Hi everyone! I just got back last night from a wonderful trip to Chile. Hope everyone had the happiest of holidays with family and friends. Right now I'm pretty busy trying to get my bearings back her in Southern California, but I thought I might share what I wrote for part of my visit south of the equator. ( I wrote it while I was still in Chile - I had some free time near the end, but you'll have to wait to hear about that.) It's good to be home! -Dave So here I am stuck in Chile, hoping that one of these days I'll be able to get on a plane headed back up to the United States. I could really use a dose of my two sisters and some good Mexican food - actually any food with a hot bite would make my day - Chinese, Thai, Indian.... But to be perfectly honest, I have to admit that where I am really is quite a comfortable place. The best family and a beautiful country, albiet sometimes a little tempermental. We are just about to go to un restaurante "elegante" - I needed to change out of my shorts and tie-dyed shirt into nice jeans and a collared shirt. It's on the corner of the streets [11 de Septiembre] and [Los Estados Unidos]. I think that is about as close as I am going to get to the United States for at least a few days. ( a few hours later .... ) The restaurant was great! Argentinian food - huge steaks, savory sausages, & fresh bread. That is one of the many things that I am going to miss - fresh bread just about every day. In the US we don't get to eat much fresh bread, but here you can buy bread from any number of Panerias, all day. Wonderful - and it's not like any of the bread we have in the States - I don't think I have seen a loaf of sliced bread for the past two months - rather it usually comes about the size of the lower half of a hamburger bun with a crunchy crust and squishier insides. While I was travelling in el Sur de Chile (the Southern part of Chile) it was normal to buy bread right out of someone's kitchen. You would just be wandering around town and see signs in peoples' windows saying "PAN" or "QUESO" (cheese) and go knock on their doors and get products fresh as you might imagine. If you didn't see a sign, you could just ask in any store which casas sold bread. Man...there was some bread in Futaleufu to die for... For desert in this restaurant we had lucuma ice cream and tortas. If you have never had lucuma (most likely if you haven't had the opportunity to visit Chile) it is really a distinct savor (flavor) with no good analogue from home as far as I could tell. It is one of the many unique fruits that I have become acquainted with during my stay (the other that bears mentioning is the Chirimoya, a fruit with rich white meat and large black seeds.) The closest I think I could come to descibing lucuma's flavor in ice cream is that it resembles what you might think of as a very light egg-nog taste, but very smooth & mellow. In the puree form, in which it comes in tortas, the flavor is fabulous and really indescribable. Tortas are basically multi-layer cakes, but instead of using only flour to make layers, Chileans use lots of meringue (as in lemon meringue). In fact a very common pastry is a meringue shell filled with puree of lucuma or equally as commmon, manjar (called Dulce de Leche in Argentina - basically a condensed milk product with the consistency and color of caramel pudding.) During the course of this vacation I had numerous adventures dealing with food. Just visiting a supermarket was an eye-opener to how different foods are. One day I made a vegetarian Lasagne - more out of necessity than desire as I couldn't find any italian sausage - and the idea that I should make my own sauce to use in the lasagne seemed beyond belief to my family. The lasagne turned out wonderful and everyone seemed to like it, but they were adamant that it wasn't real lasagne as it differed from what they called lasagne. I really shouldn't be surprised after seeing what they call pizza here. Basically flat pieces of 5 inch diameter pizza crust with all sorts of random toppings - but definitely not similar to anything Shakeys or any Chicago Style Pizza house would make for you. A few things I had a hankering for which I could not find in any supermarkets were corn flour to make pancakes, real maple syrup (although I did find an imitation corn syrup substitute), and Celery. Peanut butter was also very difficult to find, but that was one of my few successes, although it was just too strange a texture and a taste for my cousins. Along with peanut butter, they also do not have grape jam - thousands of marmelades of all types of fruits, except grape. What would I have done as a kid here without my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Also as far as I can tell, pecans and pistacios do not exist commercially in Chile. Another of my successful findings in the markets of Chile were chocolate chips. When I brought them to the register, the woman looked at them, then at me and asked quite seriously what they were and what possible use they could have. Unfortunately, I ended up burning most of the batch of cookies I tried to make. The oven in our house has two settings, gas on high or low with no temperaturesor settings in between. Nonetheless, the few that survived were a hit with everyone and seemed to be an uncommon treat. I even had requests to leave the recipe. [Why is it at this point I can see many of you out there saying "Dave goes off to a foreign country, and all we get to hear about is the food he ate. Typical." Maybe I should start at the beginning? We'll see how long this lasts.] My first mom was Chilean and she met my dad while he was living in Chile teaching at the Catholic University here in Santiago. When I was six months old, my mom passed away in a car accident, and I was raised by my dad and my grandma in the US. I corresponded sporadically with my abuelita (grandmother) in Chile, but with the exception of a one week visit in 1977 (when I was 9) I never had the opportunity to get to know my Chilean family. So I decided that over this Christmas break I would take some