Thanksgiving, 2010.

At the risk of posting more than once about this Thanksgiving, and on boring you to tears with my exhausting tale of travels and fun in multiple hemispheres with two disgustingly photogenic children who are a part of my life due to my sister and brother in law, I wish to report that Thanksgiving dinner, with its stuffings (we make two) a turkey deemed "Fred" by my not-squeamish niece who will certainly not follow in my non-meating eating footsteps, cranberry sauce, roasted brussel sprouts and many other tasty dishes, was a small, but smashing success.

We are, for the first time in many years, alone. Our friends of the family, practically family themselves, are in NY, and we are in California. The best friend of a deceased aunt that stands in almost as an aunt herself, though is actually closer to a friend, is also not here, spending the holiday with friends in NY. My grandfather, who always insisted that there be quantities and varieties of cheese too great to eat or name, is long deceased.

We're sad, but happy. Sad for what we've lost, a commmunity, a house full of chaos and fruit salads and contributions-a-million, cello concerts by kids almost old enough to feel self-conscious (10, in case you were wondering). But we're happy. We're so lucky to have each other, the means to pull this all together and a three year old with a vocabulary to make you burst out loud laughing when all you want to do is make him stop.talking.just.for.one.second.

And now we have this year's version of pecan pie, for a once-a-year treat that you pretty much wouldn't want to eat more often than that. And a sister laying in bed willing her antibiotics to kick in. She'd like to note that she's thankful for doctor's offices open on Thanksgiving.

I wouldn't trade today for anything. Next year in San Francisco. But we'll skip the sinus infection in 2011.

Latin America at Ground Level ebook

While most of us were out doing nothing particularly publish-worthy, Steven Roll of Travelojos (and who I got to meet in person in NY at TBEX last year) has been putting together some of his favorite Latin-America based and centered writers to create Celebrating Latin America At Ground Level, the Latin America e-book.

See?



Food, life, love, travel ingenuity etc. It's all compiled and edited and FREE. Download it here.

Oh, and hey, I have a piece in there. Which might be notable on its own, except that there's this whole long list of everyone else who has a piece in there, too. Hats off people. I'm delighted to be in such good company. And hats off, Steven, for dogged love of good writing and Latin America.

And speaking of dogged, Margaret from cachandochile shared her link list of all the book's contributors. And so I'll share it with you. There are a bunch of people I work with (at MatadorNetwork) am friends with (in real life and on the internet) and people I hope I'll meet one day. You too? Click and read.

Laura Quinn (Lonely Girl Travels ) Travel
Ernest White (Fly Brother) Travel
Kelly McLaughlin (Cancún Canuck) Mexico
David Miller (Matador, Operating on Stoke) Patagonia
Conner Gory (Here is Havana) Cuba
Eileen Smith (Bearshapedsphere), Chile & Travel in general
Ayngelina Brogan (Bacon is Magic) Latin America
Nicholas Gill (New World Review) Travel
Carlo Alcos (Matador, Vagabonderz) Travel
Steven Roll (Travel Ojos) Mexico
Jim Johnston (Mexico City DF and Live on Arrival) Mexico
Rebecca Smith Hurd (All About Puebla) Mexico
Mark Francis (Guate Living) Guatemala
Katie Alley (Seashells & Sunflowers) Argentina
Ben Box (South American Handbook)
Abby Tegnelia (The Jungle Princess) Costa Rica
Vicky Baker (Going Local Travel) Argentina
David Lee (Medellin Living) Colombia
Holly Elizabeth Worton (Ecohotelology) Sustainability, Travel, Latin America
Nora Walsh (Travel Ojos contributor) Latin America
Genny Ross-Barons (Roatan Vortex) Honduras
Leigh Shulman (The Future is Red) Travel
Margaret Snook (Cachando Chile) Chile
Cathy Brown (Expat Daily News in Central and South America)
Tracy L. Barnett (The Road Less Traveled) Travel
Jessie Kwak (Unpaved South America) South America
Mark Chesnut (Latin Flyer), Travel
Julie Schwietert Collazo (Matador, Collazo Projects) Americas
Jill Greenberg (First World White Girl)

Anyone else got any great crowd-sourced Latin-America based projects you want us to know about? Speak up!

Thanksgiving is afoot in Chile (sort of).

Without the speedbump of Thanksgiving, Christmas is already in nearly full swing in Santiago. I have not yet seen sweaty men dressed up like oversized teddy bears-meet-Santa Claus in the viejito pascuero getup on the street, but today I went to pick up the usual assortment of sugar n stuff for my upcoming family visit at the supermarket and I nearly slipped and fell on a cane full of Suny (a soft caramel-like treat, but not like kraft, more like the inside of a candy corn but tastes like caramel).

