Pasamos Agosto

Chile has all these sayings that I am just beginning to hear but I just love them, and love being "in" on their humor about life. As I was shivering at the church after our teaching session last night, some sisters told me about Pasamos Agosto. It's when old people (60+) sigh in relief that they've lived through August when fragile people sometimes die from the cold. Not that it's very cold, but inside drafty unheated buildings it is often colder than it is outside where the sun usually warms things up. So as I left, I said, "Just two more days," and they smiled and gave me a warmer than usual hug,
denying that I could be old enough to celebrate the day.

And speaking of drafty, I suggested to our missionaries and to Jay that the tragedy of two Elders dying in their sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning in Taiwan couldn't happen in Chile, but he is insisting on getting CO detectors for their house anyway. No worries about ours; our water heater is outside.

Another weather-related saying is "Be careful, it might just be veranito de San Juan." Verano is summer and veranito is a little summer in the middle of winter--a tease that tricks you into going out unprepared for the cold that will inevitably return. I've seen no one willing to brave the outdoors here  in the shorts that are common in Utah junior high schools as the snow is coming down. Quite the contrary: everyone is dressed as if they are headed to the south pole--face wraps, hats, layers of clothing including tights and overcoats.

So tomorrow I'm preparing to celebrate old people's El Primero de Septiembre Fiesta--assuming that we successfully pasamos agosto! Stay tuned..........

Charcoal

Burning wood to make fuel to burn for heat and cooking strikes me just a bit like curing radiation-caused cancer with radiation, but I can't argue with the result of either.

We stumbled upon this charcoal operation on one of our recent farm visits and were fascinated by the process. We had seen clusters of these large hornos elsewhere, but couldn't imagine what they were. This time, a number of them were puffing away and we had a chance to observe these large earthen ovens at various stages up close.

There were probably 10 or 15 of them--shoulder high from the top but taller than me from the lower door-like entrance in a small clearing in a remote area at the edge of orchards and farm land. A gentleman was overseeing the operation and had bagged up the cooled charcoal from some of the ovens. Others had stacks of espino (a thorny, protected tree in Chile branches. If you remove an espino tree you are required to replant another, though not necessarily an espino) branches and other raw wood ready to go into the ovens, and some looked to be filled with trash--perhaps the wood goes on top of household papers and burnable garbage. This one was actively cooking, with smoke coming from any number of porous openings, but primarily from ground-level. From the looks of things, the interior cavern is larger than the dome structure in the center. I asked what keeps the wood from burning up entirely and was told that they keep the fire very small.

From the picture below, it appears that they limit the amount of oxygen in the chamber by means of a metal door propped shut.

Being a bit of a pyromaniac and in love with the smell of wood burning, this was right up my alley and I lingered until I was so warm that I had to take off my newly knit sweater--now fragrant with smoke-- to finish the walk.

You see charcoal vendors all over, selling from the backs of pick-up trucks and in small stands. I have no idea what the yield of "carbon" ends up being for a ton of wood. That would be interesting to know. It would also be interesting to know what the impact these operations have on air pollution world-wide. But in a country where the stars are visible every single non-rainy night, and homes have maybe two light bulbs against the darkness, I will not blame rural Chileans for any holes in the ozone layer.

Simple Gifts

Audrey Hepburn said you can tell what kind of woman a man thinks you are by the kind of earrings he gives you. Only one man has ever given me earrings and I married him. (They required that I get my ears pierced so I guess he thought I was fancier than I am, but that's a story for another day.)

The gifts we've received recently have been so perfect you just have to believe that people know who we really are.

A morning at the farm where I got to dig my fingers into a kinky lamb's 

wool coat as he stood on his little wobbly two-day old legs.

Balls of hand-spun wool yarn, wooden knitting needles and a crochet hook with a hand-made clay cooking pot from one of our most diligent students that we teach and fix dinner for once a week.

An invitation to a typical almorzar (lunch, but really dinner) after a teaching appointment
in a home in the country. Yes, she cooks like this every day at noon.

We receive much more than we give on this mission!