Again we meet at the little table by the window opened onto the playground of the condominio. Kids, roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, raisin bars, a Sunday afternoon nap. Same old, same old? Not hardly. One difference: I've been in bed three of the last four days with a bad cough, headache, sore throat, etc. It's better but not completely gone today. We missed our stake conference and a day at the office and are both suffering cabin fever. A sick missionary is a miserable missionary. We want to work. As tiring as it is it's a whole lot better than lying around all day. At home I would have enjoyed that kind of break.
Elder and Sister Dorius, the “other couple” from the office came by to visit yesterday to check on me and bring some meds for me to deliver to a missionary in our sister ward. They are now the mission medics and we learned more than we needed to know about confidential medical problems missionaries are having. I won't repeat them. I guess it is kind of like the new bishop learning more than he could ever imagine about his ward members and needing someone to talk to. I'll serve the purpose if necessary. We all have our problems, don't we? It was a nice, friendly, cookies and punch visit.
We learned that we do indeed have the nicest apartment and furnishings of anyone in the mission except the pres. He didn't expect two couples and gave us all the stuff before he knew the Dorius's were coming. They don't like their apartment and have found another one on their own. Now what do we do? Send back half the dishes and furnishings? Probably not. They are trying not to be disappointed; this is their third mission. They were expecting to go to the Mediterranean coast of Spain and were reassigned at the last minute.
Senior missions –maybe all missions-- are full of surprises, but there just isn't any way to anticipate in advance exactly what your experiences, expenses, and excitements will be. I haven't figured up the exact cost yet but without a car it looks like our expenses are below $1000 a month, but that may go up 50% with gas, parking,, insurance, etc. On the other hand, every couple we've talked to encountered hundreds, even thousands of dollars of pre-mission expenses they neither were warned about nor expected. Some have had thousands of dollars of set up expenses; first and last month, security deposits, utilities, furniture, kitchen, linens, etc. Maybe we don't ask enough questions, maybe someone could give more information. Not complaining, just informing. Be prepared.
This week about twenty elders took a bus to some official office to take the next step in getting their visas and ID cards. They were stuck in traffic because of an accident and lost their appointment, had to stand in line for 5 ½ hours to get something stamped and have go back again next week for the next step. We were notified that our papers were received and should hear something more in about 2 months. Elder Roundy said he might be able to ask for them to be expedited.
Across the way two doves on a balcony seem to be feeding each other. They don't appear to be mother and child. Perhaps it's some mating ritual. Did you know that courting humans also have a feeding each other courting ritual? I studied it in college. No lie. It's a part of human communication. There is a bird feeder there and they have been doing this for some time, now. Just like the teenagers at the bus stop in front of McDonald’s. Another form of PDA.
Some stories this week: at the church building for branch presidency meeting I looked across the hall to see two little birds (pajaritos, the name of a major street here) flying frantically around in one of the classrooms. Someone had left the window open—they are most of the time-- and they had flown in through the bars. They must have been there a while because they left a mess all over the chair backs.
Beth asked if we would have window units for the summer. HAHAHAHAHA I've not seen such a thing in a window or a store, although the mission office has a heating/cooling unit and the mission cars have A/C. Not our apartment building and not 90% of cars and buildings. Open the windows and turn on the table fan. It hasn't been that hot yet. At a stoplight I noticed a long and high sort of run down apartment building and started counting satellite dishes hanging onto the side of the building. The light changed when I was over 30 and not half way through counting. We don't have one of those either, and really don't miss it, except when lying in bed for a while.
I do miss hearing what's going on, not so much in the national news, but in the ward, family, schools, USM, etc. We get a little through Skype but I'd like more. By the way my, fishing trip a couple of weeks ago for more mail paid off. Several Dear Elder letters appeared in our box soon after. Thanx.
West of Maipu as we go toward the coast we pass through a couple of satellite towns with lots of new subdivisions and rows and rows of brand new cookie cutter houses. The population of the city is moving to the suburbs for 1,2,3 dormitorios (bedrooms) and up to 1400 square feet. Pretty nice. Own your own home—the new Chilean dream. Then the long flat glacial valley opens into a patchwork of fields and farms, neatly cultivated, planted, and irrigated much the same as valleys of the West used to be. Canals, diversion dams, ditches, siphons, shovels, broken furrows, water reaching the ends of the rows, and flourishing orchards, vineyards, row-crops of all kinds One huge dairy farm with a thousand or more cows. Closer to the coast it gets hillier and cooler and the farms give way to cattle ranches and chicken houses between scrubby brush patches and groves of eucalyptus trees, much like between San Francisco and Garberville Calif.
