Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from the Epps/Ritchies!!!

We spent the week on the Outer Banks, in North Carolina.  It was great to be with everyone -- we spent the week playing pool, ping pong, football and soccer on the beach, shuffleboard, and lots more.  Rachel even went swimming in the freezing ocean with our cousin Don!  Good thing we stayed so active, because we sure ate our fill -- I can't even start to list it all here, but highlights were mom's homemade baklava and Mike's homemade Cafe Rio pork burritos. 

We also had fun listening to the girls play their instruments (I jumped in on the piano a couple times, but it was mostly the stringed instruments we listened to).  They have learned (and written) some beautiful trios for violin, viola, and cello.  They've really come a long way.  I know we all wondered a little bit how it would all turn out when each of them started learning an instrument, with their screechy hours of "tacca-tacca-stop-stop."  Now we're all so glad they've practiced so much, our favorites are "Scotland the Brave" and the theme from "Pirates of the Caribbean."

Being the oldest, growing up, you keep saying to yourself "I can't wait for these little kids to grow up so we can play together!"  Well let me tell you, they're grown up now.  And now they're winning at all the games we play too!  We had a lot of fun hanging out this past week, and having Mike there to join in on the fun was fantastic. 

Mike and I are back in Argentina now.  It was a great week -- a big thanks to my family for showering us with good food, great gifts, and fun times. 

Thanksgiving

Mike and I spent last week with his family, Thanksgiving a week early. It was so good to see them, and we got to meet our new little niece, who was born in June (and got to see her roll over for the first time!).

We stayed at Mike's parents' beach house in Rocky Point, Mexico (just south of Arizona, on the Sea of Cortez). The sunset one night was particularly beautiful, though I guess the get them pretty often there.

We ate a lot of fantastic Mexican food while there, but the highlight of our time there was our big Thanksgiving feast: turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, stuffing, mashed potatoes, roasted squash, and throughout the day we snacked on homemade ceviche (amazing!). It was a great Thanksgiving -- good food but even better to be with family.

Today, the other Thanksgiving, we went to a potluck with some other embassy folks. You may remember for our "fakesgiving" earlier this year I made sweet potato casserole (an Epps family favorite) with local sweet potatoes. It was so difficult because they were so tough and starchy, I swore to myself I'd never make them again. Well, luckily Mike didn't know that and signed me up to bring them again (they did turn out pretty well last time). This time, I boiled them for 3 hours. It knocked the starch right out of them, and the skins pretty much fell right off! Win!

As you can see from the picture, the marshmallows are a little "well done.". Just how I like them :)

We're spending the evening at home together, our first Thanksgiving, baking and eating pumpkin pie, and feeling do grateful for all our blessings and for each other.

Chile and Easter Island

In all fairness, this blog post should just be titled "Chile," because technically Easter Island belongs to Chile, but it felt like such a different world.  And because the locals there put up signs that said "for the international knowledge of everyone, we never consented to be a part of Chile."

We spent a day in Santiago, a day in Valparaiso on the coast, and 2 days on Easter Island.  We LOVED the trip.

It rained during our time in Santiago, which turned out OK because it cleared out the pollution, which is apparently pretty bad there.  We kept complaining "Oh, it's raining and we can't see the mountains," but on our flight back from Easter Island, we saw a big, literally black, cloud hanging over the city, and you couldn't see the mountains anyway.  Don't worry, we saw them on the plane ride back to Argentina.  Incredible.

