Somewhere Among 7 Million Chileans

We’ve been in Chile for a week so far and we are really loving Santiago. It’s a very large, modern, progressive city with all the amenities you might want – bakeries on every corner, a handful of museums, parks, sidewalk cafes. We feel very safe and comfortable so far. It’s the latter part of summer here and the days are long and warm. The sunsets seem to occur in slow motion, lighting up the mountains that we watch from the rooftop of our building. The evenings are cool and sometime windy.

Our apartment in Santiago

This city is enormous so we’re just taking it day-by-day….first we found a friendly bank, then a grocery store that we like, then a currency exchange, then good restaurants, etc…taking a lot of photos as we go. Hotdogs are big here – not “big” as in “Everything’s bigger in Texas” but “big” as in they’re everywhere. One thing that we found strange is the lack of fresh coffee. The grocery store aisles are full of instant coffee but not-so-much on the fresh coffee. Chile has a couple mountains…so…what’s the deal? Maybe the wine grape industry out-weighs the coffee bean industry.

There are a number of volunteer opportunities for us here; it’s just a matter of picking the one that matches up best for everyone. We’re playing that aspect of this stop by ear at the moment.