Bauzá and Barricades

It has really been a crazy week here. It's hard to know where to begin. First, I guess I'll give an update on the dog. Who knew transporting pets internationally would be such a headache? Actually, I'm pretty sure that that is just common sense - moving with pets anywhere is a hassle, and when you throw in more than 20 hours of flight, three international airports and customs in multiple countries, hassle is an understatement.

Do y'all remember the volcano that exploded in Southern Chile a few weeks ago? The ash thankfully didn't affect Chile, but did travel to the Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires. Our plan was to send puppin via Contintental Air PDX to Houston to Buenos Aires. A friend of a friend had agreed to help us in Argentina and transfer the dog from Continental to LAN Airlines for his flight to Santiago. The first problem was the cenizas (ash). His flight to B.A. was cancelled three times and he had to stay in a kennel in Houston. I was told that he was well cared for, but I had only left him with 2 days of "just in case!" food. When he finally got to B.A., our friend had a ton of trouble getting him through customs because his paperwork didn't thoroughly demonstrate that he was in transit. As a penalty we had to pay a ton of fees to import him to Argentina so he could pass through the terminal to the other airline. LAN Airlines was a no-go, so our friend found a flight on Gol, a Brazilian airline. This whole process took a number of days, but he was finally set to arrive Tuesday night, almost a week after we had left him at PDX.

Manuel and I drove to Santiago at 1am to meet him only to find out that this flight had been cancelled as well. The cargo people told us there was fog in Buenos Aires. We are now holding a bit of a grudge against the Ezeiza airport... We did, however, meet a very nice lady at the Santiago cargo office who gave us her number so we could call and confirm the next night. His flight was on time on Wednesday night and we picked him up Thursday morning, skinny, smelly, and shivering, after spending a few hours with the (extremely helpful and arguably much more efficient than in Argentina) Chilean customs offices. So Bauzá had quite an adventure, but he is here now and happy. He had three dinners last night, and two breakfasts and a lunch today, so hopefully he'll fatten up soon.

During this whole ordeal, we went on living in Viña. Tuesday night April came over to help me get through the stress of my dog-in-peril while Manuel was at work. She watched the fútbol game (and commentated it for me) as I continued to clean the apartment. [Side note: Manuel has sooo much clothing and a million pairs of shoes. My stuff takes up about a quarter of the closet. I'm helping him minimize, though.] After the game she told me gently to stop being so boring and leave the house. We went to a local café where April got to experience the wonder of street sushi. We chatted with the sushi vendor about our banana bread business and she told us that we probably don't need a permit - so long as we keep moving around and don't loiter. After she left, a girl at a neighboring table turned around to quiz us about where we're from. It took us a while to communicate that April is here to study.

The girl was a University student, and admittedly middle class. She explained to us about the student protests we had been seeing in the city. According to the protesters, and this girl, Chile has one of the most unequal education systems in the world. All of the middle class families pay a lot to go to municipal schools and the rich families pay even more to go to (excellent) private schools. The poor families are stuck sending their kids to the very poor quality public schools. As an example of the quality disparity, of the 100 best schools in Chile, only 5 are public schools. The public schools are now on strike and the students are demonstrating almost every day.

[Mom, don't read this next part:]

Manuel's mom advised April not to go to Valparaíso alone for fear of the protesters; luckily she doesn't have a reason to go there. The news has been sorta crazy, too. On Tuesday after the game, Chileans celebrated in Plaza Italia in Santiago. The celebrations got out of hand with people throwing rocks and ended in apparent police brutality. It reminds us of the civil rights movement, but maybe should be taken with a grain of salt; (as Jon Steward reminds us) the news tends toward sensationalism. We heard a story of a reporter who was jailed for taking incriminating photos of policemen that suggested that they were the first to throw rocks and incite violence. They have also been covering the story of a youth who started a fire in his school as a protest act and ended up with burns on 54% of his body.

[Mom, still don't read:]

We were on our way to Santiago, already shaken up about the dog drama, when we witnessed a crazy car accident. We were behind a Hyundai in the left lane and there were two semi trucks in the right lane. As the Hyundai, at high speed, was about to pass the semi, the truck driver put on his blinker and moved into the left lane. The Hyundai screeched his brakes, but wound up trapped between the truck and the center barrier. It was like slow motion as we watched the truck (that we noticed had an Argentine license plate, Argentinos culiados) press the car further into the barrier and drag it along a few hundred meters. Por suerte (luckily), Manuel is an excellent driver and slowed down at the first sign of danger. We easily went around the accident and, afterchecking that the Hyundai driver was okay, continued on our way. After counting our blessings, only a few more kilometers down the road we saw fire on the highway on the other side of the barrier. It only took Manuel a few seconds to identify the burning garbage and tires as a barricade - a classic tool in the Chilean protest repertoire, as I know from my Sociological research. The barricade was most likely related to the student protests, but it was cleared up by the time we were on our way back with the dog. It was a really crazy drive to say the least, and we are so lucky to have avoided both problems.

[Okay mom, you can start reading again:]

The dog has been sleeping a lot to recuperate, and we stayed home on Thursday, selfishly leaving April in the dark about where we were. Today is April Day, we got all of her papers printed out and are currently eating lunch - lasagna, Manuel is a master chef, and in Chile lunch is the big meal - before taking sister to enroll in Catholic girls' school! Wish her luck in her interview! Puppin was walking downtown with us and he is fascinated by the pigeons. I can't decide if he was a man in his past life or a cat... Walking down the street I'm quite content with my Chilean life; I finally have my dog, my sister and my man at my side.