stealing

while we were in valpo scott saw someone actively trying to steal a car by pulling on the wheels and hubcaps of the car. *please, don't waste your time buying a car alarm here, no one will rescue your car, you'll just annoy me with the sound* passers-by just kept passing by as if it was no big deal. maybe they were scared. scott tried to stop him. he wasn't easily deterred. scott's yelling at him, "que es esto, que es esto?" i wasn't quite sure if we were going to get knifed.

now you have to understand; chile has the most renown police force by far in south america. this isn't some corrupt operation where you'd pay them off, bribe them. in fact, scott and i have heard of stories where people have gotten in trouble for entrapment. once someone is caught commiting even a minor crime or traffic violation, the carabineros have said, "you know, this could go away if..." and then throw the guy in handcuffs when he commits with interest.

theives steal stupider s*%^ too, like decals and such. take a look at this picture taken at bio bio (the place you go to buy stolen crap and get great deals!).


i thought the thieves were less dumb after i saw the price tag (4 mil= about 7 bucks). if someone would pay that amount i could surely see how the pesos stack up!

in other news, scott and i like to participate in something the FBI has started cracking down on recently in the States (purchasing pirated dvds-though certainly through different methods then chile's). i thought it was no biggie here; you line up on saturday and sunday nights next to our metro stop to sift through the collection and off you proudly go with your new american subtitled dvd(s). well apparently it's illegal here too. we watched 4 vendors disappear before our very eyes with their stash as though they were about to get raided. literally piles of dvds, display blankets and personal belongings gone in a flash. i wasn't even sure what alerted them or where they hid so quickly. we were the only potential customers standing around looking blankly (and the only gringos). nothing more exciting ended up happening but i still wonder, would we have gotten in trouble too?

Everybody Loves Some 'Dirty Water'

Responding to demand is what we do around here. You want it, Caitlin and Scott will provide. Here is the music video for the Red Sox victory song, "Dirty Water" as played by the Standells...who knows how long ago. Could the sox have picked a more 'boston' song...played by more 'boston' kids....I think not.

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.