Necesitamos dinero por favor

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This week, we became even more Chilean. And by that, I mean we attended our first Jane Chilean Fonda. "What is that" you say? Well it's basically a giant festival party filled with meat, meat, more meat, and Terremotos (yes, that means earthquake, but it also means way-too-sweet-cocktail-topped-with-ice-cream...weird yet amazing?). The girls had a great time at the Fonda, which also included endless amounts of bouncy castles, pony rides, carnival games, one-man-bands and Maelle's personal favourite: popcorn dipped in sand.

To further our education about Chile, we also attended the girls' Fiestas Patrias school party and BBQ. Adorable choreographed dance numbers were witnessed (I didn't know "Baby Shark" is Chilean!?) and we also learned from Zoe that the national flower of Chile is the copihue (how does she remember this stuff?) It was really nice meeting other parents (half of whom are from Chile and others are from the U.S. or Asia). It was also really terrifying seeing the world's deadliest cowboy boot spurs at a children's party. Note: no small children were hurt during the cueca (Chilean dance involving murderous boot spurs and napkin waving; see innocent children's version in picture below).

Zoe also took us to the National History Museum, where she had recently been for a field trip. The museum itself is set within a beautiful park downtown (government district) and since the entire population of Santiago is away at their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th vacation home for the holidays, the city is empty and we got to enjoy it pretty much to ourselves. Although the museum itself is incredibly impressive, I think we would all agree that the highlight may have been the street food outside. We saw a sweet old lady making Sopaipillas (a fried bread either eaten plain or hot sauce on top), so we loaded up at 40 cents a piece. And right now, 40 cents is about where our budget sits since we still have no bank account! WTF. No bank account, no cars (despite having essentially closed two deals for cars), no heat (well we have heat now, but only after getting diesel delivered to our house for the second time since the first attempt was apparently 'just for fun' whereby they put only 200 L into an empty 1600 L tank and called that 'full').

A 'small win' did in fact occurred today when we went to Mall Sport (a mall that essentially only has sports-related stores and endless activities for kids). We walked into the Thule store since Maelle recognized our blue bike chariot/stroller. To our not-so-shocking surprise, it was marked at $950!!! (double the price of what we paid in Canada). #winning. If we can't open a bank account soon, we are going to start selling all of our prized possessions for more than what we paid for them...although most of them are somewhere on a ship, in Mexico we are told, perhaps vacationing, we are not sure.

Today, the 18th, is the actual independence day holiday, so we celebrated at PF Chang’s with a traditional Chilean meal of General Tao’s Chicken, sautéed greens beans, Pad Thai and a Pisco Sour (look everything is closed today for the holiday ok...it was delicious). Tomorrow is another holiday and the last of the Independence Day celebrations, and is called something like Great Military Day of the Awesome Military where the Military did great things Day and let’s go downtown for a Military parade...something like that...my Spanish still needs some improvement.

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Photos

Chilean BBQ
Another satisfied customer

Terremoto
It’ll get you drunk!

La cueca; toddler edition.
Coming soon to a metro station near you