Other Stuff

Two things

1. Here is my address, in case anyone out there still uses snail mail or wants to send me a sweet postcard, or a 3lb jar of peanut butter...just kidding, but seriously though

Charlie Sawyer
c/o Rodrigo Vidal
Parque Antonio Rabat 6150
Vitacura Santiago, Chile

2. Here is some more stuff that I wrote. Enjoy.

Food

Since my last post introduced you to some Chilean foods this would probably be a good time to describe in more detail my experiences with eating here. The food I eat at the house is pretty simple and not too different from American food, with some exceptions. Breakfast is usually just oatmeal and bread. Bread is served with every meal in Chile or at least almost every meal I have eaten here at home or at work. People usually buy bread every day or at least several times a week at a Panaderia (I think that’s how you spell it). The bread we eat at the house comes in small pieces for one person and in three main varieties. There are the round English muffin-looking pieces. They don’t taste anything like English muffins, much denser and less flavourful. Then there are two types of baguette-like bread, which are much better. In addition to bread and oatmeal we have some hot beverages (coffee, tea, or hot chocolate), butter, jelly, and milk. On the weekends we occasionally have eggs but during the week breakfast is quick and simple. I don’t drink coffee but the only kind I have seen here is instant coffee, although I am sure there is a Starbucks around somewhere.

Lunch is pretty simple as well. We eat at the school in a separate room with the oblates and committed members of the movement. (The same people we do Lectio with – dean of the school, Andres the oblate we live with, the people from Tutoria, some of the guys from the business office, etc.) We always have bread and a simple salad and then some type of entrée, usually pasta with sauce, a stew or rice with some sort of meat. We eat a dessert at the end as well, jello or fruit usually. The interesting thing about lunch is that it starts at around 2:15. I don’t know if I will ever get used to this. We eat breakfast at the house between 6:30 and 7 am so when lunch finally rolls around I am starving. I started bringing an apple and a granola bar to eat around 10:30 but I still can’t get used to this eating schedule.

The five of us (Cole, Andres, Rodrigo, Vicho and me) eat dinner back at the house after we have all returned from work. Rodrigo works at San Benito and Vicho works at San Anselmo in addition to taking classes and Catholic University of Santiago. We usually don’t sit down for dinner until 8 or 8:30, which seemed pretty late to me at first. I don’t like eating a big meal right before bed but I guess that’s the custom here. Dinner is usually bread, salad and a main entrée. The entrees are simple and pretty good but for the most part they aren’t that different than food back home. A lot of rice, potatoes and pasta, or else some sort of casserole or hot dish type thing. Our maid prepares the entrée for us during the day so when we get home we just have to heat it up in the oven. My favorite dishes for dinner so far are

· lasagna, obviously and its almost as good as the Reef at SJU
· a meat pie-type dish with mashed potatoes on top and meat on the bottom
· crepes, but they are dinner crepes, hard to describe, I usually eat a whole mess of them (crepes are those really thin pancakes)
· we had lamb one night, it was duro (hard) and definitely para hombres (for men)

We have a dessert afterwards as well, most of them are really good, but some are a little different.

· Flan, can mean a lot of different desserts here, but the best we had so far had two layers with manjar (dulce de leche kind of, its delicious, that’s all you need to know) in the middle I think. I can’t really describe it but it was great and I wanted to polish off the rest of the pan but sadly I could not.
· Sopaipillas – it’s like a pancake but made out of donut stuff, and apparently some squash too. So it’s like a thick, sweet, delicious, small pancake. We pour hot cane sugar syrup over the top and then I eat like 8 of them and wake up the next morning with a shot put in my stomach.
· Flan and sopaipillas are the best desserts I can think of right now. We also have fruit (apples, kiwis, oranges – always fresh and delicious), an interesting type of pink mousse, and some other stuff I can’t remember.

So that’s what my daily food is like. Its usually pretty simple, yet delicious and satisfying. We have been out to eat a few times and so here are some other types of Chilean food I have tried so far.

