Good results

My recent challenges:

Psychology GRE - November 8 (Anita's birthday!)
Got a 740

First-ever 10k...1 week of training - November 22
Ran it in 43:45

First-ever 5k...ran twice in preparation - December 19
Ran it in 19:10

Not bad!

Starting this blog over, hopefully: Thanksgiving!

I got down here to Chile just over a year ago - Nov 21st, and sort of assumed we wouldn't do anything for Thanksgiving because:

1) We were in Chile
2) I interviewed for my current job on Thanksgiving afternoon
3) In 2006 I was in Bolivia for Thanksgiving, traveling with a bunch of English guys, and they went out to a little restaurant with me so I wouldn't be depressed - I figured it would be along those lines again.
3) Are there even turkeys in Chile? (turns out there are)

Fairly last minute, Anita's grandmother heard that Día del Pavo was coming and she took the initiative to get a turkey roasted, I threw together some bean casserole, mashed potatoes and a pumpkin pie, and a number of Anita's family members showed up to partake. Success!

This year we decided to organize a bit better: I started preparing days in advance since I had to work on Thanksgiving, and we managed to get it off without a hitch! Unfortunately not many good pics though, forgot to do that.

The "low fat" menu:
-15ish pound turkey, unfortunately done 2 hours before everything else was ready. It turns out though that a couple of towels and some newspaper keep the turkey as warm as an oven would without drying it out!
-Caramelized carrots (w/butter, rum, brown sugar)
-Scalloped potatoes (w/gruyere cheese, butter, pepper, nutmeg and a little half and half)
-Roasted beets (w/butter)
-Steamed broccoli
-Pumpkin cheesecake
-Pecan Pie (w/walnuts since there aren't pecans here)
-Real whipped cream

(A number of the attendees...fuzzy)

20 people including 2 babies and 2 little kids were in attendance, meaning 16 people could actually eat, and no one left hungry. I had a lot of help slicing and dicing veggies from the lady that works at Anita's parents' house, Toñita, and without her it wouldn't have happened.

Elisa finishing off some broccoli and beets
The aftermath

Everyone said it was delicious, and I know they weren't just saying that because when they arrived they told me they had an ambulance on speed dial "por si acaso" (just in case).
Not bad for being 5000 miles from home!

4 months old

This past Saturday, Elisa turned 4 months old! As is Anita's family's tradition, we took her to have "professional" photos taken by an old lady in a little shop who has used the same background and lighting equipment (luckily its a new camera) since Anita had her photo taken there over 24 years ago. Up on the wall in Anita's parents room hang the pictures of her and her three siblings, soon to be joined by one of Elisa!

Elisa behaved really well for the photo shoot and put up with the lady's attempts to position her just-so. At one point, Elisa was sort of standing up and photo lady tried to lie her down on her belly, but those legs wouldn't give and she wouldn't lie down! Photo lady asked "Wow! how old is she again?" This from someone who's taken photos of probably thousands of babies! I think Elisa got my (fairly strong) legs...although at this rate she'll be walking at 6 months, twice as fast as me! ha.

Soon maybe I'll start including more media in these posts to make them more exciting. But its late, and I'm tired. Sooo bed sounds like a better idea.

Elisa's developing musical tastes

Well I had the intention of starting this blog months ago, and it didn't happen...and didn't happen. SO rather than try to start it off with an attempt to sum up everything that's happened since I've gotten to Chile, I decided on this:

One evening a little over a week ago, Anita and Elisa were on their way back from Anita's grandma's house and Elisa started to cry in the back seat. When she was young, aka up to about 2 months old, just the motion and sounds of being in a moving car were enough to calm her down and put her to sleep; now, though, the car tends to bore her. So, that being the case, she started crying pretty well - she's gotten good at that - and Anita tried a few things but to no avail. I don't know whether it was to drown out the crying or what, but she switched from the radio to the CD that was in the player, and song #13 came on. Elisa stopped crying. Anita told me about this later and I told her it must just have been a coincidence.

In the last week we've had plenty of opportunity to test that coincidence theory, and I was wrong. The song works every time. It's worked almost 10 times; hasn't failed once!

So apparently we have a budding Kanye West fan. Song #13 is American Boy by Estelle featuring Kanye West.



Anita said today that she's tried a number of different songs, even other Kanye songs with similar bass lines (a theory is that she likes the song because of the bass), and none of them work!