Halloween

When we told the kids we were going to come to Chile for three months, Jacob cried about one thing: “We’re going to miss Halloween!” Well, come to find out they do celebrate Halloween in Chile, but it’s not as big as in the US.

We were very lucky to find some cheap masks and just the red Power Ranger costume that Zander wanted being sold on the street. We went to Aventura Center, a Chuck-E-Cheese kind of place, in a big mall in a suburb. Kids in costume got to ride the rides for free, and we played games too. The mall was just like one in the US, but a little nicer. The food court had all the US fast-food chains, but interestingly, the few Chilean fast food joints were getting better business than the US ones.

Chile´s Funniest Home Videos

Our friend Ken Martinez emailed us a video of some of Jacob’s buddies saying hello to us. So, I had a great idea for a reply video. I had the kids dress in their Chile soccer shirts and kick a ball at me. Great idea, eh?

Did I mention how strong Jacob can kick now? Imagine if he were told to do something ridiculous, like kick at full strength at some poor soul standing just three-feet away with a metal camera right in front of his nose. Imagine that then the guy with the cut on his nose had to wear a band-aid and explain the whole embarrassing story to all his co-workers for the week. Imagine.

Oh, and imagine that in the first video take Alexander hit the camera with his ball, but I was dumb enough to do a second take. The second video was lost when the camera broke, but here’s the first one.

Montezuma´s Revenge

Montezuma’s Revenge does not exist in Chile. Montezuma was an Aztec in Mexico, and South America was the kingdom of the Incas. The water in Santiago is safe to drink, and health standards pretty equal to the US.

So, we don’t know if it’s something we ate or just bad luck, but during the last 10 days, everyone in the family has come down with stomach problems. I got it first. It knocked me out for a day, then lingered for a week. Two days ago, Zander got it bad and Jacob got it but not as bad. Amy stayed home taking care of the kids yesterday and today, and they are getting better.

But today, while I was working, I got a call from Amy. She got it and it hit her fast and hard, making her instantly miserable. Here’s hoping tomorrow is better.

My Spanish

So, how’s the Spanish going? Pretty well. Now, I understand basically everything I hear, and I can communicate without too much trouble. I still have problems with complex sentence constructions, but that’s OK because sometimes in life I like complexity too much.

During conversations at the office, when we are thinking through something new, or working on a project, there are often long pauses as I’m thinking through something. I finally told my colleague “Just so you know, it’s not the Spanish. I think slow in English too.”

Amy Helps with Columbian Refugees

Today Amy started a special project for the refugee program. We need to collect some of the stories of the Columbian refugees who have come to Chile, and we thought it would be good for a volunteer. It occurred to me that Amy would be perfect, since she has worked for many years in immigration offices helping Spanish speakers create affidavits telling their story. So, I asked her and she was nice enough to volunteer.

We went out today to visit a family that I knew, and after I introduced Amy, I left so she could interview the family. It went well, but it is quite a project for her. She recorded it and it is a long, complicated story.

In general, the situation in Columbia is a long, complicated story. Honestly, I don’t understand it, but it appears to be basically a multi-sided civil war (that Columbian and US politicians refuse to call a civil war). But I can tell you this. A person from FASIC went to Columbia for a conference on the conflict. And during the weekend she was there, 300 people died in violence. If you do the math, that would be 15,000 people a year, just on the weekends. More like 30,000 probably. And as for refugees, Columbia is the country with the third biggest number of refugees and “internally displaced” in the world—right behind Afghanistan and Iraq. And it’s right here in our hemisphere.

Killer Cigarettes

There is tons of smoking in Santiago. This despite the most in-your-face anti-smoking campaign I’ve ever seen. Every pack of cigarettes, and every ad for cigarettes, must have no less than 50% of it’s surface covered by this warning. It says, “CAREFUL! These cigarettes are killing you.” On the other side, it shows “Don Miquel, Chilean. Smoked 20 years. Lost his larynx to cancer.”

