Brunch at Jumbo

After a nice breakfast with Tia Chela, we went back to the Jumbo down the street to buy groceries. I´m starting to think Jumbo is just like the ABC stores in Hawaii but on steroids. I hear there are over 20 of them in Santiago alone. We stumbled on a small kiosk where they were serving different kinds of seafood in a cup. We had the clams and mussels seviche which came with a small piece of local bread (pan amasado), a half of a lemon, and either a small cup of wine or soda. I guess this was the Chilean version of ´Poke´. It was sooo good we could have had a whole bowl full. It´s very late now (4:40am) so Sheri is sleeping. She will add a most in the moring explaining why we were up so late. Good night!

Visitando el Pato y la Marcela

Cousins Pato and Marcela invited us to dinner at their house. The typical day is really long in Chile, most days do not end until 1 or 2 in the morning. I think part of it is due to the amount of daylight here. I took a picture from Grandma´s lanai at 9:30pm and it looked like 5pm in Hawaii.

Tio Mario picked us up and we went to Pato´s at about 10:30pm. Such a nice house! Uri and Ravit also stopped by and we were able to meet their kids for the first time in person. We all had a great time, celebrated Dad´s birthday after midnight and talked to Susie, Dad (Sheri´s dad) and Micah at home using Rod´s MacBook and Skype.

Abuelita Gina y Tia Chela

Grandma Gina looks just as pretty as she always has. We were very happy to see her and was surprised that she was up and around today. Today was a good day for Grandma after having a tough week of exams. Hopefully this weekend will continue to be good, we are playing it by ear on what we do day to day.

Tia Chela looks good as well, Dad says she has also been very ill this week and is now on a strict diet. She has been sharing a lot of interesting old stories about the family and Chile´s historical past. We spent the morning looking at Grandma´s old photos and found a bunch of early baby pictures of the great grandkids; Micah, Koa and Zach and also a few pictures of us (pre-marriage) when we were both cute and skinny (and had a lot of hair).

1969 Fiat 600

We went to pick up Paty´s dad´s car at the garage. The mechanic is a good friend of Tio Mario and he has an almost mint condition 1969 Fiat 600 in his garage. Dad says this is the car everybody had back in the day. This car won an award for being the best maintained original as it has all of it´s original parts and body while other models have been restored. Tio´s friend noticed us taking pictures of the car so he grabbed the front bumper and pulled it out (with one hand!) so we could get a better picture. This car is smaller than a mini Cooper, so cool!

Al supermercado-Jumbo

We went with Dad and Tio Mario to ´Jumbo,´the new supermarket across the street from Grandma´s house. It´s pretty incredible for a market. It reminded me of the supermarkets in Japan where everything is nicely arranged and there´s huge sections with bins of fresh food like baked breads, seafood and deli. I took a picture of a portion of the deli section and was planning to take more until Security came and said to stop. Groceries are a little expensive but everything looked more appetizing than the markets at home. There was also a big liquor section with a whole wall of different kinds of pisco and tons of wine. There was no Patron though so couple points taken off for that.

We will go back to the market before we leave to buy little tubs of Manjar - at home we make manjar by boiling cans of condensed milk for 3-1/2 hours (that´s why our electricity bill is so high). Manjar is a milky caramel that you can eat with bread or crackers or just with a spoon - very Chilean. (Tyler-mama is bringing a bunch of manjar home, just for you, my baby!)

A la casa de Abuelita Gina

It took almost an hour to get to Grandma Gina´s house. I did not realize the big family house was sold and she now lives in an apartment. (So JoAnne, I figured out that we´ve been sending our christmas cards to the old house in Luis Beltran. Since the cards haven´t been returned, I wonder if the new folks are enjoying our cards!). Dad is going to take us to see the old house later. Luis Beltran is just a neighborhood away from Ñuñoa where Grandma lives now.

Grandma´s house is really nice, its a new building and pretty modern. We are staying at Tia Chela´s house. She is Grandma Gina´s sister and lives in the same apartment building so we are close to Grandma and Dad.

Estamos en la Chile!

We arrived, got through immigration smoothly - it cost me $131 US to enter the country. For some reason, there´s an entry fee for Canadians, Americans, Mexicans to enter - AND the cost differs based on where you come from. It was the most expensive for Americans . . . hmmmm.

Dad, Tio Mario and Uri met us at the airport. Tio Mario is married to Susie´s sister, Tia Cecilia and Uri is our cousin, his dad is one of Susie´s brothers, Tio Kiko, who lives in Israel. We have not seen Uri for about 15 years - since Micah was born.

Last stop - Santiago, Chile

So we´re on the final leg of flights - we change plans in Peru to LAN Chile. Unfortunately, the plane is an old one, nothing like the LAN flight we just got off of. We sat in an exit row so no reclining seat and the food was que terible (really bad)! We watched a good English movie ´Sixty-Six.´ It was about a boy planning his own bar mitzvah, trying to make it better than his older brother´s - but found out the day of the party was the same day as the World Cup Final. So he spends his time trying to will the English team to get eliminated before the Final. To top it off, I had a faux pas in mid-flight, trying to get something out of the overhead bin without getting in the aisle, my tokidoki bag fell out of the bin and landed on a Chilean lady´s head. She was kinda pissed.

On our way to Peru . . .

The 2nd flight actually turned out to be the best. LAN Peru was the most comfortable - every seat had its own video screen and remote and the seat of the chairs pulled out a little when you reclined the seat. Very cool. The food also was pretty good, here´s pictures of the meals they served (on real dishes with real silverware!) We watched a bunch of movies on the long flight: Tropic Thunder (which I thought kind of sucked) and ´Ghost Town´ which was pretty good. Sheri watched ´Vicky Christina Barcelona´which was excellent but Rod refused to watch because it was a chick-flick, even though he watched the part with the girl-on-girl action. Rod watched ´Eagle Eye´which he says wasn´t the greatest either. We chatted with a nice girl from Korea who apparently speaks Korean, Spanish and English. I was going to add to my airplane blanket collection from this flight but noticed the blankets had a security tag attached - shucks.

Traveling day

We left Hawaii late last night for LA.  Our flight was delayed 2-hours which worked out okay because it shortened our layover in LA for 2-hours.  We thought we were going to have a little bit of an issue at the American Airlines check-in because of Rod's passport but after a little bit we got the 'all-clear' and were on our way.  We're currently at the LAX International Terminal Gate 106 waiting to board our next flight to Lima, Peru - it's an 8-hour flight which will be a little difficult since we're already tired from the first flight which was only 5-hours.  Here's a picture of 2 weary travelers (using Rod's new MacBook)

Chile here we come!

We are on our way to Chile to see Grandma Gina. The trip was planned on short notice as Grandma Gina is having surgery next week and we wanted to be sure to see her before then.