Turin, Cremona and Tuscany

Some more adventures with Caro!

TURIN
We went to Torino - seemed huge compared to Cremona!! - for one day with Vale and visited the Museo Egizio (2nd most important one after the one in Cairo), La Mole Antonelliana (the city's major landmark) and the Museo Nazionale del Cinema. We had a picnic in the park, walked down Via Garibaldi, had yogurt ice cream with fruits (getting quite popular in Italy) and that night we went dancing to a place on the Po river's waterfront. I loved how all these discos and bars were found here along the river, and how nightlife started around 1 am!

CREMONA
The following day we all went back to Cremona. We struggled quite a bit with Trenitalia trying to get the cheapest train tickets, so basically we had to change trains like a thousand times before arriving at our destination. Cremona is known for nougat (torrone) and for the violin-making industry (there are around 130 registered workshops). There is a nice plaza/gardens known as I Giardini o Piazza Roma, where everyone walks eating ice cream.

LIVORNO
After Cremona we travelled to Livorno in Tuscany. The landscapes come straight from those images you see on wine bottles: golden lights over fields of olive trees, farmhouses and vineyards.  No wonder it's so popular among the rich and the famous (George Clooney has a villa here or something?) Wines can be quite pricey, there is this Sassicaia wine or something like that, that can be 3000 dollars a bottle... hmm.

We stayed with Vale's friends - Sara, Nico, their five-year-old Isola, and (unborn) baby Libero. They have an Azienda Agricola, Alberelli, where you can rent apartments for your Tuscan dream holiday. This area is beautiful, so you should check it out! They make their own olive oil, they have a vegetable garden, and use firewood from the forest - can it get any better? Our days were spent at the main house, (where there are goats and forest! We had some delicious meals here of bread, fruit, cheese, pasta, wine), at the beach (beaches are not sandy so they are not as accessible and can be quite dangerous but who doesn't love the beach!) and visiting small little towns (eating gelato and buying olive oil). We went to Musica W Festival in Castellina M.ma and traveled along 5km of Viale dei Bolgheri. The food was awesome, and it's so tasteful they don't put salt in the bread (so the bread on its own is not too good).

We felt so so welcome and this family was really warm and filled with joy. I had never seen a more glowing pregnancy like Sara's, and had never liked a five-year old as much as I liked Isola. I realized I truly enjoyed spending time with her and her friend Vale. Would definitely be open to working with kids after this positive experience!

Sardegna Forever

Sardegna (Sardinia in English) is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. My mom's friend lives here so my sister and I went there for a week. The flight was about 100 dollars roundtrip with RyanAir. We hadn't been there in ten years but everything was as beautiful as we remembered it. The beaches here are FANTASTIC, with crystlal-clear water, rocks, reefs and sandy beaches.

The first few days Paola took time off work so we went all together, including her boyfriend Claudito. He was a sight! After these first days driving and singing in the car and playing with Claudito beach volley, Caro and I moved around on our own with buses. The first day, after the airport, we went to Cala Sinzias. Our skin color conversion started at that very second! From Impossible White to Beach Baby Tan. Another beach we visited was Solanas, which was quite full of people. This beach was good for playing water polo and things like that in the water, staying close to the shore.

Caro and I visited Chia (AMAZING), Costa Rei (Scoglio di Peppino, this was one of my favourite! Water was very very shallow and you could reach the main rock-island walking in water) and Villasimius (Cala Giunco and a nearby lagoon). In Chia we found our own small private beach, which was paradise. 

There were tons of Senegalese guys in the buses with us, and they roamed the beaches selling stuff. It made me sad to see them carrying to much weight up and down, fully dressed under the scorching Mediterranean sun. That night we had pizza at the port with the neighbours and drove around looking for places to go dancing. We found a place called Alta Marea and the Miss Alta Marea Pageant was going on, so we watched the show. So many gorgeous girls competing to be Miss Alta Marea... so funny to see all of them and their acts, for something so stupid.

Typical Sardinian stuff we tried included malloredus (a type of pasta), culurgiones (delicious ravioli with potato filling! I loved them), and pecorino cheese. We also had tequila shots, they call them Tequilla Boom Boom there hehe. It was not even tequila, just a cheap version that tasted terrible! We also prepared Mexican molletes and they were a success.

