Fate worked in mysterious ways and last week, by some freak twist, it helped me to gain a new friend from Chile! Jessica Paola Benavides Arroyo (which means means "daughter of good") had replied to my email with a tentative 'Hi, how did you get my email?' and I replied 'Ciao, er, you're not Eka?' Apparently all this while, our emails have not reached my classmate Eka in our Italian class as the email address was wrong. So this poor girl in Chile was probably wondering what the hell was going on! In her own words, she admitted 'I was quite angry because my mail was always full of those messages but now I´m so happy.' Happy to know this 'ragazza' all the way from Singapore!
Jessica is 27, works at the bank as a cashier and lives with her 9 year-old son Benjamin, 20 year-old brother Victor, mum Ana and dad Hernan on a little Island Calbuco in southern Chile. She had studied at the British Institute of Culture in Santiago for two years so could speak very good English - which was a relief as my Spanish was limited to 'lo siente' (I'm sorry), la cuenta' (the bill), 'estupendo!' (wonderful!) and my favourite - 'donde estas la servicios?' (where is the toilet?).
Over the past few days, we exchanged info and pictures about our countries and she got me excited about the idea of backpcking in South America. There are three active volcanoes in southern Chile where she was staying - Calbuco, Villarica and Lonquimay - similar to the Aeolian islands off Sicily. Just over Saturday at Curanto, they had a cookout by stuffing a mixture of seafood and meats with hot rocks inside a hole in the ground. That reminded me of the time when we were young and my dad - ever the skilful fisherman - cooked the freshly-caught crabs by slathering them in red mud and left them to bake in a woodfire by the beach. To this day, we are still dining daily on his fresh catch! Anyway I think it was such a hoot that Jessica and I are email pals now - thousand of miles away from each other but linked by a mere mistake!
Fate worked in mysterious ways and last week, by some freak twist, it helped me to gain a new friend from Chile! Jessica Paola Benavides Arroyo (which means means "daughter of good") had replied to my email with a tentative 'Hi, how did you get my email?' and I replied 'Ciao, er, you're not Eka?' Apparently all this while, our emails have not reached my classmate Eka in our Italian class as the email address was wrong. So this poor girl in Chile was probably wondering what the hell was going on! In her own words, she admitted 'I was quite angry because my mail was always full of those messages but now I´m so happy.' Happy to know this 'ragazza' all the way from Singapore! 
Over the past few days, we exchanged info and pictures about our countries and she got me excited about the idea of backpcking in South America. There are three active volcanoes in southern Chile where she was staying - Calbuco, Villarica and Lonquimay - similar to the Aeolian islands off Sicily. Just over Saturday at Curanto, they had a cookout by stuffing a mixture of seafood and meats with hot rocks inside a hole in the ground. That reminded me of the time when we were young and my dad - ever the skilful fisherman - cooked the freshly-caught crabs by slathering them in red mud and left them to bake in a woodfire by the beach. To this day, we are still dining daily on his fresh catch! Anyway I think it was such a hoot that Jessica and I are email pals now - thousand of miles away from each other but linked by a mere mistake!
1 comment:
Hi! Hahahahahaha....fate does work in a very misterious way. Anyway, glad that something good come from it for you and her :P
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