Rechoo portchoo from Colonia

Last night the temperature dropped and the wind was so blowy and the trees whispered furiously as their leaves rustled against one another in the giant arch that they formed above the streets, that I knew it was fall. What's funny about this fall is that it's the summer of the south of Chile, all humidity and promise of rain and fresh smells and leaves blowing by and no trash at all because people are tidy or because it all got blown somewhere else. It's almost the fall of my childhood in Brooklyn, with mottled, bark-missing trees and big crunchy leaves, and the constant punctuation of my allergic sneezes, which almost always come in fours, but sometimes in fives and sixes. And thank goodness I haven't been to the gym lately because sneezing on top of abwork really hurts.

We're all over sunned and over carbed with the dreaded hotel breakfast of bread with bread, and occasionally bread on the side, and every time I think I feel something shake I swear it's an earthquake, except I'm on the wrong side of the cordillera and it doesn't quake here, and we get to see the streaky craypas-colored sunsets over the water because we're not on the ocean but a giant warm river the color of water that washes off your shoes after walking in the mud, because of the iron.

And it's vacation, and it's not really under my control and doesn't require my interference or anything really, except that I walk and snappity snappity with the camera and try to ignore the giant roaming loudspeakers on the car top advertising they seem to favor in this otherwise practically silent town, and tell the stray dogs to once and for all, leave me alone. I tried the typical things I say in Chile: Sale! (makes no sense, the dog is already outside, and this means get out), Fuera! (also makes no sense, means get out! and we are already outside), and even Deja! (stop it, leave it), and the CHHHHHHH sound we make, and even stamping one foot. And none of it works and I have to do the universal dog-be-gone manouver, which is to crouch down and pick up a rock, which I really hate to do because I'm loathe to throw a rock at anyone or anything, even if I have been bitten by dogs twice here in South America, and threatened by many more. The dog-be-gone tactic works, but I feel sad for the gray-muzzled one-floppy ear black pooch (the other one stands upright) that was following us, and I almost want to welcome him back, but he was really getting underfoot.

And the evening ended with a long dinner and even longer sobremesa (afterdinner conversation) with some new friends that we picked up in spite of the fact that none of us are young hostel-hoppers. And we wrapped our coats and scarves and things a little tighter around ourselves and stepped along cobblestoned streets while the trees shuuussshhhhed us on. And calabaza calabaza, cada uno a su casa (and we all flew away home, lit: squash, squash, everyone goes to his house).

So yeah, Colonia, Uruguay. Relax, bundle, listen. And if you're me, sneeze.

A point of comparison

I suffer from an inescapable desire to compare this to that. Everywhere I go, I put under the subjective lens that it's taken me all these years to painstakingly construct and send into orbit, like some kind of personal Hubble Telescope, but without blowing the budget quite so much and without such stunning images. (though more than one editor in recent months has asked me if I've thought about seriously pursuing photography, but maybe that's some kind of weird ego-fanning that editors do; if I understood editors, my life would look very different. It would have spangles, and accolades and self-important t-shirts with the word bearshapedsphere (and no, it's not Bear Shaped Sphere) on them.)

And so I compare Montevideo. To everything. To what I remember from the last time I was here (bigger, more alive!), to New York (smaller, so quiet, architecturally stunning), to Buenos Aires (not so decrepit, such nice people!) and of course to Santiago (architecturally stunning, such great service!). I could go further and compare it to Reykjavik (so old! such a big river!), or any of another of a dozen cities I've had the fortune to visit, but in the end... why?

Montevideo is itself. Dominated by a 22-km long Rambla (esplanade) along a river so wide that you cannot see gigantic Buenos Aiires across the way, and that has waves crashing along the shore,a nd fishermen with their bored girlfriends and wives sitting on beach chairs beside them texting (who? other fish widows?) and sipping their imperdible (can't-be-missed) mate which they sip and sip and sip again.

And architecture so gorgeous I want to pack it in my backpack nd take it home, and bring a giant hose and wash the smell of old urine off its steps and bottle the fashion and bring it back with me and buy a hundred pairs of made-in-Uruguay shoes that I'll never be able to wear because of my cranky feet, but if I lived here I would try so I wouldn't get the once-oer from the otherwise lovely waitstaff at the restaurante we went to this evening where for a four-dollar glass of wine, our waitress-turned-sommelier treated us with tremendous delicacy and resptet and made me want to drown my cranky-footed sorrows in glass-after-glass of 2007 Don Pascual Tannat Roble, except the first pour was plenty big, and I'm a bit of a lightweight, wine-wise.

And the food has been great, and we had tiny coffees in little juice glasses for a song, served beside those thimbles of soda water, just like iｎ　Chile, except that nothing is like Chile, apart from the fact that they speak Spanish, but it sounds totally different, and they keep on asking how someone from the United States speaks such good Spanish. So I tell them I live in　Chile, and whereas in Argentina (specifically Mendoza) that is met with the giant WHY?, here it brings an ohyeah, that must be why you have that lyrical Chilean accent (cantito chileno). Oh, and no one has shouted anything at all at me on the street. Except the guy selling the newspaper, but he was just shouting in general, so I didn't take it personally.

And all of this we like (especially the not shouting at us on the street). Because who doesn't like a giant river, delicious food and drink, lovely people and a big,fat fleamarket (tristan narvaja) on Sundays that you cuold walk around in for miles and have 86-year-old women (at least one) clutch your arm and ask you what you're taking pi tures of and two different me running mosqueta (Uruguayan name for three-card monte) games with little stainless steel cups and what looked like yellow clown noses being hidden underneath? 　We did not buy any old telephones, nor saw blades or even fried disks of hand-rolled dough called tortas.

But we did walk our mother-daughter feet off, and you can't put that on a postcard, no matter how many souvenir shops you go to (total so far=none).

Oh, and did I mention, saludos (greetings) from Montevideo? That. More to follow.

I see you, and I feel compelled to shout non sequiturs!

As a woman in Latin America, or truthfully in many parts of the world, you get used to people shouting stuff out at you on the street. Everything from cute little "Heaven must be missing an angel" comments to things that would make your 18-year-old nephew (don't have one, this is poetic license) blush. I have a variety of reactions to these comments, based on how I feel, how lascivious they are, how much I was enjoying my day prior to being interrupted, etc. But today's jibbertyjab is not actually about men calling things out to women on the street. That will happen at another time, in another place when my mother and I are not packing our bags for a quick jaunt to Montevideo, Uruguay.

Instead, today I will talk about how sometimes people in Santiago, upon discerning that I am a gringa, which they have done with their incredible bloodhoundgang-like detective skills, upon seeing that I a) am too tall b)am to pale c) posess the wrong face or d) am speaking English in the company of other gringos, decide to say random things to me.

