The Color Run 5K

Every Saturday around 9am we have to leave the apartment to give our lovely cleaning gal a chance to try to repair all of the damage we've caused during the week.  We usually check out a different area of the city, let the kids run around a park, or hit up a grocery store to replenish supplies.  Today we needed to stock up on a few items that we'd run out of, and I also wanted to see if some clothes at a children's store that I'm fond of had gone on sale.  There is an enormous mall close to us (Costanera Center) with 6 levels, which allowed both of these goals to be met in one stop.

  

As we were approaching the outdoor escalator to the mall, I noticed a lot of people with paint covering their entire being and wearing shirts that said: The Color Run.

Once inside, we saw them everywhere! The mall even had a spacious promotional section dedicated to the event.

The Color Run, I've discovered, is an un-timed 5K event that is hosted in cities all over the world--including many in the U.S.  It's the original "paint race", and according to its website, it is the "Happiest 5K on the Planet!" Basically, you walk/run a course that covers you head-to-toe in paint at each kilometer--and all of the people we saw definitely seemed to be enjoying their paint-covered status!   Many of them had costumes of some sort--tutus, kooky sunglasses, crazy rainbow wigs, etc.  It seems like a fun and fantastic opportunity in which people of all ages and abilities could participate. 

 If anyone is interested in learning more about it, you can click on the English language link here:  http://thecolorrun.com/

(Stacy Jones--click on this link!!!)

La Comida Chileana - part 2 Lunch

This is where things get interesting.  As is the case in much of Latin America, lunch here is eaten late and tends to be a larger meal, especially on weekends.  Restaurants are empty until at least 1 pm and then stay full til 3:30 or 4:00.

Lunch can fall into three categories during the week.  First, there is the basic "fast food" empanadas.

They are cheap and very good.  The most popular kind is pino, which includes meat in a sort of savory sauce, a hard boiled egg, and at least one olive, although one never knows if there is a pit in it (I can only assume this is in conjunction with the Chilean Association of Reconstrutive Dentistry).

The next most popular collection of lunch foods I'm going to sort lump together and refer to as "Chilean Soul Food" heretofore known as CSF.  CSF consists first and foremost of hot dogs slathered in a wide range of amazingly unhealthy combinations that include stuff like mayo, cheese, bacon and some less lethal things like tomatoes, avocado (palta here), and onions.

If you aren't up for a hot dog there is also something in the pantheon of CSF called a Churrasco.  This is sliced beef (or pork) in a round sandwich, again covered with the same selection of stuff available on the hot dogs.

My personal favorite is called A Lo Pobre which has a fried egg, cheese and sautéed onions.  It has tremendous and magical healing powers after a night of Chilean wine enjoyment.

Finally, for some folks lunch is the "main" meal.  Amy and I have a favorite place near my office where some meat or fish is available to comsume.

Maybe a little pasta instead?

It can make for a long afternoon but since dinner is typically eaten well after 8 you have lots of time to digest.  More on dinner later this week.

Likes and Dislikes

The other day Amy was walking home and she spotted another silver Mitsubishi SUV that looked almost identical to the one she drives at home.  She turned to me and said that it made her actually long to touch the seats in her truck again.  Now I know that sounds a little overly emotional, but two months away is a long time, so it got me thinking about the things I like and do not like here in Chile.  Here is what I am sure is an abbrevated list of both.

LIKES

Weather - Today it is 76 for the high.  The Chileans wore warm hats to work.  To be fair it is cooler in the morning (low 50´s) but this place really does have outstanding weather.  It gets warm in the summer, which we are heading into, but the beach is 1.5 hours by car and the mountains are even closer if you need to cool off a bit.  And there is virtually no humidity.

Wine - I will do a longer post on this later, but to give you some sense of the price/quality, it is sometimes very difficult to find wines on menus that cost more than 30 dollars at restaurants.  There are dozens of bottles, good bottles, available for less than 10 bucks in the stores.  It is almost all Chilean with a sprinkling of Argentinian and Spainish wines as well.

Seafood - When you have nearly 2500 miles of coast and the Antarctic current flowing north you have a lot of good fish and seafood.  Machas, Congrio, Reineta, Corvina, Locos........and that doesn´t count the farmed salmon or trout that are all over the place.

The Subway - Last Friday´s debacle not withstanding, it is clean, runs regularly, and is about a $1.10 a ride.  And watching George stare out the window while we are traveling and learning the stops makes it even better.

Ethnic Food - with good seafood the sushi is very reasonable and high quality.  There are also a ton of Peruvian places that serve great ceviche and seafood as well.  Italian food is also very good here.  We are heading South to try the German places later next week.

