08-10-08 Cold, Quiet, Beautiful

Apuntes

• I am "Elly" to everyone here.
• My friend Diana tells me it´s easy to identify the extranjeros here, because so many (like me) wear knit hats with sort of Peruvian designs and earflaps. When my mom Paola drop me off at malabar, she asked the man outside the door, ¿hay gringos? as if to make sure it was safe for me to enter.
• The night starts late in Chile. This past weekend, we left for the bar at 1, and it was only at 3:30 that friends decided to go dancing at "Milodon" (giant, extinct sloth), the favorite disco in Natales. I was worried about coming home after 3, but my host mom came back later than I did. Most nights end at 5 or 6 at least.
• Living with a family again is an adjustment. Paola always wants to make sure I´m eating enough, literally pouring the last drop of crema de pisco down my throat! She is an excellent cook, and we eat very well, but Chileans seem to put sugar on just about everything and a lot of things in the store are very processed. As my guidebook puts it, "Sadly, the average Chilean diet is getting less healthy, as a result of increasing prosperity. Exercise levels are falling and consumption of meat, alcohol, fat, and artificial sugars is increasing, while consumption of vegetables has fallen to about half of the recommended level." Still the big grocery store in Puerto Natales is a step forward...it just opened a few months ago. Before that, there was only one tiny supermarket!
• I´m learning some Spanish listening to Nino and Paola sing to their children: "Salta, salta, salta. Salta cabellito salta!" Also, "No en la boca" is a phrase I hear a lot.
• My family likes to put the bread on the radiator during dinner. An innovative way of toasting.
• These words have recently entered my Spanish vocabulary: cisne (swan), centolla (king crab), ovejo (sheep), planchar (to iron), osorro (fox), ostion (scallop - we had fabulous empanadas!), suegro (father-in-law), trago (a drink/cocktail).
• Our Chilean Spanish teacher said it was best that we avoid the subject of Pinochet as much as possible. My dad, Nino, asked me what I knew about the dictator, and I wasn´t sure what to say because I had seen a picture of Nino´s jowly father in full military dress above the television. I mumbled something about the Human Rights Watch movie John and I had seen, but otherwise plead ignorance. And then today, when I was checking my email, an intense conversation just started up--I forget how. Nino told me his father was a "Pinochetista," a medic in the army during the dictatorship. He told me he could remember waiting in line for bread before Pinochet took power, but little else. He said that torture didn´t take place around Puerto Natales...although some of the roads around here, at least according to my guidebook, still may have some landmines. Extremes are bad, Nino said, far left or far right, and his politics appear to be right in the middle. It´s OK to talk now, he said, but for a while it was not. "They were listening," he said. Yet, even though Nino´s father was Pinochetista, other members of his family had to flee to Argntina (where they live now) because they were listed socialists. Reading the barometer of opinion and emotion about the past is still difficult!