· Empanadas – a fried bread pocket stuffed with meat, onions, olives, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, etc, then baked and served. Delicious. I have only had homemade ones, but I am going to give the street vendors a try soon.
· Pebre – delicious salsa, tomatoes, onions and I don’t know what else but its amazing, some of the best salsa I have ever had. They don’t call it salsa because I think the word salsa in Chile refers to any type of sauce, including the ketchup/mayo mixture that people dip their potato chips in.
· Churasco and Chacadero – not sure if I spelled these right or if I even know the difference between the two. Basically they are sandwiches. Sliced beef, tomatoes, lettuce, guacamole (they don’t call it guacamole, I can’t remember what they call it), ketchup, peppers, mayo, basically whatever you want. It’s impossible to eat without of bunch of crap falling out.
· Quesillo – it’s almost cheese but not quite because I guess they stop the process before it is finished. So it’s a lot softer and more moist, but still with a cheese like consistency.
· Ok there isn’t much else right now, partly because I can’t remember and partly because I haven’t been able to sample many foods…yet. You can be sure that I will be solving this problem in the very near future.

We also had a huge asado (bbq) in Patagonia when we were there for the Chilean Independence Day (18th of September) but I will go into all that stuff when I finally get around to writing about Patagonia.

I have managed to ramble on for quite some time about food, although I am sure you all expected nothing less from me. I will continue to post about my culinary experiences in the future.

Weather

In a nutshell, the weather here is pretty nice. It was a little cool when we first got here but for someone like me who thrives in cool climates and breaks into a sweat easily, it was great. The only problem was getting up in the morning and taking a shower. We don’t have central heating and the mornings were kind of cold so hopping out of the hot shower into a cold bathroom was a little annoying. Other than that almost everything about the weather has been great. Very little rain. Since it just changed to spring down here it has started to heat up and a few days when the sun has been out its gotten a little hot. I usually walk around school without my fleece pullover and sometimes I am in short sleeves and people always ask me if I am alright or if I am cold or if I need a jacket. I try to explain to them that I am from the northern part of the USA and if I was back home I would probably be wearing plaid shorts in this type of weather. Shorts are pretty uncommon in Chile, at least right now, people might wear them during the summer but I doubt it. I was walking around Santiago one of the first weekends I was here and I didn’t see anybody wearing any.

Dogs

I’d like to talk to you about a serious issue, packs of wild dogs that control most American cities.

Ok, it’s not that bad here, but I do see a lot of stray dogs wandering around the city, even in my neighbourhood. I experienced the same thing in China, except here in Chile there are a lot of big dogs wandering around as well, like German Shepards. I was a little concerned about this at first but I noticed that all these dogs do is mope around and sleep. They look very tired and usually hungry and I have yet to see them chasing after anything or anyone other than another dog. I am not sure how many of them are strays or how many of them actually have owners but have just wandered away for the day. Some of them obviously have no owner because they look like crap and someone has actually managed to put a cardboard box underneath them on the sidewalk. Others have probably just wandered away from home, especially in my neighbourhood, since we have a dog at the house that is not always around. His name is Fido and he has a habit of running away whenever we open the gate. There is a pretty nice restaurant two doors down from us and Fido is usually fed some leftovers. We sometimes joke that he eats better than we do. We he is back inside the gate he never comes in the house, always outside in the small yard we have around the house. I say small yard compared to a yard back home, but it’s probably pretty nice for Santiago. We have a patio on the side and in back, the rest is grass and a lot of plants, and it’s pretty nice. Anyway, Fido knows not to come into the house which makes me believe that people here treat their pets differently here than back home. I feel like dogs are treated more like dogs and less like humans as is usually the custom in America. I have yet to see any dogs wearing clothing here.