Pablo (the youngest and cutest kid on the playground today) keeps doing something his mother, who is marking a stack of papers on her lap, doesn't want him to do. She repeatedly calls his name and tells him not to. . . I think it has to do with climbing with the bigger boys. An eight year old girl tentatively tries out her roller skates and a boy rides his nice new mountain bike. A couple of teenage boys play a card game of some kind with cards I don't recognize. “Pablo” Pablo” Pablo” The sun is warming me nicely now.
Most days are smoggy and you can't see far or clearly. The smog settles on everything, indoors and out. Just wipe your finger over a surface or look at your white shirt collars. BLACK Pablo's Mom is smiling, laughing and pointing at him. All is well again.
Twice in cabs this week the women cab drivers had their 5-7 year old daughters with them. One had the grandmother, too. Then pick up three to five more paying passengers, and imagine me in the back seat with my arthritic hips straddling the hump, getting in and out, hitting bottom on the bumpy roads. That's the $2 ride. For $6 and up the metered cabs don't pick up other passengers and will take you anywhere you want to go. We haven't tried the micros (buses) or the metro (the new rail system) which hasn't reached our part of town yet. We usually get the $2 collectivos unless we are desperate. We don't ride far—five miles or so.
We have high hopes of making an offer on a spiffy 1999 Subaru wagon with automatic transmission this week. Keep your fingers crossed. We'd love to ditch the cabs and have some way to haul Mom's teclados (keyboards) to places where she wants to teach. She has three students in the branch and wants to do more. I sat in on her class this week. My meeting was canceled, but I didn't get the memo. She does a neat job, notwithstanding the language barrier. There is much joy and laughter. Same for her first YW (Mujeres Jovenes) presidency meeting. They were having a ball without either side knowing what the other was really saying. I translated a few words from time to time, and my friend and other counselor, Erasmo, speaks a little English and was our go--between.
We think they assigned Mom to teach three lessons, attend dance rehearsals (we don't know when or why or what the dances are for) every Wednesday at 8:30 pm beginning in November until ? ? ? ? , and be a chaperone for an upcoming Seminary Super Saturday, and cook for a fund raising dinner for Girl's camp(think summer in December) on some date yet to be approved. We think. The swimming party is Dec 12?? at a location TBA. Her first lesson, next Sunday, is Castidad=chastity. . . .whoa!. Baptism by fire!!
Skater--girl is gaining confidence, trying to do the monkey bars on skates. Chubby daddy is playing basketball with his two year old boy and Pablo's mom has calmed down. He even goes to the other side of the playground behind her back and out of sight. The words are different but the language tunes are the same, maybe among children playing anywhere in any language. Dora just found another bug and immediately had 8 new friends. They tell me there are no mosquitoes here. I'm waiting for proof.
Spandex..there is a lot of it here, and it is working overtime.
The fashion scene in a word: tight.
Shiny. High gloss everything. Most of our churches are paved (indoors and around the outside walks) from door to door, wall to wall with high gloss white ceramic tile, and accessorized with high gloss varnished wood. While I waited for mom the custodian sister polished every pew, podium, sacrament surface, & door. She scrubbed the glass front door and its iron grill with a bucket and a rag until the glass and grill were sparkling. She mopped and polished every square of tile in every hall, room, office, gym, restroom, porch—the chapel is carpeted. Cab drivers in line waiting for a fare spend their time polishing. When I visited Chile with Kevin I was impressed with the shiny walls and ceilings and marveled at how clean the homes were. Not all of them, but shiny is the watchword.
Thirty-something dad plays with 3 year son on the equipment as mom approvingly looks from second story balcony while she gathers the air-dried laundry and folds up the rack. Neat household device, holds a whole load of clothes. If you have a dryer you stick the “tube” out the window; I haven't seen any tubes today. She leans pensively against the rail. It's a lovely day in the neighborhood. More dads and kids are coming out and people are coming from work or wherever. I don't think a lot of them went to church today. It's not a holiday.
Meat. There is a lot of it here, in open markets, but in refrigerated glass cases, beef, pork, chicken, lamb, fish. Lots of deli meat. Turkey ham, saIami, sausage, lunch meat, but I've yet to see a whole turkey. They usually don't buy that much at a time. Bread and meat for tonight. I bought what looked like bacon in a sealed plastic package at the supermarket (we haven't braved the open carnecerias (meat markets) yet, fried some with over easy eggs (send grits, they don't do corn), and sat down to a nasty surprise. I don't know what it was but it wasn't sugar cured or hickory smoked. Yeeechh. Many things fool you, looking or named like what you expect, but different enough to be disappointing. We've watched them unloading meat for the little stores. A small white truck about 6 by 10 feet stops and blocks traffic. Men get out and start carrying quarters of beef, halves of pig, stacks of whole chickens in plastic crates they slide across the road and sidewalk. It may take 10-15 minutes as drivers honk and curse and (not) take turns getting through. Life goes on.
