This is the first year of social buddies at Nido. Without ours, we would be entirely lost. In addition to taking us shopping and sight seeing all over Santiago, she has also helped us by setting up our car insurance, obtaining a car transponder, transferring the internet into our name, paying outstanding utility bills on the house from the previous tenant, trouble shooting our lack of hot water, making home purchases, applying for a credit card, setting up our bank accounts, hiring a handyman for painting/home repair, lending us her “nanny” to deep clean the house, and watching our kids while we attend newbie orientation. We feel so lucky and simultaneously so guilty with each passing day. She and her husband, Joc, have opened their house to us and bought the kids little trinkets on each outing. Though most of these aforementioned challenges have not been checked off yet, we feel so lucky that Vicky continues to work on each one on our behalf. We are making a little progress as we are now driving in an insured car and have a bit of hot water; however, we cannot yet drive on any major road without a transponder, and it appears we have to light the pilot outside every time we want a bit of hot water.
Sightseeing has been a wonderful distraction from our daily challenges. We have already been to a colonial town in the city, called Santo Dominicos. We climbed Santa Lucia at the center of town to see the tomb of Mckenna and then had lunch in the bustling Mercado Central. We have been to the tallest building in South America, which is a shopping mall. We have eaten ice cream in the chic district of Sanhattan (a play on Manhattan) and dined in a Peruvian restaurant in Providencia.
There are many American products here from Lush hair products to Bobbi Brown skin products, but they are typically more expensive. We ate at a Hard Rock Cafe, a favorite of Joc’s, and our insurance is Liberty Seguros (Liberty Mutual). We went to Lider, which is clearly owned by Walmart (same emblem and painful store lighting), and there is a Little Caesar’s on the way home from our school. There are also many firsts. Max loves his pino (beef) empanadas, and I enjoyed our first Pisco Sours. I am going to have to learn to cook for real as food in the grocery store is very expensive. As we huddle around our space heater starting a 1000 piece puzzle and listening to downloaded podcasts on our little chrome books, we are living a life that is just a lot simpler. We are still celebrating little victories like buying the right sized light bulb for our reading lamps and finding The Wings of Fire series for Max in English at the school library. We learned today that one of the core values at Nido is happiness- nice.
Living in Chile 