Nomad Rover in the Atacama Desert

April 12, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s 108-minute trip around the world and the beginning of human spaceflight. If you’re an expat like me, your thoughts probably go abroad when you contemplate space exploration,* but for a little country, Chile does more stargazing than you might expect.

Did you know…

• Arid northern Chile is home to over 20 astronomical observatories
• The Atacama is Mars on Earth: the Atacama desert’s famously dry climate also makes it an ideal spot to study the properties of soil on the moon and Mars.
• Mining is like space travel underground: After the 2010 accident at Copipó’s San José mine, Chilean government received assistance from U.S. space agency NASA on medical, nutritional and behavioral health issues affecting the the 33 miners, as well as on the design of the Fénix capsules used to rescue them.
• Chile created its own Space Agency in 2001. (However, its political dependence on the Ministry and Under-Secretariat of Economy suggests a mission more closely aligned with foreign investment than scientific research.)
• Aerospace engineer Klaus von Storch, of Osorno, was selected for a mission to visit the International Space Station in 2002, but did not go (sources cite lack of funds, a failed medical exam, and post-Columbia confusion as reasons). He left the Air Force several years ago but apparently still hopes to be the first Chilean astronaut.
• While Chile has yet to send a human to space, in 1999 they did manage to send some lucky ladybugs in order to prove their offworld pest-control efficacy.
• The Google Lunar X Prize: Angelicum Chile was one of 29 teams selected in February 2011 to compete for the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, “an unprecedented competition to send a robot to the Moon that travels at least 500 meters and transmit video, images, and data back to the Earth.” Angelicum themselves say that through this effort they hope to “motivate and encourage our citizens and discover new talents, especially in the area of the technology and science.”
• Astrophiles planning to stick around for a while may get the chance to visit the European Southern Observatory’s Extremely Large Telescope, which is to be constructed in Chile and is scheduled for completion towards the end of the decade. (Plans for the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope were scrapped due to its estimated €1.5 billion price tag.)

* By contrast, your thoughts apparently turn to space travel when choosing a logo for your Chilean website.

This month ExpatWomen.com published Expat Women: Confessions – 50 Answers to Your Real-Life Questions about Living Abroad, a book in question-and-answer format meant to help women cope with the challenging aspects of expat life.

When I saw the title I thought I wouldn’t find any information of interest to me– being the grizzled expat veteran that I am– but as it turns out I did. The section on repatriation gives sound advice with concrete suggestions on preparing your family for the process of returning “home.” A few of these are:

Prepare in advance. Read about and research your new home well before your move. In fact, treat returning home as if you were taking on a new assignment. Give yourself plenty of time to mentally prepare yourself and your family for the eventuality of moving “home.” Talk about it for as long as you can before the ac- tual move, which should give family members a chance to come to terms with leaving and what that means for friendships, familiarity and grieving the things they are going to miss. It is important to allow children (and yourselves) time to reflect on their time spent abroad and to say goodbye properly.

Adjust to the idea. Talk positively about your home country and perhaps watch movies about home, eat foods you would eat at home, and talk about what you are going to do when you get home. Creating an enthusiastic mood about the impending move will frame it in a positive light, making the transition appear like a new adventure in itself.

Grieve. Give everyone in the family the space they need to grieve once they have left. Saying goodbye to anything is difficult, but saying goodbye to a place where you have lived for a long time is even more difficult. Rather than sweeping emotions under the carpet, it is better to grieve now and then adapt better in the long term than to hide emotions now but find them resurfacing in a destructive way in years to come.

Be tourists. Take some time when you land back in your home country to travel around and relearn the idiosyncrasies of the “locals.” Have a fun and positive family vacation in your “new home” and allow yourselves to be tourists for a while. Doing this as a family is a safe way for each member of the family to slowly come to terms with and adapt to their new culture and environment.

You can read a fairly ample excerpt here. If you like it and have a Kindle™ (or use the Kindle app on your computer, as I do), buy the digital version– at eight bucks it’s half the price of the print version and significantly cheaper than the last two Kindle books I bought.

And if you buy before May 31, 2011 at midnight New York time, be sure and enter the contest by emailing your receipt to ExpatWomen.com. Prizes include coaching and other career tools, as well as a Kindle. (Wondering if a purchase-necessary contest is legal? They’ve got a serious-looking Terms and Conditions page, so I’m trusting that in Queensland, Australia, it is.)

Friends photo by luiswalk

Did you ever wonder how Chino Ríos was related to tennis star Marcelo Ríos?  Or what parents were thinking when they named their daughters Kena or Mane?   Actually, Chile produced only one tennis-playing Ríos, and Kena and Mane’s parents gave their girls quite traditional names (María Eugenia and María Elena, respectively).  Chileans like to give people nicknames.

