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.

The hunt for food

We were hoping to get out and see more of Santiago this weekend, but instead we’ve been earning our hunter-gatherer badge.  It seems like the last few days since we arrived we’ve been spending every second of every day figuring out how to get food.  If we were planning to eat out every meal, it’d be easy as pie.  There are a million beautiful cafes and restaurants at every turn here, but since we are doing this trip on a serious budget, it was critical that we scope out the grocery situation and start cooking at home as soon as possible.  I really underestimated how much effort this would take, stocking a kitchen from scratch without a car (sometimes furnished places we’ve stayed in before have come with a semi-stocked pantry of carry-over dried goods, spices, etc.—however, the only thing food-wise in this kitchen when we arrived was a half-full salt-shaker).  Jonathan made a trip on the first day and loaded up the back pack and carried as many bags as he could beyond that.  Then yesterday I did the same thing, and then today I went AGAIN to a different grocery store and brought home another batch.  We now have enough food to last us through tomorrow’s lunch.  Maybe.   It makes me realize how much I rely on the stash of stuff that has accumulated in my pantry over a long period of time.  Tomorrow I’m going to scope out La Vega Central (the Central Market).  All the descriptions I’ve read make it out to be something like Pike’s Place Market on steroids. 

In a shop just down the street from us where they sell nuts, legumes, and other dried goods, I asked the proprietor where people generally go to buy fruits and vegetables.  He told me that pretty much everyone goes to La Vega Central.  I was doubtful that the entire 6.2 million population of Santiago shops for their fruit & veg at the central market, and in fact I did have that cleared up later when I talked to some other folks.  However, it will still be fun to go there and check it out.  Apparently it will be very busy!  J

While I was tied up trying to figure out how we would eat the next few meals, Jonathan spent the afternoon getting our phones unlocked in order for us to buy local SIM cards and finally have phone service here.  For a short while this afternoon our internet at the apartment died, interrupting his efforts.  We had our fingers crossed that it would re-ignite since we have no other form of communication yet—we couldn’t even let our landlady know that our internet wasn’t working!  Sure enough, it kicked back into gear about half an hour later.

This evening we met up with a musician and professor at the university who knows several of my friends in Pittsburgh.  He and his family met us in the park near our house and we had a lovely time visiting with them.  They answered a ton of questions for us, and also showed us the main public library which, unbeknownst to us, is just a short distance from our house.  They were incredibly friendly (and patient with our rusty Spanish skills) and made us feel absolutely welcome here.  In addition, it looks as though their 15-year-old daughter may turn out to be the girls’ nanny/Spanish tutor while we are here. 

And tomorrow “real life” begins: Jonathan is off to work at the University, home school with the girls officially commences, and somewhere in there I need to practice and do a bunch of computer work….. oh, and find some more food for our next meal!

Our first homecooked meal in Chile

(lentils, of course!)

Sabbatical in Santiago--the adventure begins!

We are in Santiago!  Now that we’re ensconced in our Providencia apartment, and have gotten the basic lay of the land (meaning that we walked to a restaurant and we know where the closest grocery store is!), I’ve been reflecting over the final push of getting ready to leave Pittsburgh.  Hands down, the highlight was taking 10 minutes out to have an improv jam session with the girls.  We were sending Bear’s cello back to the rental company because when we return from Chile we will be purchasing her next cello.  So just before we boxed up her old cello, she wanted to have one last play.  Bugs joined in the fun with her violin, and it was an absolutely sweet oasis of calm and fun amidst the rest of the madness of packing, cleaning, lists, and deadlines.

Although we didn’t have anything catastrophic happen on the trip, we did manage at least a tiny dose of drama.  Before we boarded our first flight in Atlanta, the airline informed us that we needed to have actual proof that we were going to be leaving Chile at some point during our stay (the max tourist visa is for 90 days and our stay will be just longer than that).  We knew we would need to leave and re-enter the country at some point, but didn’t realize that we had to have proof of our plans in advance.  We have been planning all along to make a long weekend trip to Buenos Aires, and thus naturally break up our Chile stints into two segments that were each shorter than 90 days.  However, the airline led us to believe that they wouldn’t let us on the Santiago flight unless we had documentation.  So about 15 minutes before we boarded the Pittsburgh-Atlanta flight, Jonathan was frantically buying e-tickets for our Buenos Aires trip.  I don’t think we’ve ever, in the history of our marriage, planned an international family vacation so speedily and concisely!  At any rate, I can now announce that we will be in Argentina from March 12-17!  As it turns out, no one even blinked or bothered to ask us anything about this issue—not boarding the Santiago flight nor at Chile immigration.  However, we now have one less thing to arrange for later!

Here is our embarrassingly huge stash of luggage:  5 checked suitcases, a huge box with the digital piano, two big packpacks with all our trekking gear, four small backpacks, a carry-on suitcase with all my music, plus Bugs' violin.  Since we normally travel with one carry-on suitcase plus a small backpack apiece, this just felt absolutely ridiculous!

