Octopus & ósculos santos

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I will let my words be few this time. A lot has happened in the past several days. Although I wish that I could document all of it, trying to do so would leave all of you bored and me agotado. Plus, I have to give everyone a reason to talk to me on Skype every now and again. First is a view of a silver shrine in La Catedral de Santiago. Drinking a leisurely coffee (un cortado) with Rodrigo and María Inés outside in the Plaza de Armas was grand as well.

Next we have a picture of my house, along with the view out of my bedroom window.

At the large grocery store one can buy whole octopi, as well as fish that look like the pescado of the Learnables. Unfortunately, I think that unlike what that prestigious curriculum would have young impressionable gringos to believe, Chileans remove the meat before cooking it. :D

I´m quite impressed by how many family members I´ve already met in my 5 days of being here. Last night we had a wonderful barbeque (asado) at the house of one of Rodrigo´s sisters. The meat was tasty, the chat was lively--even if I understood only a minute fraction of it--and the hosts were as friendly as can be. Perhaps the most annoying part of the evening was trying to find non-alcoholic beverages with which to slake my thirst. Welcome to a fiesta a la chilena, I suppose. Here are my Chilean parents looking good, as well as Rodrigo and I wearing Demócrata Cristiana pins. That humored him a good deal, perhaps mostly to set of María Inés, who is of a different political party. I won´t even start to bore you with a description of all the political conversation that I´ve had in the last several days. "¿Te gusta Obama?" ¡Oy!

The cat was proof that meat did indeed make an appearance.




This evening Rodrigo and I visited a wonderful little artesans´ market. There was an amazing amount of artistic talent present. I especially enjoyed the fact that you could watch the artists as work as they hewed away at a chunk of wood, transforming it into an object of great beauty and worth. Clay in the potter´s hands...



Last night at this time I didn´t yet know where I would go to church. I spent a good while searching online for a good church nearby, and by God´s providence I found la Iglesia Bíblica Bautista, which is less than a kilometer from where I live. I made it in time for Sunday School, which was on family matters as discussed in 1 Tesalonicenses. I met many friendly Chileans, and even got invited to go ice skating with some of the young people this Saturday. Interestingly enough, one of the pastors is a gringo from Wisconsin, who came to Chile 30-some years ago to do mission work here. He was very pleasant, and we chatted it up a bit in English. Also, I believe this was the first time I really obeyed the biblical injunction to greet the brethren with a holy kiss (un ósculo santo as the version read at the church would have it. That made me smile a bit inside.). I will say that the friendliness of Latino greetings makes one wish that Americans weren´t so, shall we say, fríos.


It was a good day. So much for the few words.