Easy like Sunday morning

After the madness of last week, this weekend has been all about relaxing and spending time together. Yesterday we spent a couple hours walking dogs - have I mentioned that Rodolfo also walks dogs now? It's a decently-paying, flexible job that nicely complements tour guiding and handball coaching, and he loves that he gets to hang out in parks with dogs. Anyway, what with becoming a national handball champion last week he didn't quite have time to take the dogs out for all of their walks, so yesterday we spent two hours with two different clients. Lola gets to go along on these outings, so while Rodolfo and I hung out and kept an eye on the dogs, they were free to race around and play. It's a pretty sweet deal.

We made dinner together last night: Rachael Ray's take on thai curry. It's delicious and something that's pretty far from our usual culinary repertoire, so without spending a lot of money or slaving over a hot stove for hours, we felt like we were having a special meal. We finished up with funfetti cake thanks to a box mix I brought back from the US - not a bad Saturday night in.

After such a gringo end to yesterday, it was only fitting that we would have a Sunday that to me felt 100% Chilean. Usually on Sundays we head to my in-laws' for lunch, but they were out of town this weekend. Instead, we did what plenty of Santiaguinos do on a nice spring day: got out of town and headed to the campo. Even though we were only an hour away from home, the cows, horses and open spaces sure felt like countryside to me. A friend's family owns a parcela (lot of land in an undeveloped area), and someday they'll build a house on it and landscape it and make it into a nice weekend home. For now, however, it's just the hillside and the trees. Our friends camped there last night and called us to come out for the day, so we spent the afternoon sitting in the sun, enjoying the breeze, and soaking up some fresh air. Lola, of course, did none of that and instead raced around for 4 hours straight playing with pine cones and sticks and exploring all the new smells. She's sleeping now.

Once we got home, instead of having a big meal, we went for the typical Chilean once, which is really just a fancy way of saying "toast with things on it." Cheese, ham, avocado, if you can put it on toast, you can eat it at once. We stopped short of drinking tea, but otherwise the Sunday night spirit was there, since we usually eat a full dinner but not on Sundays since the in-laws are once people.

Now, it's 10:50, and in honor of my newfound dedication to what's important in life, I'm going to get ready for bed and yet another crazy week.