Socialists, Social Events, and Associations

Sunday, December 15, 2013: “ Michelle Bachelet Easily Regains Presidency”…

Today was the run-off election.  None of the 11 candidates who ran on Nov 17 had a certain majority.  Chileans have now re-elected Bachelet, the center-socialist, and maybe she'll use her position wisely.    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/12/15/michelle-bachelet-chile-presidency/4033693/

Recent Social Events in Puerto Montt: 

Frauenverein

Our neighbor in the apartment next door is Yolanda, a lovely woman of la tercer edad, who gave me a ticket to the traditional Christmastime Onces party by the Frauenverien of Puerto Montt.  Women of German descent, they do good works in the community, and hold these parties a couple times a year to raise money for their causes.  We gathered in the large hall of the Club Aleman, where thirty big round tables were set with plates of petit four sandwiches, cookies, and cakes of every kind.  Champagne glasses of freshly minced strawberries topped with sparkling soda, marked each place, and every table had a big bowl of Nescafe instant coffee, a pitcher of hot milk and a thermos of hot water.  (Photo is from the Club Aleman website ... there really were 30 tables, each set for ten, and every seat held a lively, lovely woman!) 

Yolanda sat me next to an English-speaker named Ursula, a young woman who told me she's known most of the women in the club since she was a child. She was attending with her mother, and many tables, she said, included three generations of women from the pioneer German families of Pto Montt.  During the first hour of chatting, sipping and nibbling, club members circulated among the tables selling tickets for the raffling of prizes.  You wrote your name next to whichever numbers you wanted on the offered page, 500 pesos per number, probably 20 numers per page. Other club members carried trays of more cake for those who weren't quite satiated yet!  I'm sorry I didn't figure out a way to wrap a sticky-creamy sweet slice or two to take home to Richard.

During the second hour, once all the tickets were sold, cut apart and folded, club members conducted the raffle.  What a scene!  While women with microphones stood in the front of the room by a long table loaded with prizes, a tiny, beautiful, white-haired mujer carried the big shopping bag full of tickets around the room, choosing someone here and there to pull out the winner of the next prize.  A red-faced runner carried the chosen ticket to the front, where it sometimes took two or three to decipher the handwriting and call out the name.  Prizes included donated store-bought treasures like a hair-dryer, and a crystal platter, as well as hand-made items like an afghan, and a set of embroidered towels ... plus a couple of cash prizes, some gift certificates to various restaurants, and a huge cake that would do any wedding proud.  I didn't win a thing, but thoroughly enjoyed chatting with Ushie about her work as a psychologist at the local prison, and her family's preparations for summer vacations.  

Almozar

Richard and I went together to the next event, when Marlene, of RePacMar, invited us to her home for lunch.  We walked about a mile and a half to her Angelmo office, arriving at the appointed hour (1 pm.  Not a half-hour late, the usual tiempo Chileno). Marlene drove us to her lovely casa, up on Puerto Montt’s fourth terrace.  She's a flower-gardener with a fine collection.  (I am a giantess in this country!)

Can you see that the centers of these daisies are blue?!?

Inside, Margarita, the live-in cook, served us pirotas con longaniza, a typical Chilean bean soup with sausage …delicious ... with tomato salad, homemade rolls, and a wonderful dessert of frozen blueberries atop a melange of shredded orange and banana.   

'Twas fun to talk about the language.  I made my usual complaint about how hard it is to understand, when I can’t see the words I’m hearing.  Harina / arena … Vas hacer /  Vas a ser  … ai yi yi!  Marlene understood completely, and gave another example:  Se pare / separe … the first means he pairs with someone, the second means he separates!    

Richard got onto a story from his voyage in the south of Chile … about trading fresh-caught tuna for a certain shellfish harvested by local fishermen.  “Puro” – he recalled, a bright red oyster-like flesh extracted from rock-like shells.

Marlene corrected him:  Piure  … She talked in Spanish about what an important source of yodo, this particular shellfish is.  Yodo, she said, the essential life ingredient.  ¿Que?  (photos from internet) 

Yodo was NOT in my dictionary. 

Back home later:  Google translate explained.