Not long ago, I foolishly walked along Manuel Rodriguez to Huerfanos in Barrio Brasil late at night after getting off the 503 bus. In truth, I do this with some frequency, believing that this option is safer than getting off on the Alameda and walking into my neighborhood. I do this on the assumption that walking from populated to unpopulated areas is plumb dumb, and that walking from unpopulated area to unpopulated area is merely foolish. And so I set to walking. And out of nowhere, a man appeared, and he said to me, "YES!" (only it sounded like "JESS!"), which is not my name, so I yust (sic) kept going. YES! he shouted. Again, and again. I wondered if he was secretly in flagrante delicto, or perhaps listening to a silent soccer match. Or perhaps I'd unwittingly asked him a question, again, and again.

And then I remembered. I'm a gringa! He knows a word in English! He must demonstrate this! And he did. Yes! he did.

Then, a few days later, it was to a chorus of "I love you"s that I walked down the street. Being single, and relatively alone in this country, I took them for what they were worth, true professions of unrequited love, and scampered along. They love me! Yes! they do. Or maybe it was just what they remembered from English class. I'm so lucky it wasn't "This is the door," because that would really have hurt my feelings.

But the guinda on the torta (the icing on the cake, though literally it's the cherry, because bleck, Chilean deserts tend to have fruit on them), is that the other night I was walking with a couple of gringa galpals down the Alameda near the Univ. de Chile metro stop, when out of nowhere, a woman in tight jeans and a sequinned-tee shirt shouted at me, "Hey, baby!"

Did you catch that? A woman. Which on the one hand, just goes to show you how some people will shout out whatever words they can think of in English whenever a bunch of gringas goes by. And on the other hand it shows you how screwy the world is when the only words a woman can think of are the ones that have probably been shouted out to her on numerous occasions.

And then I thought of how it would be a fun little piece of performance art where you could piece together random things people shout to you on the street into a little conversation.

Hey baby!!!

Yes?

I love you!

See?

And in case you were wondering, to the "Jess" and the "I love you," I said nothing, and to the "Hey baby I responded, "hola, washita rica" (hey hot stuff (in rural lowerclass Chilean slang)). Because this was one of the days on which I had to respond or die. And then we broke into knee-slapping guffaws and ran away.

My city is a vision of safety. Except when it's not.

Santiago is outrageously safe, for the most part. And for the most part, I mean specific neighborhoods including Providencia, Ñuñoa, La Reina, La Dehesa, Lo Barnechea, Las Condes, Vitacura, parts of downtown and lots of other comunas (districts) that you'd probably never visit unless someone invited you over for tea (or onces, as they'd be more likely to call it, especially if they are not very upper class). I have, of course, also been to a bunch of the lesser-loved comunas, from Macul to Cerillos, Cerro Navia to Pudahuel, Quilicura, Renca, Lo Prado and even Pedro Aguirre Cerda (affectionately called PAC), which seems to be everyone's favorite whipping comuna. Part of it is under a highway, the public transportation isn't great, and it has more than its share of substandard public schools, for which one of my acquaintances used to be a psychologist. And he has stories, yes he does. None of which I will tell here.

The funny thing is, being in a comuna where you are allegedly in danger, allegedly likely to have something happen to you, is where you, as a foreigner, are least likely to be targeted for being foreign. You might get the fish eye, but I don't think you run a better chance of being asaltado (mugged/attacked) than the average Joe who's just gone out to get a liter of milk or beer. Though the likelihood of this is admittedly high in some areas.

If you're in a nontouristy area, you're probably visiting folks, who will take you in and out via the best route, like a guy I dated who lived in the fuzzy area between La Florida and Puente Alto, and had a few pet streets that we never walked down, no matter what time of day. And we certainly never crossed the way into La Pintana, because if you don't have a reason to go to a comuna that's known to be turbio (shady), you just shouldn't. I'm not talking about places like Estación Central or the smaller neighborhood called Franklin, which although questionable in places, at least have commerce. They're places that at least "tienes por que estar" (you have a reason to be there). I mean places that don't have a particular store or event that you need to go to, places where the map shows millions of dead end streets with numbers, (Pasaje 103, for example), rather than names, like the powers that be ran out of words before they got there. Even comunas that everyone loves to hate has places in it that are walkable, loveable, vistable. But you need to be shown these places, as they may not be evident. And you don't want to be the person that surprised some ne'er-do-wells just when they were thinking about what to do next.

One day I was headed out on my bike to meet up with a bunch of friends at Paradero 14 de Vicuña Mckenna, which translates to busstop 14 on the named street. It's a straight shot from Plaza Italia, a straight shot that I've ridden every single time I went to see the aforementioned ex (who lived closer to Paradero 23 1/2, and no, I'm not kidding about the 1/2), and up to Puente Alto, and to Pirque to go to Rio Clarillo or to Cajón de Maipo or further up towards Baños Morales. It's dull, and under the metro, and trafficky. I decided instead to take Santa Rosa. This is where all of you Santiaguinos old and new visualize the map and put your right hand (if you're right handed) up to your forehead. I was quickly treated to dilapidated buildings, a road under construction, flapping hojalata (corrugated iron used for rooves and external walls in poorer areas), and the ubiquitous barking dogs. And a flat tire. JOY! In the end, I did the old pump-and-pedal, and arrived to my friends at the paradero, who were happy and relaxed, in time to tell my tale of woe. But nothing had happened, there was no story to tell. I went where I shouldn't've (love that double contraction), and nothing happened. Except I learned that some routes are better and safer than others to get to Paradero 14 of Vicuña Mckenna (and by the way, this name I spent the first three months in Chile humming to the tune of Hakuna Matada from The Lion King, the stress is the same, and which in Spanish would mean Hakuna Killed, but I digress, as is often the case).

And yet, I know that Santiago is not safe. That "things" happen all the time. Sunglasses stolen off of faces, and cellphones ripped from hands, bananos (buttpacks) stolen off the waist of a friend while she was riding her bike (?!), and purses taken off the back of chairs, and bags opened and their contents taken, to later be reducido (fenced) by people in the know, and a friend's brother was carjacked (and killed), and another friend was stabbed on the street, and an acquaintance's father was murdered in what looks like a business-related incident.

I'm thinking about all of this on the eve of my mother's visit to Chile (and later to Uruguay, got any advice?), because of course, I want to keep us both safe. And because I'm often asked for advice on Santiago, and how safe it is. And I feel like two-face. Because the answer is: It's safe! But you have to be careful. And lucky. Don't forget lucky.

