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.