Nicknames based on a person’s given name, for the most part, have one of three origins, which I’ll call “Shortened”, “Younger sibling”, and “Imported”.

1) Shortened: These nicknames are easy to connect to their full-form counterpart, since they’re usually just the first one or two syllables of the name. They may sound confusing at first to foreign ears, since male nicknames can end in “a” and female nicknames in “o”.  Examples: Fran, Manu, Pau, Rafa, Seba.  In the case of compound names such as Juan José or Carmen Luz, the shortened form will usually be made up of the first syllable of each component name, producing Juanjo and Calú, respectively.

2) Younger sibling: These nicknames sound vaguely like the original, though they never have more than two syllables, and they simplify complex sounds, in much the way a child learning to talk might pronounce her older sibling’s name.  For example:

Jorge -> Coke :  /x/ (written as “j” and “g”) is replaced by the easier-to-pronounce /k/, and the adjacent /r/ is removed
Gloria -> Lola : /g/ is removed from the first consonant cluster, /r/ is replaced by the easier /l/ and the diphthong /ia/ is reduced to /a/

3) Imported: These are Anglo-sounding nicknames, like Paty and Naty

Here is a list of common name-based nicknames.  As  you’ll see, several have both shortened and younger-sibling forms.

Then, of course, there are the nicknames that come not from a person’s given name, but rather from a physical characteristic of theirs.  The most common of these are: Chascón (needs a haircut), Chico (short), Chino (Asian-looking), Flaco (skinny), Gordo (fat), Guatón (fat), Pelado (bald) and Negro (dark). These are generally pejorative terms, but always used con cariño.  The nicknames are often assigned by peers in primary or secondary school and can never be shaken.  They stick so fast to their owners that they can often be spotted in mainstream media, followed by a surname, as though they were official.

Photo by constantin jurcut

I showed a draft of this article to a friend of mine, my sole acquaintance whom I could consider an expert on the café con piernas phenomenon. I had written this:

A PG café con piernas is brightly lit, the windows are large and clear, and the waitresses are fully clothed, at least down to where the all-important legs start.  You may even see a businesswoman there among the male customers.  It’s the kind of café con piernas featured in this blog post.

An R-rated café con piernas is dark, the windows are covered, and the waitresses are wearing only enough, I suspect, to keep the place from being legally classified as a strip club.

My friend read it, chuckled, and said, “That,” referring to the PG café con piernas, “is not a café con piernas at all.  It’s just a café.”  He then went on to describe the raunchy goings-on at a real café con piernas, which I won’t repeat here, this being a PG web site.

Anyway, regardless of whether Café Haiti and Café Caribe are technically cafés con piernas, this is all just an introduction to the following excellent news feature.  Watch it and you’ll get a good sense of the atmosphere in a café con piernas and hear from the customers, the owner of the café, and of course, the owners of the legs.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHjih8qr0pY

Isabel Allende, the Chilean author of novels such as La casa de los espíritus (The House of Spirits), De amor y de sombra (Of Love and Shadows) and Paula, spoke at the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference in Monterey, California in March of 2007.  Here’s the talk she gave, titled Tales of Passion.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=E11cDEr272Y

Things to do in Chile before you die… or leave, never to return again.  But how could you ever say you’re never coming back to Chile?

This is an open article, meaning everybody writes it. The idea is to make the big list of the best of the best, unconstrained by the requirements of travel guide writing or the criteria of a small group of people.

So head down to the comment form below and add your top suggestion(s) for something do/see/hear/taste/etc in Chile, something you wouldn’t let a good friend leave without trying.  It can be something you really love, or just something that’s really Chilean.  And tell us a little about it.

It doesn’t even have to be a specific place or event; feel free to challenge us.  My brother, for example, might say “Eat as much palta as you possibly can.”*  And don’t leave something great out just because it’s touristy.

So share your top pick with us now.  Then, next week or next month, when you think of something else, come back and add that too.

* The word palta translates very straightforwardly to and from avocado in English, but it’s a term that gringos seem to prefer the local version of while in Chile.

Celery figure with mayonnaise hair

In Chile, you can buy mayonnaise in jars and envelopes, local and imported, regular and diet. You can buy it flavored with (or perhaps like) olive oil, cheese, garlic, and strangely, milk.

Chilean mayonnaise has a different look and feel than American mayonnaise.  It’s decidedly yellow, and less viscous but somehow thicker.  I find it has a stronger flavor and doesn’t go down quite as easily as the stuff from home.  Fortunately the stuff from home has arrived: it’s sold in jars, rather than envelopes, and is billed as “premium”.  If you want the mayo you’re used to, stick to the brands you know.  On the other hand, an especially good or especially rustic restaurant will make its own mayo, which beats anything you can get in the store.