Wishing you all endless streams of wisdom and bottomless boxes of luck.

Dr. Simi! What is that funny costume you wear?

Price fixing. That's what my first legal temp job was about after graduating from law school. I worked in a windowless "war room" with several wannabe lawyers (whereas I just wanted to be working, and soon was, as a kind of legal journalist/law clerk), checking document after document for "compliance." We were looking for evidence of price fixing between several major agricultural giants, specifically on high fructose corn syrup. You rememember that stuff, right? That we're not supposed to consume because it doesn't affect satiety and you keep on eating or drinking more and more and OMG it's even in the ketchup and we can't get away and gah! Yeah, well move to Chile. We don't see much of it here. And blabla Michael Pollan and the Omnivore's Dilemma, and yeah I read it, and it was great, but that's not what this post is about. And I hope you never ever have to work in something called a "war room" in peacetime or during conflict.

So, price fixing. Not as pleasant as a prix fixe meal at your favorite French restaurant. Collusion among the major players in a field to keep the prices of certain products high, gaining more profits for the major players themselves, and fleecing the customers. In Chile a major pharmacy was recently fined chump change for admitting to having price fixed (fixed prices?) with two other pharmacies. The pharmacies in question are Salcobrand, Cruz Verde and FASA, which you may know by it's other name, Farmacias Ahumadas, which although it sounds like they might sell smoked salmon (salmón ahumado), they don't. Read more about the pharmacy situation (but sadly, not about smoked salmon) here.

Pharmacies are a major deal here, stand-alone businesses (though sometimes they're located inside the larger supermarkets) that are on corner after corner (and in the midblock) downtown. I used to live in Providencia, further uptown, near the corner of Eliodoro Yañez and Los Leones. I like to call that corner "dueling pharmacies" (with apologies to the composer of the piece Dueling Bajos made famous by the movie Deliverance, and yes, I had to look that up) because there were two giant pharmacies across the street from each other. Competition is rife, with "discounts" offered on certain days, and on certain products. I put discounts in quotes, since now we know the prices were artificially high to begin with.

So now that we know that the three major pharmacies are colluding to raise prices, or at least were, and that the recourse for consumers is a byzantine maze of mythic proportions, including receipts, which doesn't make any sense, because they know who we are and what we bought, as everyone has one of those points plans, and gives their RUT (national ID number) when they buy anything larger than a pack of gum, what's a drug-seeking gringa to do? I am quite sure I will not join the rebate club, but I will try, when possible, to patronize other pharmacies.

I know of one vaguely nearby neighborhood pharmacy, which I tried to use the last time I needed to buy something drugstore-related. It was a holiday weekend though, and so it was closed.

So I hunkered down, and went to talk to this man.



This is the mascot? icon? big foam dude? that represents Dr. Simi, a low-budget pharmacy with a cheapie clinic attached. The chain opened fairly recently downtown, is only present in lower-income areas (it would seem) and has a company motto which is "the same, but cheaper." (Lo mismo, pero mas barato)

To be fair, you don't always see the man (what do you call this giant man with a person inside? Is it a mascot even though he's not an animal?), and in fact, I think this picture I snapped of him near the Mercado Central was the only time I've actually seen him. Most of the time the pharmacy just looks like a regular pharmacy, though they do sometimes pipe loud ranchera music into the street at the location near where I live (which is "bohemian" and not lower-class, they tell me, and I would have to agree that it is not lower-class, but I'm not too sure about the bohemian part). It's also open on all sides, whereas most other pharmacies have a door you have to open and walk through. This makes it seem a little like a garage, but as far as I can tell, they only sell medicine there, not even gum, and definitely not car parts (for this you will have to go to 10 de julio, trust me, and say hello to my friend S that works down there, please).



This photo I took near the Plaza de Armas, which apparently didn't used to be paved and now is paved, and it has a big fountain in the middle which people scoop water out of to pat down their hair in the summertime, and last night smelled a lot like a Y swimming pool, and also they were setting up (I think) the children's book fair. Beside the Plaza de Armas is also where an impromptu "Peruville" (my name) crops up at a number of times a day, with courier and money-wiring services and plates of chicken and rice and the dessert mazamora and other Peruvian delicacies (including Inca Cola and Sublime, a kind of chocolate candy), and lots of people speaking very well-pronounced Spanish.



It turns out the pharmacy chain also has locations in Peru (as well as Guatemala and Argentina), where I don't know if they have price fixing but I mainly wonder if they have that guy. Anyone? Also, have we decided what that is called yet? I was thinking of getting a suit made that looked like me, that I could wear around. You know, in case I didn't feel like going out. Or in case I had to be in disguise. Very subtle.

On knitting your own weekend

This weekend I played cultural philistine, and purposely avoided several big events happening in Santiago.

There was the Cumbre Huachaca in Estación Mapocho, a throwback festival/party that celebrates a kind of Chilean hick culture. There's dancing (usually popular music), sandwiches with perníl, which is some kind of meat, a drink called a terremoto, which is a mix of pipeño ("green" wine, that is, not very aged), and scoop of pineapple icecream plopped on top. There are sopaipillas, those fried disks of dough, and long lines, and drunk people and folks using strips of toilet paper to emulate the pañuelo (hanky) they're supposed to twirl around while doing the cueca (national dance of Chile, not to be confused with tighty-whities, which is what the word means in Portuguese). I'd like to say I purposely didn't go to this. So I will. I've been before, and without a giant group of people, it's not that much fun, and (for me), even with a giant group of people, it's still not really my style. But it's Chilean excitement, and if you're ever in town on the one weekend of the year when it's happening, you totally should go. Or to one of the Sept. 18th festivities called fondas. Which, I've been told are totally different. There's no perníl! Try La Piojera or El Hoyo if you're here in the off season for a taste of what you've missed.

I also did not go to the RenFaire here in Santiago, but Pablo, my super talented photographer friend did, and you can go see his take on it on his flickr page, but I have to warn you that regardless of your sexual orientation, you will get trapped looking at stunning photos of (tastefully nude) tattooed women that is part of a larger project he's working on.

In addition, I skipped Museos de Medianoche, or the midnight museum walk. Museums open late for family browsing. Also free. I like museums as much as the next philistine, but I gave this a miss as well.