It’s a new campaign that just started this year, and it will be interesting to see if it changes things.

Kids Have Amigos!

The kids have been doing great, and haven’t really been too sad about the fact that they haven’t had any friends here in Chile. But, of course, we were hoping they would find some, and fortunately, now they have.

We met the family through the kids school. The husband and wife are super friendly, and their kids are a great match for ours. The eight year old likes Pokemon and the three year old likes Power Rangers. What’s even better is they just moved from about a mile away to the apartment building just a block away. They have been over several times, including today, and we played some soccer in the patio below our apartment.

Los Bunkers Concert

Last night I got to see a concert by my favorite Spanish-language band, Los Bunkers. I learned about them from a free iTunes download nine months ago, and I loved them. I bought the CD in Houston and listened to it all the time. I knew they were from Chile, and when I found out I was coming to Santiago, it was a goal to see them.

They play a lot all around town, but this show was for a neighborhood festival. It was in a park in the evening, and the crowd was about half neighborhood folks just checking them out and half crazy fans singing along to every word. I was a little of both.

They were really amazing live. They played great and their sound was excellent. Here’s a video of them playing that I took with my camera, like some crazy kid fan.

Zoo

Today we went to the Zoo. It was small, but really great. They had penguins, which I have never seen in a zoo, and are native to Southern Chile (close to Antarctica). They also had a polar bear, which of course come from the other side of the world. The weird thing is that he was just sleeping in the sun, and it was like 90 degrees. Poor guy, he’s probably thinking global warming came faster than he expected.

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda is the most famous Chilean writer. He was a poet who lived the classic bohemian lifestyle, writing love poems and traveling to foreign countries. His home in Santiago was in the Bella Vista neighborhood, which is a hip area of town, full of bars and stylish restaurants. We went there today for dinner, and afterwards had the best and most unique gelato/ice cream in Santiago—they had flavors like cucumber.

Amy went a few weeks ago to the museum at the Pablo Neruda home, and she said it was one of the best things in Santiago. She also bought a book of his poems in Spanish.

Chile National Soccer

Soccer, of course, is the sport in Chile, and now is the big time for soccer. This week began the elimination rounds for the World Cup 2010. Basically, the countries in South America play each other, and the best four teams go to the World Cup. They play games just every once in a while, so I think the process takes more than a year.

Brazil and Argentina are two of the best teams in the world, so they are guaranteed to be at the top, which leaves everyone else vying for the other two spots. Chile has a new coach for their national team and is hoping that they will make it this year.

A friend tried to get us tickets to today’s game in Santiago between Chile and rivals Peru. But the tickets were sold out. Instead, the boys donned their Chile soccer shirts and we headed to a restaurant that was showing the game. It was a great game and Chile won 2-0.

After the game, as we walked home, we saw this group of fans in the Plaza de Armas. They were waving Chile flags and shouting slogans like, “He who doesn’t jump is from Peru!” (It’s more rhythmic in Spanish) So we jumped, of course. Here’s a picture of the kids in the Plaza, showing the score with their fingers.

Soccer trivia: When we were planning to go to the game, I tried to hide from Amy this fact from Jacob’s copy of the Guiness Book of World Records: the worst soccer riot happened after a game between our neighbors Argentina and Peru in Lima. 318 people were killed and 500 injured.

Heroes of Chile

FASIC had a staff celebration today out at the home of the Executive Director, Claudio’s. They grilled tons of meat, and we ate lots of food, and drank wine and pisco sours (the national drink of Chile). Actually, I didn’t drink because I wasn’t feeling well. Here´s a picture of his cool house.

