Lady Marmalade

I am finally finding time to cook a little again... for fun.

I took a few pounds of these:


and reduced them


and added some more stuff:white sugar, brown sugar, balsamic vinegar, red wine and a few sprigs of thyme


and ended up with this:


Onion marmalade... quite delish!


I used this recipe here (but used butter/olive oil instead of bacon grease)

Just another English teacher

Most gringas (and gringos) who live or have lived in Chile, have at some point taught English.

My first job in Santiago, 15 years ago (good lord!) was teaching English. (I have also taught Spanish since then.) If you remember the "How we met" story, you know I met my husband teaching English.

Some do it because it is a good way of living abroad for a few years. Some do it because they found the love of their lives, who happens to be Chilean, and now they live here and whatever they studied has been rendered useless either because there are certain areas of study, take law for example, that don't "travel" well or because they are limited by a language they don't know--Spanish.

Some actually like teaching English... but there are many who would rather do something else, anything else. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard a gringa say: "I don't want to teach English, I want a real job."
Many gringas are also irritated beyond belief at the unfounded assumption that they are English teachers... in terms of annoyingness, it chalks up there with the unfounded assumption that all gringas are easy. We are not all easy and we are not, by the mere nature of our gringa-ness, all English teachers.

So, it is funny, in this context of opposition and the with the discourse of desiring a real occupation, to be a gringa who works in the English-teaching industry. It is not just because I am a native speaker, though that makes me more marketable here in some ways (though it is slightly illogical in other ways--because just being a native speaker in no way makes someone a better teacher). I am a language-related teacher because I love it; it is one of those unexplicable passions. I love language, I love how languages work, I love the random similarities and the baffling differences. I love talking about universal grammar and the critical period and minimal pairs. My doctorate degree is in language education. Teaching about language is what I do. It is what I have chosen to do.

I am actually not an English teacher per se... I am an English teacher-teacher. I prepare future English teachers. I try to help them step out of the box that they were taught in--"a fill-in-the-blank-worksheet is not an activity" and "how are you going to activate their previous knowledge?" I teach theories of second language acquisition and methodology courses.

But I can understand the irritation piqued by that unfounded assumption that if you are a gringa, you teach English. I get it.

Recently a woman I know told me that her (adult) son had asked her to ask me if I would give him English lessons. I sweetly (because she is sweet) said: "I wish I could, I just don't have time." (and I silently whine: "I have a 44-hour contract, I am expected to research and publish, I leave home at 7:30 am (because I live far), I get home some nights after 8:00 (because I live far), I love what I do, but I have two kids and a husband that I want to see and not enough time to read or run or watch movies, and you are asking me to spend my precious free time giving English lessons.")

When I meet people in the hall or bathroom at the university where I work and they ask what department I am in and I say Education and they say, nodding-- knowlingly, assumingly "Oh, you teach English." There is a little twitch in my brain and I politely say "I teach language pedagogy." (and I silently hiss to myself... "and I have a Ph.D. in the field"). But I don't say it out loud because I don't have to prove my worth to anyone and I am actually mostly uncomfortable talking about my Ph.D. (despite having mentioned it like 15 times in this post, but you guys already know!)

I have friends who, when we made public our plan to return to Chile, asked: "Are you going to teach at the institute again?" I reply politely, "No, I think I'll find a university job" (and I silently, sarcastically hiss to myself: "Dude, I just spent years finishing my doctorate degree so I could totally go back to what I was doing 10years ago!") But I don't say it out loud because I don't have to justify myself to anyone.

It is an odd space, feeling perfectly happy with my very real job, feeling like I don't have to justify what I do or why, but not wanting to be put in the gringa-English-teacher box that the other gringas complain about either.

ya know?

... and worms

My hubs is also obsessed with worms... is that weird?

We compost, I think I have talked about that before. We LOVE composting! If it were up to him, not a single scrap of organic material would go to waste--if you run in our circle, at some point you will hear about composting toilets... probably over dinner after Nico calls us from the bathroom to help him wipe... I hope you have a stomach of steel.

Anyway, my husband is always concerned about the health of our compost heap. He spends quite a bit of time digging around, assessing if there is enough heat, checking out whether there are worms or other signs of life.

Don't believe me? Look...


It is seriously something that comes up in conversation as we lay chatting at night before falling asleep:

"I haven't seen any worms in the compost. What does that mean?"

When he finds worms, he is happy, he thinks it means something very positive about the compost. He's probably right, it is just funny, is it not?




Look! It was obviously a good compost day!

Someone will sleep in peace.

Views from work

One of the things I really enjoy about where I work is the natural environment. The grounds are beautiful, it is so quiet, even the air feels different. My workplace is right at the foothill of the Andes. This is the view of the city from the floor where my office is.



This is a back view facing one side...


and here is the back view facing the other direction.


Not too bad, huh?


(I used a kind of crappy camara, pics don't even do it justice)

Have I mentioned he likes to prune...?

My husband likes to prune... I mean he really likes it. He spends a lot of time pruning and re-pruning, and trimming trees and shrubs.

Sometimes it is like one of those bad jokes when you tell your hubs that you have to get ready for visitors and he starts pruning... it is a lot like that actually.



At our house we don't throw away any organic matter that will compost back into rich soil. Leaves are left to compost in the grass, and in addition to pruning the trees, he spends even more time cutting those bigger pieces into sticks and twigs that will break down and compost. So we have sticks and twigs covering lots of ground space--just think of it as a rough mulch.


We also have piles of stickes and branches in other spaces... I like this old wheel-barrow.


Remember a few months back when I made plum jam? Well, this is what is left of the plum tree.

He says it is a "drastic" pruning. Yes... drastic is one way of putting it.

We have a running bet going about whether or not it will come back in the spring. He says it will come back. I find it hard to believe I will be making plum jam again this year... or ever again. What do you think?

The funniest, weirdest thing is that he will not touch this ancient fig tree. He hasn't trimmed one little branch!

Though I think it was the only tree in the yard that desperately needed pruning.