A Month of Asados

One of our family's little "urban" parrillas.

"Some have meat and cannot eat, and some cannot eat that want it.  But we have meat and we can eat - And let the Lord be thanked."
--Robert Burns

The weeks that followed my Fiestas Patrias experience were punctuated nearly every weekend by an asado of some sort, which is to say I was living the dream.  A week or two after returning to Calama, my host brother Carlos showed up on Saturday morning with Emilo and Sebastian, my host cousin's boyfriend, and told me to get dressed and come with them to a "camping." After six or so months in Calama, I was used to finding out I was doing something the minute someone came to pick me up.  Apparently that day, Carlos was preparing a huge asado for his clients and socios.  I was encouraged to call Ryan, who was still asleep (sidenote: Ryan has a reputation in my family of constantly being either tired, asleep, or falling asleep.  A typical conversation will go, Mom: "Donde está Ryan?" Carlos: "Está dormiendo." Mom: "Comó siempre.")  Five minutes later, we picked him up from his house and drove out to the outskirts of town where the "camping" was located.  The place was simply a park carved out of the nothing consisting of a synthetic soccer field, a quite-obviously-never-used-before tennis field, a picnic area, and a half-full salt water pool.  Part of the picnic area was covered by a plywood building, which we took over for our asado-ing.  Note, there was no actual camping involved at all.

Whenever my family hacen asado, it is typically my Tia Marcela doing the grilling, which is a shame because that day in the camping, Carlos proved he is a master parrillero.  We feasted on a ton of excellently prepared steaks, along with the obligatory chorizos and chicken.  That day, however, Carlos was introduced to pollo barbacoa, or in reality, chicken basted in ketchup and grilled.  He fell in love, and I tried to explain that in the States we always grilled our chicken in sauces specifically designed for such, but he couldn't wrap his mind around it.  Later, at the end of October when we had another asado for his 30th birthday, his birthday request was more ketchup-grilled chicken.  The notable story to come out of the camping asado is admittedly an odd one.  Ryan and I were sitting next to the grill, baking ourselves under the desert sun, and Ryan happened to have his shirt hiked up halfway up his belly.  Emilo walked over and very casually pointed out that there was lint in Ryan's belly button, before preceding to clean it out for him.

The very next day I was awoken again by Carlos arriving to take us over to Marcela's house where, true to form, we had another asado.  This time it was simply a family affair.  We put a table outside in the patio and spent most of the day eating and talking.  At one point, Carlos' baby, Pablito, was handed to me and pictures were snapped.  Later, when the photos made it up on facebook, all my host family took delight in claiming the picture was a snapshot of my future.

The following weekends were characterized by my real mother's birthday (she turned forty-eight, the exact age of my host mom), debates (which I have already recounted in previous chapters), and desert camping.  After the first debate, the desert walk number one took place which was followed by Ryan, Matt, and I making our own asado at my house.  We invited some of the girls over and spent the afternoon watching football on the internet and chowing on grilled flesh.  After the second debate, Matt once again returned to Calama with us and we then went together to San Pedro where we met up with two girl volunteers from Antofa and pitched tents in a small campsite outside of town.  The place wasn't the best site in the world, but it was cheap.  The problem became the fire restrictions.  Even though San Pedro is in the desert, and there is absolutely nothing to risk burning down (there are no plants and the buildings are all adobe), fires are prohibited in just about every local.  The old woman who ran the site said we could make a little fire on which to cook.  Thus, exploiting the loophole, we kept a frying pan poised on the side of the fire the whole night with some choritos (a type of Chilean mussel) simmering.  The woman kept coming over during the night to harass us anyway, and at one point when I left the others to go meet up with some other volunteers in town that night, she apparently came over and doused the fire with a bucket of water.

The weekend was a long one as the following Monday was El Día la Raza, or Columbus Day depending on who you ask.  The actual holiday was spent eating Chinese food at Marcela's where the news was officially broken that my nineteen year old cousin, Vale, was pregnant with Sebastian's child.  Mena had already clued me in to this truth after having to explain to me why my host mom had spent the better part of one afternoon in tears.  Marcela, Vale's mom, did not seem as upset.  Teen pregnancy is unfortunately a common situation in Chile and as such it isn't as taboo.  My own host mom Ximena, who is one of the most conservative women I've met in Chile, got pregnant herself with Carlos at seventeen.  In any event, I certainly wasn't surprised at the news.

A week passed with regular teaching days, which generally consist of me goofing off with the kids or showing them an American movie with English subtitles.  Things had begun to feel like they were speeding towards the finish, with October coming and going as quickly as a burrito supreme from Taco Bell through the bowels of...well, anyone.  Once Friday rolled around again, I arrived at school in the morning to discover that is was Día del Profe (Teacher Day) and that there would only be one hour of classes and then all the teacher's were going to the "camping" I previously mentioned to asado.  My host teacher Teresa and her extremely friendly (and short) husband Gonzalo came to pick me up in their car around lunch time and we arrived at the camping to find Oscar (the English teacher in charge of the debate team) already grilling an insane amount of steaks, chicken, and pork ribs.  As was the case with Carlos, Oscar proved a deft hand at the parrilla and the meal was by far one of the most flavorful I've had in Calama.

Come the last week in October, I had more or less checked out mentally (maybe from meat-shock.)  The seven months had worn me down and a real, powerful longing to leave for home, or anywhere else, began to take shape in mí  alma.  Before November would finally arrive, on the heels of another long weekend thanks to Día de Todos Los Santos, Ryan and I would have two more asados.  Another at my house where we handmade hamburgers and grilled up chicken wings (a hit, of course) and then the last when a group of us once again went camping in San Pedro--a weekend that I will recount at length in the next chapter.