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Poets My aunt, who lives in Florida, came to visit us for her birthday. She brought us TONS of presents and treats. I got a watch and a few books. RJE got books and some clothes, which are much more expensive in Chile than in the U.S. We had a party on Saturday to celebrate my aunt's birthday. Eighteen people came and filled up our small living room. There was a lot of food and music and dancing. After a while, when the grown-ups had had a few drinks, they started acting like children! But even if they were children, they were not my type, and I wouldn't play with them. ------------- I just found out that Disney is making a new movie about a rat, and it feels like they stole the idea from RatSoap! The story is about a rat that lives in Paris, France, and wants to become a chef. I saw a preview of the movie, and it is very funny. It's called Rattatuille, and is coming out sometime in July. If you would like to see the preview, click here. ------------- As I said before, we have many projects in Language and Communication class. This time, the teacher asked us to write about three Chilean poets. What I understood was this: Write a paragraph about each poet on a sheet of paper and glue it on a poster board. What my friend understood was this: Write a few pages on each poet and put all the sheets in a folder. When I went to school with my project, no one had a poster board. But it turned out that all students had done it wrong. The teacher wasn't happy. What she really wanted was one paragraph about each poet---saying what WE found interesting about them. The poets were Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda and Miguel Arteche. Gabriela Mistral wrote poems about love, childhood, maternity and death, and won the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1945. Here is a nice one, in the original Spanish, and a translation:
If you want to read more about Gabriela Mistral, click here. Pablo Neruda also won the Nobel Prize of Literature, in 1971. Dad says that outside Chile Pablo Neruda is more famous than Gabriela Mistral, but his poems are harder to read. ------------- We are still trying new things to eat that are common in Chile and not in the U.S. One of them is alcachofas (artichokes), which we cook in a pot of boiling water and then put on a plate to cool off. To eat them, you take off the leaves, one by one, and dip them in some oil and vinegar with salt, then scrape off the meaty part with your teeth.
The other treat is humitas. I don't think there is a word for them in English. They are made with ground corn and basil that is placed inside the cornhusks, tied with a string, and cooked in boiling water.
Once cooked, you open the husks, put butter, salt or sugar on the steamy corn paste, and eat it. They are very good. There is something similar in Mexico that's called tamales, but I don't think they taste as good as humitas. Write back to the rats at The RatSoap™ Project is a work in progress, 2006-2007
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