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A summary of recent news and events and planned events:

We’ve enjoyed two cultural events provided free by different competing municipalities in Santiago- firstly, a live jazz concert on friday night (Poncho Sanchez and band) and then, on Sunday night, Don Quixote, in a park outdoors!

Our sea freight arrived yesterday!

We missed another earthquake only 120 miles away, Richter scale 4.7! 8am. We were awake. But didn’t notice. No comment!

We met a lovely couple, with new baby who have moved here to work with Campus Missions for Christ.

Rachel is working on PhD corrections this week while Doug attends a conference- please pray for her work and for her. The work required for the corrections has taken longer than expected and they are more difficult/complex than anticipated. They are troubling and depressing her because they are dragging on. She longs for it to be finished.

We’re meeting with Chilean friends Michael and Veronica later this week to celebrate him passing his PhD last week! Well done to him! We look forward to trying our local English Bar (yes… its just 300 metres away from our house!).

Doug has done over 3 hours of solo paragliding now. Had two flights last week each lasting an hour! He’s really enjoying practicing and is considering going for a tandem or instructor level licence. He flies again on friday.

Timbo is keeping well. He is glad for the company of Bauer, Doug’s bear, which arrived in the sea freight. Although he is anxious that he’ll be ignored during the unpacking process!

Now that we’ve got our sea freight, we are going to get down to writing to you all! So watch this space… literally… we won’t blog so much for the next few days!

Yeh! Our sea freight arrived yesterday and have been delighted to finally open and use many of the gifts given to us at our wedding! Now we have no excuse for not writing to you all to thank you! So here is a big preliminary THANK YOU! You have no idea how appreciated a juice-ing machine, an ice-cream maker, dinner plates and cutlery are when you’re living in 32 degrees every day and have only plastic plates and cutlery to eat from!

So praise the Lord for the safe arrival of most things! We were dissappointed to find Rachel’s cello (ouch) has been irreversibly broken plus one lovely crystal glass (sorry, Lorraine!), but thank the Lord for insurance and for a generally trustworthy and professional moving experience with the relocation company.

It might also be strange to some of our readers that, in addition to thanking God for insurance (!) we also thank Him for helping us to live without our possessions for so long (9 weeks). We are, of course, taught to depend on Him alone for our contentment and satisfaction, and not upon worldy goods! So it has been a challenging and helpful time for us both while we’ve waited for our things to arrive.

Doug/

This week, I’ve been attending the joint United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and European Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) Seminar on Fiscal Policy for the region. You might think this would be beyond me… indeed, after the first session without the assistance of interpretation via a clever little machine, I was sure it was beyond me too!

However, with some determination, the seminars have proved very interesting and have been an opportunity to learn more about the region, the comparative performances of Chile, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Brazil (to name the primary participants) on issues of taxation, income redistribution, fiscal policies to manage the economy, fuel taxation and pensions.

However, i’ve also learned a lot about spanish…. this region is highly diverse and as a consequence, so is the language. After listening to lectures given by individuals from each nation, i’ve put together a rating of intelligibility of spanish for each nationality. This can be seen in the sidebar below (go to the bottom of the weblinks).

Peruvians come out top… their spanish is both slow and easy to understand. I can listen to their lectures without translation! Chile… i’m sorry to say, runs bottom of the rank. Fast, difficult and said without breathing. Probably in response to the smog that every chilean lives with in Santiago!

To add to the difficulty, today, we had lectures in english with spanish slides, lectures in spanish with portuguese slides (that was wierd… i didn’t notice till the end!), lectures in spanish with english slides and then one in what can only be described as kling-on (central american spanish). No comment and no offence intended! I admire the interpreters for their work!

Generally speaking however, its been great to attend the seminar and to learn the spanish terms for economic concepts and phrases…. that is… if they exist. Today, I laughed when told that there is no term in Latin American spanish for “corruption”. Nor, apparently, for “Willingness to pay” (an important concept for a transport economist!) which slipped out in the middle of a chilean’s discussion of air pollution.

The latter gives me some hope that I might find a job here- there is a lot of scope for the use of economic evaluation methods in policy making here in Chile, for example, assessing the health costs of air pollution in Santiago. Anyone can say its high… but how high?!!

Today, after the worst shopping trip in history, we had what dear Douglas considers to be an “amusing moment”. Crossing over an underground vent, a strong blast of wind blew my skirt up around my waist, at which point my sweet husband refused to help, or even let go of my hand, and instead laughed his little socks off at my struggle to hold down 360 degrees of skirt with one hand.

We have been debating whether this incident was a) Embarrasing or b) The Funniest Thing To Happen This Week. I appear to be losing the argument, so please, if you agree with me, write and tell Douglas that he is horrid and mean and any other insult you can think of.

The only weapon I have left at my disposal is the “mirror hand”, taught to us by a small child in Shropshire. After a particularly good insult (such as the looser-minger-whatever hand, ask any 6 year old for details), the insulter can hold out a hand and say “mirror bounce back no return”, after which the insulted party must retreat into a dignified sulk. At present this is keeping my dear beloved quiet, but I’m not holding out too much hope…..

All assistance gratefully recieved (Aunty Dorothy!!)
-Rachel

If you know any french, you might think this is rude… but it means, just, “shut up”!

Discussing chilean slang last sunday after church, and in the churchyard, no less, we concluded that owing to a lack of alternative words, or, perhaps just a lack of innovation, chileans don’t have a lot of words to choose from when forming slang.

Amongst the higher classes, there are signs of more imagination… caballo, normally meaning horse, is used as a superlative. Is something better than brilliant? “Es caballo!”

Otherwise, just two words form a wide range of insults. These are:

More on huevon another time… but for the moment, I hope that satisfies your desire for rude, crude chilean, Richard! Hey man… how about Chile for a honeymoon? Can get a good deal for you here or in the Sheraton.