Everyone told us Chile didn’t celebrate Halloween or Expats said, “It’s nothing like it is in the States.” So our expectations for October were very low. But honestly, we had a solid few days of Halloween festivities. Wilson’s skateboard class had everyone come in costume. They played special games and brought lots of snacks to […]

When researching our move to Chile, I read many stories about how hard it was to get phone service here. Mark and I decided to sign up for our standard Verizon international service to start since good phone service was needed for work. It was expensive and even more so when we went over our […]

As mentioned we often list the things we think we’re going to miss about Santiago. This is a good way to focus on the positives and will also be fun to see if we’re correct in our assessments. Ciclorecriovia We’ve mentioned our love for this program before. It’s such a wonderful gift to a city […]

One of the first things we noticed when we arrived in Chile was that there were no mailboxes at the street, none on the gates of the houses, no big mailboxes on street corners. One rainy day some mail for someone else was deposited under our gate, on the stair, in the rain. “So that’s […]

Sometimes we list the things we think we’re going to miss about Santiago. At the top of that list for Mark and myself is Ciclorecriovia. On Sundays we get on our bikes to ride car free on the usually heavily trafficked roads into downtown Santiago for church. The way there is usually pretty relaxing as […]

Last night I was invited to an English book exchange by a lovely woman I met on our WhatsAPP “gringos chat”. My need for conversation outweighed my social anxiety, and I willed myself to drive to a strangers house to spend an evening at the woman’s house in the neighborhood of Lo Barnechea. It was […]

You know how when you send your kids off to school and you wish you could be a fly on the wall and witness their interactions? I feel like I’ve been given that gift this year. Getting to hear the kids participate in their virtual class discussions is so fun. I’m always so proud when […]

Our kids are kids, and they don’t always feel like going on hikes, or adventuring. They’d much rather be in a house, face-timing with friends, or playing Minecraft. Once we get going, and once they see what we’re doing is worthwhile and fun, they usually get into it. Usually. Sometimes at the end of a […]

When Wilson was 5, he asked Santa for a violin for Christmas. Santa came through and we signed him up for lessons. Neither Mark nor I have played the violin so we couldn’t really help him with it. The violin was 100% his thing. Lucky for us, he had a wonderful violin teacher in Raleigh. […]

Last time we traveled every single person we ran into told us, “Oh you’re so smart to travel now while the kids are young (2 and 4). You won’t be able to do this when they’re school aged.” We would just nod and thank them, knowing full well we planned to travel for a year […]