Marilee’s Travels

today was a drive through santiago to a 68 acre vineyard south of town. the most popular chilean wine. we had a tour, two tastings and got to go to the famous CELLAR OF THE DEVIL. (insert scary voice here) it was kindo of funny with it being halloween and all. had lunch out side. empanadas, shrimp, wine y papas fritas (french fries sounds better in spanish) it was a mellow day and tonight is a get together with a few friends of carolinas. have a happy halloween.

on sunday carolina drove me straight west to a town called Valparaiso. it is about 1-2 hours away through the coastal mountains. it was a perfect day to see the ocean. it is a port town so we did not go to the beach. the town is built on a very steep hill so we rode one of the many elevators that is on a pulley system that you pay a small fee to ride. i took some photos and hope to find a cafe today to upload them. (we will see) we met up with a friend of carolinas from university and had an amazing lunch. everything takes forever here. lunch was atleast 2 hours. i had my new favorite drink… pisco sour. at first it has a margarita flavor but more sour. i am hoping to bring some home. we got home around 9 and had dinner waiting for us. salmon and potatoes at 10pm. they eat all the time and seem to enjoy every moment of it. i did not sleep to well last night as the piece of shit neighbor dog was barking for an hour just across the street. chucha!!! (i guess that is soft cuss word for what i wanted call that crap dog) anyway… how can i stay mad. i do not have to work today. (thanks nike!)

well i woke up and i thought i was in portland in the winter. cloudy and cold. which is a bummer. the mountains are so close! i have a week for them to go… i am on a dial up system and feeling a little impatient with it so it looks like i will not be uploading photos for a while, instead i write here. last nights party(asado) was really fun. carolina invited her friends that know english but 4 never spoke it. mean while her actor sister inlaw who knows as much english as i do spanish was more than willing to show off her skills for a good laugh. at one point everyone was eating the mass amounts of meat that jose louis prepared on the bbq(also called the asado) and everyone was laughing and talking and i had this moment of thinking that if i consintrate enough i would undersand them and then at the same time just listening to the beautiful sounds and basking in the fact that i did not understand a word. chileans are very gentle, polite and very easy to laugh. while walking downtown with carolina i noticed that there is not a look that they have. people mostly have brown hair and eyes but there features are all so different. well… i have no idea what we are doing today. carolina is a little slower since she has a cold. oh… i woke up from my nap last night before the party and when i came out carolinas mothere was in the living room. when she saw me she began to cry and said, i am mom. then she hug me about five times saying how happy she was. she has the most beautiful light green eyes. ok. it is early and still sleep from the constint meat fest that ran into breakfast.

24 hours of traveling and i arrived in one piece. it is so beautiful to fly in over the andes. they are as big as alaska mountains. carolina was so happy when i arrived and we went directly to her house and met nelly (the nanny) and little esparanza. such a beautiful baby. it is chilly here and i hear that people are coming over for dinner tonight. i hope my sleepiness does not kick in too soon. one week will not be enough… we are already making plans to meet next time (in less than 15 years) some place in the middle

hello everyone. as you can see i have just been counting down and now i have started packing. really nothing big to report other than my suit case was stolen out of my entry way 2 nights ago. (not the bag you gave me, mom) it was one i scored from work. looks like i’ll have to beg for another. not too worry. garbage bags work, right? (it’s sad, i have done that before…) it is great knowing that i don’t have to be at work after tomorrow. i see people having a hard time detaching from work and moving into vacation-brain… i don’t think i’ll be one of those. as soon as the drool begins to flow on the 17 hour plane trip south… all the bags will be washed from my brain and body. if not, try alcohol!!

9 days. let the chaos begin!!

after work on friday the 13th i headed down to eugene thinking it would take +2 hours. to my surprise i was at the henry’s front door in 1.5. they have a new house and have settled in nicely. they have a wonderful back yard and house filled with love and laughter. that night jess, john and i just stayed up chatting over beers while the kids slept. saturday morning i woke up to giggling at 7:30am. (that is a new thing for me. ouch.) thankfully it was laughter and not screaming! we enjoyed breakfast together and headed out for an adventure. downtown has a great saturday market. (that is where most of the photos are taken.) we had such a wonderful time. looking, talking and happy to be alaskans living in oregon. next stop was pizza and belly dancers. it doesn’t get much better than that. dinner was chinese take out with the strangest eggrolls ever. (yuck). that evening we all piled into the kids room and listened to the story jess was reading to all of us. (what a family moment). after they fell asleep i received a wealth of knowledge from john about how to play cribbage. (due to my math skills ((or lack of)) john laughed A LOT!). sunday was low-key. breakfast, making necklaces and saying goodbye until the next visit. i hope to be back very soon. j4… thanks for the family holiday!!

17 days. 13 days of work… !!

we left the house around 5:30 pm with the goal of setting up camp at bagby hotsprings and eating as soon as possible. we drove down the last of the many fire roads with 3 miles left to go, the hopes of sitting in a quiet hot tub in the middle of woods was warming my body.

we turned one of the last corners to see a man standing in the road with a cooler in one hand. there was no one in sight and the last time we passed a car was miles ago. he slowy approached the car and with our window only slightly down he said, “help. my car stolen.” we had know idea what to do. who was he? why was he out here? what was in that cooler? where is his jacket? do we help him? do we miss out on our plans, to put this guy in the car and drive him all the way back to town? because of his limited english, we had trouble finding out the whole story. it would seem that he had no friends with him, no phone, no jacket, no flashlight (it was raining and dark) and sadly, no car. we told him we needed talk and he slowly walked past the car and continued walking down the road. only later to find out… crying.

victor and i had a brief conversation and decided we could not leave him alone in the woods and would take him back to town and mourn our weekend plans later. we turned the car around and stopped near andrei. after checking his cooler for a gun or knife. (thanks to too much tv and bad movies…) he got in the car. for the next hour and a half we found out many things. he understands more than he speaks, he is from southern russia, has 4 kids and wife he loves so much he doesn’t have the heart to tell her about there stolen car over the phone. the thank yous and kind looks were a reminder that the world is good and so are it’s people.

we returned andrei safely to his home with shared hugs and smiles. as we leave he hands victor a huge jar filled with pickeled tomatoes that his wife had jarred and stored in their garage. (thankfully he didn’t know that neither of like tomatoes.)

who would have guessed that our camping trip to bagby hotsprings would turn into a 4 drive to pick up Andrei and take home his jarred tomatoes?

20 days and counting. be looking for more info to come!