The little “convenience store”(do not even imagine 7-Eleven) two doors right of our building is typical. Enter the door-less open front of what looks like a double garage, homemade and hand lettered, to a space about 12 by 20 surrounded by U-shaped glass counters with stuff piled in, on and behind them. But don't start shopping yet. Take a little number from the thingy you didn't notice by the door when you came in, after which six more people came in, got their number and are now ahead of you. There is no line, just milling about, but don't think you can just shop and help yourself to what you can reach. Besides, the ice cream freezer and pop coolers are padlocked. When she is done with one customer the helper behind the counter calls the next number, the customer tells his/her order which is slowly filled item by item and placed on the counter in front of you, but don't touch it yet. You haven't paid for it. Step to the left/right to the elevated, glassed in, cashier booth, and put your money and the little paper with numbers on it given you by the helper through a little hand hole in the glass. Get your change and little green/yellow/ orange receipt, go back to the helper, show it to her and she will hand you your order and say “gracias”.
If you think they made a mistake like I did last night, go back, get another number, etc. etc. They didn't make a mistake; I thought they gave me $6 too much change, but I was counting 100 peso coins the same as 1,000 peso bills. Me culpa. The money taker went on and on explaining and counting and pointing (it seems to take a very long time to say anything), finally smiled, spoke a little English and said he had worked for a while in New York. As I left, the other customers glared, but the helper sang out a perfect “good bye” and a perfect “hello” to the next customer. P.S.: the homemade bread, like four little hoagy buns, in the wooden bin from the “bakery” in the back of the garage is out of the world, with butter, turkey ham and Gouda cheese. They also do wonderful mayonesa. UMMMUMMM good. Worth the trouble.
Multiply this scene by about a thousand, throw in a few more modern—glassed-in CruzVerde (green cross) pharmacies and two three-story department stores and you have a street level view of downtown Maipu. Don't forget the hundreds of closet-sized stores in the “malls=alleys” criss-crossing the interiors of the blocks and along the necessarily wide sidewalks. I’ll make a photo panorama someday. Words don't do it justice, and it's not nasty or dirty or distasteful in any way. Everything is neat and clean, and closely guarded, but the sidewalks are all broken up. The first week I carelessly stepped into a hole where a tree used to be and stumbled three steps forward into a light-pole which I grabbed and avoided some serious plastic surgery. I saw them patching a big hole by pouring in gavel and dry cement and sprinkling it with water. No wonder it doesn't last. When it dried, the patch was about 3 inches below the rest of the sidewalk. Oh, well, good enough for who it's for.
Later: We just had five elders stop by to check on me, no not to get fed, but they did. We've found a cure for leftovers. They ate up all our mashed potatoes and gravy with a little taste of roast beef. Elder Acosta from Uruguay had never had gravy before—he loved it and had seconds-- and some had not had it in over a year. Imagine. I make it every Sun. You too? Got to go to bed. End of travelogue.
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It's Tuesday pm. We're worn out, but I want to get this sent. We came back to work yesterday. Today from 8am to 6pm we were at a zone conference. Same thing tomorrow and Thursday. It was nice, but too long for old people. We had our friend Elder Callis translating for us today; not tomorrow or Thurs. BJ had “choir practice” afterwards. The music was gorgeous and her animated performance more than compensated for her lack of Spanish. It was wonderful! They sang their hearts out. I don't think they get many opportunities like this. We have one rehearsal with 1/3 of the missionaries each day. About 40 stayed late today to be in the choir. If the other zones do as well she'll have a mini MoTab on her hands. They will not all sing together until the performance Dec 23. Just like the temple dedication choirs.
We didn't go to church or visit any families or do any “Real” missionary work this week. That doesnt mean we did nothing or are disappointed. Hardly. More and more it appears that our mission is to the missionaries. They seem to need some grandparenting and we love doing it. Sister King says she thinks this is why we are here. It's OK by us. These people are awesome. Already we miss the ones going home next week. The Latina Hermanas love BJ, but none of them speak English. They mostly have Latina companions. There are some cuties. I think some of the elders have noticed that, too.
I want to tell you more about our reading aloud experience with the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith did not write that book. I hear the difference in the language of Nephi, Jacob, Isaiah, etc. Sorry, got to go. Mom is exhausted.
LUV TO ALL
MOM AND DAD.
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