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I have spent Thanksgiving here, in fact I think I was here twice for the big day, and once we celebrated it in opposite time, in May, which is when the fall foods you need for Thanksgiving are actually in season.

What we discovered, amid all the planning and purchasing and whatnot is that:

-sometimes you'll have to replace scallops for clams if you make that weird scallop stuffing, because they're very expensive at this time of year (maybe always, don't buy them, wouldn't know)

-cranberry sauce in a can is available at Jumbo (and maybe at Shangri-La, I haven't checked. Fresh cranberries may also be available at Jumbo, though we found out most people don't actually like fresh cranberry sauce.

-drying out marraquetas for stuffing takes like five minutes. Put in lots of sage and butter, very tasty.

-you are unlikely to find celery at the feria this time of year, but you can get it at the super market, particularly Jumbo.

-sweet potatoes can be found at the very back of the Vega, get off the metro at Patronato and enter from there, in the second to last galpón, there is a guy on the left side of the rightmost aisle that sells radicchio and fennel and stuff. He has the last of last year's sweet potatoes, harvested by hand so they're not moldy. Pricey and dry, but if you need them, you need them.

-cooking down zapallo give you a very wet squash mush, and you are better off buying pumpkin in a can for a pumpkin pie.

-Lúcuma is not traditional, but it tastes thanksgivingy.

-Having to wear a tank top on Thanksgiving is just wrong

-It doesn't really matter what you eat, being together with the people you love is the most important part.

Next time from San Francisco! (where many of the people I love will be waiting for me, clamoring for suny. Worry not, it's in the bag.)

What? No Brillo?

I have a friend here that is great with words. He was the person whose FB status I saw that said "terremoto en Chile" and I knew it wasn't a tremor but rather an actual earthquake. He's also the person that hoofed it over to my house to see what was up and cleared me a path to be able to get back in, but I digress.

He has this expression that I love, "Ni un brillo" which means, it doesn't shine at all, but which you take to mean, it's not at all interesting to me. And I've heard him say it before, but the other day when he said it, I suddenly realized something.

Brillo pads, those steel wool chunks with the pink soap impregnated? That's brillo. As in brillo (BREE-yo), which means shine. And now every time I hear someone say "ni un brillo," I'll think of some never-gonna-happen comedy routine wherein I take a brillo pad out of my pocket and say, "here's one."

Except that steel wool here is called virutilla, and it's more of a mass moun than a countable one, mainly used to de-wax your waxed hardwood floors, and the countable version of this item is mago pads, and really, where's the fun in that?

This post brought to you by a very short night of sleep and one of the many stacks of notes I take on things I wish to expound on at a later date. And they are many, fear not. Brillo pad, anyone?

Missed opportunity, the rude girl and the older ladies that would have given her what-for.

The other day on the way home from the beerfest in Malloco, I watched a really unpleasant scene unfold between the conductora (female driver) of the bus and one of the passengers.

First, the situation was tense. We were all walking back on the highway away from Santiago, hoping to catch the bus before it filled up at the entrance to the beer fest. It was late, some people had been drinking quite a bit, though my friend and I had had just a little beer, and were doing just fine. One of the passengers got on the bus, about 18 years old, lowslung faded jeans, a white belt with studs, some kind of tee shirt, medium length brown hair. She insisted on paying the student rate to get home from the beer fest at 9:30 at night.



And the driver wasn't having it. "You're not on your way to or from school," she said. And the girl insisted, "I'm a student, I pay the student rate." This went on for a while and the driver opened her "cage" (this bus runs near Pedro Aguirre Cerda and Cerillos, and all the buses on this route have metal mesh that divides the driver from the passengers), and said, "Bájese! No sea fresca!" (Get off the bus, don't be mouthy/fresh. -in the politest possible grammatical form). The girl didn't get off and the woman said she'd call the police, but the police were all busy directing traffic and trying to prevent people from walking up the highway to catch the bus, so there was no way they'd do anything, and the girl knew it.

45 minutes drag on when you're on a bus with drunken teenagers (the drinking age in Chile is 18), practicing their English and saying filthy things to each other, and I kept on thinking about this girl, and how rude she'd been to the driver. And also how much she was shouting and being the center of attention there on the bus.