Claudio and FASIC are famous. They are literally in the history books of Chile for their work opposing the dictatorship of Pinochet. The book I’m reading on Pinochet, A Nation of Enemies, mentions how Claudio would help anti-Pinochet leaders seek asylum in the embassies of Sweden, Switzerland, and other countries. Apparently, Claudio had an old van that he disguised as a paint truck. People would climb into the back, he would park his truck next to an embassy, and the people would escape out the back of the van and climb the wall of the embassy. There were many other things that he and others in FASIC did to help those targeted by the dictator.

I don't know how many people those in FASIC helped in this way, but I know that thousands of people sought asylum in foreign embassies during the time of Pinochet. Those accepted, were resettled as refugees in those other countries.

Pollution

I can’t believe I haven’t yet mentioned the pollution. I thought it was bad in Houston, but it is worse in Santiago. On weekdays, often it’s impossible to see the mountains for the smog. On weekends, with less cars on the road, they are clear. It is worse in the winter here (May-June) and this time of year it is getter better. Still, I’ve got a cough and I’m not feeling too good.

Driest Desert in World

I am writing this from an airplane thousands of feet over the driest desert in the world. It is somewhere between Arica in the North of Chile and Santiago in the Center. The terrain is astonishing—miles and miles of nothingness. Somewhere on this trip, the mountains of sandstone will turn to mountains of some other kind of stone, and they will be covered in snow. And imagine that the same country, as far south from the center as I am now north, is covered in glaciers like Alaska.

Here's a picture of us in the desert around Arica.

In Arica, it never rains. I don’t know if it ever has in history. But today, I met a girl of 20 years old and she has never seen rain in her life.

Work Presentation in Spanish

“If you had been there in Egypt, what kind of welcome would you have given?”

Try translating that into Spanish. That’s just what I did today, when I did my first presentation in Spanish for a group of Christian young adults today. I definitely bit off more than I could chew, getting all theological with the topic of why people should volunteer with refugees. I referred to the story of baby Jesus and family fleeing to Egypt just after the birth to escape Herod, who was killing all the boys under age two. I then suggested it was interesting to wonder what kind of welcome they received in Egypt. And, this led to the crucial question—which I repeated three times in the presentation for emphasis—if you had been in Egypt, what kind of welcome would you have done? It was such a strong point that I couldn’t resist (and I’ve never heard it used before).

But, my gosh, the verb tenses! I pulled out the textbook and Amy helped too. Still, we got it wrong, and Juan was kind enough to correct it before my presentation. The presentation went well. It was 30 minutes, with a Power Point and all. I was seriously nervous, but it went pretty well. Juan is great and was there to tie up any loose ends after the presentation. Oh, and the correct translation is:

¿Si hubieses estado allí en Egipto, que tipo de bienvenida le hubieras dado?

How’s that for some crazy subjunctive verb tenses?

Seeing Edwin Again

When we first got married, one of the first interesting things that we did “as a married couple” was to sponsor a child through Compassion International. This is a Christian organization that connects sponsors with kids in developing countries. We sponsored a kid named Edwin from Bolivia back in 1994. In 1998, I encouraged our band Caedmon’s Call to partner and endorse Compassion as other artists do. And Amy and I went on tour with the band that year to talk about Compassion with people at the concerts. That same year, we got to go on a trip with the organization to see their work in Bolivia. There, we met Edwin, 10-years-old. We got to spend a day with him and share dinner with his family. Afterwards, we kept in touch by letter and later by email, and always hoped we would see each other again.

Now, Edwin is with us in Arica. I had emailed him that we were in Chile for three months, and he made arrangements to come. Flights were expensive, but he found a bus for about $70 each way from Santa Cruz, Bolivia to Arica, Chile (a 25 hour ride). He was really committed to coming. To take time off for a week at the university, he had to miss a whole month (and they go by month-terms). This means, he’ll be doing double work next month to make things up.

It is so amazing to see him. He is 19 now, and a great young man. The kids are having such a good time with them, are speaking to him in Spanish and teaching him some English too. In fact, we’re having such a great time that we’re arranging for him to come to Santiago with us for a week after Arica. He’s never flown on a plane, so it will be great for him. And he’s never seen a city like Santiago..

