Hello to everyone who reads this blog...if anyone does...I am moving. Starting today you can find my blog at amandainchile.wordpress.com. Just to tempt you, there's a new post waiting for you there, as well as all my previous posts from this blog. See you there!

Chileans do not give used things to charity like Americans do. Goodwill and the DAV would quickly go under here.

Things like used clothes are given to friends, family members, or church members. Things like broken vacuum cleaners and electric kettles are fixed or given to people who might be able to sell them at a street fair.

Even my egg cartons and glass spaghetti sauce jars have to be saved for a friend who gives them to someone she knows. That person sells eggs and jelly at farmers' markets. Recycle, Reduce, Reuse could really be a description of a cultural value here.

So when I have clothes that I consider to be well-used, and I would normally put them in the box for Goodwill, what do I do here? I put them out at the curb on top of the trash containers on trash day so that the cartoneros can come get them.

Technically, a cartonero is someone who collects cardboard from the trash. I'm not sure what they do with the cardboard boxes, but they drive these tricycles/delivery vehicles. They have one wheel in the back and a seat with pedals like a bike, but in the front there is a three-foot-square platform with three-foot sides and a wheel on each side. In the "basket" (for lack of a better term) this person collects their boxes, any useful trash, and anything people leave out (whether or not they intended to). They might also carry a passenger in the basket, especially a 10-year-old-ish child who can jump out and help look for good stuff.

So when it is trash day and the apartment building trash cans are rolled out to the curb, we can count on it all being gone through by at least two or three cartoneros before the garbage truck comes by. Tonight I left a bag of very used children's clothes and a 7-year-old pair of Mark's pants that finally gave up the ghost. Tomorrow someone in Santiago will be getting them ready to sell at one of the street markets.

It is true: one man's junk is another man's treasure.

Everyone has been asking me to write about having a baby in a foreign country. Honestly, I was prepared for something culturally-crazy to happen during the labor and delivery of Megan. I know that I am not so good at surprises, so I tried to psych myself up for something weird to happen. Pretty much it all went according to plan, which almost never happens here!

I credit this all to my doctor. I was referred to this ob/gyn by an Australian friend who has since returned to Australia. The doctor is German, speaks English easily and fluently even with my kids, and has been in Chile for four years. He's the father of four kids, which I find a big plus in a doctor. He knows what I am experiencing in my daily life because he and his wife are also trying to raise their family in a strange culture.

Anyway, it was Dr. Buhler who put me in touch with my Swiss-German nurse-midwife and my British-trained Chilean pediatrician. They all let me pretty much do things how I wanted, and it all went very smoothly. Whew!

Post-delivery things got a little weird when I had to move on to the care of Chilean-trained nurses and nurse aids who look after new moms. Chilean women usually stay in the hospital for three nights after having a baby, and these nurses were a little hesitant to let me leave before that time was up. During my two days in the hospital, I also had to adjust myself to the Chilean meal schedule: breakfast at 8:30, lunch at 2:00, and dinner at 8:30pm.

Overall, it was a good experience. At my one-week checkup, Dr. Buhler informed me that he was taking all of July off to travel to Europe with his family, so I would have to see him again in August. "I just have to get out of here, you know?" he told me. "Santiago in the winter is pretty unbearable, what with the cold weather and all the smog." Yes, I know. And it's good to know that other people know too.

The first row of seats on each side of the buses in Chile is supposed to be "preferencial" for the handicapped, senior citizens, and pregnant women.

Today when I got on the bus, there was an open seat in one of these preferential seats, so being 37 weeks pregnant, I took it. The man next to me looked to be a businessman in his mid-50s. The other preferential seats were taken by middle-aged women.

As the bus filled up, the aisle began to fill with people who couldn't find empty seats. The "bien educado" (well-educated = polite) thing to do is for younger people to give up their seats for the older and less mobile people. This doesn't always happen, of course. And some people aren't happy about it, including the next woman who got on our bus today.

She was about mid-50s, I would guess, and a bit overweight, with a huge purse that was hanging under her arm. She decided to position herself in the aisle right beside me, hanging on to the back of my chair. This left her purse to bang me in the head every time the bus changed lanes.

