Valparaiso

Sunday we rented a car and headed to Valparaiso--on the coast about 2 hrs from Santiago.  Valparaiso is a colorful and vibrant town that is best known for its street art.  Just look at the pictures.....

War memorial for Chilean veterans in Plaza Sotomayor

In Valparaiso, even the cats appreciate the street art.  This cat sauntered out of a nearby doorway, crossed the street, sat down very deliberately in front of this painting and started perusing it up and down, just like your average dude visiting an art museum.  I kid you not.

And of course, the odd bar with advertisements in English......

Our intensive stair climbing of the morning was rewarded by an afternoon at the beach.

Week Two Mashup

A few more details from this past week.

Monday:  Bear's rental cello was finally ready so we went to pick it up.

The girls are sitting in one of the trees in Parque Forestal--they call them the "fairy tale trees."  Parque Forestal is a long narrow park between two thoroughfares that run near our house.  We can walk in the park at least 3 miles in either direction, maybe more.

Tuesday:  We had a visit from J's aunt Jeanne, who is a flight attendant.  She was working the Miami-Santiago flight so she had about 10 hrs here during the turnaround.  She sacrificed some of her precious sleeping hours to come and visit us, and we had a fantastic time with her.

Wednesday:  Becca and her daughter, and her mom who was visiting from Boston, came over for lunch and for a swim.  

Thursday:  The girls went with Antonia to a farm up in the foothills of the mountains, Mahuida, in La Reina district.  They got to feed various animals, and even had the opportunity to milk a cow!  Sadly they forgot their cameras that day, so weren't able to share any pictures of their adventure.   Here they are setting out from the apartment.

In the evening we went out for dinner with Eric and Carolina at a local vegetarian restaurant.  They had vegetarian versions of some of the most common local cuisine.  It was a special treat, as those dishes are usually pretty meat-intensive.  I'm going to try to start making some of those things and if any of them turn out, I'll share pictures/recipes.   The one I'm going to try first is Pastel de Choclo.  Nope, it's not "chocolate pastry" like it sounds.  :-)  Choclo means "corn" and Pastel de Choclo is similar to a pot pie, but with a cornbread-type top, rather than a biscuit top.  The main ingredient in the typical Pastel de Choclo is ground beef.  I've found some pretty decent soy meat here that will work well in the dish.  Pastel de Choclo is often made in individual-sized earthenware dishes, so I'm going to get a set of those to bring home as my Chilean souvenir.  In addition, we have no baking dishes in the apartment, so once I buy them I can use them for a bunch of other things while we are here.  

Saturday:  J spent the morning introducing the girls to coding (part of our homeschool program). Then we finished off the week with a visit to Pablo Neruda's house right here in Bellavista, around the corner from where we live.  Pablo Neruda is the mostly widely celebrated Chilean poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.  

In the gardens of La Chascona

Home life

For some time I've been obsessed with small living spaces and I figured our time in Santiago would be a perfect time to get a feel for it.  The verdict is in:  it is fantastic!   We have about 800 sq ft here in the apartment and I don't think any of us have felt particularly cramped.  The girls and I did a really thorough cleaning of the whole house a few days ago, and it took us 12 minutes! The kitchen (although rather poorly equipped) has easily more storage space than our kitchen in Pittsburgh.

So in other words, if we actually lived here long-term I would certainly stock the kitchen with a few things that I miss, such as my big cast iron skillet, some baking dishes, a full set of silverware (rather than exactly 4 forks, 4 spoons, 4 knives), and you know--just turn it into a fully equipped kitchen.  The space for it is here--there's just no stuff.  Based on what was in the kitchen when we arrived, I think previous tenants of this apartment perhaps made pasta a few times, kept ice cream in the freezer, and made tea now and then.  Oh, and they could fry the occasional egg and make toast.  I'm way too cheapo to go out and stock this kitchen with things that we already own at home.  We are trying to just manage without, for the most part.   We did break down and buy a grater, a vegetable peeler, a paring knife, a potholder, and a few other things.  I think we've reached a sustainable level where we can conveniently cook at home and I can't complain, really.  I'm not one to use a ton of kitchen gadgets anyway.  Here are some pictures of our place.

My studio  (or would that be the dining room table?  or perhaps the office?)  OK, maybe in my dream house we'd have to include 10 extra sq. ft for the piano.  I do miss my lovely B.  My pianist friends will think it's funny--given how ridiculously low I typically sit at the piano--that I have to sit atop no fewer than FOUR pillows to be at the correct height to the keyboard on the table.  It's a rather pleasant setup, though--I have a great view out the picture window from my piano perch.

Or I could just get an upright piano and put it where the TV/entertainment center is, which we never use.  Excuse me, girls did watch cartoons in Spanish the other day.....

One end of the kitchen, plus our laundry area.  We have a nice washer, and the clothes go on the rack to dry. 

