Another encounter with a mime

I was heading to lunch at the little vega today. Walking, absorbed by my thoughts, I see I'm approaching two mimes, but I'm already 5 feet away when I realize this. Their "stage" is like 10 meters wide and 20 long and I'm very much on the stage with a whole crowd of onlookers watching to see how these mimes will huebearme (mess with me). Huebeando a la gente is the Chilean National Pastime, quite a fun one, when you aren't the object of the webeo.

Nothing left to do but play along. So one of them took me by the elbow, walking with me as a gentlemenly mime, then he took me by the hand. And then he stopped and exaggeratedly admired my butt. Here I saw my entrance, and I slapped him back side the head, and kept walking. Fortunately, they didn't follow me. But just as I get offstage, I think, "I should have gotten out my cellphone and taken a photo with the guy". Doh!

Check out these nifty fashion-related objects

I so want one of these, called a "trip clip" and tried to order one, but it didn't work. Which is probably better because my Chilenized ego is telling me I could sooo make one for sooo much cheaper. It may just involve a trip to Galeria Rosas. If I do manage to make one that works, I will be selling them. Hehehehe. I'll keep you posted.

This is how you use it. And they could totally try to make these be styling, embedding them with rhinestones or something.


Love these. They are sooo Cute!! I happen to have some pretty beat-up angora that may find a new end as soon as I buy my sewing machine. Because upcycling is where it's at.

So there is an English library in downtown Santiago, sort of

In an earlier post, I said downtown Santiago needs its very own English libaray. I was told that the "biblioredes" from the metro has a small collection of books in English at the Plaza de Armas metro stop. Miiiiiiitsch! So I donated a book in English, The DaVinci Code. I handed it in at Los Heroes and they will take care of getting it to Plaza de Armas. And I definitely will be checking out the English books there at some undesignated moment in the future. This should be interesting.

Edit July 26: So I went to the Plaza de Armas bibliored the other day and the only books they had in English were a couple of photography books. Mine had yet to arrive.

My map of downtown Santiago

Traveling/and planning trips sure has changed in some ways with the internet. Facebook, peoples maps, blogs, google and other internet tools are excellent means for planning your travels.

I started to read this article, but have yet to finish because I got sidetracked with one of his piece's of advice.

I got to paragraph three where you can make your own google map. They look kind of like these: Here you can get a geographical depiction of Matt's drunken walkabout. While here, you can see the general vicinity of Mike's home in Taichung City, and here you can min carta over bloggvanner. You see how useful this tool is?

So I made my own map.
Ver my map of downtown Santiago . I'll probably be editing and expanding it as time passes.

Any other bloggers up for making a Santiago or other city map? Please send me the link if you do your own :) It seems they could be quite useful.

Downtown Santiago needs an English Library

Downtown Santiago really needs an English library. I have books to donate, but no one to donate them to. (I definitely want to be able to have access to them after loaning them.) The National Library will accept them, but only in the regular section, not in the part where you can take the books home, préstamo a domicilio. :( I've thought about donating a book in English to publimetro, but I doubt they would lend it. I have this idea it would disappear. But I should stop being so pajera and try it out and find out. I would donate most of my books in English if I thought people would eventually be able to check them out. So I'm going to donate The DaVinci Code and see if they actually make it available for checking out and take it from there. Meanwhile I have quite the stack of books.

Group post. Travel story: Bena, Minnesota

Okay, so this is a work-travel story. Perhaps we could call it a business trip. hahahahaha. So, one of the summers I was working road construction in Northern Minnesota, I was assigned as a flagger on Hwy 2. During this job, I spent a couple days in Bena, Minnesota. (Check out this link that shows their median incomes. I was blown away when I read this. I shouldn't be surprised I spose, but I was. All I can say is I hope they hunt and gather for food.) I was flagging like 16-hour days which could be a little dull, but this town was a great place to flag. It's 70% Native American, so it´s a totally different culture nestled within Northern Minnesota. (It's on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation.)

I spent one whole day standing in the middle of town, stopping people and letting them go through when it was clear. Across the street was the gas station/mini market. At like 9am, somebody from the rez's brown buick broke down right in front of me. They spent the ENTIRE DAY trying to fix it. Something like 4 different people tried to figure out how to get it running. They left the car, came back, left the car, came back. Watching them sort of eased the long moments of boredom that I often experienced. At the end of the day, they ended up pushing the car across the highway and down a little road. I thought about how I would have handled the situation so differently in my town. And it never occurred to me at like 9am when the car broke down that it was going to be a day-long project. It was nice to have a little entertainment during the day and to see a slower-paced way of living.

Working on the Leech Lake Rez sparked my curiousity about the Native Americans living in and close to my home town. However, I moved to Chile soon after that. I'm thinking of perhaps taking some Ojibwe language classes when I move back, just to learn a bit more about their culture.


Check Kyle's post for a list of links to more travel stories.

God does not play dice with the universe...

he lets us do that.