Our day in Valparaiso (or "Valpo" as the cool people call it.  Actually, I don't know who calls it that, but we do.  Otherwise it's such a mouth-full), well, it was awesome. It was a very colorful city, in all senses of the word.  It's a port town, so a little rough around the edges, but lots of brightly painted houses, and lots of culture.  Most of the town sits up on a hill, and you have to take these tiny box "elevator" trams to get up there.  Except the first one we found was closed (we weren't the only confused tourists wandering around :).  So we started hiking up the hill, and luckily, we hiked right through one of the things we wanted to see -- an "open air" mural museum.  Most of the murals were in state of constant change (i.e. graffiti-ed change), but the ones by the most famous Chilean muralist were left untouched.  We kept walking up and up the hill until we came to the home of the VERY famous Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.  If you haven't heard of him, he is known throughout Latin America.  I first read his poems when I was studying in Guadalajara, Mexico.  His home has a great view of the ocean, and it is said this is where he got most of his inspiration for his beautiful poems about the sea.

We ate a lot of seafood throughout our trip, and all of it was good.  Grilled octopus and lots of ceviche and crab-almond raviolis and conger eel stew (we thought it was fish stew until we looked up the word later....it was REALLY good).

The next leg of our trip was Easter Island.  Everyone has been asking us if it was worth it (it's very expensive and a 6 hour flight from Santiago).  We have concluded that yes, it was worth it, but not if you're looking for a Polynesian beach vacation.  It was a very quirky little island, and we left it feeling that we had a one-of-a-kind adventure.

Easter Island is the piece of land furthest from any other piece of land (I still haven't found a good way to say it, but you know what I mean). It first became inhabited about 1500 years ago, and most experts agree that the natives arrived there from Polynesia.  They were the only Polynesian culture to have a written form of their language, but no one is alive anymore that knows how to read the script, so much of their past is a mystery.  They are famous for the giant stone "heads" erected all over the island.  These statues are actually not heads, but rather over-sized heads with squat torsos.  They are called "moai."  They all stood on platforms called "ahus," and all faced inland, sending positive energy to the family or clan that erected them in memory of their ancestors.  Unfortunately, at some point the islanders grew to be too many, or got island fever, or something because they started warring and killing each other and cutting down all the trees, and toppling each others moai.  Then, most of them were captured and taken to Peru to work as slaves in the guano mines.  Then, those that survived the mines were returned to the island, but took smallpox with them, and killed a huge number of the population on the island.  In the end, there were only about 110 natives left.  They have now intermarried with the Chileans and others now living on the island, and you can see their Polynesian features and names on the campaign signs throughout the town.  But the island is devoid of a distinctly Polynesian feel.  Everyone speaks Spanish, and almost all the plants and animals are introduced (horses and cows and chickens and dogs).  There is one town, Hanga Roa, with 5000 locals.  We spent half a day walking around, saw the church, bought the local banana bread across the street (just as the guidebook recommended), and ate at one of the restaurants in town.

The next day was our Indiana-Jones-Adventure day.  We rented a little stick-shift SUV and drove around the island, exploring quarries and caves and taking pictures of the mystical moai, while reading their story in our guidebook.  It was incredible.  You have NEVER seen anything like these statues.  You can find a link to our photos below, I don't have the words to describe them.

You may have noticed that the SUV was a stick-shift......and you may or may not know that it has been a life-long dream of mine to learn how to drive stick......well, Mike and I figured that a better opportunity would never present itself (a 10 mile stretch of road that was practically devoid of cars, with nothing to hit but some bushes).  So Mike taught me how to drive manual!  It was a bit rocky at first, 6 tries to get the car started, and then VROOOM!  Mike was a very good teacher.  I hope he had a good laugh when he finally caught his breath.  His only rule was that I was not allowed to accidentally hit one of the statues :).



Enjoy the photos!

Picasa Web Album

More pics from Uruguay, and from the Argentine Campo

A few more pictures can be found below to finish up our Uruguay trip from a few weeks ago.  Also, this past weekend we took a trip with some friends about 2 hours outside of Buenos Aires to an "estancia," or ranch.  It was great to drive a little bit and get some fresh air.  We sat outside and read, walked around the farm, rode the horses, and just relaxed.  Oh, and ate LOTS of meat. 

In Uruguay, one of our favorite things I forgot to mention in my last post were the "ramblas," or walkways that ran all along the water.  It was a sunny weekend, and the walkways were filled with people.....well, rambling.  Drinking mate, talking, sitting in the sun.  Really pleasant.  

