A Busy Week...

So it has been a very busy, very hot week.  We have our CO visit this week which means tons of extra meetings and service time.  The brother and his wife are actually from Milwaukee, so they were happy to see another Wisconsinite here, and will be joining us at our family's home for lunch tomorrow. Last night we had our pioneer meeting with all 30 pioneers, counting Brandon and myself, and then one sister who is auxiliary pioneering.  Even in Sign Language we never had that many pioneers!!! It is almost like the entire congregation is pioneering because there are only 18 publishers besides all of us.  There has also been some great service support this week and some good experiences. In the morning Brandon and I both met women who greatly appreciated that we visited them and shared a scripture, took the tracts we offered, and asked us to come back to share more with them.  It was great!!!! In the afternoon we ended up doing return visits in a different part of the city, and as you can see the car was a little crowded (yes there are 6 of us in a car that snugly fits 4).

The only strange thing about service here is that we travel is a mass hoard. You know how is the States we don't like looking like a swarm of locusts in a neighborhood? Not the case here.  We always seem to be this big pack traveling through the area, but nobody bats an eye so I am guessing it is the norm.

We ended up taking a bit of a holiday this past weekend because the congregation had their district convention.  Not only was it in Spanish, because there are not enough English congregations in the are to support an English one, but it was also last's year convention in the States.  We ended up just hitting the beach and enjoying some parts of the city we haven't been to yet, so it was very nice to relax before this week of extra activity. The waves are huge, and our other room mate, Justin from California, is hoping to take his underwater camera out into them, because photos just don't capture them. Also, I am proud to say, Brandon and I can venture out by ourselves because we now know the bus route home :) Nothing else riveting I can think of now, so I will catch you all later!

So, today was a very interesting day. Guess when the assigned time for service is on Mondays? 4 pm!!!  So, Bradley and I got a lot of reading done today. It was very relaxing. Being in a new culture is an interesting and enjoyable change of pace, even if at times it is less than the height of efficiency. We actually started at 3 with return visits and then met at the kingdom hall at 4. Isn't it pretty?

Then we set out to do street witnessing!! A nice change of pace since we have only done census work up until now and guess what? I got a return visit!! This is exciting because it is my first one here and return visits are not very common in street witnessing in a completely tourist area. We also placed 4 tracts to English speakers before a car pulled to the side of the road ahead of us. Two women got out and tried to open the hood. Their car was smoking a little so we tried to help them. The engine looked perfect, only the radio was smoking. They started to take all of there stuff out of the trunk which I thought was an overreaction. But it turned out that was wise because the situation escalated just a little...

Suddenly Vina had a new tourist attraction. Everyone from the beach went to see what the giant pillar of black smoke was about. Everyone in the service group wanted to see our pictures. The moral is to make sure your electronics are wired correctly in your car and if you do find yourself in that situation and would like to save the car, disconnect the battery. Learn something something new everyday :)

Later on, while I am in the Kingdom Hall bathroom, the door and the windows start shaking. I thought my service group was being immature but it turned out to be an EARTHQUAKE!! It was a 4 point something. Only two days before I had been the only one in the group who had not felt one and was a bit jealous. How cool is that.

Another great highlight of the day came later...

Very very good ice cream here, it was coconut and mocha and more like gelato even though they call it ice cream. I was the only one who got some and was affectionately labeled a Chancho (fat pig here in Chile)

That's all I have for you right now and as a friend of mine would say,

Toodles

A Few Points on Chilean Culture

So in our first week it seems we have learned quite a few things we have never known about Chile or its people so we would like to share them :)

1. A Day of Eating-Chileans have four meals a day which is quite a change. The first meal is obviously breakfast which is normally bread with jelly, a liquid yogurt, and maybe some fruit.  Thankfully they are also coffee drinkers so we can both get our morning fix.  The second meal is lunch which we eat around 2.  Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and can be almost anything.  Today we had delicious tortilla (the kind from Spain not Mexico) with salad, roast potatoes and bread.  The best part was all the vegetables we ate were from the farmer's market this morning so it was incredibly fresh. Then instead of dinner at 5 Chileans have "Once" (not once but 11 in Spanish (I can't do the proper accent marks in Blogger)).  It is not so much a meal as it is a snack to tide you over until dinner.  It is usually coffee or tea with bread or cookies.  And finally around 9 is dinner.  Normally it is a light dinner, but it seems like a full meal to me because I am always stuffed afterwards and there is always tons of food on the table.  Of course with dinner we have wine because why live in a country that makes some of the best wine if you are not going to drink it?!? As you may have noted bread is at every meal.  Everyday people go to the Panderia (a bakery) to buy their bread for the day because it is a staple here.  If you don't like to eat your carbs, Chile is not the place for you.  We have also been eating avocados everyday because they grow them here and are very cheap and versatile. Also Chileans hate, hate, hate spicy foods.  You can not even buy hot sauces or peppers with any kind of kick because they are so unpopular here.