I first just made a face, but then she just shrugged and it happened again. So I asked her to please lower her purse so it wouldn't hit me.

Then it happened, and I couldn't believe it...She told me I should give her the seat! She pointed at the sign on the window indicating that this was a preferential seat we were talking about. Thankfully she didn't tell me I was "maleducada" (poorly educated = impolite). I was speechless.

The man next to me quickly intervened and informed the woman that I was pregnant (couldn't she see?), then stood up to give her his chair. (Forget the fact that neither of them really was qualified for the preference of the chair anyway.)

If I had been in a hurry or had something else happen to me badly today, it probably wouldn't have been funny at all. But at least today I can look at it like this: Even though none of my clothes fit anymore, I guess I don't LOOK that big after all!

Mark and I enjoy watching a few shows on television in the evening after the girls go to bed. Basically, we have one or two shows at a time that we try to watch every week. One of those is 24. Another is Prison Break. It's like our appointed time each week to do something together, so we try not to miss.

Being in Chile makes this different than it would be in the States for several reasons. First, we get a new episode every week. No getting ready for the next installment then finding out you have to wait another week like we frequently do in the US. Every week, new episode. And if you miss one, just turn on the tv an hour early and watch last week's episode. I guess you could only watch every other week for two hours, if you wanted. I like that.

Of course, the seasons are a couple of months behind what is on in the States. I think season six of 24 started while we were in the States in January. But it didn't hit Chile until the first of April. In the end, though, with all their breaks for re-runs, we might end at the same time.

One of the irritating things, however, is that since they run all the new episodes back to back each week, they finish at different times. For example, there are 24 episodes in a season of 24. But only 22 in the second season of Prison Break. So in Chile, there are always "seasons" of shows starting and finishing at random times all year long.

Apparently, some series have a better place on the totem pole, because when it was time for 24 to begin in April, Prison Break, which had the same time slot, just stopped. In mid-season! I found out online that there are 22 episodes in season two of Prison Break, but they just randomly stopped it after 13 episodes in Chile. I assume because 24 is more popular, and it was time to show that one, but who knows why. And who knows if they will ever finish Prison Break, either! And if they do, will the call it season 3? Or the second half of season 2, like it really is?

I confess that I am highly tempted to go on the US Fox Brodcasting website and read through all the show synopses until I get to the end of season two. It just doesn't seem right to leave us all hanging for the next 24 weeks. If I do it, I will let you know.

Protests are so common here in Chile, I had to read back through my entire blog to see if I had written about them before. I couldn't find an entry about them, so this being Labor Day in Chile (and in many other parts of the world), I think it is high time that something be said about this phenomenon.

First, Labor Day in the States is something like a picnic day, coming right at the end of summer as it does. But when you think of Labor Day in Chile, you have to think "labor union". Today seems to be set aside as the official protest-against-your-employer day in the whole country. It is always on May first, and so this year it lands on a Tuesday.

Protesting in Chile is just what you do. If you want more pay, you strike. If you want better benefits, you have a picket line. If you want to work less hours for the same pay, you have a march. The key is to disrupt the normal course of events (the traffic, the tranquility, and definitely the workday) in order to embarrass your employer (or the government, depending on your reason for the protest) into complying with your wishes.

There are lots of ways that this plays out. A calm, peaceful protest usually involves a march of the interested party somewhere downtown. They will carry signs on posterboard, blow whistles, chant their sayings, and be accompanied by police who ensure their safety as they block vehicle traffic and disrupt normal sidewalk traffic. In the end, they usually take the rest of the day off and sometimes receive what they requested.

Other protests, usually when students get a little too excited about their cause of the week, can involve rock-throwing (usually at the police), barracading the gates of their schools with chairs and desks, tearing down outdoor signs (both street signs and advertizing), looting stores, vandalism of bus stops, burning tires in the street, and occasionally a Molitov coctail or two. In such cases, the police presence protects the people and businesses around the protesters by wearing riot gear, arresting those involved (just overnight without pressing charges, unless they are a leader of the movement), breaking up the crowd with tear gas, and sometimes using the water cannon.