Have you guessed? 

yodo = iodine 

English-Speakers' Book Club of Puerto Varas

During a very lucky momento at the grocery store not long ago, a woman named Lia overheard R & I talking in English about how to ask for the cheese we like (from Wisconsin … lo siento … we haven’t found a Chilean cheese to compare with Monterey Pepper Jack, or with U.S. Cheddar.)  Lia introduced herself,  offering to help with our request if we needed some Spanish.  She’s Columbian by birth but has been living in Chile for decades, since she married the gringo, Thomas, who came to Chile 20+ years ago from New Hampshire to work in the salmon industry and is now building homes on the 30-acre farm he purchased in Pelluco, just outside of Puerto Montt.  We were satisfied more or less with the grocery store clerk’s answers about our cheese (“maybe next month") but Lia was so friendly we just stood there in the cheese aisle chatting.  While Richard and Thomas discussed their sailboats, Lia asked if I’d like to attend the English-Speaking Book Club in Puerto Varas with her the next day, Friday.   Yes, please! 

She picked me up outside my building at about 10:30 next morning.  We got stuck in traffic in downtown Puerto Varas as one of the elementary schools was celebrating its five year anniversary with a parade thru town.  But the book club group runs on Tiempo Chileno, so even tho we were 45 minutes late, we were not the last to arrive. 

The book, The Good Doctor, by Damon Galgut, is set in post-apartheid South Africa, in the almost-deserted hospital of the former Bantu homeland.  I’d Googled it the night before the meeting, so was not completely ignorant.  But what a pleasure when Vanessa arrived.  She and her husband had emigrated from South Africa some three or four years ago, so she was able to provide a lot of background for the story.   

I will ramble on about the various women of this group in future blogs, as I’m sure to be attending future book group meetings.  Next book:  The Dalai Lama’s Cat… which, I don’t know, doesn’t sound like my cup of tea, really, but I will look forward to hearing Sonia and Doreen and the others discuss it.  Doreen, Chilean, lived in Seattle for 40 years.  Sonia, Chilean, and widowed now, worked at UCLA for years before marrying a retiring American prof and moving to Texas.  He was quite a bit older than she, and told her that one of the good things about her country was that she should be able to live well there on their savings after he was gone. 

Filosofia with the Nueva Acropolis
A poster I kept seeing around town intrigued me, so last Wednesday night Richard and I walked about a mile across town to the house on Anibal Pinto where the local branch of Nueva Acropolis holds its meetings.  The advertised lecture:  
La Personalidad Como Máscara de Yo Interior. 

Interesting topic … who knew if we’d be able to understand more than 10% of the talk, but it would be a good chance to immerse our ears in Espanish, si?  

A very good speaker (he enunciated, spoke slowly and distinctly, and enhanced his presentation with gestures and tidy printing on his white board) delivered a review of basic concepts of filosofia:  the personality is comprised of el cuerpo fisico, el cuerpo energetico, el cuerpo emocional, y el cuerpo mente-deseo.  These temporal layers are all supervised by the a-temporal alma.  Sign up for the full course to learn more about Greek, Chinese, and Egyptian interpretations of the meaning of life! 

We did not stay for the coffee and chat afterwards, but might go back for another session one of these weeks.   

Asociaciónes

Two more things this week:
First:  My friend Beccy commented that my addiction to the soap opera is a legitimate way to learn to hear the language.  Thank you!  I have to add that Avenida Brasil has also been a great spark for good posture.  Every one of the women in this tempestuous telenovela set in Rio de Janeiro holds herself wonderfully straight, erect, long in the spine, breast bone held high, shoulders back, neck lifting the brain to the sky as if to affirm that her body is a conduit connecting her heart with the celestial spirits above. 

That’s an image of Life Force more accessible to me than yodo.

Second:  The cruise ships are delivering tourists to Puerto Montt on a regular basis again, now that the weather is warm and the sun is shining most days.  ¿Quien sabe quien puede aparecer?  Cat Stevens is scheduled to be in Santiago sometime soon.  Maybe he'll stop in down here, too?
Richard took this photo from the end of the waterside tourist pier just outside El Mall Costanera.  Those little boats actually deliver the tourists to Angelmo, almost two miles from the Mall.  The tourists have to ride the buses, or take taxis or collectivos, or WALK like we usually do, to get to el plazo central in Pto Montt.