BASICally Red Sox

One of the rites of spring in the Northeast is the first sign that winter is truly beginning to melt away. It is the heat resultant of this event that warms the hearts and invigorates the soul. Yes, that's right folks... I'm talking about opening day of baseball season! Here in Chile, it is next to impossible to receive any type of popular media from the US due to copyright and usage restrictions. Obviously some of this can be circumvented through the illegal downloading of TV, Movies, and music. However, Major League Baseball has always been the model of Uncle Scrooge in guarding their product. Imagine my happiness when I found an American run bar that boasted a satellite signal from the East Coast! Soon after the magic of opening day, I found myself getting geared up for the first real test of what our Boston Red Sox were made of. The Yankees were coming to town for a three game series and all three games were being shown by BASIC bar.

I found myself at the bar on Sunday night, looking forward to the final game
of the series...a series that the Red Sox were winning in dramatic fashion. Friends and colleagues had been cajoled with promises of great food and fun. A new face, Pancho, had joined us as well. He is a roommate of some friends and was eager to share in this promised food and fun, but a little reticent of the baseball game. He'd never seen one or understood the game! Over the next few hours, Caitlin explained the ins and outs of the game while we all whooped and cheered. Pancho quickly took a liking to "Big Papi" David Ortiz and in short order was standing and cheering his every appearance.

As the game headed into the later innings, still tied at one...Pancho got to experience baseball at one of it's greatest heights. With the bases loaded and two outs, the runner on third base took off just as the pitcher began his motion. With disbelief, every person on the field, in the stands and watching at home watched Jacoby Ellsbury steal home!!! It's a play that I grew up dreaming about, but had never seen happen. It's one of the most difficult because of pure physics and the potential game altering consequences. Stealing any base is difficult as the pitcher usually takes a scant 1.3-1.7 seconds to get the ball to the catcher. A catcher can normally recieve the ball and throw it back out to one of the bases in 2.0 seconds. I can't run anywhere in 3.7 seconds and I don't know if you can. The thing that is amazing here....is that Ellsbury stole home! That means he only had, at most, 2 seconds to beat the ball home once it was thrown!! Amazing!
As the game ended and everyone was finishing their food and beer...Pancho asked us if we had a victory song to sing after the team had won. We did our best rendition of "Dirty Water" and called it a night. I can't wait to do it again and bring along the most energetic new fan I've ever watched a game with!

Shopping Mall 2.0

Caitlin and I headed to one of the largest malls in the city called Alto Las Condes. Chileans do malls similarly to the way we do, but perhaps a little bigger and more upscale. In any event, there was a place called Gatsby's Buffet and Cafe. We're talking a cross pollination of Old Country Buffet, The Cheesecake Factory, and a Chophouse. You could choose your type and cut of meat...then have it grilled in front of you. Full selection of other grilled vegetables and assorted items, pizza, a hot table with various fish, potato, casserole stuff. The other side of the room had different pasta salads, appetizers, sushi, and desert. Desert was the kicker with a full selection of pastries, cakes, fresh fruit, and ice cream. To top that off, there was a standalone crepe station with all the fixings and a well uniformed attendant. As I approached this guy and asked how it all worked, he gave me the classic 16 year old dead stare. Only upon further coaxing did he finally grunt out some basic descriptions of what he could make for me. Wearing a chef coat with the words "Gatsby's Culinary Team" emblazoned on the front, I thought to myself as he prepared my chocolate, raspberry, banana crepe....."Teenage food-service help is the same in every country!"
The Chileans so love their sugar... that we saw a couple at the next table drinking out of HUGE glasses of fruit juice while eating their plate of SIX pieces of cheesecake. Now each piece was easily 2x what you might normally picture The table beyond them had one of those over-sized margarita glasses filled up to the brim with ice cream, toppings, desert sticks and shaved chocolate. It's really a wonder that there aren't more overdoses!

We finished our night in the mall with a 3+ hour adventure(painfully full from dinner) in JUMBO, or what they call a 'Hipermercado. This store is a super walmart on steroids. Not only is it just as large, but the quality is out of this world. From a full butchers shop, cheese emporium, bakery and deli...to the department store sections that included fine tablewares, high end cookery, and sprinting track shoes in the sporting goods department. This place was massive, impressive, and suffocating at the same time. There were people everywhere! At no time were you able to just walk down an isle without doing an imitation of the Olympic slalom.

