no tienes pies

"You don't have feet." - from the mouth of the new love of my life, a two-year-old who equates not wearing shoes to not having feet

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Hey guys.

So if living in a Chilean house, getting cooked my favorite meals by a cute woman I call mamá, being scolded when I forget to wear my raincoat, and attending grandma's birthday party didn't convince you that I really am just another member of the fam down here, I've got another persuasion point to offer:

I just returned from a six-day family vacation.

My host niece Sofía (for those family-tree-impaired like me, that's my host parents' granddaughter) turned two recently. So we loaded up the car with what else but tea and bread and made the 10-hour trek to Osorno, Chile (in the lake district, near all those lovely places like Pucón and Puerto Varas we visited during Bicentario). 

Riding with my host parents ain't nothin' like riding in a cramped-n-crowded bus. We stopped every two hours to take tea, stretch our legs ("to prevent thrombosis" ... Rosi's real concerned about that), and to moo at cows meandering across the highway.

We arrived late Wednesday night (yep, I skipped a good deal of school to partake in this adventure ... but Mads promised to share her notes! Thanks Mads!) to a shower of hugs and kisses, most of which came from the most preciously precocious two-year-old EVER. 

World, meet Sofía González, AKA mi reina preciosa (my precious queen), mi corazoncito (my little heart), mi pedazo de cielo (my piece of heaven). 

Credit: Thank you, host parents, for the nicknames of my future children.

She was fascinated by my duck silly band. Patito = little duck.

My host mom gave her some wallet photographs of herself as a baby. She carried those around so proudly.

So smiley!

Gahhhh pigtails make her even cuter.

Her favorite plastic fruit was the potato.

Noted: Children like to bang hard-boiled eggs on the wall. Great, healthy diversion.

Something learned about Chile this weekend (or maybe just the particularities of my host fam): while adults greet adults with a kiss on the cheek, children are given open-mouth kisses. Yeah, it took me a little while to get over it too, especially since Sofía had a nasty sinus infection going on. But I haven't developed any symptoms yet! (What does that make the score, Mads? Abby's Immune System = 8, yours = 2?)

And now, World, meet Sofía's hometown: Osorno.

Lago Llanquihue.

That's Volcán Osorno! That sneaky volcano that wouldn't show itself when we visited Lago Llanquihue in Puerto Varas!

You didn't think you'd get away without some flower pictures from me, did ya?

So, obviously, we enjoyed the outdoor beauty a bit. 

Salto de los Novios. Waterfall of lovers.

We stayed inside on rainy days and danced the cueca to the sound of Tío Pedro's (Uncle Peter's) guitar strumming.

We scouted out some quaint local restaurants for this slam-dunk combo of raspberry kuchen (remember what that means? PIE) and raspberry smoothies ... both fresh and all-natural. 

 We went to the farmers' market.

It took SO much self-control not to stuff one in my pocket ...

We went to some thermal baths next to a river.

105 degrees Fahrenheit. No artificial heaters.

 And we decorated the house for the princess's birthday party.

My present, the butterfly wings and matching wand/boingy antler things, was a HUGE hit. So was my host sister Pauli's bouncy pony.

She just kept shouting, "¡La Sofía vuela!" Sofía can fly!

Each cake I've had in the country has gotten progressively better. This cake had manjar, banana cream, and PEACHES. Ay Dios mío.

I contributed the birds' nests (thanks, Momma Hannifan, for sending the peanut butter and butterscotch! And thanks to my language-exchange partner Nicolás for helping me make them!).

One thing learned about select host family member:

My host dad says, "I am Jack Nicholson" in English every time he puts on his sunglasses. Do you see the resemblance?

One thing my host family found out about me:

I talk in my sleep. My host parents (yeah ... in a house of 10 people, someone's gotta share a room) said they awoke one night and entertained themselves for 5+ minutes listening to me have a conversation with someone. "Love" was the only word they could pick out. Dad's advice at the breakfast table: Work on stopping that before you get married, or else hubbie's going to ask, "Who is Edward? Who is John?"

Overall, lots of family time, zero English, and fresh air for six days was exactly what I needed before the upcoming craziness of end-of-the-year exams. It was also great to be greeted by freshly powdered mountains upon arriving in Santiago. Weather can't make up it's mind :).

There's the metro Mads and I ride to school EVERY DAY! With the mountains behind!

This is your birthday song... it isn't very long.

(That's a Hannifan family birthday song, just to give credit where credit's due.)

Abby's on a trip to Osorno (in the South) with her host family for 6 days! She'll be excited to fill you in all about that once she gets home. But first...

We've had several joyous opportunities to celebrate some births around here lately! I think there were 5 or 6 October birthdays within our program of 30ish people.

First, on October 26th, our own Abby turned the big 2-1!! On the night of the 26th, her sweet host family invited a few of us over to celebrate with completos and torta. The guest list included a few of our friends, Abby's host mom and dad, my mom and dad (more to come about that!!), and even Abby's real mama, via Skype, of course.

Abby's host mama got her a present!

Abby and her real mom having tea

Abby's host dad was in charge of decorations.

The next night, on Ab's actual day of birth, we had the treat of going out to dinner (we never eat out here) with my parents, since they had to head back home the next day.

A few days later, we were off to San Pedro de Atacama to continue the fiesta. And luckily, we had another great reason to celebrate, as Allison's 21st came on October 31st!

