family

The feel of our household is slowly shifting a bit, gelling into a more cohesive unit. Last night Oscar built a big fire to heat up the living room, and when he called me to come in, I discovered choripan on the table, as a sort of post-dinner munchie thing. (I guess you could have called it once, though I don't know. Our family eats at pretty random times.) Apparently in the winter, when they cook meat, they do it in the fireplace. I explained how Dad has been known to go use the grill while it's snowing.

Today at lunch, everyone acknowledged that the family washing machine has died. It's been making horrible noises and leaving strange stains on my clothing (hopefully my expensive khakis are salvageable). They're buying a new washing machine today or tomorrow.

Oscar: Chris, how many more days are you single?

Chris: Five.

[discussion about how Anna is getting to Valparaíso]

Chris: I'll have to hide all my Chilean girlfriends.

Oscar: We should talk about how much money it will take for me to keep quiet about that.

Chris: How much is a new washing machine?

Finally, a joke that translated well enough that Oscar had to laugh. There's hope!

Oscar is building a sort of lean-to next to the house where we can hang the laundry even in the rain. I went back to hang out and enjoy the stunning clear day, and we wandered around the property a bit, which turns out to be really big, with lots of random crap on it even beyond the piles of scrap wood and sheet metal (which seem de rigeur for Latin America anyway). There's an old concrete water fountain, some kind of small pool that might have been a really deep, tiny fish pond, and then what Oscar says was a watering trough. The house is 50 years old, and as recently as 40 years ago, the area was all countryside. It's similar to, and as hard to imagine as, the San Francisco Peninsula being mostly orchards.

I'm feeling pretty good about teaching tomorrow, which is funny since I'm sick. I imagine I'll be cranky again after curso G at the end of the day. But it feels like I'm getting the hang of it, and also tired of being stressed and deciding not to do that.