The last major event that I didn't go to this weekend was the "Vendimia" (grape harvest festival) up in Vitacura. Vendimia is celebrated in the wine-growing regions, like the Colchagua Valley and Santa Cruz. This "vendimia," complete with pisada de uvas (grape stomping) took place in a park in Vitacura, a fairly exclusive, pricey part of town that's still relatively close-in. It's not filled with ostentatious houses, just lots of wealthy people and their dogs. And sometimes their nanas (household employees) walking their dogs. And sometimes they have on matching outfits, the nanas and the dogs, and no I'm not kidding. Anyway, this was in Parque Bicentenario, ex Parque Las Americas, because nothing in Chile can have just one name, everything has been named and renamed several times again. It's like they're all following the "artist formerly known as Prince's" example.

Here's another place where they've done it, in case you thought I was making this up:



Rather than enlighten myself with any of these activities, I took lots of long walks, went out to dinner with a friend (at Kintaro in Bellas Artes, if you were wondering), out for a late lunch at Café Amadeus near Parque Bustamonte (get the piadina filomena), went to a couple of parties which won't be written up in the farandula (celebrity gossip) pages and on Saturday afternoon, went to Club de Portugués (email me if you want details, you can come, too) with a very multi culti crew (we were from the US, Chile, Argentina, Cuba and Poland/Canada), and I can now falar portugues. (a tiny bit).

On Sunday, while I was shirking yet more high-profile events that I could have attended, I went to the Huerto Hada Verde Bazaar.



where organic this and that was for sale:



and the kids wandered freely and one of them laid down in the tomato plants to have a snack.



and then later went into the gallinero (chicken coop), and came out with this lovely hen (sorry, don't know her name).



And Bernardita, a talented bassist/singer (with the band Guiso, which meanns stew) /skateboarder/marmalade coach and breadmaker showed us all how it was done. And I'm eating some of the whole wheat pesto bread right now.





I know that living in a big city is all about the capital E events that you go to, and line up for and spend your hard-earned money (or not) on, but this weekend fit me to a T, and I wouldn't have traded it for a free tasting glass or the chance to rub shoulders with winelovers from uptown, or to get sweated upon and have terremoto sloshed upon me downtown, or seeing people in overdone costumes, or even peeking through the museums at night. Though if it had not been for the Portuguese club, I really would have gone to the garage sale that a reader invited me to, and which I'm sorry I couldn't make.

But instead of all these storied events, I spent a weekend with my people. And this is something no newspaper and no guidebook can walk you through. It's all about the world you build for yourself. What was in your world this weekend?

Las Siete Maravillas (The seven wonders). Or not.

What? Have I not written about language in a day or more? Well then, it must be time. I actually have studied linguistics for years and years, so most of what I say on the topic is not a complete invention, if you must know. Unfortunately, due to my own inability to correctly identify the field of language study that would truly thrill me (random observations and wonderwhys, of course), I mostly studied what can only be called "heavy theoretical linguistics." Which, by the way, is not a field of study that should be embarked upon by a web, rather than linear thinker. But I digress. As I often do. Did you say you saw something shiny?

Anyway, today's linguistic observation is based on something that happened at onces (teatime, which neither has eleven of anything, nor is served at eleven, which is another etymological mystery that I can take time to explain at another juncture) at a friend's house. Part of the pre-meal snack was sunflower seeds, or semillas de maravilla. I always forget that sunflower seeds are called maravilla in Chile, since I learned the word in Spain, as I passed field upon field of these leggy beauties, literally turning to the sun (girasol in Castillian Spanish).

So as the cracking and spitting of the semillas de maravilla went on and on, and our blood pressure rose from the tasty but high sodium content, we were talking about sunflowers. Sunflowers this and sunflowers that (though not seashells and sunflowers because my friends don't read a lot of blogs in English, mine included). And one of my friends said something that made the other two of us stop and wait.

Las usan para las siete maravillas. Sunflowers are used to make the seven wonders of the world? What? Like if I plant a seed, I can get Macchu Pichu in my yard? That's incredible. Oh wait, I don't have a yard. I'll have to plant it in the flowerpot with my cacti that live on the outside windowsill. Might get crowded.

So we waited, and waited to find out where this bizarre (even for me) tangent was going. Las siete maravillas. The seven wonders of the world? From sunflower seeds?

And then we realized where we'd gone wrong. (Actually, we had to ask). They're used to make sunflower oil, he said.

Las usan para el aceite de maravilla. Not: Las usan para las siete maravillas.

I used to think that my inability to correctly identify where words began and ended in Spanish was what made my listening poorer than my speaking (read all about it here). But here I was, beside a native Spanish speaker, the speaker's partner, and she didn't know what he'd said either.

Which is how I furned FODA (SWOT, in English, a business acronym to begin discussions about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, or fortalezas, oportunidades, debilidades y amenazas) patas arriba (upside down). My D was now my F, or my W my S, if you prefer. I was as easily stymied as a native speaker. Gooooooooool!

And anyway, considering that sunflowers are not yet genetically engineered, unlike the soy beans from which they make the oil we get here in Chile, I'd consider that pretty darn wonderful. Las siete maravillas indeed.

What is snark? And a bonus article! Supermarket souvenirs.

Is it a bonus or a detriment when I don't write a blog entry and instead redirect you to some of my work which has actually passed another human's eyes before going public? On the one hand, less snark. On the other hand, less snark.

What is snark, exactly anyway? I've been accused of it, or crowned with it, not sure which. I read a series of blogs when I'm not running around my apartment in tight, geometrically-incorrect circles, making oven-baked squash and carmellized onion soup (which never becomes soup, strangely, forkful by forkful it disappears down my squash-deprived gullet). Anyway, some of these people? Not happy. It might be that I'm mellowing with my (cough) advanced age, or that I've lived through a couple of mindwrenchingly bad scenarios in my life, and am better able to tell the difference between TRAGIC and merely uncomfortable. Anyway, who knows. Looking at the world through my own lens? Certainly. Does the lens need an adjustment? Dunno. Got a friend who works at an optical shop. Maybe I'll see what he can do for me. I just hope it doesn't hurt.

I will now ponder my own navel in private, and before I go, leave you with this.

Supermarket souvenirs. Brought to you by my fab editor at bootsnall (who I hope to see when I'm in Portland later this year, someone should probably mention that to him), and also from me, your humble hostess. But you don't get any soup. Go buy your own squash.

and now, for something more visual (parque mahuida photos)

It's wrong to talk about Teniente Bello and the hike in general (see yesterday's post), without mentioning a bit about Parque Mahuida (ma-WEED-a). It's the most accessible slice of nature available to Santiaguinos, and is relatively unvisited. There's a kid's park (Granjaaventura, where people have birthday parties), picnicking areas, the rodelbahn (alpine slide, like a bobsled without the snow), and a bunch of other activities. But a quick walk up a steepish and either dusty or muddy road, and you're on another planet.