time to spend with my abuelita, while I still had the opportunity (she's 80-some years old now!), and the rest of mis tios and primos (aunts, uncles and cousins). So with the permission of my advisor at UCSD, I began my great adventure. The flight down was uneventful, except for the Chilean lady seated next to me. During our 14 hour flight, in between my naps (which annoyed her to no end as she was too scared to sleep on the plane) and meals, she gave me some pointers about speaking spanish in Chile. I also found out that there are some common Japanese words that you just don't say in Chile - like the word for coffee...oops... I met my family at the gate, barely recognizing my aunt Toya (who lived with us in the states for a few years while I was very young) and my abuelita. It's a strange, but very wonderful thing being taken in and treated as family in a completely foreign environment. I don't think I can adequately describe all of the wonderful family that I have met, and I'm sure if I tried I would forget someone. Suffice it to say that I feel as if I was given a whole new world, and that's a mighty nice present. And from what my family has indicated, my visit was about the best Christmas gift I could have possibly given my abuelita. Besides my abuelita, I must mention my tio Luis, tia Patricia and their four children, Maria Elena (Mane 22), Maria Francisca (Paqui 21), Luis Cristian (Tan 19), and Nicolas (11), because it has been in their house that I have really been made welcome and made to feel like I was at home. In fact, my tia Patricia is still trying to convince me that my advisor will understand if I extend my trip until 25 March (the end of summer vacation for the kids here in Chile - the Southern Hemisphere of course has reversed seasons from us! I gained 3+ hours per day of sunlight just by coming here. And probably 5 hours or more while I was in el Sur.) The week I arrived here in Chile was the last week before their presidential elections and it just added to the sensation of being initially overwhelmed. Santiago is very much like Los Angeles in many ways. Very large metropolitan area of 5+ million people, lots of cars, large mountains covering a horizon, and unfortunately lots of smog. The week before Christmas was about equivalent to the worst smog days in LA as EVERYBODY was out shopping for Christmas gifts, crowding the streets. And the drivers here in Santiago are SCARY! Imagine everybody driving faster, very close to cars and buses on every side, pressure always hard on the accelerator, brake, or horn, and most of the streets are one way and the two way streets are very narrow. Meanwhile pedestrians are trying to jaywalk in-between the waves of cars. Add to this political signs hung from every telephone pole, tree, and building, while all available walls are plastered in paint saying who you should vote for. The American system seems tame by comparison. Thankfully, the day before the elections is a political blackout day as it is illegal to have any political signs hung or advertisements in the papers or on the airwaves. The other initially upsetting thing about Chile was the meal times - you don't think much about how accustomed you become to minor things like schedule - and coming from a place like Caltech, I would have thought that I could adjust to just about anything fairly rapidly. Chileans have 4 mealtimes. Desayuno is a breakfast of sorts, but generally you just have coffee or tea with some bread and marmalade of some fruit or another. Regardless, eating this at 8:00 in the morning, I was always hungry by 11:00. My family here always gave me strange looks seeing me eat large amounts in the morning as if they were thinking "Why in the world would anybody eat at this time of the day?" Actually, I got lots of strange looks for doing small everyday things, but I think my being an american (norte-americano or gringo to Chileans) excused me for lots of my idiosyncrasies. For the next meal, Almuerzo, I had to wait until 2:00pm! Luckily, almuerzo is generally like a good sized dinner and is substantial. Then at 7:00 you have Te or Once which consists of basically fruits or a pastry, possibly h'oursdeuvres, and somthing cool to drink in the summer (or something warm in the winter, I suppose). The story I heard for the origin of the name Once I found to be amusing. Apparently, during the late part of the afternoon, housewives got together to socialize during Te. During Te, it became common to drink aguadientes, an alchoholic drink. To keep the fact that they were drinking on the sly they would say something to the extent of "Vamos a tomar Once" - "Let's go eat/drink Eleven", Eleven being the number of letters in aguadientes. Finally la Comida or dinner is eaten between 10:00 pm and 12:00 am. It is similar to what we in the US would consider dinner with the exception that the meal comes in courses. First a salad or soup, next the main course, then the desert, and finally coffee. It surprised me that for both Christmas and New Years Eves, the extended family ate together at 11:00 pm and socialized until 1:30 am or so. Christmas day was very comfortable and it was neat to see traditions of a different culture. On Christmas Eve everyone set out their shoes by the sofas in the living room and everyone brought out their presents and set the presents next to the shoes of their owners. The next morning we opened all of our presents, went to mass, and visited family for the day. If my sisters and parents were in Chile with me, it would have been perfect. New Years Eve was celebrated differently from the way I have celebrated New Years in the States. Whereas in the US the party is before New Years, here it is afterwards. 12:00 o'clock January 1, 1994 was celebrated solely with family, at 12:30 or so fireworks similar to the 4th of July began, and afterwards my cousins and I party-hopped until 6:30 am! Then we got to sleep in most of the day... On Jan 3, I began a trip to see el Sur de Chile, but more on that when I have some time to write it. Ciao for now! And more to follow....