The best part of the overnight bikeride to the coast is seeing the red blinkie-lights stretching into the black night start to disappear. It means you're reaching the crest of the hill, the end of the cuesta, the up, the incline. Soon your breath will still, your...

Hey kids, put your grammar hats on, because it's time to talk about verb endings in Chilean Spanish (and friends beseeching male friends to not have that baby right then and there, but that comes at the end, skip ahead if you have a short attention span).Sure, you've...

Sunday. Day of relaxation, of rest, of work (what? just me?), of move it or lose it re: feria visits. My best closest fresh market is on Sundays, down in Barrio Yungay. So today is Sunday, and my feria, which I've just learned is called Esperanza, which means hope...

So, after my travel companion and I took our famous detour to the little hamlet of Pelequén, whereupon we saw the lovely onion-domed church and marveled at our inability to get off the train at the right stop, we set to the task at hand, which was actually seeing...

In which I tell the story of my first urine sample in Santiago. Just so you know what you're getting into. So. You go to the doctor, and they want to look at you every which way and then want to take samples of various fluids to boot. I don't know about you, but in...

One of the questions that gets alot of play over on a board or two that I post on is health care in Chile. About which I can say, it is generally good. There are two systems of health insurance, public and private, FONASA and ISAPRE, respectively which I believe...

Something that I don't talk about as much as you'd think I might is bicycling in Santiago. I get almost every place I need to go by bike, especially if it doesn't matter what I'm wearing or how sweaty I arrive (thanks to friends who let me shower at their houses and...

Bearshapedsphere and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad, long-lasting voyage. With an invitation to group post at the end. I was in Ecuador, which means it was 1996, and I was running away from the bar exam. I’d been living in Cuenca, studying Spanish and...

I believe that it is safe to say that the 18th of September and all of the associated brouhaha (with tip of the hat to the Beastie Boys and bonus points to you if you know what song I'm talking about) is finally over. Which makes sense given that it's the 21st of the...