As we got closer to San Borja, say a couple of blocks out, she started heckling the driver, "Sos shora, sos shora" (basically, you think you're so cool/tough, but with the lower-class and very looked-down-upon pronunciation of chora (cool), with the initial sh- rather than ch- sound). She went on and on, using words that are considered typical of the lower class, like "nadien" instead of "nadie." You could tell she was trying on this accent for size. It's not how she usually talks, she was just trying to put the bus driver in (what she thought was) her place.

It had nothing to do with me, but I was so angry at this fresca, this girl who, upon looking at her, was comun y corriente (just a regular kid), her clothes looked like she bought them at Patronato, where cheap knockoffs, and heavy doses of lycra rule the day. Not that I think that someone from the upper class has the right to denigrate a bus driver, but it would have made more sense if she at least came from money, which her appearance indicated was not the case. Just a regular kid.

We all eventually got off the bus, and I had to restrain myself from saying something to this girl about her lack of respect for the bus driver, her friends, the rest of the passengers and herself. I felt too young, too foreign, too angry to say anything. She showed up on the metro platform with me and I purposely got in a different car so I wouldn't see her again.

And the story could end here, but yesterday I was leaving the house to meet up with an out of town guest, and I saw a group of escolares (schoolkids, this time highschoolers, and actually from Liceo La Aplicación, which is near my house, here they are protesting) being given a dressing-down by some older women, maybe 60ish.

Y es mas, usas la corbata de tu colegio, y tomas en la calle! (And what's more, you're wearing your school tie and drinking in the street!) The kids were shrinking away from the women, but not saying anything. It went on, "Show some respect, who do you think you are, what kind of example is that for the other kids." And the kids were contrite. They apologized, and looked at the ground.

And since I love contrasts I couldn't help but compare the two situations. And wish that those ladies had been on the bus to give Ms. Mouthy a piece of their minds. And think about how sometimes, I just can't wait to get old so I can say absolutely whatever is on my mind.

What's in a hat? Fiesta de La Cerveza in Malloco, Chile

Where to start? Every year, Chile has a bit of a beerfest out in Malloco, out the old highway to Talagante. It's a big, fun, family affair that really, people bring their kids to. They give out tiny tastes of beer and a big beer costs about $3, and a bigger one about $4, and that's alot for Chile, but still, the number of people that go is astounding, and we all stand around in the sun and take tiny tastes and then decide what to drink.

And in the middle of everything, as I stood back, I noticed two things. 1. Everyone at the beer fest was incredibly happy (though not many were particularly drunk). Joyous, smiling, wandering, sausage-eating, happy and 2. Hats! my goodness, they were everywhere. We are not a hat-wearing people in Chile and certainly it's easier to take pictures of hats than of happy.

And so I present:

Viking!


Mysterious girl viking with braids, that says Ireland on it.


Gold lamé furry viking hat.


a possible former viking hat, with horns removed. Qué opinan? (what do you think?)



Dueling headwear



This kid would look much more choro (much cooler) without the icecream.



Adoreableness alert with this wee porkpie one:


sometimes just one hat isn't enough


I'm not entirely sure she wants to be seen with him.



hat, no hat, hat no hat



There were many more spectacles (including a couple of cases of actual beer goggles) to enjoy, like an amusement park of dubious safety, baby animals (nursing llama, so cute!), and many sweet and/or fried items, and the one beer I bought turned out to be from a microbrewery near my house (they sell it there, don't think they brew it there, but who knows), and some very odd happenings with the to-ing and fro-ing (but actually mainly just with the fro-ing, but in the end, everyone was happy and since we went in the late afternoon, no one got sunburnt. If you want to go next year, give me a call and we'll get it set up.

And for more hats (like the chickenhead one) and other things from this great festivity, go to my hats-a-million flickr set here
.

Or go see what Isabel had to say about the event (and other things about her life in Chile here.

And this post has nothing to do with one of only about three fruits or vegetables I've ever come across that I didn't like, called a malloco, which I can only assume has nothing to do with this town, and which I talked about here.

Gender equality: what decade is Chile really in? (disturbing image below)

Something we often talk about in Chile, locals and foreigners alike, is where we are socially. Where are gay rights, and abortion rights and racial equality? We sometimes use where the United States is as a point of comparison, for example for gay rights, you might say we're in the 60s, or maybe the 70s. For abortion rights, we're certainly pre Roe vs. Wade, as abortion is illegal and a prosecutable offense here.

But what about gender equality? Well, it's related to gay rights and abortion rights, but in a class all its own. Recent newspaper articles say that the salary gap is the same between women and men as it was ten years ago. Is that still happening in the US? Where does that put us?

