In Concepción, we stayed with our good friends Mauricio and Monica and their daughter Anita. They are lucky to also have their oldest daughter Sylvana, and her family, living in the same apartment building. In Chile, families are close, and children tend to live at home until they are married. And even then, they tend to try to stay close to home.
Here's Monica helping me make insect curtains for the van. She was nice enough to work on them all evening while we were at a dinner party with some other friends. Thank you Tía! They turned out great!
Dylan was lucky to spend the afternoon with a bunch of her friends from Colegio Republica del Brasil. She made a tight group of friends over this past year and every day that we were in Patagonia, she couldn´t wait to get back to Conce to see them again. Before we left we had three days of 12+ kids hanging out in our tiny apartment after school. It was good to see how much these kids love my kids! I´ve told Dylan that we can return to Conce in two years to visit before everyone graduates and splits up.
We also had the chance to visit with our friends Claudio and Margarita and their children, Carla, Paula and Bruno. Claudio was Ben's host at the University and they were tireless friends, always willing to help us out as we needed local expertise regarding food, cell phones or medical treatment. Plus, they are just fun people to be around. We had a great dinner party with some other outsiders here on exchange from France and England, so the conversation around the table was in rapid fire Spanish, French and English.
It was time to say goodbye to our home in Chile. Goodbye Concepción! We love you!
Upon leaving, our friend Mauricio gave us this poem by C.P. Cavafy:
The Canon
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
We drove all day towards Santiago, and arrived by 8pm at our friend José Antonio's house and promptly went out to Sushi at his favorite spot. Though we only met in October, José Antonio has sort-of adopted us into his family. Ben has stayed with José Antonio extensively while we needed to work on the car, since our mechanic is in Santiago, and the kids and I have stayed with him when we've vacationed here. He's introduced us to his friends and family and though he's an extremely busy man, he's always made time for us. We're lucky!!
In Santiago we began what I'll call an errands marathon. There were work things Ben needed to do, things that we had to send the US, things we needed to buy and, of course, things we needed to fix on Jules. Ben even had to fully disassemble his computer to fix something the repairman had forgot. We (meaning the kids and I) also just wanted to dink around and be a bit lazy. You know, enjoy the plumbing and wifi.
Ooooh....indoor plumbing!
Dylan spoiled José Antonio with home-baked gluten free chocolate cakes!
We also got to meet a wonderful new friend from Uruguay! Hola Rocio!
We visited the Los Condes skatepark. It's pretty posh, but Wells wished it had a bowl.
Jules was having problems with idling and selecting gears, so we took her to see the Muñoz family in Quinta Normal for a check-up. Turns out some plastic part on the shifter was broken and the carburetor needed a tune-up. These folks have been like family to him during his weeks in Santiago, sharing breakfast, lunch and dinner (and so much more).
While Ben worked with the mechanic, I took the kids to the local skate park and to the art museum downtown.
Shrine close to the San Pablo Metro Station in Santiago
Here is Chachi the stray dog who lives at the Quinta Normal skatepark. He doesn't let any other dogs in and also apparently hates the police, since they were the only cars that he chased barking and snarling.
The kids and I also visited our good friend Leopoldo at his place downtown and afterwards ate lunch at a very busy Indian food joint that always has a line out the door. We happened to be standing in line in front of these two young women from the US who spoke as if no one could understand what they were saying. Wow. We just stood there silently, or speaking in Spanish, and for a half hour listened and then tried to tune-out what they were saying. No doubt they wouldn't have described their drunken hook-ups in such detail if they thought the mother and her two children standing in front of them understood every word they spoke. When they started badmouthing me and the kids for not giving them our table, though we were in line ahead of them, I turned around and casually said, "Actually, I've been waiting for awhile and really just want to sit down. I'm sure you'll get a table soon." The went pale. It was hilarious.
Let that be a lesson to you all: YOU NEVER KNOW WHO IS LISTENING, SO DON'T BE AN ASS.
On Saturday afternoon we visited Juan Carlos and Isabel and their children Alejandra, Matías, and Martín at their home in the Independencia neighborhood of Santiago. We also got to see our friend Yuyu and meet Isabel´s brother Claudio and his kids. It was a great visit, and it was hard to say goodbye.
On one of our last nights, Ben washed the car (fresh start) and Wells got the chance to skate at the best spot in the city of Santiago...a huge concrete complex of bowls, stairs, table-tops and terrain at Parque del los Reyes.