2.No, it's Not the Ice Cream Truck-So yesterday we were sitting around the table when all of sudden we hear "It's a Small World" being belted from the street.  I turned expecting to see the ice cream truck, but no it is the Propane Man.  The stoves and water heaters all run on propane here, and for convenience they sell propane in the streets so people don't have to lug them home on the bus.  So here instead of children going to the street when they hear the classic songs of youth, the adults go to the street to buy their propane.  The sad part is there are many propane companies, so there are trucks circling the neighborhoods all day and all I want is ice cream when I hear them coming.

3. A Shell Game-The majority of people here do not own cars, and even if you do it is sometimes easier to take the bus.  Even though there are so many people who rely on the bus to get where they need to go, there is no written schedule or map of where the buses go.  You have to look in the window to see if the area you want to go is posted and hope that it has a stop in the area you want to be in.  Needless to say, Brandon and I can't leave home unaccompanied because we will have no idea how to get back. The buses do have numbers according to the route they run, but since there is not a list of what number bus goes where, it is trial and error and then remember which one is right. Besides the buses they have taxis that act like buses called Colectivos. It is a taxi that follows a route instead of taking you to an exact address.  They are more expensive than buses, but quicker because their stops are more spread out and they can only fit four people, so once they are full it becomes nonstop until you reach your desired stop.

4. Watch Your Step-I'm not sure if it counts as a point of culture, but it is just and interesting tidbit.  There are tons of dogs just running loose here.  So far they have all been nice (its seems the only ones that are mean are the ones kept as pets) but they are very distracting.  They follow you around in service just trying to get some attention or some food, but the dogs kept as pets don't like them at all.  When you walk down the street all of the dogs start barking so when you speak to a house holder you are yelling over every dog living on that block plus the strays.  At night all you can hear is the stray dogs barking though the streets playing and fighting with each other, then come morning you see them curled up in various spots to sleep the day away.  You always need to look where you step because they make messes anywhere.

Day One in Vina

Sorry for not saying so earlier, but we have arrived in Vina safely.  The family we are staying with is very sweet, and there is also a brother from California who is living with them as for the next year, so it is a full house. Today was our first day of service in Chile.  As much as it pains me to say, we did mostly search work today, which I was kinda hoping to escape on this break from Sign Language.  However, being able to search for English people is Spanish is a bit of a change of pace, and we spoke to many people today in Spanish and English.  We have also made many new friends with the other pioneers that were out today.  Its typical to come home for lunch during the day as it is the largest meal, and as you can see Brandon is throughly enjoying his Completo.  It is basically a hot dog with everything on it: sour kraut, salsa americano, tomatoes, avocados, ketchup, mustard, and mayo. I am not a hot dog fan, and they were amazing!!!! Tomorrow we get to do service in the nearby city of Valparaiso, so hopefully that means we will get to see the ocean for the first time.

Santiago English Congregation

So after a night of not much sleeping due to the riot like celebration of New Year's in all of Santiago until 4 this morning, we sleep in and had an easy morning of studying our Watchtowers in a local park.  Afterwards we grabbed a quick lunch and had our first adventure on the Chilean Metro.  I was actually quite impressed as it is cleaner and easier to follow than the NYC subway system.  The English congregation here is clear on the other side of the city, so after half an hour we arrived.  Everybody was so excited to see us, but were sad when we told then we leave for Vina tomorrow and will be there until March.  They were very insistent that the service here is much better than it is there, and the Kingdom Hall was the first air conditioned building we have been in, so we shall see. There congregation is also in the ritzy part of town, so there were much cooler buildings to look up at and trendier restaurants to enjoy after the meeting with our new friend David. Today was our last day of "vacation" so from here on out its gonna be some hardcore service!!

The Virgin Mary

 So we see this big statue that is on top of this hill/mountain seems to preside over the city and of course we want to go see it. At the base of the mountain there are taxis that take you to the top for about $2. Bradley decides that we should hike up instead. Keep in mind that we are wearing jeans and it is very hot and sunny. So we hike our sweaty bodies up a very dusty path up to a view that overlooks the whole city; it was very pretty and we both managed not to get heat stroke. We realize that the statue is actually a shrine to the Virgin Mary entitled The Immaculate Conception. There was catholicism everywhere. At least it was beautiful. The hike down was easier. There was a lot of slipping and sliding on the loose gravel since it was quite steep all the way down. There happened to be a fruit tree of some sort on the path and I decided to try it. Bradley was sure it was deathly poisonous but after I told him that it tasted great and fruit that tastes great usually are not bad for you he ate some as well. Hmmm, is there something in the Bible that follows those lines?

Zoologico Nacional De Chile

Our third stop of the morning (after eating our unwashed strawberries from the market) was the zoo. We didn't really intend to go there, but during our wanderings we just happened to find ourselves there, so we decided we better stop. As far as zoos go, this one in phenomenal!!! It is basically built all up hill, so each plateau has a different set of animals. They have your normal zoo creatures, but there were also many native species of Chile that I had never seen before and an amazing aviary. It did feel a little ridiculous that we had flown all the way to Chile, and we found ourselves watching a peacock endlessly in hopes it would fly (it didn't for the record). Although they have an albino peacock, which I don't think can be seen many places. We ended our visit with some ice cream overlooking Santiago from the top of the zoo.