 Colonia was a quiet little town, with a pretty church, lighthouse, and little museums and cafes.  Today, we were looking through our tourist guidebook, reminiscing about Colonia, and Mike saw a picture of one of the quaint little streets we walked down.  Except it must have been taken about 10 years ago because there was no tree growing through this antique car yet :)

This is Mike strolling through the estancia property during this past weekend.  After sunset (shortly after we took this picture), we did a little stargazing.  With the help of Wikipedia and a constellation app, we found the Southern Cross (you know, the constellation on the Australian flag, that can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere).  Pretty exciting, we thought.  Come visit, we'll point it out to you!

Working in an embassy

It has been a sad week for those of us who work in embassies around the world. We are accustomed to going about our work quietly, but now we've been thrust into the spotlight. And that is because US embassies are one, if not the strongest, symbol of America overseas. While the attacks on our embassies break my heart, it makes me proud to be a Foreign Service Officer and to be representing my country abroad. Most of us that work in embassies are not ambassadors; we don't make speeches that make the press, and most of us don't broker high level trade agreements or peace deals. But we make an impact in smaller ways every day as our paths cross with locals in the host country, and everything we say and do can be taken as a representation of the United States, whether we're aware of it or not. It is a heavy responsibility. In the consular section, I talk with over 200 Argentines each day who want to visit my country. They may have had limited or no interaction with an American up to that point. My colleagues and I try our best to greet each person with a smile, with respect, with an appreciation that they want to visit our country and sometimes with a sense of humor.....which brings me to the things that made me smile this week.

"What university do you attend, sir?"
"Universidad de Morón." Pause "That doesn't sound very good in English does it?" (It took me a minute to realize he had made a joke - applicants are usually too nervous to make a joke.)

"Señora, do you have any other nationalities?" "No, yo soy Argentina." (This literally translates as "No, I am Argentine," but it sounds to me like she's saying "No, I am Argentina.". Then I look at her full name and it is Maria Argentina. She really IS Argentina! Her middle name is Argentina!)

A family of four walks up.
"Where are you going to travel?"
The mom speaks right up:
"I'm taking the boys (los chicos) to Disney."
I look at the husband.
He says "Yeah, I'm really hoping she'll take me too."

Uruguay!

Mike and I are in Uruguay this weekend, and having a great adventure. For the record, Mike is an incredible trip planner, so we've gotten to see and do much more than I expected in such a short amount of time. I have planned a number of trips in my day too, but due to my directionally-challenged-ness, if you join me on a trip I've planned, you'd better be prepared to walk or drive at least 20 minutes in the wrong direction at least twice a day :)

We took the ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, about a three hour "tour." Since getting to Montevideo, we've walked all around the city; saw the Palacio Salvo, which was the tallest building in South America when it was built in 1920; ate chivito al plato: a pile of fries with meat, ham, cheese, bacon, an egg, olives, ketchup and mayo on top; walked through old town, and an antiques market in a park; we ate some grilled meat and grilled sweet potato at a "meat market" by the port, where restaurant after restaurant was firing up its wood grills; we took a cab out to the suburbs to see the LDS temple and then we went to a sushi restaurant that had a great review in the NYTimes -- I've eaten a lot of sushi, and LOVE it, but this was THE BEST sushi I have ever had, go figure. Ceviche sushi with cream cheese, cilantro, and chili; we also walked (and cabbed) along the "rambla," which is a little like Lakeshore Drive in Chicago.

2 major things we've noticed here: 1) the amount of mate drinking here far exceeds what we've seen in Argentina, which is a lot. I'd say every third or fourth person we'd see walking down the street would have their thermos of hot water tucked under their arm, and a mate gourd in their hand. In fact, Mike saw a motorcyclist with the thermos under his arm, the gourd in his hand, a cigarette in his other hand, and...yeah, we're not really sure how he was driving. I spotted a mom with the thermos, gourd in the hand, soccer ball in the other hand, and her other hand holding on to her child (moms have more than two hands, if you hadn't noticed).

