newborns and wine...not at the same time, for obvious reasons

On Wednesday I was in the neonatal unit of the public hospital. Rather than having to look at the icky tiny sick babies, they let me play with the healthy ones that are fresh out of the womb. The only truly nasty part was watching them comb nasty birth juice out of the babies' hair. But it's an incredible feeling to be one of the first people to talk to a new little person. I bet they're really confused. There was a set of twins...they've been sharing a tiny little womb for nine months and now they're suddenly separate and in a big freaky world. I felt like it was my duty to give them some advice. We had a good chat. The nurse yelled at me for talking to them in English, because she said they wouldn't understand me. I got to carry one of the babies to her mommy. It was so fun being the person to be like, "Hey, here's that awesome new person you just brought into the world. Good luck not fucking her up too much!"

The hospital building is over 100 years old, and I don't know much about medical equipment but I'm pretty sure some of it is old as dirt. That being said, the nurses are great and the patients get good care...for the 15 minutes allotted to them daily. Besides the obvious issues with disease spreading, I like the rooms with 6 or more people in them. There's sort of a camp-y friendly family-type atmosphere to it. I'm only being sort of sarcastic right now.

On Friday we went to one of the new family primary care clinics funded by la Universidad Catolica. This place was spanking new and extremely modern. The patients, all of whom have public insurance, get great personal attention from nurses and doctors. This was the only clinic/hospital I've seen so far with computerized records. The family clinics are a new-ish idea for primary care, and there's two other as nice as this one. Unfortunately that's only a couple thousand people being served by these great clinics. Hopefully they'll expand, because it was really great to see people being treated like they deserve individual attention for their medical needs.

Looking at a very different side of Chile from the people we interact with at the public hospital, we dropped $10 on a wine tour of Cosiño Macul. I talked to a Brasilian couple, and was completely thrown off by their use of "vosotros" in conversation (that's a verb tense that's only used in Spain). The vines are currently empty and they weren't processing any wine while we were there so it was a little boring, but we got to do a few tastes and I got a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon "gris" which is red wine grapes processed like white wine, so it ends up being kinda pinkish and gentler tasting. My host dad was really pleased and Friday night my host sister's godfather came over to visit and he served it. Mostly the trip made me realize that there's a whole lot about wine that I'm never going to have the time or desire to learn.

My two good friends are off in Valdivia for the weekend, so I've been spending some more time exploring alone and spending more time with my family. Having American friends is great, and it's good to have other people to digest the experience with and talk about how much we miss ketchup and peanut butter and whatnot, but it's also a crutch that keeps me from fully immersing myself in Chile. I spent yesterday evening at home, conversing with my host sister Lena's godfather and talking about plans for Lena's wedding (which is in March, but already the arguments about what kind of music, what she should wear, what kind of wine to serve, etc. etc. etc. have begun). Then my older host sister, Edda, invited me to "carretear" (=going out dancing) with her. Around 11:30pm we left the house with one of her friends and went over to another friend's house where we drank "navegado". It's hot red wine, orange, cinnamon-y spices, and fruit pieces. Super delicious. Around 1:30am, they decided it was time to head to the Discoteca for a birthday party. Crazy chilenos. We had a really fun time dancing and stayed until the club until 5 am, when they finally closed and kicked us out. Out of the whole experience, the weirdest part was getting used to the cheek-kiss greetings. Like when we got to the party I had to go through the whole living room and kiss all the people in the room on the cheek...before learning their names! I actually really like the custom and I wish we had something like it in the US...really breaks the ice and whatnot, establishing a friendly atmosphere...but it's hard to get used to. I always feel like I go in awkwardly or something.

Today we went to a Universidad de Chile soccer game, but I'll write about that later...this is getting long and I'm exhausted.

Kisses to all! I can't believe I have less than two weeks left :-( Time to start making plans for Ecuador. I think I better take some more Spanish classes and get rid of this Chilean accent I've picked up. ¿Cachai?