I love the Sardinian landscapes. Emerald green, sapphire and aquamarine waters surrounded by cacti.

Dreams

TODAY I will start my Notebook of Dreams. That is a a Notebook that will always be next to my bed and I'll write my dreams as soon as I wake up. I think it's time to start it (another project that has been postponed for YEARS), as I have been having very vivid dreams in the last few days, whereas before I used to dream black. Just black. Or I wouldn't remember anything at all.

The other day I was talking about "waking up" in dreams, or realizing that you are dreaming, so that you can just do whatever you want in your dream. That had never happened to me before, but it did last night. I think because I had this idea in the back of my mind and it occurred to me to wonder if I was dreaming or not. I tried to float and I could (the little test analogous to the thing that turns and turns and never falls in Inception), so I decided I was definitely dreaming. From then on it was great fun, I could really do anything and also create things... I'll try it again tonight. In either case I feel very ignorant in this whole dream business, but I find it very appealing and want to learn more. Same with hypnosis.

Shopping Stories

SHOPPING WITH MOM

Today a typical shopping incident occurred, which has been happening for as long as my sister and I can recall. When my mom likes something in a store, she HAS to buy it for us. This is how a typical conversation goes:

- Look Carolina/Olivia, this sweater/pair of shoes/blouse is so classy and nice.
- Hmm I don’t know, I don’t like it that much...
- Well, how can you say that if you haven’t tried it, huh? Try it on!
- No Mom, it’s just not my style, I don’t want to…
- Come on, won’t you do your mother this small little favour? It’ll take only two minutes. Just to see what it looks like!
- Mmm okay Mom, but I don’t want it…
- No, just to see what it looks like [pushes us into the dressing room]
[We try it on, and it looks bad]
- See Mom, it doesn’t fit, I look fat and the colours are horrible.
- Wow, what a lady! It looks SO good! But SO SO good…You can’t imagine how good you look, really.
- Well, I’d rather not.
- It would go amazingly well with your black pants. It makes you slimmer. Ok, we’ll take it! It’s only half price!
- MOM, I will NEVER use this, I don’t want it!
- You will one day.
- Mom, it will stay in the closet forever and no one will ever wear it, I don’t like it!!
- Well, if you don’t wear it, I will.
- Mom you always say that, it’s not even your size.
- Well, your sister can use it then.
- Mom, pleaseeee...
- Try it at home, and if you don't like it we can always return it.

[We buy the sweater/pair of shoes/blouse]

THE END

Epilogue: The sweater/pair of shoes/blouse follows one of two fates: a) collects dust in the closet because it really is ugly, or b) we have a revelation and finally see what our mom saw in the first place, so we wear it (“I told you so, Carolina/Olivia”).



SHOPPING WITH MY SISTER

The other day we went to this nice little shop of underwear and swimsuits here in Cremona, one of the typical shops on the main pedestrian street. The owner is an old lady with bleached blond hair and a tan (the characteristic tan of old ladies that can’t hold their sun exposure). My sister got some stuff and this is what happened:

- Great, this will suit you very well. So yes, it’ll be 30 Euros…Great, sign here... here is your receipt… my copy, and here is your card back.
- Thank you.
- AND, before you go, let me give you this nice little booklet with the upcoming fall collection, so that you have a look [takes booklet from a pile and places in bag]
- Mmmm… When exactly will the new collection arrive?
- [Looking surprised at the question] I believe around September…
- Hmm yeah well, we’re not here in September, so you can take the booklet back.



SHOPPING WITH DAD

Last Christmas we were in Vancouver and after Boxing Day found sales and discounts on top of sales and discounts. While we usually drag my dad to the mall and shop while he reads one of his papers at the nearest café, this time he came into United Colors of Benetton and found a hat that costed about $1.68 dollars. This was the price on the sticker at the top of a pile of stickers of ascending prices. Basically the first sticker said ~$40, so my dad was SO proud of this purchase and he went around telling everyone what a deal his one dollar hat was. It’s a really cute hat!

Good bye Chile, Hello Italy!