Have instrument, will travel

On the 10 hr flight to Santiago we were in the center section of the plane, but because the plane was not very full, we managed to score two whole rows of seats:  Jonathan and I had 3 seats, and the girls--right behind us--also had 3 seats.  I’d love to be able to say that this translated out to us all sleeping ALL NIGHT and arriving in Santiago feeling rested and refreshed. 

However, that would be a lie….

Despite being tired on arrival, we blasted through customs and immigration, got our monstrous mountain of luggage and made it to our apartment in record  time—so soon that the landlady wasn’t expecting us for another hour!  She is a very friendly and sweet woman and was happy to let us crash on the couch while she finished turning over the apartment for us. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent finding food, and of course taking a dip in the pool in our apartment complex.  We haven’t quite figured out the best place to buy groceries, but we did find a place that was able to supply us with enough for dinner last night and breakfast this morning.  Jonathan did the grocery run and his assessment was that although the store was the biggest anywhere around, it made our tiny Giant Eagle in Squirrel Hill look like a Costco.  Haha!  I have a thing for small grocery stores, so I will probably love it.  However, we may have to actually take the metro to a bigger store to get certain things now and then.  Today we’ll get a better feel for what’s around so we can hopefully fall into a rhythm.

Our apartment is tiny and perfect.  It would be great if there were more hooks to hang things on, and more strategic storage, but the space is plenty big enough for us and all our stuff.  We got completely unpacked and our luggage miraculously fit into the various closets so that we don’t have empty suitcases cluttering every room. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the heat.  Oh my!  It is so hot here that the girls nearly died when we walked into Bellavista (our little neighborhood) to find a late lunch.  Between the heat and being tired from the flight, they both fell dead asleep at the table while waiting for the food!  I nudged Bugs when the food came.   She sat up immediately, downed her whole plate of penne pasta in about 2 minutes, and fell straight back to sleep.    Thankfully it cools down considerably at night so we were completely comfortable and even used blankets.  Jonathan headed out for a run this morning while it was still in the 50s, but it’s heading up to 91F  later today.

Peru

I'm sitting down to start blogging about our sabbatical time in Santiago and realized that I never wrote about our Peru trip.  We went to Peru during October 2014 to help celebrate the wedding of Louise and Patricio Palanco.  The beautiful wedding took place in Lima, and after that we traveled with many of the members of the family and wedding party to visit some of the more famous historical sites in Peru, among them Machu Picchu and Lake Titicaca.  I documented this trip fairly thoroughly in the photo albums posted on my Facebook page, so I will not duplicate that here.  This is just a short post to place that trip in the timeline of our other trips documented on this blog.

2013 Summer West Coast Trip

Awesome time on the West Coast this summer.  Spent the first weekend with Marit and Bob in Ferndale, but commuted up to Abbotsford to spend time with Great Grandma and the rest of the Westtstein clan.  A bit of stress due to the fact that we didn't bring correct paperwork to take the girls across Canadian border.  Resolving it involved Elisa coming to our house late at night, digging through dirt with her iPhone light to find the hideaway key, as it wasn't where it was supposed to be, rifling through our important papers and emailing us copies of their birth certificates. In the end, they gave us a rough time at the border, but did let us through.  Won't make that mistake again!

Following week on Orcas Island to celebrate Dad's 70th with Mom & Dad, Greg and Christy and gang.  We were sad that Paul and Sheena couldn't make it.  Spectacular view of the islands and Mt. Baker from our rental house on Fox Cove Ct near the (defunct, or at least mid-renovation) Bartwood Lodge.  Hiked Mt. Constitution, shopped the shops, met local artists, went whale watching and hit the jackpot (guides said was one of the best outings they had in 10 days' time--and they do the run twice a day), kayaked to the nature reserve two days running and spotted tons of seals, eagles, every kind of amazing bird, even a porpoise on one day!  Spectacular!  Could have stayed there forever!

Picked up by Bob in his boat and traveled across the Sound to Sequim for Storms family reunion to celebrate Bob's 75th.  Really fun times with great food, Storms family olympics, music and dancing, boat outings and more.  Cute cabins right on the bay, nice location for a big family get-together.  Main cabin was perfect for hosting the group as a whole for meals, activities, etc.  Had fun sharing our little cabin with Brian and Tina and the kids.

Second week we spent back with Marit and Bob in Ferndale.  We took the girls up on their first ever backpacking trip and they did so great!  We hiked along Baker Lake to Anderson Point--the perfect first hike carrying packs.  2 miles in, then a nice day hike the next day and then hike out.  Marit and Bob came up and hiked in with us.  The girls really enjoyed it and I think we'll be able to convince them to do it again!!

The remaining days we just relaxed and hung out at the house, enjoying the comforts of home, and lots of good food and company.  Spent a lot of my "down" time nursing my obsession for yurts.  Jonathan helped with computer troubles and edited his essay, and the girls played, played, played.  They really enjoyed spending time with the two cats.