Burned out, we hopped on a bus headed back home finally collapsed after storing up what looks like provisions for a serious winter here in our small kitchen.

valpo

i think scott said he was going to add updates about valparaíso a long time ago. maybe i am making that up. anyway, now i am going to.

two weekend trips we have done since scott has been down here were to valparaíso (close to santiago- 1 1/2 hrs. away but considered middle chile- chile is divided into different 15 different regions) and to pucón (10 hours away- considered part of the lakes region).

valpo was fun. really really interesting once we got up to the cerros. cerro means hill in spanish. the town had so much culture, really it was amazing. it was almost what i'd imagine a small town in the south of france to look like, right on the med. sea. the colors were brilliant and so intentionally painted. valpo is a port city and also hosts many of the cruise ships which launch from there and travel down the cost to round the horn of patagonia and puente arenas.



though there is a thick fog that hangs over the coast, it is still breathtaking to see the pacific this far south.


the following pictures were inspired by and taken for nancy patton (starfish) i think there were like 20 on that rock, my grandmother moppie (perched birds which i'm sure she could identify easily), steve sutton and brian clark (fisherman- the guy on the rock near the laundry doesn't have a pole!) and skip and steve patton (boats- there were tugboats, naval and industrial and commercial vessels).





we enjoyed a nice lunch at colors café and at night we went to a great irish bar


vegetable tortilla







we stayed here for 8 US a night. We were able to get a hot shower, use of a kitchen, toilet and a bedroom with a lock!


and i was finally able to get a shot of how creepy these guys are...

the pucón experience

well you've seen all the pictures by now so i decided to add some words to the trip. it was really, really great. it was so wonderful to be able to breathe the clean, green, fresh-smelling air. it's fall here in chile and it's like you can't taste or smell the seasons in santiago, you'd have to go to a place like pucón for that. and i'm so glad we did. it was a lot of money to spend to go so far (10 hrs. south) without knowing exactly what we'd do there. but i really had no reason to worry. pucón is kind of like an adventure tourist's dream where all you have to do is get there and the rest will work itself out. there are over 100 companies to take you rafting, volcano adventuring, horse back riding, hiking, mountain biking, fishing or whatever else the mountains and lakes might tempt you to do. we booked both rafting and the volcano climb with one company.

we were there for two full days and on the first day we went rafting. it was amazing. now, i had never been rafting before but everyone who had previously experienced it said this had been by far the best for them. it was also my first experience jumping off a cliff into the water. growing up, i had known tons of people to do this but i always avoided it, i thought it wasn't my thing and i generally don't like to be underwater anyway. well i did it and it was so cold and i had so much water in my ears when i got out. we were all told to march like soldiers past the raging class 6 rapids only get to get back in the water and continue a bit further down. well on the way i lost my earring and miraculously scott found it against a backdrop of a ton of rocks next to the fierce rapids. i took up a ton of time trying to find the earring which left me little time to try to get the water out of my ears. later that night, i felt the water so far inside my ear. i had a raging neck and headache with no remedy in site. when scott asked the hostel owner if they had any alcohol, she instead suggested we use the adventure company's insurance and go to the private hospital (the 1 hospital) in pucón. she assured us it would be quick and cost-beneficial to the company we used (their insurance would cover it and i wouldn't have to cancel on the company for the next morning's trip up the volcano). she made some calls, i talked to the guy, she talked to the guy.

me on the phone with the guy: and i jumped off the cliff because they told me to and everyone was doing it.

after i got off the phone with him the hostel owner told me the guy told her he thought i was probably "telling a story" and i got hurt some other way since my complaint came several hours after the trip was over!! i believe he told her it was a lie (mentira!)...
that's what you get for paying the cheapest group rate to do adventure activities (and my health insurance explicitly doesn't cover adventures like these)... so, scott and lindsay so kindly went to a pharmacy while i laid inebriated with pain. they were able to find alcohol and we dumped it in my ear to try and get the damn stuff out. it worked!!

the next morning i woke up at 5:30am ready to go!! the 6 hour trip to the summit was painful at times but was completely worth it. the pictures should illustrate everything i won't write here. the day was perfect, we were with a terrific group and for an incredible price we got to use crazy technical equipment and do combo mountaineering/hiking/ice-pick sliding as well as see volcanic ash, glacier chunks, toxic volcano smoke, crazy cracks in the glacier... it was awesome. when i got to the top, i thought i might die, i was so thirsty and hungry and the water supply was limited (scott had already run out). i started slicing an apple with scott's super sharp knife, thinking i shouldn't be doing this. it was like i didn't have enough blood in my brain to think straight. and it slipped! went right through the apple, through my hand to the bone. i knew it was bad as soon as it happened. it didn't bleed right away and i just grabbed it and looked up, then the blood started to come. i was able to have one of the guides rig up something to stop the bleeding at least until i got down. it didn't really stop it though...

