Tuesday, February 17, 2009



I am recently back from my last trip to Chile before the move! We accomplished several things and had a few surprises as well. The main "surprise" (quotes because I could see this one coming) is that there is no chance the house will be ready by the time we move. Things. move. so. slowly. there. I have to get used to this. I am pretty laid back, but that's laid back for an American, which makes me fairly uptight everywhere else, apparently. I think I have a perfectly reasonable expectation that if you tell me that something will be done on a certain date, you mean that it will be done on a certain date, but that does not fly in Chile. So the house will not be done in September. The good side of this is that now that we know it won't be, we can take our time in making sure the design is exactly right and we can observe the construction itself, which we are told is imperative to making sure the quality is what we expect.

The house was the main topic of discussion on the trip overall. We met with the gentlemen designing it several times, and moreover Michele, Johannes, Nick and I spent many an evening poring over the drawings and imagining every possible scenario for the future of this house. What I mean by this is that we're not sure how it will be used past the immediate future. Nick and I will be living there full-time for a while, but then we anticipate being able to live in the US again at least for some of the time. That leaves the house available for use by other family members, so their needs must be taken into consideration. On top of that, although Michele & Johannes and Nick & I are childless couples as of the moment, those things have a tendency to change and change rapidly. So we have to plan to accommodate families in that house as well. This all led to much discussion over the form and function of the future abode and in the end we determined that flexibility in the design is key. The final product isn't available yet, but when it is, I will share.

So in regards to the living situation, we did find an apartment! I use the term find rather loosely because it's a family owned unit, but we did view it and found it delightful. It is in the El Golf neighborhood of Las Condes which is more or less part of Santiago. I'm excited because it is right in the middle of the city with quick access to the subway and has lots of stores and restaurants around it. The view is incredible as well--something I am not used to here :) The photo at the top is one I took from the living room balcony. I am excited to see how the cats are with having an outdoor spot open to them. We can screen in one of the balconies so they can go on it whenever they please. I suspect Mister will be all about it and Shady will be happy with her comfortable indoor existence :)

The trip was productive in those respects, although I did not do a lot of vacationing on my vacation. We spent a couple of days at the farm doing sheep things, but I was horribly jet lagged and slept a lot of it. I recovered from that just as we were going back to the city and getting involved with these projects. We did have a fantastic day at the home of family friends Jorge & Edith who also gave us some very helpful pointers about building the house, so I am very grateful that we got to speak with them. As usual, time went very quickly and I've been home now for over a week, but I think things will start picking up now! The wedding is about 4 months away and I have toooons to do, not to even begin mentioning all the work for moving! Stay tuned for more pictures, news, etc. Nick will be at the farm in April, our wedding is in June, lambing is in July and so on!