Be on the lookout for unexpected quantities of mayonnaise in these places and situations:

• Covering just about anything called ensalada at a barbecue.  With papas mayo (“mayonnaise potatoes”) you’re warned, but the corn and the carrots are also fair game
• As a major, sometimes even the only, topping on white-bread canapés
• Decorating your appetizer at a Chilean tourist restaurant

Several expats appeared in Las Ultimas Noticias on August 17, 2009 discussing chilenismos: why they’re so animal-laden and how ridiculous they sound translated literally into English.

The article is here: Gringas se matan de risa traduciendo chilenismos

It references this post on the blog Cachando Chile: Chilean Spanglish Spoken Here: A Rooster from the Glue as well as expat comedian Eileen Shea (pictured).

Retail consumers in Chile don’t have many rights to speak of, but one we do have is the right to get our purchases gift-wrapped in the store for free.  Supermarkets, department stores and toystores have gift-wrapping counters year-round, and during the holidays so do the rest– drugstores, hardware stores, you name it.  A store that doesn’t provide this service might just stay in the red on whatever the Chilean equivalent of Black Friday is.

As such, stores must take gift-wrapping seriously; they must dedicate space, labor and materials to the endeavor, with basically no value added.  It’s just more overhead, like electricity or toilet paper.  They can’t skimp too much, however.  They should offer a choice of gender- and age-specific designs, and include a bow or other adornment.  What they can do to provide this service efficiently is to go “high-tech” in one of two ways:

1. High technique: In stores that use this method you will be impressed with the gift-wrapper’s skill.  He will take a precut sheet of wrapping paper, then quickly and with judicious use of creases and Scotch tape produce a bag that is open at one end.  He will then carefully insert your gift, and seal it with a few more careful folds and some more tape.  Finally he will pull out something that looks like a bookmark or several pieces of ribbon stuck together, and magically, just by pulling on it, turn it into an impressive bow that he will tape to the gift.
2. High technology: Some stores prefer to forego such time-consuming production, and buy pre-made bags that look like large multi-colored plastic envelopes.  They have a self-adhesive flap for sealing the gift, and– here’s the kicker– the adhesive is protected not with a piece of wax paper, but instead, one of the aforementioned magic bows.  What’ll they think of next?

With both methods you end up with a bagged gift rather than a wrapped gift, but this is absolutely acceptable in most social situations involving presents.  Also, birthday boys and girls traditionally open their gifts immediately upon receiving them, so guests don’t usually add a note to theirs to say who it’s from.  If the host doesn’t manage to open all presents as they arrive, though, the result is a big pile of unmarked colored bags– a good opportunity to let an uninspired gift get lost in the crowd.

In general, the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world assigns its children two family names at birth. In the case of Spanish-speaking countries, including Chile, the father’s surname comes first and the mother’s second. The father’s family name is the one that each person passes down to his or her offspring. So if my father’s name is Juan Pérez López and my mother’s is Carolina Rodríguez Núñez, and they decide to name me Paula, the Registro Civil would put me down as Paula Pérez Rodríguez.

This naming system is generally well-regarded by the locals here, since it helps distinguish individuals who may share first and last names with many other people, and gives the maternal line an extra generation of legacy.  (That coupled with women maintaining their full birth name after marriage makes the Anglo naming system look pretty machista in comparison.)

The practical result of all of this is that Chile is set up to keep track of people with two last names.  This is perhaps due to the fact that the vast majority of immigrants Chile do have two (according to the 2002 census, over 70% of resident foreign nationals were from Spanish-speaking countries).

But in come the gringos (and, frankly, most of the rest of the world) with their single surnames to mess things up.  Most retail client information systems in Chile require people to have two last names, from banks to pharmacy and supermarket loyalty programs.  If you’re lucky, you can enter a period (.) as a second last name, as my bank did for me, but often the system will require that it be composed of letters.  Previred, the employee benefits payment web site, had me enter “NN” as a last name, and I’m reminded of one particularly frustrating web shopping session every time I get a letter from Falabella addressed to “Rebecca Lee NO TENGO APELLIDO MATERNO”.  Sometimes the employee typing in your information will just repeat your real last name*.

What I find most attractive about the idea of obtaining Chilean citizenship– no joke– is the possibility that it would grant me a segundo apellido.  If you’re a naturalized Chilean of non-Ibero-American origin, do you have two last names now?  Let us know in the comments.

Vocab

• apellido, apellido paterno: (paternal) surname, family name
• apellido de soltera: maiden name
• segundo apellido, apellido materno: maternal surname

* Having identical first and second last names is actually fairly common among Chileans.  Although at first glance it suggests incest, it’s usually the result of undeclared paternity or simply two parents with the same common paternal surname.⇑