2) It smells like smoke here. All the time. It makes your eyes sting and everything. We finally asked the cabbie and the hotel staff "Why does it smell like smoke here all the time?" And they both said "I guess because of all the parrillas (the wood-fired grills)." They guess, because they are probably so used to it that they can't smell it anymore.

Now, we just took a city bus to catch a coach bus to take us to Colonia, a small town just up the coast. We'll spend tomorrow there, then head back to Buenos Aires. Thanks Mike for planning this great trip!

War Stories

I had one day this week that was crazy! I've been wanting to blog about it all week because I have so many good stories.

I am currently spending half my time at work in the non-immigrant visa section (tourist visas) and half in the immigrant visa section. I love both. But on this particular day I was in immigrant visas.

My first applicant was a fiancée of an American citizen, moving to the US to marry him and live there. Pretty straight forward case, no fraud or anything. I finished the interview at the window, and told her that the visa was approved and that she could go. She thanked me, and turned to leave the tiny interview room, but the door was jammed. And no one could open it!!! She was stuck in that little room for about 20 minutes before we could get the door open. I told her "At least I didn't refuse your visa and then trap you in here."

The next couple came in and (after seeing so many people try to break down the door) immediately said "We'll just leave the door open, thanks." This gentleman wanted to move to the US with his wife. I had my suspicions that he had been living illegally in the US, and asked him if he wanted to review his statement about his prior travel to the US before signing and swearing before a US Consular Officer. "Sir, I think you HAVE been to the United States before." "Never. Never been there." "Sir, I have reason to believe you have." "That was my brother." "Um, I don't think so. Are you sure you're ready to swear and sign your name to this?" "Well......OK, I entered the US with my Argentine passport in 2000 and didn't leave until 2006.". Me: "Well, thank you sir, for telling the truth.". In my head: "What?! No one ever tells me the truth, what just happened?" The guy just started gushing as his wife had her head in her hands: "Oh, I feel so much better now that I told you, it's like a huge burden off my shoulders, I'm so glad I told the truth!" I was too. He'll still have to wait until 2016 to reenter the US, but telling the truth to a government official can go a long way - now we were able to clear things up and I was able to give him instructions on how to apply for a waiver with DHS. No guarantee he'll get it, but lying in an interview always makes things so much worse.

Then.....I had an American citizen mother applying for her 13 year old son. Mom had gone to the US on a visa and overstayed, but eventually was able to overcome that and become a citizen. However, when her son was 6, she had her brother-in-law smuggle him across the border. Not the kid's fault, and he qualified for an immigrant visa now through his mom, so I was just finishing up his paperwork (though I was grilling the mom about his uncle, trying to get more info on him). Then, the boy starts tugging at his mom's sleeve: "Can I ask her mom? Can I?". He then looks at me and shyly asks "How did you get this job?" My heart about melted, I love talking about my job! He said "I heard that it's really good to know 2 languages, and I know Spanish and English!". I told him he'd go far. Sharp kid. But part of me was thinking he wouldn't necessarily like my job, which is to bust people like his uncle.

THEN: Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited the embassy and did a town hall meeting where we could meet her and ask questions! I got to ask a question (see pictures)! She is an amazing lady -- very sharp, but very kind, and for a person so high ranking, she definitely remembers how it is to be much further down on the totem pole. She walked up and down each aisle of seats as she answered the questions (NOT an easy feat. If you've ever tried to get to your seat in an auditorium, you know). She talked about her love and appreciation for work and service, and how everyone, from the hotel staff that cleaned her room that morning, to the clerks on her staff and up, made a difference in the life of someone today. Every kind of work has value, she said. Anyway, it was a great experience -- Mike and I feel so lucky that we get these kinds of experiences in our jobs with the embassy!