This is as much of the kitchen as would fit in the frame when I was standing in the laundry room.

In addition to the living spaces, we have two bedrooms (ours has a double bed, and the girls' has a single trundle bed), and one bathroom.

They must have some sort of miraculous sound proofing methods here because we have yet to hear any noises whatsoever coming from the apartments above, below, or next door to us.  Directly across the hall lives a couple with an infant and we can't hear the baby crying ever (or perhaps here in Santiago the babies just never cry).  :-)   We only know there's a baby there because we met them leaving the apartment once.   We do leave our windows open at all hours so we have plenty of street and neighborhood noise.  Although given that our street dead ends into San Cristobal mountain about 100 yards past our gate, this mostly consists of a particularly annoying car alarm that goes off several times a day, and stray dogs (of which there are MANY here) that bark a lot and get into fights.  We don't really have traffic noise, which is nice--we are in a quiet little pocket up against the mountain and the busy streets are about 2 blocks away.

Our gate is on the left, and you can see where the sidewalk dead-ends into the mountain just beyond.

We have been spending a lot of time here at the apartment since the girls and I do homeschool every morning.  It's been going very well--Bugs is cruising on her spelling and math, she's also learning how to type, and doing a ton of reading.  In the two weeks since we arrived, Bear has read the first two Harry Potter books and the better part of another book she just started yesterday.  She is coming close to mastering her times tables (which was our big math goal for our time here) and is writing a play.  In addition, together we are reading a historical novel about a young boy who works on the caravans on the Silk Road, and of course the girls are learning as much Spanish as they can, swimming for hours in the pool, practicing their instruments, and we are walking, walking, walking all the time, mostly for the purpose of obtaining food.

Bear working on her play

Bugs on keyboarding--she almost has the home row down pat.

Yesterday the girls took our Cardline game (each card features one animal and lists several characteristics of that animal: average weight, size, and lifespan) and organized the whole deck by the average life span, all the way from bees (60 days) up to the Great Blue Whale (82 years).  It was a pretty interesting project which they cooked up all on their own.  I'll let them explain it themselves.....

Watch the "Average Lifespan of Animals Project" on YouTube (1:16)

The windows of our house face towards the mountains, but if you walk into the stairwell just outside our front door, the balcony there overlooks the interior of the apartment complex and the swimming pool.  I think there are about 12 or 13 buildings in the complex with roughly about 30 apartments in each building.  Even so, the pool is never over-crowded.  It's quite pleasant and the girls also have a playground and grassy area there below, as well as access to some short trails in the woods (just behind the hedge on the righthand side in the picture below) that are fenced in as part of the property of the apartments.  The trails lead a short way up San Cristobal to an overlook that is just high enough that you can see out to the city skyline overtop of the apartment buildings.

Loving our place here so far!

Locking in the love

This "love bridge" is a short walk from our house.

People write their names on the padlock, attach it to the bridge, and then toss the key into the river.  There are so many padlocks on the bridge at this point, they may have to start shoring it up from underneath due to the extra weight!   In reference to the milky brown color of the water, the girls have dubbed it the "Chocolate River," obviously with the Spanish pronunciation:  choh/koh/LAH/teh

The perfect Sunday

Yesterday was one of the most pleasant and lovely days in recent memory.  After a lazy morning at home (clarification:  Jonathan went for a 2-hr run, but *some* of us had a lazy morning....) we met Eric and Carolina for lunch.  Eric is Jonathan's colleague and sabbatical host at the University of Chile.  Their little daughter is as sweet as can be and the girls had fun playing with her.  We ate at a marvelous place called Mestizo, right on the edge of the Parque Bicentenario, an innovative concept in urban green spaces.  After our beautiful meal, we spent the rest of the afternoon lounging about in the park with the girls.

Mestizo

Our view of Parque Bicentenario from the terraza

All tuckered out at the end of the day

Apparently all evening following our outing, Eric's little daughter kept asking where her "cousins who speak English" had gone.  :-)

Chilean hazing

One reality of life in Santiago is the smog (or as they say in Spanish: "esmog").  Several years ago I was in the NW in February with my piano duo partner, Jack, who had never been to that part of the world.  Every couple of minutes (or so it seemed) I was saying something like, "Well, if it wasn't so overcast right now, you'd see that there's an enormous mountain right over there."  It sort of feels like that here in Santiago.  The first day we arrived you could actually (if you really squinted) see a very tall snow-covered peak right from our living room window.  I'm assuming it's still there, but we haven't really caught a glimpse of it since then.  On the average day you might be lucky to make out the outline of the closer mountains against the sky.  Mostly it all looks pretty grey over in that direction most of the time.

Yesterday we took a family hike, and since Jonathan and I had both been up San Cristobal behind our house but the girls hadn't been up, we decided to make that our first family excursion.  We feel very spoiled to be able to walk out the front door and have a real 5-7 mile hike on actual trails, up to a beautiful view, even if it is admittedly smoggy.