The ascent up the Cerro La Cruz side brought us some unusual sights, like this bright blue (carnivorous!) bug, dragging this juicy spider around:



And this nearly dead chagual stalk next to the quisco cactus with what I imagine is a parasite wrapped around it. I couldn't get any closer without risking impalement, and I'm no botanist to identify for sure what the red boa around the cactus was. In this photo you can see that the winter smog is already setting in.



Which, come to think of it, I saw something very similar on the cacti on that ill-fated trip to El Roble last year with those locos with their piston legs and their multiply-suspended bikes.

And here's a naked quisco, one of a few cacti that grown near Santiago, which are kind of saguaro-looking, but without all the shoulders. Spines? Very pokey.



And I know the quintral is a parasite, but for me it's a total show-stealer, regardless. The quintral is the blooms on this esclerofilo (hard-leaved tree, like a holly, called schlerophyll in English).



Here's a closer look at what we were calling, affectionately enough "my parasite."



And no trip to a bosque esclerofilo (a native forest of these hard-leaved trees, which are now just in small stands as development encroaches, and which are an important environmental niche) would be complete without mentioning my favorite seed pod. What? You don't have a favorite seedpod? Go find your own, this one's mine!



And since it's not a pod, I can also equally love this seed-delivery system. I call it "planta plumavit" or styrofoam plant. If you touch it, it falls apart into tiny triangles which constitute the sphere.



And here's where I knew I really had a photography problem. I looked at these dead leaves (original image):



and immediately knew they would look better in black and white:



Which opens a whole 'nother can of worms about how photography purists seem to allow black-and-white as a legitimate use of photoshop, even though, I don't know about you, but I see colors. Daily. And thank goodness, or I'd never ever have noticed the quintral.

But the eagle eye award goes to Mr. Still Life for spotting this local fauna on our way out of the park.



Another trip is tentatively scheduled for mid-may. Quién se suma? (Who's up for it?)

You, me and Teniente Bello

Chileans already know where this is going, mas o menos (roughly).

Yesterday I accompanied two intrepid gringos (actually, whose idea it was go out for a hike, hi still life, mr. still life!) up to Parque Mahuida in the comuna of La Reina for some steep walking up, and some steep walking down.

See, this is the thing about hiking in Chile. Since we've got these giant razor-backed, um, you know, Andes, most hikes are straight up the mountain, and then straight down the mountain. Though you might think it would be the opposite, I far prefer the ascent to the descent, basically because gravity keeps me from flying up the mountainside sin querer (by accident), but also gives a strong pull downwards on the slippystep down the scree, loose gravel and rocks. I sat down a couple of times, harder than I'd have liked, poom right onto my poto (tush/bottom).

Anyway, slipping down the mountain aside, I always have a bit of a problem with this park. It's lovely, safe has holly-like trees (including the rash-producing litre, which you must say hello to), a million blooming things, and several different kinds of birds, which you might actually see, unlike the mammals who know a thing or two about hiding. My problem is that I am constitutionally incapable of following Sendero El Litre to its logical conclusion back down to the road.

The main hikes in the giant park (and before I forget, it's accessible by the D02 to Alberto Cassanova/Larrain, and you can get the D02 at the Irrarrazaval metro, or at Plaza Egaña or at Simon Bólivar or a bunch of other places), are up Cerro San Ramón (two days, you overnight on the mountain), along the Sendero de Chile (trail that one day should connect most of Chile), or up to Cerro La Cruz. We opted for up towards Cerro La Cruz, guessing we might not go up the whole way, but rather take the dreaded Sendero El Litre back to the park HQ. This trail is dreaded only because I cannot follow it. In the spring it is one of the prettiest place I know close to Santiago, the other being Yerba Loca, which is harder to get to, but I'm sure I'll write about someday soon.

And here's where the poor lieutenant Bello comes in. As we were hiking down and across a few dry streambeds, we heard a voice. "Are there people over there?" "Yes," we responed "and over there?" "Estamos mas perdidos que el teniente Bello" (We're more lost than Lieutenant Bello, fig: We are utterly lost). The hikers coming in the opposite direction were trying to hike the same trails as us, but in the opposite direction. And they too, were a bit confused. We were able to direct them back from whence we'd come, but not before exchanging a few pleasantries. The leader of the duo, a broad man with a very big stick, proclaimed himself to be "from" San Francisco. This seemed curious to me, as "from" is really a where you were born thing, not a where you live thing. The gentleman was obviously Chilean, but had been living in SF for 30 years. It almost makes me want to go on yet another tangent, one where we discuss what it means to be "from" somewhere. But I will resist, and leave it hanging for discussion at a later juncture.

Teniente Bello, of the getting lost fame, was a minor military figure, the son of important people, and the grandson of Andres Bello, for whom one of the city's major traffic arteries is named (when I die, please name a bikepath or hiking trail after me, not someplace where people sit in choking traffic and smog). Anyway, poor Teniente Bello had a series of mishaps when trying to get his pilot's license, He had to fly a tight triangle from town to town, and first got lost in the clouds, then lifted off without enough fuel, and finally was lost forever in fog. He is not celebrated like our Amelia Earhart, that groundbreaking female pilot, rather he has become the butt of jokes, and

Which, come to think of it is actually what I'd like to have named after me. A trail that never takes you where you think you're going, that meanders and crosses back upon itself, and that in the end, you have to write your own adventure to get found again. Given my lack of sense of direction, my tangential musings and all the rest, I think it would be only appropriate. If it's in Chile, I hope they'll call it Sendero de Aylín. (Aylín's path).

Expat life, those pesky and repetitive questions.

Inspired by the blog of a France-to-Canada expat who's an adult TCK (third culture kid) which I found through someone I don't know (@expatify)who started following me on twitter, which is maybe less serendipitous than the fact that I met an exboyfriend's exgirlfriend at a party not too long ago (oh! and did we have things to talk about). But that did not inspire a blog entry, so back to this one. In the linked entry, Emmanuelle discusses the top six most annoying questions she's asked as an expat living in Vancouver.

I thought I'd do something similar, with seven questions (because I really couldn't narrow them down), with a little analysis of how I perceive the question and how I field it.

Top seven FAQs asked of expats living in Chile.

1. Oye... Y por qué Chile? (hey, and so why Chile?) or alternatively: Cómo llegaste a Chile? (How'd you end up here?).

I think this question is based in a disbelief that anyone would purposely choose Chile. It's perhaps a mix of lack of country-based pride and a hope-upon-hope that maybe you'll say something complimentary about the country the asker was born in. I have a pat answer. I wanted to take a spell out of United States, to a Spanish-speaking country with economic and political stability, where it was possible to make a living and live reasonably well, and which had a stunning geography.

