Friends and family

I have been asked by a reader to say a few words about how we are doing here. This fits nicely with the visits we have enjoyed from friends and family, so these will be the topics of this entry. Of necessity, the descriptions of the visits are selective rather than comprehensive.

The boys are doing very well. They are delighted that school is over and summer break is here, though they did enjoy Colegio Baltazar. Their Spanish is improving dramatically. This coincided with the start of Spanish lessons, which are given by a very nice woman named Elisa once per week in our home, and with a request we made of the boys' teacher Marcela to speak to them in Spanish as much as possible. Or, it could simply be time doing its job. In any case, Sam is yakking up a storm in Spanish, and Gus, though he doesn't speak much, seems to be understanding a great deal. Sam is becoming an expert at mancala, an ancient African game and also enjoys chess.

Gus is absorbed in a series of books called The Animorphs, which is about a group of kids who can change into animals. Gus is also developing a keen appreciation for mathematics. I recently asked him to guess how many subsets a set of size n has. After some thought and assisted data generation, his answer was, "you add it to itself to get the next one". This translates as "double the number of subsets of an n-set to get the number of subsets of an (n+1)-set". He was able to understand a proof involving a 2-1 correspondence between the collections of subsets. When he understood it, he said "Cool!". Mathematical readers will know what I mean when I say that he completed the base step himself.

Rebecca went to Santiago a couple of days ago to see a dance performance -- in a former life she ran an organization that supported dance companies in Florida -- and to pick up her sisters Angela and Martha, Martha's husband Jim, and their adult children Tracy and Jay. Rebecca was highly entertained by the juxtaposition of Christmas displays and bikinis on sale. I also found the summertime holiday season to be counterintuitive.

I am over the bout of homesickness I described earlier and am very much enjoying being here. The trip I recently took to New Zealand and our visitors helped in this regard. I am finally getting to the point where I can understand what Chileans are saying, though not perfectly. I have been getting research done, which always puts me in a good state of mind.

We had a delightful visit with my father and his wife Betty. They planned and implemented a Hannukah celebration, which the boys enjoyed. We also visited the banks of the Rio Claro, which flows near Talca. There are restaurants on both sides -- our favorite is called Las Viejas Cochinas, or Dirty Old Women. It looks as if it were slapped together by a couple of buddies over a weekend twenty years ago and hasn't been touched since, like something you might find in the Florida Keys. You can catch a boat for a brief tour of the Rio Claro and a trip to the other, more developed side, which is planted in places with beautiful flowers. Weeks later, Rebecca, the boys and I saw an experimental theater piece on this side that was better attended than any comparable gathering I have seen in the US. In fact, it was so packed we had to climb a nearby hill to see what was going on. Generally, interest in culture seems to be higher here. Virtually everyone plays an instrument, and there seems to be a good deal of apprecation for poetry, theater, painting, and sculpture. Another favorite restaraurant of ours is Los Ganaderos, or The Cattlemen. Good meat, but don't ask what part of the cow it comes from. Chileans can be quite resourceful in this regard!

Before my mother came, she said the only thing she wanted to do was to do whatever we would normally do here. Her goal, she said, was to create a mental image of our lives here. She flew down with us when we first arrived and saw how the house looked before we moved in but never saw it furnished and lived in. She integrated into our routine right away and never left it. I keep expecting to find her talking with Rebecca in the kitchen, feeding our bunnies in our back yard, or reading a book on our futon.

My mother left on the same day that our friends Kathy, Kelly, and Adele Fish arrived. We had pisco sours at the Torremayor, our pied-a-terre in the Providencia neighborhood of Santiago. The boys and Adele played as if we had never left Memphis. Like my mother, the Fishes demonstrated an appreciation for the benefits of good food, wine, pisco sours, and naps. Kathy is pictured with Lucy, the woman who helps us around the house, behind a table of Lucy's delicious food. I have a lot to say about Lucy, but it will have to wait for a future entry.

One of the most memorable of our adventures with the Fishes was a New Year's party at the home of our friends Constanza and Manuel. Chileans welcome the new year by eating a dozen grapes (good luck for each of the coming months) and running around the house with a suitcase (to ensure travel in the coming year). Good food, music, and dance are also essential. Chileans, including the children, love a good party, and the parties always start and finish late. Manuel told me that he was up until 6 AM! We left around 1 AM.

To celebrate their tenth anniversary, we took the Fishes to the restaurant at the Miguel Torres vineyard near Curico, where they serve sophisticated food in an elegant setting. We also went there with my mother. There is a lovely sunken courtyard outside surrounded by a fountain which flows moatlike around its circumference. I don't think it was intended as a playspace for children, but ours like most are known to improvise. We visited Rio Claro and Las Viejas Cochinas with them. The kids (large and small) enjoyed riding around on the three wheel recliner bikes and on the horses. We attended a party at the property of our warm and generous friends Aturo and Fernanda at Lago Colbun.

During a later visit, Arturo told me an absorbing story about a nighttime UFO sighting 16 years ago, complete with a visit the following morning from a "scrub team" of men in full-body white suits who used heavy equipment to collect and haul off the dirt from the landing site. If it had come from anyone but Arturo, I would have been skeptical. Sam and Gus were able to understand Arturo's Spanish language recounting.

Casa Donoso is a small and beautiful family-operated vineyard that produces delicious wines. Note the cactus growing through the roof. We learned about the production of wines and got to sample some in the process. Huilquilemu is a former estancia, or country estate, a few minutes from our home. Kathy made friends with a couple of guides, one of whom left her group to be with ours because she found Kathy to be so entertaining. We attended a cultural festival there weeks ago, where we first sampled chirimoya ponche.

In addition to visiting us, Kelly came to Talca to establish an exchange program between the business programs at his school, Arkansas State University, and at the University of Talca. There are strong similarities between the goals and demographics of the two institutions and their business departments. Maria Fernanda (in the sleeveless blouse) was his contact person; the chair of the business department is seated next to Kelly. It was very interesting for me to be a fly on the wall of the meetings they arranged. Kelly is looking even sharper than usual in the beautiful library at the University of Talca.

Rebecca's sisters Martha and Angie, Martha's husband Jim, and their adult children Tracy and Jay arrived yesterday. Tracy lived with us for a few months after the boys were born to help us with them. We are still grateful! More updates soon.

January 11, 2005 | Permalink