Quality of Life - Chile is safe, predictable (things actually work!) and pleasant.  It has virtually all of the amenities we have at home.

Our Friends - we have made a lot of wonderful Chilean friends (as well as ex-pats) who have been warm, welcoming and generous in the way they pour the wine :)

No place is perfect............

DISLIKES

Pollution - Santiago is in a bowl and has six million people and a lot of cars.  It is not as bad as Mexico City, but it can get bad and we are currently in the dry season which means it really doesn´t get washed away that much.  I´ve experienced worse, but it´s not great.

Apartment Life - It has been too long since I lived in an apartment with neighbors making noise above and below me, sometimes late into the evening.  Living in the relative quiet of Arden has spoiled me.  Oh, and the space is not exactly what we are used to either.

Sports - I like soccer, don´t get me wrong, but last weekend Amy and I went to the only bar in Santiago that has NFL Sunday Ticket.  It was needed.

Coffee (or lack thereof) - it is awful and that which is less awful is very, very expensive.

When 6 million people lose their transit system

This post could otherwise be entitled, a few metro lines go down, and chaos ensues.  Around 7:00 this morning an electrical shortage downed large sections of three of the five metro lines in Santiago.  The result was a city full of people left scrambling to find other means of getting to work.  As of 4 pm this afternoon there are still 24 stations closed and hundreds of thousands of folks facing long and unpleasant commutes home.

In many cities around the world, especially in the U.S., finding alternative transportation would be annoying, but certainly not chaotic.  In Santiago, however, a 2007 major over-haul of the transit system occurred, which essentially outlawed an abundance of private buses (known as "micros) that were operating simultaneously with the public options.  The private buses posed some serious pedestrian-safety flaws that needed to be addressed, but otherwise it offered a popular, efficient and profitable method of transportation.  Under the new system, the Chilean government expanded the metro capacity, but drastically limited the convenient "point to point" bus service.  With fewer transportation alternatives, the metros are now overcrowded with commuters, who are then left without any reasonable mode of transportation in the event of a metro malfunction.    

An economist friend of ours, who has been a frequent visitor to Santiago for over a decade, offered an interesting and much more thorough perspective of this transformation in 2008:  http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Mungerbus.html  His article also offers some great insights into the economic culture of this city and the country.    

The Santiago metro services about 2.5 million users daily.  The news today had constant footage of these individuals running en masse to get to buses already stuffed so full of people that the doors had difficulty closing.  Those on the stuffed buses were the "lucky" ones, because once many of these people reached the bus stops, there were already swarms of people hoping to encounter a similar fate.  Keep in mind that the temperature today was almost 90 degrees.

                                                                            
Take a taxi, some might say.  If one was able to find an available cab, the traffic jam created by this mess likely would have taken a person 2-3 hours longer than normal to arrive at their destination.  The alternative for many was a very lengthy walk to work.

  

Sometimes a picture says it all

Artsy Macrame

There is a lovely artisan village close to our apartment that I enjoy going to.  

 

It's called Los Dominicos Village, which is adjacent to a famous colonial church formally known as San Vicente Ferrer, but often called Los Dominicos Church.  We've adopted a church a few blocks from us, but this one is so striking that I'd like to attend at least one of their masses while we're here.  But I digress...

The village has a variety of shops that sell a lot of the typical Chilean kitschy items found in many places around Santiago.  

        

 

I'm not the kind of traveler that snubs her nose at these kinds of things, because I've already made a lengthy list of similar items that I'm planning to either carry back or ship.  I'll probably even do a later post on what these items entail.  But my tacky side is at times tempered by a desire for the finer things in life, and I'm fond of this village because they also have several shops with artisans who are producing unique pieces on-site that could be considered art.  

I've perused several of these places on my own, but finally had the opportunity today to show some of the shops to Pat.  He served two fundamental purposes.  The first was to see if he liked any of the pieces I liked for our home, in order to give him the illusion that he has some input in these decisions.  The second was to help me maneuver around the language barrier and determine the price conversions.  I'm still shockingly bad at this--even after 6 weeks!  

One of the things we both enjoyed a great deal was a large abstract macrame textile.  Behold:  

We liked it so much that it's now rolled up and sitting in our apartment as we're trying to figure out whether to carry it back or ship it home.  The problem is not the textile--it is the four and a half foot piece of wood at the top from which it hangs.  Pat didn't expect this to be a part of the package, but for me this was actually a selling point.  Any suggestions?