2. Te acostumbraste ya? (Are you used to it here, do you feel comfortable?) or: Te costó acostumbrarte? (Was it hard to get used to it here?)

I guess people here want to know if an outsider can really like Chile. Part of this is based in the same incredulousness as question 1, about why someone would choose Chile. They also want to know that you feel acogido (comforted, supported, hosted) by Chile, as hospitality is very important in this country. My answer here is, for the most part, yes. Sometimes I get impatient, and that doesn't mix terribly well with Chilean culture and causes conflict, but for the most part, I have adjusted, and I also don't expect to fit in fully. People seem to like this answer.

3. Qué tal los hombres chilenos? (How's about Chilean men, nudge nudge)

Here I don't have alot to report. Despite early efforts, I have yet to date even a small percentage of Chilean men, though that doesn't stop me from running into two of them on the street within a week of one another, which was kind of frightening. I never really know if I'm supposed to say they're fabulous dancers or incredible gentlemen or look good in snug jeans. So I just kind of say, yeah, they're fine. I mean, it's not like I know everyone in the whole country, and while I do make broad generalizations in general, this does not seem like an area in which it would be wise to do so.

4. Tení pololo? (Got a boyfriend (in Chilean slang)?)

This question used to annoy me, until I realized it was just that people wanted me to be well taken-care of. If I had a Chilean boyfriend (see question 3, above), there would be a reason for me to be here, and also they would know that I had a standing invitation to my suegra's (mother-in-law's) house on Sundays and someone to take care of the cat (if I had one) when I went away for the weekend. I think this question is based on conformity rather than an actual interest in whether or not I'm getting any. At any rate, no one has ever offered to introduce me to their son, brother or cousin upon hearing that I am single. (Though this may be due to my "caracter fuerte" (strong personality) about which I am constantly harrangued.)

5. Te gusta la comida chilena? (Do you like Chilean food?)

A point of connection, I suppose, that is, if I ate meat. The fact that I don't eat meat is a bit of a mystery, an insult. They wonder what my suegra (see question 4) feeds me when I come to visit on Sundays. I usually save face by talking about how good the fruits and vegetables are (and OMG, are they ever), and also how much I like porotos granados (or the blogsherpa version here, which I seriously could eat twice a week for the rest of my life and it would not be too much. This question usually devolves into a question about seafood, which though I technically do eat, in practice I don't really chow down on too much.

6. Te quedas? (Gonna stay?) or Te radicaste ya? (Are you here permanently?)

Here I guess what my interviewer is wondering is whether it makes sense to become friends, make an effort, etc. If I'm leaving, it might make sense to say hello and add me on facebook, but if I stay, from there I could come to a barbecue (and eat bread and freeze to death as the nighttime temperatures drop), go on a bike ride, be included in a night on the town, etc. There's also probably an element of testing country pride again. If someone from New York (albeit Brooklyn, which leads to great disappointment and actual physical steps back at times) chooses Santiago, well then maybe it's not a bad place to be (it totally isn't, you should visit sometime).

7. Qué te gusta de Chile? (What do you like about Chile?) This question always reminds me of the letter I had to write to Extranjería (foreigners' office) about why I wanted to stay in Chile. I was counselled to say I liked empanadas and Chilean men (See questions numbers 4 and 5). Here any answer will do, so long as it's true. In my case, I love the quality of life, the freshness of fruits and veggies, the photo ops, the bikeability, the awesome landscape, the (mostly) warm people, the blogfodder (If I were a pastry, I'd be a proliferole).

The thing about the questions, which are predictably asked, everywhere from the doctor's office to the fruit stand at the market where they call me "casera, caserita" (homemaker!) is that you have to take them in good stead. In Santiago, you may be the first (or the tenth) foreigner someone has ever met, not the hundredth or the thousandth like in New York or LA. And for the most part, people mean well.

However, being asked the same questions literally hundreds of times is annoying. It's frustrating because it's like asking a tall person how tall she is, or a noncustodial mother if she misses her kids (like the air she breathes, according to one such mom I know). I love to talk (and about myself, even more), but I just wish people could put a little more research into their queries. In a way, I look at it as though my lame and soon-to-be-fired publicist has booked me on yet another night time talk show. I'd rather stay in the greenroom and eat M&Ms, but I must go on stage, be gracious and not show too much cleavage. It's all what's good for the public eye.

Or I could do what a friend of mine did not long ago at a party. When asked, "Cómo llegaste a Chile?" (how did you end up in Chile, question number one), she replied "En avión" (by plane). I bet her publicist doesn't book her on any more talk shows. Lucky girl. Now she can eat all the M&Ms she wants, from the comfort of her own home.

On the informal economy

In a recent guest blog post over at Travelojos in which I talk about the contrast between formal and informal morality in Chile, I mentioned that there are two economies here, the formal and informal.

The formal economy is just what you'd expect. People busting their humps, with the longest work week, of 48 hours and allegedly some of the lowest productivity in the Americas. Workers leave the house at 6, 7, or if they are lucky 8, and arrive home nearly never before 7, often not until 9. For this, once a month, people who work here will get their liquidación de sueldo (like a pay stub), or less commonly, a check to cash. The minimum monthly wage in Chile from July 1, 2008 to June 30th, 2009 is 159,000 pesos, or about US $300. This article in the Bolivian newspaper El Diario, refers to the Univ. of Belgrano study, which compares the minimum wages of several nearby countries and finds that Argentina is in first place, with $310, then Chile, $266. Paraguay marks $216, Colombia $197, Brazil $176, Ecuador $170, Peru $150, Uruguay $129 and Bolivia $63.

No matter where you live, the minimum wage is just not a whole lot to live on. You probably struggle with necessities, like your kids' education, electricity bills, buying and cooking nutritious food and transportation costs. My repeating monthly bills, which are housing, gastos comunes (apt. maintenance that renters pay), electricity, gas, internet, cellphone, health insurance and a gym membership, dwarf the minimum wage. And I do not have a car, or a television, or cable, or take public transportation practically ever (I ride my bike everywhere), or have children to send to school, or eat meat or do a host of other things that "normal" humans might consider essential.

If I do the math, there are ways I probably could live on minimum wage. I'd drop my cellphone plan, my gym membership, possibly my health insurance. I could also take in a lodger into my one-bedroom apartment. With two out of the three of those things, I could just barely live on minimum wage. I'd be eating a lot of potatoes, and forget about those pesky things like going to the doctor when sick or the dentist, ever. And if it was your birthday I'd bring you some beads I'd strung myself (not a bad gift, actually).