July 24th, 2011

I’m writing from a plane again. I did the Santiago – New York flight last night and right now I’m flying from New York JFK to Paris CDG…Then I will take a flight to Milan Linate, where I will be picked up by my mum and sister. When we arrive at Cremona it will have been about 30 hours since I left Santiago, possibly one of my longest trips yet… So I look and feel like shit right now haha

My connection in NY was 9 hours long so I left the airport and visited my friend Julius! It was a sneak peak to what the week in NY will be like when I go back in August. Basically, Julian is super chill and the week will have a good balance of chill and intensity, I think. My first impressions of NY?? I loved it! People are crazy and everyone has their own style, you won’t get bored observing people: how they behave, how they talk, how they’re dressed (I know because I misread Julian’s instructions, went the wrong direction, and spent more than an hour in the subway looking at people. There was this guy that looked Filipino or Hawaiian and he was naked except for a red speedo, pink Crocs, a transparent pareo, a Disney Princess bag, a Betty Book suitcase, and a Yankees cap). Women are really beautiful, and everyone was extremely helpful (three different people lent me their phones to call Julian, they helped me with the luggage, with directions, etc.) Definitely felt welcome those couple hours and I'm looking forward to going back!

The Spicy Pepper Chronicles

July 23rd, 2011

THE SPICY PEPPER CHRONICLES

50 GB worth of work, 5 hotel rooms, 3 months and many great experiences later, my time in Chile has come to an end! The co-op work term really flew by, and I can’t believe how much things changed throughout the summer, how many things I learnt, how many new people I met, and how many places I visited.

There are many differences in forestry here and in BC. In Chile, forestry is all about intensively managed plantation forestry. Chile's forested land is highly concentrated in the hands of a few major companies, principally those connected with the paper industry. Second growth forests in BC are not strictly considered plantations (although they are), and they are less intensively managed: the plantations try to consider the ecology of the site in terms of choice of species and management. In Chile, it involves mainly two species (radiata pine and eucalyptus), and things like thinning, brushing and fertilizing, spacing, etc. are carried out. These trees grow FAST, so rotation periods are way shorter (14-20 years depending on the species. Nothing compared to the 80-200 years in BC). There is also no conversion of native forests anymore (in terms of the company I was working for), which is where big bucks come from in BC (100-year-old red cedar = $$$). The safety for outside contractors really impressed me as well – there have to be special designated vehicles that meet certain specifications (tools can’t go in the same vehicle, for example, they have to go in a box on top of the brand new van). I also worked for a different level in the hierarchy of the company, not at the forest operation level like I did in BC, so I also got to witness how the big-decision-making process worked and how changes slowly trickled down the veins of the company.

If you are reading this you probably have me on Facebook so that’s were the Chile album will be, it’ll be a pretty fat one...

Being a tourist in Chile

July 20th, 2011

Although I didn’t visit the southern part of the country, I was lucky enough to visit many other places. In the three months, I was in Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, Valparaíso, Viña del Mar, San Pedro de Atacama, Constitiución, Chillán, Paine and Cobquecura. Most of the trips were work-related (for meetings, visits to the native conservation forests, and research projects like the Islote Lobería Cobquecura for sea lion monitoring).

Pato punk en Paine. Here I visited a firend's friend, JC, who lived together with other nine people in a rented house and they led a pretty chill life revolving around things like permaculture

SANTIAGO
I had a touristy week-end in Santiago, where I took the 18 000 pesos Turistik bus and travelled around the city. I visited Cerro El Caracol, where you take a cable car to the top and then enjoy the polluted view of the city. I also went to El Museo de La Moda, which houses clothing and paraphernalia from the 80s, and a street whose name I forget but all the fancy clothing stores are located here. And Los Dominicos, an expensive craft market for tourists with chicken running around the dusty streets. On the Turistik bus I continuously saw throughout the day a group of four ladies on their forties that tried to behave like Sex and The City.

