Soi sapa, an accusation and screaming match in Santiago
In case you didn't know, Chile is mourning the loss of a famous television personality, along with 20 other people who went down in a plane crash on their way to the Juan Fernandez archipelago, a small collection of islands (among them Robinson Crusoe, which I grew up...
The defining national dish of the United States
Yesterday I was on a mission. I had a meeting in the morning, followed by a purchasing spree at one of my favorite "Chinese import stores" whose owners, it turns out, are Vietnamese, and this mainly to buy a spicy chili paste I'd had at a friend's house the other day....
Santiago protests, sadness rushes in
Imagine for a minute if you will your metro station. Or your bus stop. Or your bike route. Where you leave your house, in your neighborhood, which you picked carefully because you liked it, felt good there, wanted to raise your puppies and plants in a place just like...
Being the primera venta, the Esperanza feria report
In a post that is almost completely apolitical except where momentarily (and only here) I delve into the curiousity of why we must have a plastic bag for everything, and when this started, and when it will go away (maybe in the next five years, c'mon Chile, you can do...
Finally made it to Concepción (more road trip blather)
If you are from Concepción, you are a penquista. Which makes it sound like you're from Penco, which you're not, but you used to be. At least you're not from penca, which means (roughly) lame, though it is also a kind of thistle which makes a nice, shiny salad when cut...
Glittery, perfect blue-white snow in Chile, more roadtrip talk
I grew up in NY and went to college in New England. That's about 21 winters of sloppy, gloppy, slushy puddles and stained cuffs and wet shoes and freezing socks. And though I've now spent nearly half my life mostly outside the reach of winter's frigid grasp, I love...
Where you least expect it, Dichato and tsunami stories, but not together
Where we resume talk of the recent roadtrip. After waking up not once, but twice in Curanipe, we finally headed out into our day. We went back through Pelluhue, where it looks like we might have found better housing and then, having picked up a Germán, a senior in...
Cows and salt ponds, an unexpected turn in Chile
They didn't tell me there would be cows in salt ponds. Oh! What I might have missed. On a recent trip to the coastal (and later, mountain) regions of Región de Maule and BíoBío here in Chile, during which we experienced a kind of dubious signage (photo evidence...
A full-on pajama run in Curanipe, Chile (now, with no tsunami)
I jumped out of bed and ran down the tilted-too-far-forward stairs, threw on some shoes and trotted first out the small, gated courtyard and then, when I saw no one, farther down the street. A siren had woken me from my bizarre dreams about a high school boyfriend and...
No sabe para donde va la micro, eavesdropping on the maestros
No sabe para donde va la micro, said the short guy to the taller one. I know this because I was sitting in my living room, listening to their conversation, and they were standing on my balcony. I don't know these guys, yet I know more about them than I ever expected...
