Second Childhood

 

Kelli rockin' out to her iPhone music while walking to the Metro station on the way to the hospital

For the past two days, Kelli and I have been sitting in on the Segunda Infancia service at the hospital Sótero del Rio.  This is the general service that has children generally between 1 and 2 years of age (older than the Lactantes, or infants), but has had several children younger and older than that.  For example, yesterday they admitted a febrile 30-day old neonate, and the day prior received a transfer from their "intermedio," or Special Care, of a patient 12 years old with multiple medical problems including CP, neurological devastation, GTube, and chronic malnutrition now with extensive DVT of right leg, and cellulitis around the GTube site.
     But enough about what we do during the day (there will be much more posting about that to come)... after that we're left to our own devices to explore the city!  On Tuesday night, Kelli and I decided to try and make our own pizza, since the pizza here has left something to be desired, so there wasn't much exploring done then.  We succeeded, and it was glorious (so glorious that it was gone before pictures could be taken).  Last night we set out again to the Bellavista section of town in search of good local Chilean fare.  Our journey to the area took us past the big cellphone building which you saw in a previous post, as well as the area known as Baquedano, which is supposedly the geographic center of the city.

A view of Cerro San Cristóbal from the Baquedano Metro station

This is the geographic center of the city, marked by the horse statue.

Río Mapocho; not so much a río in the summertime

 We also wandered through one of the many parks of the city that runs parallel to the Río Mapocho that cuts through the city.  Before we left for Chile, we were informed that Santiago has been designated by Guiness Book of World Records as the "number one make-out spot in the world."  Wandering through the park, we finally understood what that meant.

We finally made it into the Bellavista district, where we found a restaurant called Galindo that serves up local Chilean dishes.  We had our hearts and minds set on trying the finest that Chile had to offer: pastel de choclo, caldillo de congrio, empanadas de pino... and the list goes on!  (Muchas gracias a Dr. Stagno for giving us tips on which foods we should try!)  Kelli started her meal off with one of the local Chilean beers, which may be her new favorite.

Kelli ordered the caldillo de congrio, a soup/stew made with vegetables and conger eel (it's not as Andrew Zimmern as it sounds), and I wanted to order the pastel de choclo, but unfortunately they were out, as were they not offering the empanada de pino except for on weekends (why I don't know).  So I ended up settling for the humitas, which are cornmeal and some spices wrapped and cooked within corn leaves.

The humitas were decent, but overall pretty bland, but the caldillo that Kelli ordered was extremely flavorful!  It was a very colorful soup and had a broth that was downright addicting.  I eventually used the broth to flavor the humitas.  So perhaps it was for the best that we didn't get all our Chilean cuisine sampling done in one day, because that leaves us more to look forward to!  And if tonight was any indication, we definitely have a lot of awesome food ahead of us...
J/k