Spice Update

I found Allspice at Liders after internet research told me that it might be called Pimiente Dulce(translation: sweet pepper). There it was, with both titles on the label! Cream of Tartar, I've heard, may be found at the pharmacy. Hmmm.

We bought a portable CD player too. It was an interesting discussion with the Chilean salesperson who spoke no English and our rudimentary Spanish. I lost track and Michael did the talking. He is much better at speaking a few Spanish words and getting them to reply in a few words. One Spanish word on my part seems to encourage a Spanish paragraph or more from the other person, both confusing and nowhere near understandable to me. It seems when we don't understand, many think if they just use more words, we will! Of course, it's just the opposite-fluent Spanish speakers run words together so we no longer understand the words we know. There are those that understand that and slow down, mostly those that know a little English and thus, how difficult it is to understand a second language.

But this guy was really helpful and very nice to us. And we eventually purchased a cd player and batteries. By the way, square batteries are batteries here-or bateria (car battery or 9 volt battery) but the round batteries are called "pilas". At one point, another salesperson tried to help and we got our pilas-silly us, asking for baterias. Always a new lesson.

We looked at baby clothes, hoping to find a lovely Chilean oufit for my new grandbaby. But the clothes are generally what they deem to be US knockoffs. Some terrible English translations often grace the front of T-shirts. And what them they believe is USA style is often pretty funny. My Chilean pots and pans have the US Tradition brand right on them(made in China). Which reminds me-the American kitchen you often see advertised is tiny. Helia said that is because they think Americans in the US don't really do much in the kitchen, just cook. And I think they believe we don't really cook much. Lol.