¿Como? ¿Que? ¿What did you say?

After the Tsunami, life around Castro has been rather slow. Berto and Lisa have been going to school. Mike has been writing scientific manuscripts. Gabi has successfully transitioned to Medio Menor in Jardin Infantil (Children's Garden). A change for Gabi moving out of sala cuna (crib room) is that she now wears a day care version of a school uniform. Gabi's delantal is a green and white checked smock with Jardin Infantil Jean Piaget embroidered on the front. Just in case anyone mistakes the genders of the little darlings, girls' smocks have red collars and boys' smocks have yellow collars. Pat the outfit, Gabi's day is the same. Mike drops her off at 9:00 and Berto and Lisa pick her up at 4:00 on their way home from school.

Each of us have developed our network of people we know in Castro. Berto has Jose, his favorite bus driver. When we ride Jose's bus, Berto gets invited to ride the shotgun seat. Jose then chats with Berto and Berto glows knowing he is in the seat of honor. Berto also gets special attention from the ladies who sell empanadas and milcao by the bus station. Now that he is speaking Spanish with them, Berto gets a free empanada with his order.

Gabi, for her part, has the Fruteria Tia. Early on we'd stop in the fruit stand after picking up Gabi from day care. The fruit lady would cootchie coo, Gabi would wink and smile and a friendship was born. Now we don't pass "Gabi's Fruteria" without a wave. Though most times we make up something we need for dinner as an excuse to stop in and say buenos tardes.

Mike has been invited for beers with our gas man, Ivan. The joke when we first moved to the neighborhood is that Mike would call up the gas man all full of grammar appropriate phrases to order a new canister of natural gas only to have Ivan blurt something and hang up mid sentence. We later discovered that all Ivan needed to hear was a start of an accent to surmise that the gringos needed more gas for their space heater. On a given day Mike passes Ivan's Gasco office 3 or 4 times and Ivan passes by us on one of his deliveries. The guys share the manly Chilean greeting of 2 pumps on the handshake and 3 whacks on the back in a hug, left hand over the shoulder and right hand under the armpit.

Lisa's buddies can be found in the sala de profesores at Carpe Diem. Hugo, Carpe Diem's English teacher, is a friend, translator of all things Chilean and watchful eye over Lisa and Berto at school. However being able to speak English takes Hugo out of the unique category of Chilote Spanish network. If Chilote friend includes friendship despite lack of linguistic understanding, then Gloria qualifies as Lisa's Chilote pal. The joke between Lisa and Gloria was that for the first two months of riding into school, Lisa would say something to Gloria and Gloria would say "¿huh?" And then Gloria would say something to Lisa and Lisa would say "huh?" Eventually Gloria learned Lisa's Spanish and Lisa learned to understand Gloria's Chilote accent.

Most often these days Mike and Lisa will remark something along the lines of "Either my Spanish is getting better or so and so is learning how to understand what I'm saying." As we come up on 8 months in Castro, we realize how much we've been taken in by the Chilotes. We also realize how much our communication skills have improved. And we are very thankful for the patient people who spoke slowly and endeavored to understand us in our first months here.