This is one of the trails along the edge of the park that is still down on street level.

One of the many trails up to Santa Maria

Ahem.... this stands for Parque Metropolitano de Santiago.  

The tall tower you see on the left is Costanera Center, the tallest tower in South America.  Directly underneath it is the Jumbo grocery store where we sometimes shop.  We actually walked to it last evening, following our morning hike, bringing our mileage for the day up to somewhere over 11 miles!  (That's 25,249 steps, for my Fitbit buddies....)  As you can see, the mountains are vaguely present, and the 17,000 ft peak, which you should be able to see just to the left of the tower, is pretty much invisible.

We did get a better angle on the Santa Maria on yesterday's hike.  The girls enjoyed seeing her up close.

Just below the statue is a shrine for lighting candles and leaving momentos of loved ones.  Bugs wants to go up again and light candles for Miss Crystal and Great Grandpa. 

Becoming santiaguinos

We’ve been here a week now and we are starting to fall into a routine. It seems like we should feel like tourists here, but there’s something about forging out the semblance of a normal life and routine starting on day one that places us firmly outside of the sightseeing realm.  I’m used to bombing into a city, exhausting all the major sites within the first few days, and feeling like I’ve “seen” the place.  Here we haven’t seen much of the city yet, but we’re getting into the groove of our little area.  

Here's our 'hood (Bellavista) on a Thursday night....  (5 min walk from our house)

  It's a happening place!  Believe it or not, just about half a block from this exact spot is the trailhead to a fabulous hike.  I took it first thing this morning and here are some pictures from the top. As the sister statue to Rio's "Jesus"--here in Santiago we have Santa Maria stretching her arms out over the city.

Santa Maria

Overview of Santiago from the Santa Maria statue.  The stage you can see at close range is in fact an outdoor sanctuary/church.  There is a covered altar at the front and the congregation sits on the terraced hillside just below Santa Maria, La Virgen, and looking out over the city.  Our apartment building is backed up against the base of this mountain.

When we leave our house to go almost anywhere, we walk by this fountain.  We can often get a bit of a misting to alleviate the crazy heat.....

Our new grocery cart!!!   I can't begin to explain my excitement over this particular purchase.  Now I can go to the store and buy all the things we need in one trip, meaning we can eliminate those daily trips to the store and maybe only go twice a week.  If I had to label one of my possessions as "the most life-altering" it would be a contest between this object, and my SmartWool socks for winters in Pittsburgh.  The jury is still out on that one--it is very, very close.

Starting yesterday the girls went with their new babysitter/tutor Antonia for several hours in the afternoon.  She took them to the library and got them ice cream.  They love her and it's going to be fun for them to have time with her.  She has plans to take them to the zoo, to the movies, the art museum, and a bunch of other stuff.   It looks like it may be more of an opportunity for Antonia to practice English than for the girls to learn Spanish, though.  We'll see.  

However, the really big break-through is happening today at this very moment.  The kids at the pool downstairs have befriended the girls and they are "in like flin" down there.  I'm so excited to see this happen, as THIS is the way they are going to actually learn some Spanish.  The other kids speak a very tiny bit of English, but there's a lot of sign language going on, so I think there will be a good bit of mutual learning happening.  Yay, yay, yay!!  We've been swimming there every day for a whole week now and it didn't seem like the other kids were going to interact with the girls (and the girls were too shy to do the approaching), but today it finally happened.  They all hit it off earlier this afternoon.  The pool closes every day between 3 & 4 so the lifeguard can go to lunch.  At 4:00 the group of kids who had played with the girls earlier actually went to the concierge and figured out how to call our apartment to ask if the girls could come back down to the pool.  So cute!  I couldn't be more thrilled!

We were also invited to dinner a few nights ago this week at Becca's house.  Becca--a friend of our friend Emily in Pittsburgh--is American and has lived here in Santiago for quite some time, but will be moving back to the States soon.  The girls enjoyed getting to know her kids (who speak Spanish and English with equal fluency)--that is, after they recovered from the torture that I inflicted on them of walking the 3.5 miles to her house.  I'll admit it was a bit warm, but I was so glad that we walked because we discovered a bunch of new places along the way that will help us manage our life here; one of them was a vegan/vegetarian market & cafe that actually sells tofu and a bunch of other stuff that we use on a regular basis.  We were able to go back today and buy some things we needed.  Hooray!  And hooray for Becca for making a splendid dinner for us--wonderful food, wonderful company!

We also finally got our internet fixed today--it has been extremely spotty and unreliable since we arrived, but a guy came out today and resolved the issue and it seems to be working brilliantly now, thank goodness.  I deem WEEK ONE a success!!

Breaking news from our youngest correspondent

Thursday, January 15, 2015

This morning at 2:19am there was an earthquake.  It had a magnitude of 4.7 and the epicenter was in Melipilla, Chile near Santiago.