So what do people do? Here in Santiago, people double and triple-up in pretty small spaces, live in neighborhoods that are not winning any Good Housekeeping awards. They eat at home, or load up on the free lunch at work (or in the nearby eateries that accept the sodhexo pass, a lunch coupon which some employees get), and they use consumer credit which will take them a lifetime to pay off.

They also supplement their work. People who work in the formal economy, and those who are outside of it have invented a million and one ways to make cash when money is tight, or economize on what they have to pay for. Not just minimum wage earners. People who are out of work, and even people who make fairly decent money, but for whom a few extra pesos would round out the month nicely.

Transportation: On the old bus system (where we paid cash), young people would get on the bus with their arms in a creepy heil-hitler salute, saying "me llevas a doscientos?" (Can I ride for (esssentially) half-price? With the new system this doesn't work, and so people sometimes pry open the back doors of the bus and hop on for free, or just don't scan their BIP card on the way in. Money saver. People also walk distances rather than taking transportation if possible. Bicycle use is on the rise as well.

Food: Rather than eating dinner, people will stop off and eat a couple of sopaipillas, fried disks of dough bought on the street for 100 pesos (less than a quarter), spread with mustard and ketchup and scarfed down. Nutritious? Absolutely not. But cheap.

Recycling: Cartoneros swoop around the city, looking for paper and cardboard to bundle up and sell by weight. People also dig through the trash and pick up cans, always followed by a resounding crunch as they flatten the can for easier storage and transport. Last I looked, the price for aluminum was 300 pesos a kilo. Do you know how many cans that is? Still, it's something.

Selling stuff: This is where the informal economy really takes off. At the place I used to work, where salaries were far above minimum wage, it was fairly common for someone to bring in a loaf of banana bread, and sell it by the slice. Or a box of cuchuflies (rolled wafers filled with cream caramel, sometimes dipped in chocolate) that they'd bought, to sell for a profit. At Christmas people came around with boxes of cookies or pan de pascua (a cross between pannetone and fruitcake), all for sale.

On the street, there are people selling bandaids (100 pesos a strip), fruits and vegetables in bags (prices and selection vary, depending on the season), and the shoeshine men, who always have signs up saying "llegó la grasa de caballo" (horsegrease arrived!). They perhaps are not actually informal in that they have permission from the city to be there, but I'm guessing they don't make minimum wage.

Candied peanut stands are popular, and you'll often find people with baskets of the same hopping on and off busses or wandering the street offering them for sale. At big events you'll see people selling cubos (ices) or sandwiches, like the "vegetarian hamburger" I bought last night for 500 pesos after the monthly critical mass ride. It was delicious. Garlicky. I know people who make bath salts, herbal remedies, natural cosmetics, marzipan, jam and a million other things for sale on the street, or among friends. And I know several people who run bikeshops out of their homes, with a space in the garage or in the back yard where they have a stool you can sit on while you wait and make idle chitchat with their mom, girlfriend, daughter, etc.

And last night, as we were sitting out in Bellavista (which I mention in this article as well), a guy came up selling flowers he'd made from palm leaves, presumably leftovers from Palm Sunday (domingo de ramos), which he'd had lying around after street sales of palms didn't exhuast his supply. And before you deride the workmanship of something you can buy on the street for 200 pesos, I want you to take a look at the level of detail involved, the precision.



In another world this guy would be a reknowned artisan. Here he's just another guy who sells stuff on the street to make some money for the family. Thanks guy. You do beautiful work.

Misinterpretation

About two years after I moved to Chile, a couple of friends and I set to subtitling a movie short that a friend was submitting to an international film festival. We were doing it as a favor, and for fun. The footage involved several hiphoperos (hip hop artists) talking about their art, about battles, about what it means to the kids in their communities to have this form of expression.

I'd been invited not for my in-depth knowlege of coa which is a jailhouse slang used among people in the lower classes, some of which has percolated up to middle class, giving us coin-name slang, and several words in verés, which are words taken apart and put back together al revés, or backwards. No, my friends would translate the coa into Spanish that I spoke.

From there, my job was to make Spanish into real English. Sure, we were native speakers, one and all. But after you've been here for a while, your English can get a little broken. Spanish grammar or word choice translated in English starts to sound normal. So it was my job to make sure the subtitles sounded like real English.

But when you're not subtitling a movie short, and you're just shooting the breeze with some friends, the whole messed-up word choice can turn into a bit of a game. You pause, smile, and point when your friends misstep, using the translation of a Spanish word in English, and then discuss what the right word is.

Consider this conversation I had with a friend:

Her: So I told him I'd go, but it turns out I can't, because I'm compromised (from Spanish: tengo compromiso, I have previous plans)

and I pointed and laughed and said:

Me: You're not compromised, you're complicated! (from Chilean Spanish complicada, which means that it would be difficult, and thereby unlikely for you to do something).

Ahem. In this case, not better, just different.

For the most part, despite having been here for five years, my English is relatively intact. Every day is a mix of English and Spanish, with work and talking to family and a handful of friends in English, and out of the house and socializing and any bureacratic things and some reading and listening to the radio and on line chatting all in Spanish. I admit that I can be lazy, and with some English-speaking friends, we speak more of a mix, replacing patches of sentences in Spanish when the mood strikes us or when something is expressed better or more succinctly in Spanish. This I know is frowned upon, and I can make an effort to say it all in English when need be. But though I have to admit sometimes it's an effort, I like to think I can do it like a champ.

But consider this beaut from Sunday.

I was up and out of the house very early to take pictures of the Santiago Marathon. Afterwards I was riding up the cerro when I got a call from an (English-speaking) friend (aka still life) who wanted to have lunch. So I toodled back down the cerro and we met up to grab a bite. During lunch I was explaining that I was pretty goofy tired because I'd been awake since 6:30. She looked at me, wondering why so early. And I explained that I'd meant to awaken somewhat early for the photo ops, but not quite that early.

I said to her, "It was so strange, to wake up at 6:30 in the morning, alone."

She finished chewing her salad, paused for a second and said, "Why? do you usually have guests?" Which I'm sure was her polite way of saying, wait a sec, Eileen, you're single, what's up with the occupied other half of your bed?

And I looked at her and said, "No, I haven't had any guests." And then I realized what I'd done.

Me desperté sola = I woke up on my own (without any assistance, e.g. an alarm clock)

And I'd translated it (sin querer (by accident)) into "I woke up alone." Which is a possible interpretation, but it's not what I meant, and certainly not what I planned to announce there at lunch at Café Mosqueto (get the quiche plus salad, very tasty).