I was feeling kind of positive about the move to liberate women with this cutesy ad in the Baquedano metro exhorting women to drop their pumps in the uneven streets, and wear sneakers to work. It's sponsored by ACHS, the worker safety commission (the same people who graciously gave me many months of physical therapy when I was hit by a truck on my bike on my way home from work). It reminded me of the transit strike in the 80s in NY, which is when women first started appearing in public in tennis shoes and skirts. Admittedly, it looks ridiculous, but take it from someone who walked about a mile in heels the other night, it's not a bad idea.



It says: Walking's good for you. Walk safely. Every year high heels cause more than 3,600 ankle sprains, 7,000 commuting accidents and 32,600 days off of work. Wear sneakers to and from work. High heel time is over.

And it made me feel nostalgic, and think, wow, in Chile we have to tell women it's okay to be comfortable. But at least we're on the right track (though I don't see anyone actually doing it). Aww. It gave me the warm fuzzy comfortable foot and back feeling. Sweet. 1980s sweet.

But that was short-lived, because the very next day I was up in El Golf doing a photo shoot (more on this later), when we passed this sign.



1980s? or 1880s? Horrible, woman hating, self-image hating, violent, anti-female, hate producing, sick.

It's an ad for non-surgical fat reduction (on a woman who is already of normal weight). I know I like all my non-surgical procedures to be carried out with a saw. In fact, I just got a haircut. Perhaps I should have suggested that be done with a saw as well. Imagine the ads!

Chile, what decade are you really in?

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There are many more examples, but these two visual interruptions of my regular day evoked strong reactions. And you?

My lakes crossing beat up your sound.

I am fully cognizant of the fact that comparisons are wrong. You should never compare this to that, because either this or that will feel badly about what you're saying, or you may later regret it, or you may be at a party and someone may disagree with you vociferously, and then drop his drink.

Look, a picture to illustrate my point (and capture reader attention):



I don't care much about the vociferousness, and I'm about to make a comparison, or say something unflattering about someplace I've been, and you can say what you want, and even drop your drink, but there is a reason I wasn't wowed by Milford Sound. Milford Sound is one of the "must sees" of New Zealand's south island. You can take a four day (I think) walk on the Milford Track, you can take a bus in from Queenstown (or Te Anau). And you can spend a long day (in my case, seeing "Whale Runner" (love that movie) and something about a race car that features a person from the southern part of the south island, and seems to have taken on a cult-like following in New Zealand, though it's an American movie.

And so, the Milford sound. I was game. I was also tired from a whole lot of bike riding, and so I slept and woke, slept and woke. And then we were on the boat, and the best part of the whole thing was that an Indian woman, fresh from her wedding, mehndi still fading on her hands, gasped and said, "penguins!" And I said, "really?" and she said, "no, dolphins." Which is totally understandable because they're right next to each other in the kids' science encyclopedia, and when I saw an otter humphing across the beach one day in Maitencillo, and shouted out "nutria!" I wondered if I'd accidentally instead said "morsa!" (walrus, which it was not, but hey, pinnipeds).

And I just was so nonplussed by the Milford Sound. It might have been because there were so many people, or because we got there so easily, or because the weather spat between sleet and rain the whole time, or because I'd rather have been cycling, or it could be because I have this in my backyard:





Both of these on the lakes crossing between Chile and Argentina, and which I am still arguing with the travel agency about because they want to charge me more money because I stupidly handed over my Chilean ID instead of my passport when I got to the hotel (more to follow on that...). But the lakes crossing. So much bus-boat-bus-boat-bus-boat, but so much worth it, because it finally helped me to figure out why I thought the Milford Sound was just ok, though in general I loved the pants off New Zealand, and that sounds much wronger than it was supposed to, but it's a holiday weekend and I'm working anyway, so give me a break.

Also, look: kitty in Peulla (Chile).



And a rainbow welcoming us into Bariloche (Argentina).



And since I mentioned NZ movies, now's not a bad time to mention I wrote up a little thing on NG about "must-see" modern Chilean movies, where "must-see" is in quotes because there's really nothing in the world you must do. Wait, that's not true. You must live your life well. Or answer to yourself why you're not.

And also, if you've noticed a kick up in my mad photog skillz, it's not your imagination. It's Ricardo Portugueis, and his CasaK Taller Digital de Fotografía. Credit where credit is due. He took me out of manual and woke me up and got me to La Reina seven weeks in a row. Both astonishing accomplishments. Thanks Ricardo!