Uh...

This would be another day of not doing terribly much. Tomorrow another student, Nicolas, will be showing up, so maybe tomorrow will be more interesting. Today... well... uh...

I took a shower! In our shower, I mean. Now that the water's back. It's a little stand-up number, with walls made of doors (e.g. there are two walls which are not house walls, and these swing on hinges), and a spout-on-a-string that you have to hold because there's no place to hook it. Means that whenever you need two hands for something, you have to either let the shower head hang spraying water or turn the water off and let it hang. A bit awkward, but we're supposed to be conserving water anyway-- turning it off when you don't need it to rinse stuff is a good plan, I suppose.

I forgot that water heating in Chile isn't automatic: you have to turn on this thing called a califont, which is basically a heater started with a lighter (one of the ISA kids said that the one in his family's house is stubborn-- he has to get a lighter, light a piece of toilet paper on fire, and then shove the burning paper into the mechanism to get it to start). As a consequence, I got to shower with cold water until about thirty seconds before I was finished. This was when Myriam realized that someone was in the shower and turned in the califont.

Warm water, let me tell you, is awesome. I love warm water. I could take a bath in the stuff.

I got to use my pretty new green towel, and then hung it up to dry in my closet. No sun today, and no driers either. You make do.


What else for today...

Ah.


I was all inspired by a conversation with a friend and the general lack of breakfast cereal in this country to draw a picture, which can be found here:

http://unosombrero.deviantart.com/art/Unstoppable-156422659

If there is breakfast cereal in Chile, I have yet to see it eaten as such.


I also met and got to talk with this neat old lady named Laura, who is apparently a friend of the family and showed up sometime around five or six to chat with Myriam. Myriam wasn't home, so she hung around and talked with me and Cristobal about learning the British version of English and not being able to understand Americans, about male-female relations as regarding who serves who, about where you stab yourself when using insulin, about why there's so much bread in Chile, and about the meaning of life in general. She wore a long scarf, a red coat, had milk-white hair, and brought along a bag of peaches ("duraznos") and a colored-pencil drawing of what looked like a psychedelic desert sunrise as a gift. Anyone bearing gifts is welcome in my book.
She ended up sticking around until eight, sitting down to drink tea and talk some more once Myriam got back. I had some tea, too, and between the two of us (me and Laura) we ate an entire bag of tea crackers with this awesome caramel-ish spread called "manjar."
Fun times.

I would like to point out at this point that milk here tastes just like half-and-half. I love half-and-half. It's like me and this country were made for each other. With the notable exception of the fish cubes from last night.

I never thought I'd be able to say I've eaten fish cubes. I mean...
No. I didn't even know fish cubes, as an actual food, existed. Or could ever exist.
I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong! It's just...
Fish cubes.

*glances over shoulder*

It's a good thing I have access to a secret code called English. Otherwise I'd probably be in trouble.
It is a nifty feeling, knowing that your native language is more or less totally incomprehensible to everyone around you. Scared Cristobal on the way back from the mall yesterday by dropping an English "positive" while he and his amiga were exchanging a chain of "seguros" (which, as a question, means something like "you sure?").

C: Seguro?

A: Seguro?

C: Seguro?

Me: POSITIVE

C: D8


Makes me feel special. :D