No te tengo miedo

The temblor tips are: 1. Remember your priorities: first the kids, then the plasma.
2. If you are the type to run in terror, take precautions and invest in pyjamas, a dressing gown or permanent depilation.
3. If you are one of those who waits until a beam falls on your head to move, be assured that this is not valiant, it's just fear of ridicule.
4. Don't yell at the tremor. Phrases like, "stop", "I'm not scared of you" or "enough already" have been found to diminish, not the strength of the tremblor, but of your dignity.


[A very loose translation. I'm not sure I understood no. 4 correctly.]

Reading statistics

Chile enjoys an almost universal literacy rate . . . but many people have trouble understanding what they read and many can't read fast enough to follow subtitled films.

Living statistics

50% of households are single Mums
(or ones in which the man is largely absent)

Less than 50% of couples are married

50% of marriages end in divorce


Nb I was told these figures - can't vouch for their accuracy

La Virgen

A few people asked me what was different about Easter in Chile, and I didn't really know what to say. The bus I took to church on Good Friday and Easter Sunday goes through a couple of suburbs, poorer and richer, and I didn't notice anything. It wasn't until my language teacher spoke about religion in Chile that I realised that this was significant in itself. Apparently Easter and Christmas aren't particularly special here - the really big days are the Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmel (ie the Virgin Mary) on 16th July and the Fiesta de la Inmaculada Concepción de la Virgen María on the 8th December. Both festivals see people paying back a blessing received from the Virgin - in the first, if your child was healed, you promise that they will dance for her at La Tirana every year until they turn eighteen. In the second, people walk or cycle 85km from Santiago to Santuario de Lo Vásquez, crawling the last bit if their plight had been especially serious.

Fiesta de la Virgen del Carmel

Fiesta de la Inmaculada Concepción de la Virgen María

Gracious strangers

As an elderly person in Chile, you could step out your door and feel pretty confident you'd be looked after by strangers. Here, if someone's having a bit of trouble getting across the road or up some stairs, the nearest person will hurry over and give them a hand. And on buses and trains, men and women will vacate their seat as soon as they notice someone elderly, pregnant or holding a little kid. Australia's grim in comparison.

Stage two

On Friday I completed two months of language school. I've learned all about the present, past and future tenses, the subjunctive and conditional moods, various combinations of all these, and a few non-verb related things. It's time to stop learning anything new; time to consolidate and practice all I've learned so far. So for at least the next month, I'll be having a private tutor maybe three times a week. The rest of the time I'll either be doing homework or absorbing the language by watching TV, reading books and newspapers, talking with people, and running errands. It's a strange, ill-defined sort of time in many ways, but I'm quite looking forward to it. I still love the Spanish language; I'm pumped to get really good at it; and it's abundantly clear to me that without it I'm not much use to anyone!

First snowfall

Terremoto

The locals only call them earthquakes (terremotos) when they get over about 7.5 on the rictar scale; anything less than that is a mere temblor. If they happened in Australia, we'd be freaking out a long time before that [here I am put in mind of the photo below]. Whatever you call them, I've experienced three since arriving. The first two were 5 point something I think. I slept through number one, which happened in the middle of the night a couple of weeks after I'd arrived. I think that I may have been too exhausted to notice or perhaps my subconscious didn't yet have a category for this phenomena.

The second was towards the end of Samy and Pedro's birthday fiesta. I was in the kitchen with a bunch of people and once again completely oblivious until Felipe called us all outside. It ended before I fully comprehended what it was. It was such a foreign experience - the world rumbling and shifting around me - that I only half took it in.

The third tremor was quite different. It ended up being rated a 'moderately strong' 6.7. Fortunately these days buildings in Chile are designed to withstand earthquakes (they have chains running through them and I'm sure other things), so the worst thing that's likely to happen is you'll be injured by something falling on your head. Anyway, I'd gone to bed early and was in the middle of a dream when it started. The earthquake morphed into something unpleasant in my dream, so I woke unnerved and befuddled to find the house shaking around me, to the sound of a rhythmical banging going on and on. It was a pretty scary experience and I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep afterwards, but I asked God to calm my fear and he must've done it.


Here's a short clip of what the tremor was like.

And here's a photo of the horrifying earthquake experienced in Canberra only the other day (H/T Simon):

Naughty English

I'm trying to do less communicating in English, at least for the moment. This means that Monday will be my day for updating and reading blogs and writing longer email replies. Otherwise I can easily spend a few hours in English each day, when I need to be swimming (/drowning) in Spanish. Don't worry though, I'll still be jotting lots of things down to share with y'all, it's just that they'll have marinated for a while before they get to you.

El pan de vida

Last week's grupo en casa was a happy time. For starters, I understood maybe 70-80% of what was being said (it's not always like this - being familiar with the passage and ideas, and having the questions sitting there in front of me helped). And Juan capítulo 6 versículos 25-40 is precious. The multitude seek Jesus out, not for who he is, but to get more bread - and Jesus calls them on it. Then he introduces the idea of doing good works, but turns it on its head by saying the works that God requires are "to believe in the one he has sent" (v29) - ie no work at all! And it only gets better, as Jesus continues to expose and confound his listeners' assumptions (and ours), and finally to offer the reassurance that "he who comes to me will never go hungry . . . . All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away" (v35 & 37). The group's been great too, because almost from the get-go, we've had someone's relative along. He's had a really good chance to see how Christians operate, and, from time-to-time we get to stop a while and address his questions.

Experimento Marcos / 3

The actors share what it was like to act out the Gospel of Mark. Experimento Marcos from iglesianunoa on Vimeo.

Experimento Marcos / 2

Experimento Marcos happened on Sunday! Our ~60 person church swelled to 140!!! And a couple of my classmates came along!!!! So thank you all very much for your prayers. Unfortunately it was really very hard for us to understand what the actors were saying, but I trust it was a moving and even life-changing experience for the rest of the audience. There's a whole heap of photos here (and if you go to the one second from the end you may even see someone you know). We're following it up with a seven week course 'Club Preguntas' ('Question Club'), an opportunity for people to get answers to any questions they may have about Christianity. As for me, I'm going to follow it up by giving each of my friends a copy of the Gospel of John.

Street scenes

7 seconds to go before we can cross the road - a helpful thing for impatient city folk. Boot polishing - I had mine done the other day - a very pleasant experience. A bit of lunchtime chess. Art for sale in the Plaza de Armas. It's someone's job to water the now-absent grass. And a well-dressed elderly lady begging in an arcade entrance.

Buildings

Just below you can see the building that hosts Tandem Santiago, my wonderful language school. A bit further down you'll see some friendly builders - living up to their international reputation :P. The church at the very bottom is the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago, the preeminent Catholic cathedral.

 

 

Religion

The first few photos at taken in the square outside The Moneda (the presidential palace, where Salvador Allende died during the 1973 military coup). I assume that the statues of the Seven Stations of the Cross were there for Easter.

Shops

As far as I can tell the first photo shows a stall selling books containing various laws. Hush Puppies is really stylish here. It's not hard to find hairthings of one sort or another. And, for those with good eyesight, the oven in the fifth photo down does cost 125 700 pesos.

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