Yesterday we went out to dinner at a bar in our town and tried to order a cheese and Hawaiian pizza. The waitress said, “We don’t have cheese.” Interesting. We ordered the margherita pizza without the ham and basil. Apparently, they have that. I felt like I was Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces when he wants some toast, but there are no substitutions. Nicholson then rudely orders a chicken salad sandwich and asks the waitress to toast the bread and then hold the mayonnaise, tomato, and onions. As she walks away, he says, “Oh, and hold the chicken.”
After dinner, we went to Mallsport in Las Condes to rent scooters for the pump track. We also wanted to check out the surfers in the wave pool. I asked the custodian, “¿Donde esta la piscina? She looked at me like I was crazy and said there was not one in the mall. Then I pointed to a sign with a wave on it. And she said, “Oh you mean la ola? It is around the corner.” It was a wave pool surrounded by a large deck.
Needless to say, there are a number of experiences that continue to surprise me in Chile. This particular mall is sport themed. From an equestrian shop to a store called Car Toys that sells bike racks and other vehicle extras to accommodate sport, Mallsport is shopping for all athletic gear. One would think that a single venue with similar stores would compete against one another or that a single Dicks could shut them down. However, it seems that there is room for three bike/scooter stores, two floors of athletic gear, multiple camping stores, and plenty of speciality stores. There is a place to string your tennis racquets, another to buy your archery equipment, and another to buy your athletic watches. It makes sense that athletes should have their own store, but here athletes also have their own mall. Trampolines and all day pump parks are clever; parents can leave their children jumping on trampolines or zipping around on scooters while they shop. They can have calm conversations at the outdoor restaurants while kids amuse themselves playing ping pong or floating in the water within plastic human gerbil flotation devices (regretfully I did not get a picture).
There were two birthday parties that I noticed, one on the skywalk and one in the jumpy castle area. There were a number of kids’ playgrounds, motorized ponies, and train rides that Max and Mia have outgrown; this made me feel oddly nostalgic for that sleep-deprived blur of chasing them in their toddler years. I sent my mom video footage, and she asked me how is possible that they have grown so much in four and a half months. It is true; Max was incredibly proud of himself for being able to independently use the scooter and scale the walls without any noticeable challenge because of his limb difference. Max said that he was terrified on the skywalk, and yet wearing a harness secured by carabiners to a zip-line like apparatus, he finished the course. Both of them negotiated the pump track amid other kids sharing the track who clearly had more experience and were pushing them to go faster. They negotiated directions in a mix of Spanish and English. They pushed themselves to take the risk of trying new challenges and enjoyed watching each other succeed.
The kids definitely want to go back and try out the mini-golf, the Ninja Warrior games, and the augmented reality dodgeball. Plenty of challenges on the climbing wall and zip-line remain.
Last night, a friend and his son biked to our house for a bbq dinner. He was on a motor assisted bike that he had purchased at Mallsport; one week ago I had not even heard the word e-bike. Yesterday, I was on one appreciating the kick, as I did not even break a sweat cruising up a tough hill. This friend told me that he and his father had not been able to bike together for years, and now they could do an extensive ride into the foothills of the Andes together because his father could get an extra lift by shifting into a greater assisted mode.
At home, there is a big emphasis on specializing in sports and in team sports in particular. We may not be able to re-enter that world because so far in Chile the kids have been playing a lot of different sports very uncompetitively. We have already purchased scooters, skateboards, and roller skates. We have been practicing on a friend’s slack line when we are at the park. They bike around our plaza. They swim at school in PE; Max plays baseball and soccer twice a week; Mia does gymnastics after-school and horseback riding down the street whenever we want to ride. They may join the surf club that meets once a week. I am not sure whether they will be competitive in any of these sports, but I like that they can try them all out. And if they do find that sport that they are really passionate about, I know just the mall to get the gear.
Living in Chile 