The night before Allison's birthday, we got to go to a nice dinner (described by Abby earlier...) in a really cool open-air restaurant, and Abby was bold enough to ask the band to play "Happy Birthday" for our friend. They were awesome and enthusiastically complied, getting the whole restaurant, staff and diners, involved. 

Little did Allison know, but that was just the beginning. Thanks to some sneaky earlier planning between the three of us (mostly thanks to Abby's thinking-ahead skills), we had managed to create a birthday surprise without Allison's knowledge. When we got back to the hostel from dinner, this is what we found:

Yes that's a cake made of alfajores. Yes it looked more beautiful before the candles melted all over it.

Then, as Abby's already told you, we spent Allison's actual day of birth hanging out with flamingos, high-altitude lakes, and little Andean villages. There was a surprise singing attack, which involved Abby stealthily informing our whole tour bus that it was Allison's birthday.

Then, when we returned to Santiago on Monday, we headed over to Allison's house, where her host family was having an asado (basically a cookout) for her! 

So that's the end of 21st birthday time in Santiago. It was so great!

PS- All of these pictures are Abby's. That's why they're so pretty.

PPS- Only 20 days until we're done with all of our school work. And only 39 days until we're back in North America!! Aaahh!

summer time

With things heating up here in Santiago (temperatures are expected to creep into the mid-80s by next week), we thought it'd be a great idea to prepare ourselves for the summer sun by heading to the driest desert in the world ... San Pedro de Atacama! (Ironically, after a steady temperature increase in Santiago since mid-October, it snowed while we were gone.)

We started our magical adventure (really, it was quite magical ... I think we said, "I feel like I'm on the moon" maybe 703 times) with an ill-fated yet still wonderful bike ride through Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) on Friday. Ill-fated because my tire popped (did I mention we were in the Valley of DEATH?). Wonderful because you see a lot more detail when you're walking a stinky broken bike through a barren desert than you do when you try to do fancy tricks to avoid rocks and thick sand traps. 

In the middle of our bike trip, we paused to do some sand-boarding. As Allison's guidebook suggested, we intended to live out our "Lawrence of Arabia fantasies" by gliding smoothly through pristine sand dunes on our sandboard (which was no different from a snowboard, as we deduced from the word "ANTARCTICA" written across the bottom). Turned out my Abby of Arabia dreams were not to be fulfilled this go-around. Our buddy Erica had to do a little dance all the way down the massive sand dune to achieve a measly 4.56 seconds of sliding. So a little anti-climactic. But still fun.

They're not moving. At least I didn't have to say, "Stop moving! I want to take a picture!" like always.

The trek up was brutal. Sweet Madeline had to lend me her shirt so I could protect my burning toes.

After hitchhiking back into town in the truck of a jolly German couple, we visited some lakes that are saltier than the Dead Sea. Because they're so densely saturated with salt, it's impossible to sink in them. Trust me, we tried. But our legs just kept floating to the top. We also rolled around in some nasty-smelling, albeit refreshingly exfoliating, "mineral mud" (in the words of our guide, who very unfortunately chose to wear a Speedo).

After watching the sunset, we spent some together time at the hostel before calling it quits early to prepare for our 3:30 AM wake-up call ... to see the geysers! But before we get to that, a somewhat off-topic explanation: Madeline sometimes likes to have "Hair Down Time." It's basically this great time when Madeline unlocks her ponytail and leaves her hair down. It can be abbreviated HDT. There was some of that at the hostel, and it made us all happy.

Mads may or may not have her hair down in this picture. But trust me ... HDT definitely happened.

We were a little wary of the geysers. Some had told us that it wasn't worth the sleepiness or the altitude sickness (we had to ascend almost 3 miles) or the -13 degrees Celsius (that's 9 degrees Fahrenheit, folks) or the altitooties (won't explain that one). But we did it, and loved it (at least I did ...)!

Note Madeline's Christmas Sweater Country Club ensemble.

On the same tour, Madeline and Allison tried some llama kabobs (rudely right after we saw a pack of llamas and commented on how cute they were ...).

Also on Saturday, we went to Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley). It really felt outer-spacey.

Yes, my Chilean host parents have me on steroids. (NO I DON'T KNOW WHY I LOOK LIKE A GIANT...even when I'm hunching!)

Senior pic #2!!

After watching yet another beautiful sunset, we dined in an open-air restaurant with a fire-pit and some great music (basically all restaurants are open-air ... who needs a roof with rainfall once a year for a maximum of 5 minutes?). Since Allison's birthday was Halloween, I told the musicians to make her dance. Muahaha.

And we'll fill you in on Allison's surprise (and my birthday shenanigans, as well) in an upcoming post. Stay tuned.

Sunday, our last day in San Pedro, was spent frolicking with flamingos (which we for some reason kept accidentally calling penguins the whole trip) and hovering above the high-altitude lakes (I needed an "h" verb there to make some parallel alliteration ... sorry it didn't work so well). We were told by our guide Salvador that flamingos spend 80% of their life dragging their noses through mud to collect shrimp. The other 20% is spent mating. Pretty humdrum existence. But they seemed so rosy and happy!

Anddd we saw some other unexpected fauna on our way up to the blue blue lakes.

Fox. Zorro.

Ostrich. Chile is so weird.

There's the lake! Mads and I used our fifth-grade science knowledge to deduce that the lake is so blue because it's only 3 meters deep ... which means the always-cloudless sky is easily reflected. Right?

San Pedro really was fantastic. Every time we visit a new city, we fall in love a little more with how strange and diverse Chile really is.

We're very blessed :).