Starfish at the Beach

Arica is totally different from Santiago. Santiago prides itself in being European, and the people are very European too—I hate to make it so simple—but basically formal and very white. Arica, on the other hand, is more like the Latin America I am familiar with—Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama. The city is full of brightly-colored buildings, the environment is casual and lively, and the people are all shades of brown. I like it here.

We went to the beach today, even though it is too cold to swim (despite Arica’s slogan of “Siempre Primavera” “Always Spring”). Zander started walking into the water because he had spotted something and sure enough it was starfish—dozens of them all over the rocks just a couple feet off the shore. We picked one up for a picture.

14,000 Feet in a Day

Arica is an oasis surrounded on all sides by the desert. But when I say desert, I’m not talking about Arizona or any other desert I’ve ever seen. I’m talking about miles of sand, sandstone and rock without a single twig of grass, plant, weed or anything alive. We drove through it today, and for 3 hours, we did not see a thing—no plants, no animals, no birds, no people. It’s very very weird.

We were headed to Lake Chungara, one of the highest lakes in the world. It is at 4.500 meters (about 14,000 feet). We started the journey at sea level in Arica, on a road that goes along the beach. Then, over the course of five hours (which was supposed to be three), we reached the high plateau that goes all the way to Bolivia. There, there is rain and cactus and shrubs. With this, comes animals, especially at the lake, where we saw flamingos, llamas, lampacas, and plenty of other birds.

Part of the experience is the altitude, and tour companies take bottles of oxygen for customers to breath. We took only bottles of water and a special blend of herbal tea that the native people use for the altitude. Reaching that altitude so quickly can make you sick, and Juan who drove us up got some altitude sickness for the first time in his life—mostly it was a headache. The kids, thankfully, were OK, but a combination of the altitude and the long drive made all of us feel sluggish. Here's a llama sticking his head in the window looking to be fed.

Walking slowly at that altitude, you breath fast and hard like you were running at sea level. Running at that altitude—well, you just don’t do it or you are guaranteed to get sick.

Visiting Peru

Our kids are spoiled, I know, with all their travels. As of today, Jacob has been to seven countries and Alexander six. I know it’s crazy, but it is for a reason. #1, they just are going along for the ride with us. #2, It is very important for us that our kids understand the breadth of the world and its people in order to be productive and successful in the ever-changing world.

Peru is close enough to Arica to go for the afternoon. So, we went just long enough to have a lunch, which was much cheaper than Chile (I got a plate with chicken, sausage, pork, beef and some other beef for $5). Then, we went to the market and bought a few souvenirs. While we didn’t expect it to be too different from just across the border, it was. The people were very beautiful looking, with dark and reddish skin, just like you imagine Peruvians.

Going to Church

It cost Amy about $7 today to go to church. The whole family went to the Methodist Church that is involved in the refugee work. They have a tradition that everyone who has celebrated a birthday in the last week has to come forward and put pesos in a box--$100 pesos per year, which makes $3.600 for Amy.

This evening, I went with Juan from FASIC to visit a Pentecostal church that supports the refugee work. The church was basically made out of scrap plywood and the metal from an old shipping container. They had plastic lawn chairs for pews.

They did have a small sound system, exemplifying the importance of music in the church, and the music was excellent. I enjoyed singing along. I totally don’t believe in admiring people for what they lack. But it was really interesting to see people who would choose to go to church in a plywood box when there are plenty of fancy Christian churches in town with bathrooms that aren’t outside in the dusty backyard. I have a lot of respect for that. Here's me and the pastor in front of the church

To Arica, Chile

Today, we all flew to the very northern end of Chile (just 20 miles from the border) to a town called Arica. I had to come for work because there are many refugees here who come by land through Ecuador, then Peru, and enter Chile.

