Aneya & Lauren: Smoking.

At California Bar on St. Patrick's Day. The place was filled to the brim and everyone was smoking. Our hair, clothes, everything reeked afterwards.

Lauren: There's definitely a haze over Santiago, some people think it's smog and as a runner I was a bit concerned about running through toxic air, but after nearly three months (!) in Chile we've realized that the haze we see is from all of the smokers.

Aneya: I wasn't sure what Chile's policies were on smoking, and I was just as surprised as Lauren to see people puffing away here. It reminds me of France, actually.

Lauren: I remember noticing that some of our pictures were a bit foggy. Maybe it was the camera? But now I can see it was all the smoke in the restaurants/cafes/bars everywhere really. People smoke indoors, at work, at lunch. Our Red Cross recruiter was smoking the first time I met her. It's like 1950s America. Everyone smokes. Parents smoke while pushing strollers, and appallingly very rarely people have said that some pregnant women will smoke!

Aneya: The whole thing is very European, and I'm used to seeing people smoking in the most appalling places (hospital waiting room, anyone?) Lauren was especially shocked to see parents smoking in front of their young children. Now that's a great example! But I'd seen that so often in France, all it does is encourage the kids later on to try it. Oooh, and do they ever. My high school in France had a "smoking section" and all you had to do was have a signed waiver from your parents saying you were allowed to smoke (which everyone forged, of course). That was the "cool" place to hang out, and I would sit there with my friends, breathing in all the second hand smoke, wondering what I was doing there.

Lauren: All cigarettes come with a warning on one side and a picture of an unhealthy baby accompanies any cigarette advertisement. And yet, you leave the house and people are puffing away like chimneys.

Aneya: The picture of the baby is pretty graphic, it's premature and there are tubes going up it's nose. Hard to look at. Apparently not for some people.

-- Aneya & Lauren