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 […]

We had heightened expectations to participate in the family 5k in Lo Barnechea this weekend. However, as we often find in Santiago, we were foiled by our mistranslation of schedules, plans, and other logistics. Road closures delayed our arrival to the parking area for the race, and since we were late, we missed the busses […]

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 […]

Spring has sprung in Santiago. Though nights can still be cool, the hot sun of the southern hemisphere blasts the city during the day. The heat has warmed the pool water, and the kids have finally christened the swimming hole. The pool is open! La picina es abierto!

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 […]

Jane and Wilson are hooked on Minecraft, and we’ve equipped them with a paid version on an iPad and old iPhone we call the game phone. They’ve become quite good at the game, either building creative landscapes, surviving mobs, or embarking on quests. They can play at the same time, interacting with each other in […]

Chile has its own time zone (CLT) and version of daylight savings time. When we arrived, our time was the same as Eastern Standard Time (EST), where cities like Raleigh, New York City, Atlanta, and Miami are located. This was convenient for our remote work and schooling, both of which aligned to EST time. Now, […]

I was fortunate to have three sisters and a brother, and I’m in the middle of the five siblings. Two younger ones close in age and two older ones a decade more senior. There was often a play companion in the younger siblings or a caretaker in the older ones, and the large number made […]

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 […]