Arica is where my Spanish tutor is from. Jamie, a friend who now lives in Houston, began giving me Spanish lessons about two years when I decided I wanted to study Spanish again. He taught me much about Chile and he taught me much Spanish. Without his help, my Spanish would not be good enough for me to be here in Chile—so it is such a circle that I am now in his home town.

McDonalds!

To celebrate one month in Santiago, we went to McDonalds. Yes, it was just the same as in the US. Only difference is the fries were tiny bit less scrumptious and they had nutritional labeling right on the food packages. The kids played on the indoor playground. There’s about five McDonalds in the Centro of Santiago, but they are only mildly popular.

In this picture--no, the kids are not throwing a Chilean gang sign--they are making the "m" for McDonalds.

Surreal Chili in Chile

Maybe it was the wine, but last night’s dinner was surreal. We were invited by a Chilean family, but I was greeted when I entered with a real, authentic, “Howdy partner!” It was a friend of theirs, an American born in Houston, who has lived in Latin America for more than a decade and is an expert in bird sounds. He can identify a thousand bird calls and has recorded more. He contributes to the top bird call website in the world

Then, the host, asks me if I know Keith Green, the Christian musician. I say that I’ve heard of him, so the host starts to crank up loud worship music on the stereo, in English.

And the American guy had cooked chili—real life, real good chili (which no one in Chile has ever heard of) I felt totally at home and also a million miles from anywhere. And, like good Chileans, they were filling and filling my wine glass, and….

Mailing Wine to US

One of the cute things about Santiago is that there is a store for everything. Need a plastic bag? Go to the plastic bag store. Need a little wheel for a rolling chair? Go to the little wheel store. Need a printer cartridge? Go to the printer cartridge store.

This will also drive you crazy. I had this great idea to mail my Dad a bottle of wine from Chile for his birthday, which was yesterday. I bought a bottle of a sort and brand that is unique to Chile. My friend told me that the post office has service to pack and box things, but after waiting in line there for an hour yesterday, I learned they were out of all boxes.

So, today Amy offered to help. The people at a different post office told her that they also did not have packing supplies, but they referred her to the Styrofoam store. Seriously, the Styrofoam store. There, she found Styrofoam packing supplies of every shape and size, including one for the bottle of wine. But boxes-- of course not!--this is the Styrofoam store, of course. So, she got referred to the box store, which indeed had boxes, but alas, no tape. For that, you would need to go to…you guessed it…the tape store.

The end of the story is this: Dad, if you are reading this, we love you very very much. And for your birthday, how about you go down to Kroger, buy yourself a bottle of whatever Chilean wine they have, and I’ll pay you back when I get home in December.

Bikes in Santiago

The bikes in Santiago are really great. I would not say this is really a “biking city,” and I would never ride a bike in the congested city center, but there are a good number of people who ride bikes around town. And the bikes are the sort that are made for people to actually ride. It’s ridiculously hard to find such bikes in the US because the bike market there is obsessed with racing road bikes for rich Lance-wannabes and mountain bikes for people who want to be cool and outdoorsy. These are not bikes for people—meaning regular people—to ride—meaning not race or take into the mountains. Bikes for people to ride have the following characteristics:

1. Comfortable riding position
2. Comfortable seat
3. Fenders to keep your pants dry
4. Few gears to mess with
5. Storage options for hauling groceries
6. Sturdy metal
7. Cheap enough that you don’t have to guard it like a Tiffany diamond

I can’t tell you how many people in the US have told me they want to buy a bike with these characteristics. But if you do find one with the physical characteristics, typically it will be made by a big-name brand and have a big price tag. This negates the whole equation because if your bike is so valuable that you worry about it being stolen, you won’t go out and ride it to the store.

In Santiago, you see bikes old and new with these traits, and they are cool. They look inexpensive and utilitarian. The most popular brands are Oxford (made in Chile) and Bianchi. Oh, on the weekends, the Lance (or more likely Eddy) wannabes do come out on expensive machines.