I had heard Christmas starts showing up in Chile as soon as their September Independence month ends. But this week when I went on a grocery run and was greeted by a stuffed elf that was a full story tall, I realized Christmas in Chile was on its way. Granted I’m sure Costco and Lowes […]

What started as a pile of 1.5 gallon water bottles that needed to be recycled, turned into “Carlos” our Halloween decoration. Originally, I had wanted to craft someone a robot costume or make the bottles into layers of ribbons for a skirt and head dress to resemble those from the Kari-Kari dancers we saw in […]

Since being in Chile, we’ve found a couple cool Chilean brands that we really love. There are loads of amazing Chilean outdoor brands here, much like Patagonia and North Face who have some of their roots in Chile. We just haven’t needed anything like that thus far, and since we’re going nomadic soon, we don’t […]

So as Jane and I were going for a walk yesterday, we noticed the maintenance people out in full force at the apartment complexes. Spring has sprung, and they were diligently getting flower beds ready, fertilizing the grass, sprinkling poison, and placing foot long black tubes around the perimeter of the apartment’s gate. We decided […]

There are so many dogs in Santiago. Everyone seems to have a dog that they leave inside their gate all day to bark at every single person that passes. There are also stray dogs roaming everywhere which seems to be very common in South America in general. When we were in Rapa Nui, there were […]

The kids are getting to have a real 1980’s “Stranger Things” experiences here in Santiago. Not in the form of battling evil creatures, having super powers, or living in parallel universes. Well, maybe in a way they are getting to live in a parallel universe. But here they’re constantly finding themselves at the mall! There […]

I’ve been trying to figure out the Chilean mail system since before we arrived in Santiago. I had heard that anything shipped from the US took at least two weeks to get here, and I wanted to test it out. I sent a letter to myself before we left the US, and it arrived in […]

We play this game while walking/roller blading/skate boarding and think of companies that would absolutely SLAY in Santiago. Here’s our running list so far: Chic-fil-a, Target, Trader Joes, Costco, Halloween, also any bagel. We’re convinced Chileans minds would be blown from one bite of an Everything Bagel. The list of things from Santiago that we’d […]

During those first quarantine months of COVID, Mark and I frequently commented on how much it felt like our Airstream adventure. We were all together, all the time. There wasn’t much time for personal interest or solitude. At times you feel like you might suffocate from too much family time. We all love our families […]

As I’ve mentioned, the produce at the grocery stores here is hit or miss. This baffled me because when preparing for our trip, I would say to the kids, “Look where these strawberries are from.” or “What does the sticker on those apples say?”. Chile. They were all grown in Chile. I’d daydream about the […]