After choir practice on Saturday, we biked to a festival in Vitacura at Lo Matta cultural center. This is the same place where we attended the piano and strings concert. The festival included live music, crafts, games, food vendors, and a petting zoo. It was like a fall festival at home in October, but it’s […]

In Chile, we’ve been giving our kids more individual accountability and responsibility as gain confidence in the community and establish our lifestyle here. At first, we were hesitant to let the kids outside of the walls surrounding the courtyard of our home, but now they can buzz themselves in and out of the gate. We’ve […]

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 […]

This bookmark the kids picked up at the library has an Einstein quote in Spanish. Translated into English, it means “Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.” It struck me as strange that Chilean’s gain inspiration from an Einstein quote in Spanish, as I’m quite sure the man didn’t speak Spanish. It […]

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 […]

We made a last minute call to attend a concert tonight at a cultural center in the neighborhood. We had some expat friends attending, which motivated us to push ourselves to leave the house after dinner. This is not something we normally do. Once night falls, we tend to hole up, still sticking to our […]

English language books in Santiago are hard to obtain, especially new books. In book stores, the English language section is tiny, as Jane discovered in our first week in Chile. The used book market among expats is strong. We’ve bought boxes of books for the kids to enjoy. The Santiago Community Church, which we’ve been […]

The above picture is the view from one side of our house, and those mountains in the distance can be seen from all over Santiago. It seems that on every clear night, people are hiking the mountains. Right after sunset, when it’s dark, headlamps switch on at the summit. Until about 11pm, we see headlamps […]

We hiked last weekend on a cloudy day at Santuario de la Naturaleza el Arrayán. It’s a private park about fifteen minutes from our front door. It’s a bit on the pricey side of outdoor hiking activities, though it was enjoyable. Kid’s weren’t enthused for hiking in the cold, but we got some smiles here […]

Jane was having a bad day. She had lost the iPad due to bad behavior and was downright despondent about the boring conditions here. She refused to play Chile’s knockoff equivalent of Jenga, Torre De Madera. Who can resist a Jenga tower though? I set it up on the table and waited ten minutes until […]