Though it didn’t make the news, the sprinkler scandal of Vitacura rocked out little world. Our home has a high wall around it. The wall creates an inner courtyard containing a patio, lawn, pool, and driveway. Outside the wall, there’s still property belonging to this home, and there are strips of grass, bushes and trees. […]

Santa Clause in Chile has the persona of Viejito Pascuero or Papa Noel. With November coming around, Santiago is beginning to burst with summer Christmas. At one of our nearby malls, Open Kennedy, the kids and I waited for Katie outside of a store while she finished some secret Christmas shopping. In the central area […]

I’ve mentioned in the past that one of my small joys in the evenings is to watch hikers descend the mountains over Santiago. Each night, at sunset, the headlamps illuminate the summit and begin filing down the mountain trails at dark. We joined up with another family to make the hike ourselves last weekend. We […]

We had been discussing a beach trip. When the kids had a recent Saturday off from choir, we decided to jump on the opportunity and make the hour and a half drive. Since we doubted we would be swimming in the Pacific, I wanted an activity involved so made our destination the Pablo Neruda House […]

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 […]

I’ve yet to develop beyond a basic understanding of commerce are made in Santiago. Of course cash and credit cards are accepted, but there are methods of payment and transaction here that I’m still coming to understand or downright avoid. I’ve not gone online to thoroughly research the mysteries in the Chilean payment systems. I […]

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 […]