by the time we got down the mountain a bit to the non-technical part, my reputation had preceeded me and i was the only one in the group not allowed by the guides to take my helmet off until we got safely to the bottom.

we're going to cajon del maipo this weekend so i'll let you know what craziness i will have unearthed then. stay tuned...

ideal brother or sister

i administered an english test recently where one of the questions was: who is your ideal brother or sister? describe him or her.

i have heard a variety of great/interesting responses to this.

"my ideal brother is sexy."
"my ideal sister doesn't exist because i don't want a sister"
"my ideal brother is a good boy"
scott in the context of my explaining the trials and tribulations of teaching (and misunderstanding the role i was asking to him play) says when cued simply, "brian clark".

scott patton

top 5 food and drink

1. Beer- Kuntsmann Miel
2. Seafood- Machas a la parmesana
3. Liquor- Pisco Sours at Mercado Central
4. Fruit- Kiwis from La Vega Central; Tomatoes and Avocadoes from anywhere!
5. Vendor Food- Napolitana Empanadas

someone's going to die

this is the thought i have every day, at least twice a day whenever i hear a motor vehicle. now i'm not sure if they have poor rubber quality down here or what but the screeching of vehicle tires is so jolting that scott and i haven't stopped looking every time, expecting to see an accident. there never is.

unity is hope

Barack Obama has inspired those across international borders. anyone who needs any sort of proof should just look at the pictures sent around post-election 2008 (people hugging random people/kids sharing flags/celebrations in Japan, Australia, Europe, Africa). above is a bit of a sketchy painting but you don't have to look long to figure out who that is (unidad and esperanza- that has to be the new US president!).

now there isn't too much discussion about the US. in fact, Chileans only seem to know random folks in the US. fact of the day, people generally love Whitney Houston internationally, not sure if it was "the bodyguard" or her voice. anyway, i would say pretty consistently i am surprised by who Chileans know and who they don't. They might know Angelina Jolie but not Johnny Depp. pretty rando...

this collective belief in Barack Obama was highlighted by a class i had during the first week of school. the assignment was to look through 3 popular magazines (Time, Newsweek and People) and find three images or articles and write about them. students completed the assignment with varying degrees of motivation and interest. the one i was most impressed with was inspired by a photo of an african american hand (not clearly Obama's- but could've been) holding onto many different hands all in a chain. the students wrote a montage of qualities that emanated from the photo for each of them: words like fraternity, strength, equality, power and union. they wrote more and with more interest during that assignment when compared to any other so far. they also wrote sentences like "Mr. Obama is the first black man to be president." they could have written about Batman, Heath Ledger, Britney Spears or any other cultural influence the media produces from the United States but they decided to write about him.

kind of exciting to see a mural of our president in a country populated by pictures/phrases/paintings of Che Guevara and other revolutionaries.

clean-up of rando thoughts on aisle 5

1. scott saw a large tub of mixed pasta at a market and really wanted to eat it, turns out it was for dogs. scott undeterred.

2. you can't have your deli cheese sliced here because there's no machine for cheese, says the man while he's slicing our ham.

3. a young man came within inches of the back of my head in an attempt to throw a rock at a car- no camera was available. scott- previously aching to witness a riot- took off running in the direction of safety.

4. bus driver takes time to explain to us that we can't ride his bus unless we can beat him to the bus stop two blocks away.

5. cow blood isn't scary and doesn't stain your shirt. we saw a lady throw three packs of steaks under her arm like a large clutch atop a nice silk shirt. kind of where you might throw your screaming child to hold him in place.

6. evangelism takes on a new meaning when you dress up like jesus with a flowing white cloak and sandals and ride a bike with rainbow streamers, attach a front basket with a large cross and fly like the wind.

7. aloe may not be native to santiago parks. i stopped to pick some off a plant to put on scott's lips (which have been sore), telling him i know it doesn't taste great just try not to lick your lips, i promise it will help. long story short, it was not aloe.

8. chocolate is kept locked away like cigarettes in the US. you know the plastic containers with the metal locks in the middle? testament to Chileans' sugar addiction.