In the system

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Life tends to be a series of small decisions, like where to eat, what to wear, whether or not I should I should click on “yes” when Netflix asks me “are you still there?” (yes I am, and thanks Netflix for making me feel like a lazy piece of s***).

And a small decision that paid off big this morning that we made, and by “we“ I mean “Steph”, was to not drive and set up transportation to take us down to the immigration office today to register with the authorities (part 1) and then to the registrar’s office to get our RUT (part 2, and a separate cab ride from part 1), which is essentially a SIN and gets your life going here. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we would have been driving around Santiago rush hour traffic this morning at 8 with Maelle and Zoe, trying to government offices, and parking, and then getting in a massive line-up with everyone else who was trying to do the same (divorce maybe?).

Anyway, it all ended up going relatively smoothly and was about a 5 hour affair all in all, and now that means we are in the system. A special thanks should go to Marco, who was from Teck’s destination services company in Chile who helped us through the ordeal, zooming around on his motorbike ahead of us to get in lines etc. I’m sure this would have taken a whole day or more to get done without the guidance.

So that means we now both have a RUT, which allows us to get a bank account, register for utilities, buy stuff from Banana Republic online in Chile (weird hey?) and a host of other things. So it’s a second step in our lives here, I suppose the first was actually getting here. As for the girls today, they did well. Besides an angry and tired Maelle by the end of the registration process and the occassional comment from Zoe (“this is taking soooo long” and “Daddy I don’t want to go to another government building”), they got through it...I think Zoe even had a little crush on Marco and his mortorcycle, or Marco Polo as she kept calling him.

A few sidebars

Starting to get quite a few experiences with awkward Spanish conversations with locals, although you can’t really call them conversations when I stare back blankly. There was certainly not a lot of sympathy from the lady at the registration building today when I couldn’t answer back, or figure out what she wanted me to do (look I get it you deal with idiots like me all day, but you know, a little patience or speaking clearly might help). My other favourite one was the security guy at the park yesterday telling me not to ride on the swings (ooohhh right, just for las niñas - excuse me). My early estimate that my Spanish is about 5-10 percent is probably pretty accurate...

...oh and the large, bearded van driver that drove us around this morning suprised me when his phone rang and his ring tone was none other than Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa...alright then...

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Photos

Hooray!
Maelle can’t contain her excitment about our new RUTs