Metro

During our first few weeks here Cole and I were driving to work with Andres but in an effect to get home and little earlier and have some free time we have started taking the metro on the way home. We got a card (BIP, named after the beep sound it makes when you swipe it) for the transportation system (Transantiago, sometimes known as Transantiasco because of all the problems they have had). We can ride the metro or busses with it. It’s about a 1 kilometer (that’s right, I’m using the metric system) walk to the metro station from San Lorenzo. I’ll admit I was a little nervous walking thru Recoleta the first time (Recoleta is the community that San Lorenzo is in. It’s pretty poor with some sketchy houses, but it’s not a slum or a shanty town) However now I feel totally fine walking down the busy street that takes us to the metro. Its got the usual sites and sounds; liquor stores (no gun stores), bakeries, butcher shops, grocery stores, sidewalk vendors, broken sidewalks, dirt boulevards, trash in the street. There is a big street market on this same street every Tuesday. It was actually one of the first things I saw in Chile, after getting off the plane, going to the house and coming to San Lorenzo. I am going to try to check it out more. It’s like a flea market plus there are fruit and vegetable stands. I would love to take some pictures on the walk but right now I would rather not make it any more obvious that I am not only not from the area but also not even from the country. . Sometimes I feel like I can blend in since a lot of people here look very European. However my blond hair and blue eyes usually give me away, if my Spanish doesn’t.)

But anyway, back to the Metro…Cole and I have been taking it home nearly everyday after work now and it’s pretty nice. The stations downtown and near our house are a lot nicer than the ones in Recoleta near San Lorenzo, but overall it’s a pretty clean, safe and reliable system. We have to change lines once and the trains get pretty packed near downtown. And although it takes about an hour for the whole trip home we still get back a lot sooner.

Football

From here on out the word football on this blog will refer to the sport in America known as soccer. I can’t stay in the habit of calling it soccer here because I will look like an idiot. If I do refer to American football I will make sure to call it American football.
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If Chile wasn’t such a predominantly Catholic country I am pretty sure that people here would worship football. I am sure that some people do take their affection for the Chilean team or their favorite local club to the level of worship. Basically football is pretty popular here and it’s obvious to me almost anywhere I go. Almost all the boys at San Lorenzo play football, where in the middle of the patios at recess, on the tennis/basketball courts (this is called baby football) or an actual game on the football fields nearby. A lot of the kids ask me what my favorite football team is back home. I try to explain to them that I don’t have a favorite football team back home because football is not a very popular professional sport in America. I haven’t watched a lot of TV here. (We watched the news a few days ago after the stock market fiasco and Cole and I also watched a little bit of Flashdance (dubbed in Spanish) with Rodrigo and Andres before we went out last Saturday. I had never seen Flashdance but if I had to pick a movie to watch with two oblates of a religious movement, Flashdance would probably not be one of them.) But the first two times I did watch TV was when Chile was playing in the latest World Cup qualifying games. The first game we watched was against Brazil (they lost) and we saw it at home. The second game was against Columbia (pretty sure) and we went over to Carla´s (girl from work) house after work and watched the game in her small living room with about a dozen other people. We (Chile) won 4-0 so we are still in the mix for the World Cup, I think. (I don’t really know how the qualifying works or when it ends)

I played a little football already as well. Cole and I played some baby football on the basketball court with some other students a few weeks ago. It was five on five and there were 4 teams that rotated in whenever a goal was scored. I am pretty terrible at football and the only way I can contribute at all is if I can run around a lot and rely on my fitness and defensive skills. However, since we were playing on a basketball this was not an option and although I like to think I held my own, I was embarrassed pretty badly a few times. These kids, who were about 16 years old, could do some ridiculous things with their feet. Our team’s strategy was to have Cole play goalie (because he’s tall and filled most of the net, and he also has experience playing goalie) I played defense with one other kid and then the two all-stars on our team just hung around the opposing net most of the time. We would kick it in their general direction and they would somehow control and keep it away from three other players and then put it into the net. Unreal.

Lastly, there are three big football teams here – Colo Colo, U de Chile (University of Chile) and Catolica (Catholic University). Colo Colo is like the Yankees of Chilean Football. They are huge and they almost always win. And unlike the Yankees almost everyone seems to love them. U de Chile and Catolica, even though they bear the names of universities, are actually professional teams. This was really confusing for me at first. It turns out they just practice at the schools and are not actually made up of university students. I think at one point they were more affiliated with the schools but now they just bear the name.

I promise next time I will post all the stuff I wrote in my journal while in Patagonia

Peace