Heyy!

We last wrote to you before Pesach (or Pesaj, as it's called here) from Santiago, so we think you're due a little update...

We love Aish Chile!! We spent the first few days of Pesach with them in a posh suburb of Santiago. Joel stayed in dorms on the Aish complex with 10 other guys, whilst Mel was hosted by an American Rabbi and his lovely family. We were thrown in at the deep end before Yomtov came in: we politely offered to help Mel's host mum and before we knew it, an electric whisk and recipe book were thrust into our hands. We ended up making a chocolate dessert and a carrot and pineapple 'Tsimmus Soufflé' (which got rave reviews at the Seder!).

First night Seder was an intimate affair (only 20 guests), whilst second night boasted a rather impressive 50 guests in one house. Both were English-speaking Seders (much to Joel's relief) and we found them so so welcoming and inclusive. When we finally reached the food-part of the Seder (11.30pm at Seder 1, 11pm at Seder 2), we were treated to a huge amount of kosher meat, as well as kosher for pesach chocolate brownies... mmm. We finally rolled in after the Seders at about 2am each morning!

It should be noted that Chilean Jews seem to rather enjoy their Kosher lePesach wine at the Seder - unlike the small kiddush cups that we use at home, we were expected to drink our 4 cups of wine from the world's BIGGEST wine glasses... and we were obliged to fill them to the top! (Needless to say, we switched to grapejuice fairly early on.)

After our wonderfully relaxing Yomtov and Shabbat, we returned to the centre of Santiago for a couple of days and did our last bits of sightseeing there... a huge mountain-top park, a cablecar ride with beautiful views, and the National Zoo. We survived on a diet of matzah, chocolate spread and tuna salads and, as we're sure you can imagine, we're pretty relieved to be allowed to eat bread again!

After more than 2 weeks in Chile, it was time to move on to Argentina... we set off on the supposed (!) 6hr journey on a nice, clean bus with comfy seats and good films on the TV. Except that the bus broke down after a couple of hours, before we'd even reached the Chilean border, so our rather gruff driver hailed down the next passing bus and shoved us and our bags onto it. And so, for the remaining 7 hours of the journey we found ourselves on a dirty, smelly bus with a torturous TV showing music videos of Latin American crooners of the 70s on repeat. We were NOT impressed.

We finally arrived in Mendoza and spent a sunny couple of days exploring the city's parks and plazas (we even fitted in a little sunbathing time!), before catching the 14 hour bus to Buenos Aires, where we arrived this morning. We can already feel that the city has a real buzz to it... we spent the morning exploring little antiques markets and visiting the Historical Museum in our neighbourhood.

In other news, Mel is VERY excited about taking a tango class this weekend, whilst Joel is VERY VERY excited about attending the Boca-River match on Sunday. Updates to follow!

We hope your Pesach was as fun as ours and we look forward to hearing from you!

All our love,

Melanie and Joel xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx