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Published: March 29th 2019
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So, if you recall when you last joined us, our car was viciously attacked by some sheet metal on a Chilean highway. And so, since then we decided to jump headlong into the wild world of Chilean car insurance claims, and the car disappeared for about a month and after jumping through some hoops, actually many hoops, we got it back (not fixed of course)...and so hopefully someone got my reference to an 19 year old stoner comedy with Aston Kutcher and Stifler with the title of this blog. Ooof....although to be honest, is this at all worse than ICBC?
So what has happened since my last entry...every day I think about so many little things to write about, and just wish I had the time to do so...including our current insurance situation (when we bring this situation up, most people just shrug their shoulders and say that's how insurance goes around here). We had a great visit from my parents for two weeks at the end of February, including an amazing few days on the coast in a place called Cachagua where we rented a place where our backyard was the beach! (Fortunately no sheet metal incidents occurred on
Can you smell the Penguinos?
I hope not, because they smell terrible - sunset hot tub, with Isla de Penguinos in the distance the drive up) And who knew that you could see penguins only an hour and forty five minutes from Santiago! Where we stayed there was a little island nature reserve called "Isla de los Penguinos" so that was pretty cool...consequently, have you ever smelled Penguin sh*t?! Because it is literally face melting. And it's not like you needed to be close to the island for it to become an issue. I was downwind from this island reserve, in the water surfing, probably a good kilometre away, and I almost had to get out of the water. It was like a World War I mustard gas attack (Ze Germans). That aside, Cachagua and Zapallar, which is very close to Cachagua where our cabin was, are unbelievably beautiful. It was a great couple of days and I can't wait to get back.
I also got the chance to try my hand at BBQing on the Parilla, the Chilean BBQ. It's essentially a grill that feeds into a big chimney (see the photo), and you buy and light some charcoal and attempt to get that charcoal burning hot enough to cook. We had done this before, but this time I was the
Visit from Grammy and Grampy
Friday afternoon in the park, enjoying a 50 degree swing from Calgary main chef, and to be honest the other times I was not really paying attention to how to get the thing going. Despite my many doubters (my parents, my wife, my kids) as I went through the process getting the thing hot enough...better turn the oven on just in case, said my dad...I got 'er done and it was deeee-licous. It was my proudest Chileno moment.
Since then we have headed back into the upside down world that is our lives...and by upside down I mean that we are in opposite world in this Hemisphere as summer just ended and we are heading into fall, so when March hit Santiago went from quiet to extremely busy...including rush hour, which...is...just...insane...here (I'm sure that is a recurring theme in my posts, but man, it is crazy). The girls started the Chilean school year, with Zoe going into Pre-Kinder and Maelle...well, like in Canada, no real change, she's just keeping on keeping on. So the thing with Maelle right now is that when we got here she was not really speaking much, although now she is speaking a lot...which is adorable, and also because she's speaking Spanglish! She says things like "mas
Upside down school year
Zoe's first day of Pre-K agua" and "mis hands" and knows where to point when you say boca (mouth), pies (feet) and manos (hands)...so at least someone around here is learning Spanish! (actually Steph's is amazing, and mine is ok...I can get by. After six months I thought I'd be better, but to be honest I think we all may be a little overconfident about how much of another language we can speak, and how fast we can learn)
So that's where we are at right now...and I could go on, because there are so many little things about life here that are just different, and so many little things about our experience here that I could talk about. I want to write all about them (for instance, let's talk health care!). But as I'm already starting to run long, I'll save my ranting about those for later...ciao.
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