And that, my friends, is what I'd call a misinterpretation. Thank goodness for polite friends who don't speak with their mouths full and who clarify before alerting the presses that I've taken up with a new pierna peluda (lit: hairy leg, we use it in Chile to mean your (male) mate.) We don't need that kind of thing going through the witches' mail (correo de las brujas=the grapevine). Especially when it's invented (inventado=made up, not true).

On accents

It drives me batty when people imitate what they percieve to be an American accent in Spanish. If they did it well, or reliably, or if they actually sounded like what Americans sound like when they speak Spanish, or if I myself had a strong accent in Spanish, perhaps I would take to it more kindly, think it cute. Instead I've got my blood cells jumping up and down in a jumpity motion we call boiling.

It was the worst when the Chilean English teachers at the institute where I worked used to do it. They, at least, were more capable, being language professionals and bilingual to boot, but I still found it off the mark. I also found it rude.

I was a great imitator of accents until I started teaching ESL. I used to bring my ex to tears of laughter by imitating my Hindi teacher who would leave me long, berating voicemails on my phone at work telling me that my homework quality was poor or reminding me that I hadn't done it (this following how poor the previous one had been). She was from the Punjab, which borders Pakistan and had a lot to say about Partition (when Pakistan and India divided), sometimes even when yelling into the phone about my homework.

So there we'd be, in stitches, me rolling my rs and ls back into my mouth and talking about my terrible handwriting in Devenagari (the script used for Hindi and a bunch of other languages) was. When I started teaching ESL to adult students from all over the world, I thought for sure I'd get some good language-imitation practice.

But I found it unfunny. Sure, I could imitate Krasimira, but how good was my Bulgarian, or Daljit, but how good was my Punjabi, or Enkshargal, but my Mongolian? nonexistent. It seemed in poor taste to imitate, and so I didn't. Not because I'm morally superior, but because I don't like to do things that make me uncomfortable. My particular subculture (Jewish, female, neoyorquina, thirty-cough) doesn't prize making fun of people after the age of eight, and even then it's looked down upon.

So back to Chile. When faced with a person who imitates the gringo accent in Spanish, I wonder two things: 1. Why don't you do that when you speak English, it would give you the prettiest accent in my native language that I ever did hear? and 2. What would happen if I gave you a tongue-lashing in near accentless Chilean Spanish? If I avoid all the words with rs and ds, I could really do a great job.

Which is why I will never (again) date someone named Rodrigo. Or say the word adolorida (in pain) or refrigerador unless it's absolutely necessary. Which if you think about it, is pretty unlikely.

But at this point I've picked up the somewhat Chilean (goodness knows it's not from New York) habit of smiling and nodding in the face of adversity, and trying not to be rude outright, even if the other party is being malcriado (poorly-raised, like a miscreant). So when faced with the accent imitators, I simply ignore it.

And den I seet and tallk to frence abouditt.

And that always makes me feel better.

Guest blogger: me!

I was recently contacted by Steven of Travelojos, an independent newsman of sorts, who pulls together information from all over Latin American and follows a variety of people and news sources about the same. It all started when somehow or another I came to leave a comment on his blog. Chatty this one (had you heard?)

And a guest blog post was born. It's more political and more likely to get me raked over the coals than is normally the case (though I've had a couple of burns here as well). I'd be interested in expounding on a bunch of other topics as well if you were hoping for some bearshaped blabla to grace your pages. Please don't step up all at once. A girl's got to work for her (mostly vegetarian) bearfeed as well.

And in other news, there's a giant pillowfight (flashmob style) at 2PM tomorrow at Paseo de Las Palmas up in Providencia. What will they think of next?

Today's blog entry brought to you by TravelBlogs. Oh, and me.

In the interest of me actually getting some work done, today's blog entry has been replaced by this fine piece I wrote on learning to listen. Today's the perfect day for it to go live, as it marks five crazy years since I got off a plane at Santiago's airport into a maelstrom of having no idea what was going on.

Thanks to Travel Blogs for encouraging me to write this piece and making me edit it a bit (my words! my beautiful words!), and where you'll find what they think are 99 of the best travel blogs and where I find myself in truly stellar company. Thanks again.

More to follow!

Shopping locally. The real yapa is how they treat you.

A while ago (maybe a year or so), a friend of mine and I were talking about how much she hates going to the grocery store. Part of this is just the way she's wired, part of it is that she goes seldom, and by car, thereby having to fight traffic, parking and cart-driving all in one trip. And part of it is where she goes. She lives in a little gated community up on a hillside. They have a supermarket, but it's not very complete, so she prefers one of the bigger ones out in the suburbs. Here the supermarkets are huge, and require a lot of walking around. Also because the area she lives in doesn't have a lot of gringos, and she is very pretty and both light-eyed and light-haired, she gets the major fisheye everywhere she goes.

I was comparing her experiences food shopping to mine, and came to the conclusion that the main factor that makes her stare-worthy is not that she looks like a gringa. I too, do not pass for Chilean most of the time. The issue is one of familiarity. Because of where I live, in part of downtown with cobblestoned streets and old, old buildings, and little tiny minishops, one with fruit and veggies, one with bread and empanadas, another kind of a drygoods shop, another drygoods plus meat, all the stores are family-run. At most they have two or three employees, and these same people see me every day, or every other day as I hop in to buy some grapes, some olives and today a little tray of cut up veggies which I was planning on stirfrying but ended up eating most of raw with my lunch.

Later I'll bring the returnable 1.5 liter bottle back to "my" other minimarket and get another dose of diet coke (terrible vice, I know). They'll try to sell me on the Chilean avocadoes, which are delicious, but much harder to peel than Haas. They know me well enough to not give me a bag, to ask how work is going.

One of the many things I love about living in this neighborhood is how much of a neighborhood it is. People are a little nosy, and I'm not sure the guy living on the bench in front of the building isn't tipping someone off to certain dwellers' comings and goings, but it's just a nice place to live. People know me, are accustomed to me, don't act surprised when I come in and gab about the weather and ask them to please cut the hardened end off the cheese before slicing some for me.

But the best thing about the neighborhood and the local stores in it is that today while I was buying my little tray of cutup vegetables I decided to buy a knot of ginger to tasty-up my lunchtime treat. And the lady at my local veggie shop, with whom I've spoken at length about bags and several other environmental issues just tossed it in my backpack for free. La yapa, she said, the Chilean word for a freebie added on to something you just bought. And I looked at her and I said, "oye, gracias, me enchulaste el almuerzo." (hey thanks, you just pimped (as in dressed up) my lunch.) It's not the free ginger I value (though it will be tasty). It's that she accepts my presence without batting an eye, as if I belonged here. Which is the best yapa of them all.