The story behind the much-alluded-to "great garlic debacle."
Today I'm going to tell a story that has nothing to do with Uruguay. It's not that I won't ever talk about Uruguay, it's just that I haven't downloaded the pictures yet and as a friend yesterday why I don't upload pictures (oy! because, the laze, it is strong with...
From Colonia
Last night the temperature dropped and the wind was so blowy and the trees whispered furiously as their leaves rustled against one another in the giant arch that they formed above the streets, that I knew it was fall. What's funny about this fall is that it's the...
A point of comparison
I suffer from an inescapable desire to compare this to that. Everywhere I go, I put under the subjective lens that it's taken me all these years to painstakingly construct and send into orbit, like some kind of personal Hubble Telescope, but without blowing the budget...
You, me and Teniente Bello
Chileans already know where this is going, mas o menos (roughly). Yesterday I accompanied two intrepid gringos (actually, whose idea it was go out for a hike) up to Parque Mahuida in the comuna of La Reina for some steep walking up, and some steep walking down. See,...
Oh, the questions you’ll be asked (expat life)
Move to another country and never again be at a loss for a conversation starter. Well, you might be, but the people you meet will not! And here's a list of the top seven questions you'll be asked as an expat living in Chile (as of 2009, subject to change). 1. Oye... Y...
On the informal economy
In a recent guest blog post over at Travelojos in which I talk about the contrast between formal and informal morality in Chile, I mentioned that there are two economies here, the formal and informal. The formal economy is just what you'd expect. People busting their...
Misinterpretation
About two years after I moved to Chile, a couple of friends and I set to subtitling a movie short that a friend was submitting to an international film festival. We were doing it as a favor, and for fun. The footage involved several hiphoperos (hip hop artists)...
On accents
It drives me batty when people imitate what they percieve to be an American accent in Spanish. If they did it well, or reliably, or if they actually sounded like what Americans sound like when they speak Spanish, or if I myself had a strong accent in Spanish, perhaps...
Shopping locally. The real yapa is how they treat you.
A while ago (maybe a year or so), a friend of mine and I were talking about how much she hates going to the grocery store. Part of this is just the way she's wired, part of it is that she goes seldom, and by car, thereby having to fight traffic, parking and...
A tale of my washing machine. And what should not, but often gets washed.
My mother says that when I was a child she used to have to go through my pockets before doing the laundry to find the rocks I'd secreted there and forgotten about. It doesn't surprise me, kids do all kinds of silly things and on our recent family vacation we followed...