Santiago City from Cerro El Caracol

Metro Station in Santiago

VIÑA AND VALPO
I went to Viña and Valparaiso another one of my week-ends in Santiago and had an unsettling trip with a gory, low-budget film that was just repulsive. No one seemed to mind this terrible choice of film for a bus, but I had to ask them to turn it off and get rid of the sound of breaking bones and knives. It was a rainy day in Valpo and Viña, and at the bus central I signed up for a 15 000 pesos tour of the two places. We went to the house of Pablo Neruda, La Sebastiana, and I was impressed by the amazing view of the city and the port, the pastel colours of the houses, and the weird feeling of walking among ghosts. I met two Colombians on the tour, which also made it fun, and we had Telepizza (pronounces Telepisa, obviously) at Reñaca after having visited the place where the Viña del Mar International Song Festival takes place. I had never heard of this (should be ashamed), but they told me it's very famous and promising new talents perform here before becoming famous, like Shakira did.

Reñaca beach

CHILLÁN

With Carolina I visited Quinchamali, a small town by Chillán that could be considered a street, characterized by their black pottery (turns black when fired with soot) with white decorations. The three-legged chanchito, a three-legged piggy bank, is pretty characteristic. Needless to say, I was fascinated! First of all I love pottery, and second of all they get the clay from their own backyards! This is a really ancient tradition and women have been doing this type of greda negra for generations, selling it on their front porches and going to crafts markets with their pottery. They have a special room in the house where they fire the pieces at different temperatures and with the various techniques to turn the bright red pieces a polished black colour. She also showed us a room piled up to the ceiling with clay pieces, I had never seen so many in my life. A box of stuff was 20 000, so I think it was a good deal, but the best part was the feeling of buying really authentic stuff. When we were looking at the fresh clay, I immediately thought of my soils class and my soils teacher back at UBC, as she always got mad when people called soil "dirt". Well, this soil was definitely NOT dirt!

Chillán was also very nice, with a spacious and well-organized market where I got nuts and dried figs. They have a famous mural in Escuela México of the Mexican muralista David Alfaro Siqueiros. I didn’t see that one, unfortunately, but did go see the González Camarena mural at the Casa del Arte of the Universidad de Concepción, Presencia de América Latina, which was quite gorgeous.

Greda negra de Quinchamali

Presencia de América Latina at the Universidad de Concepción

Last week in Santiago

July 20th, 2011

My last week in Santiago was a lot of fun! Everything about Santiago (where I worked, lived, people I hung out with) was very different to Concepción. Hehe for instance, I find that I was way more productive in my El Golf cubicle than in the office in Cocepción. I stayed working late many nights to finish the project, and Carolina visited Santiago one day. We went to the bar The Clinic and I had the best wine I’ve ever tried called borgoña (wine + sugar + strawberries, very yummy). With Carola things couldn’t have been better. We worked together really hard, and she’s an admirable person with a fantastic sense of humour so we got along just great!

Going to the desert alone = amazing last week in Santiago
This is because I met a bunch of people with which I hung out this week back in Santiago. With Tom, the French Sandboarder, and Paige, the Harvard Vancouverite, we had sushi, watched the Argentina-Uruguay football match, went to The Clinic (hmm do we see a pattern here), and then went dancing to a bar called Constitución. It was really fun and they didn’t know each other before this, I was the connecting point and I met both of them in San Pedro.

At the disco Constitución, we started in the centre, with a good amount of dancing space. As the night progressed we were surrounded and cornered by an army of kissing couples holding lit cigarettes while making out. We were encircled, with the couples surrounding us and pushing us around, dancing between us too. Some cigarette burns, annoyed looks and firm positioning later, we regained our territory.

The last night I went out with Andrea and her boyfriend Felipe to Gran Central, where we got a waiter that was socially awkward, he wouldn’t look at us in the eyes. I must say socially awkward people are exhausting.

The following day I ran around looking for exchange houses to get my chilean pesos from my salary changed into dollars. Of course I had waited for the last day to get presents, so I went to Santa Lucía market and bought alpaca sweaters and other presents. That day, I also heard about Amy Winehouse's death while I was eating rice and writing 22 postcards (yes, my hand did hurt after so much writing. And yes, they were all different.) I then spent my last few hours in Santiago packing my bags with my Spanish friends, Nuri and Xabi, which I met in San Pedro too! It was so great to form meaningful connections with really cool people :)

Chilean suitors - they're everywhere!