So far today is a quiet, cloudy day. Maybe the protests will all be peaceful today. But I will definitely keep an eye out for a police water cannon driving through town, and drive the opposite way. Happy May Day!

I went grocery shopping today. There are many things about this weekly task that are the same as in the States, but a few modifications just to keep me on my toes and remind me that I am in Chile still.

First, the security guard at the front door. He checks to make sure you aren't bringing in anything that someone might think you stole from the store, or that you might use to steal from the store. My backpack/diaper bag has to have it's zipper pulls taped together so I can't open it and fill it with store goods. The guard does this a thousand times a day, so he hardly even looks at me as he tapes my bag.

Next, after I find my bread (in a bag on the shelf instead of the freshly-made kind Rachel can't eat, that has to be weighed at a special station), I head back to the produce section. I've learned after two years FINALLY which things have to be weighed and which do not. This is the key to a happy eventual check-out, because the checkout clerks do not have scales at the registers. You MUST weigh your fruits and veggies in the produce section. And yes, the store employs someone, sometimes various someones, to sit there all day weighing your food. I weigh my grapes, my tomatoes, and my kiwis. I don't weigh my spinach, my parsley, my oranges, my mushrooms, or my brussel sprouts.

When I hit the meat counter, I start looking at the prices. Today it so happens that the pre-packaged chicken pieces are cheaper than the exact same ones that are in the case. But the whole chickens are cheaper in the case. So I choose appropriately, get my case chicken weighed by the meat man, and move on.

I decide that I need milk. Milk here comes in one-liter specially-lined cardboard boxes called tetrapak. I have two children who drink a lot of milk. I buy two cases of 12 one-liter boxes each. I bring along a 25th loose box of milk so they can scan it at the register without opening my cardboard case. Twenty-four liters of milk will last a week-and-a-half at my house, but I don't have to worry about it going bad or refrigerating it. It's treated a special way with rapid high heat so that it is room-temperature stable. That is something I will miss in the States!

Today I did not bring any returnable 2- or 2-1/2- or 3-liter bottles for Coke. I decide not to buy any since the non-returnable bottles of the same size cost about half as much again as the returnable ones. If I had, I would have to take the bottles to the machine in the back of the store and feed them in the machine mouth to get my voucher for the bottles. One less thing to deal with today.

I also decided not to take a number at the deli counter to wait for someone to cut me lunch meat or slice cheese. Too many people, since Chileans eat lunch meat and cheese on their weird bread for both breakfast and afternoon tea. Besides, Rachel can't eat any of it.

The last stop before the check-out is the toiletries. I can pick up for myself the hand soap and the shampoo I need, but I have to ask the clerk behind the counter (once I get her attention) to hand me the shaving cream and the deodorant I want to buy.

I make it to the check-out. Today I remembered to weigh the right things, so there isn't any trouble. No, I don't want to add on the giant chocolate bar the clerk offers me. Only plastic bags are available, so there's no questions to answer. I pay the college-student bag boy (since the store doesn't) and head for the car.

Another successful grocery stop!

Soda in Chile is a strange thing.

We have the world-saturating Coca-Cola, of course, Sprite, Fanta, Coke Light (almost Diet Coke), and now Coke Zero, which I tasted by accident last week and decided tastes like Half-Diet Coke.

Then we have Pepsi, which is sort of the lower-class Coke of Chile, and comes in cheaper, smaller sizes. 7Up, Crush, and Canada Dry Ginger Ale all follow along those lines.

And we have Chilean sodas: Pap (papaya-gag!), Kem Piña (pineapple), Bilz (strawberry), and Limón Soda (made by Canada Dry, and very good!).

Once in a long while we see a Mountain Dew that costs a ton at the upper-class supermarket.

But today we saw for the first time in Chile Mark's favorite drink from the States: Dr Pepper! Granted, it cost almost a dollar a can, so I picked up four and went to find Mark in the store. Of course, our first reaction was: How many do we buy? Who else wants this? So we call around and get everyone's orders. (What are friends for, right?) We leave with 28 cans! Yes, we spent $28.00 on Dr Pepper today. And we're pretty happy about it, too!