I had a couple funny incidents with Chilean guys. I had heard from co-workers that Chileans where supposed to be shy (at least compared to seductive Argentinean neighbors), but apparently not.

When I was in Conce for the first time and didn’t know anyone, I went to a classical music concert. Instead of sitting next to someone my age, I had to go sit next to this 45-year-old guy – we’ll call him Peter Pettigrew due to his uncanny resemblance – with whom I engaged in conversation. He was nice and worked for the same company I did and I guess he mistook my normal friendliness for something else because he started emailing the work email the following morning asking to meet up again. With really weird emails. And a lot of dot dot dots, like if he was sighing while writing about music and the coincidences in life… Hmmm. Well, after some carefully-crafted emails from my part and then ignoring his emails altogether Peter got the message and stopped.

After that, I was in Santiago eating at a restaurant, minding my own business without paying attention to anything but the food, when someone taps my shoulder. I turn and this short guy hands me a flower (a rose maybe?) made with a wrinkled and greasy paper napkin – it had leaves and everything! He also gave me a second wrinkled napkin with his email (one of those emails you wouldn’t use with your employer). I stood there with the two pieces of napkin in my hands and a stunned expression on my face of WTF, and he says “Un regalo para ti… a present” (so he thought I spoke English), and then left immediately, looking at the floor all the time. It was very brave of him to have done that, to be honest!!

From these two examples came tons of joke and other funny stories of the sort that happened to Carolina and me.

Cachai?? Sipo!

July 15th, 2011

My last month in Conce, as us locals refer to it (haha), was great!! I was staying at yet another apart hotel (Aurelio, which came after LaFayette, Germania, Dreams, and before Eurotel), going to some fun classes at the gym and meeting people. It’s so funny how networks and connections form, how friendships unravel thanks to mutual acquaintances and coincidences. The friends I made were usually friends of friends. Or I just met them randomly, like this one guy I met at a supermarket (he turned out to be a douche in the end). For example, Edgardo was Andrea’s acquaintance, which in turn was Valentina’s (my roomie in The Van) friend from a one-month camp in Brazil four years ago.

Some things I took note of this last month:

- One of the best things I got from Chile was WWW.CUEVANA.TV. I truly feel like I found a treasure!! Caro my sister thought the same when I showed it to her. And I have no idea why people in Mexico or Canada do not know about this. It’s an incredible website where you basically download a plugin for your web browser and you’re good to go: you can have access to thousands of movies and TV series, all with great quality and no time limits. Could wasting time get any easier?
Also, I became obsessed with a movie, Mr Nobody. It's a mash-up of science fiction, parallel realities and futuristic drama, all with a fantastic soundtrack. Definitely in my Top 10.

- Going to a casino as a poor student CAN be fun if a) you have a lot of luck, b) know what you’re doing so that you get all your money back and leave with either the same amount or more money, or c) find a partner to spend all night walking and running around the casino while the other friends are having fun at the DJs concert which you couldn’t afford. The night we went there, Oliver (the cutest and most amazing guy in Chile) and I stayed roaming around the casino till 5ish am waiting for the others to come out. It’s impressive how some people were making big bucks playing with those machines (but we have no indication of how much money they had lost). When I’m 21 I’m going to Vegas with Talis!

- Pisco sour, the delicious drink I mentioned before, may contain egg whites! Ewww. This version of the recipe uses eggs for consistency, but after witnessing the preparation I felt I was drinking a protein shake…

- Plan ahead when you’re thinking of going to the beach. So yeah, I will be going to the beach in a week, and it’s too late to go on a diet NOW. So I will look like a cow in bikini

- Good-bye parties and gatherings are really wonderful. And writing good-bye notes and letters is something basic; I cannot leave a place without writing everyone a note. I had a couple good-bye events with different people, and at the office I had two. We had a hot chocolate and pastries good-bye breakfast, and we also went to dance to a Tex Mex restaurant called Tijuana. We had Mexican food and I must say dancing with my co-workers till 3 am was something we should have done more often.

View of la desembocadura del Biobío, the widest river in Chile. I went with Carola the last week in Conce.