Zoológico Nacional

We went to the Santiago Zoo yesterday. It was a pretty small zoo, but they let you get really close to the animals. Some animals you could actually touch through the fence.
Mr. Polar Bear relaxing in the hot sun.

Some people were feeding the monkeys peanuts. We tried to get a picture of them begging, but we kept missing it. The monkies would hold their hands out and motion with their head to throw food. This poor monkey is mad that the people stopped throwing peanuts.

A lion sleeping.

This tiger acted just like our cat. Her zoo keeper walked by and she croutched down like she was stalking him an then ran towards him like she was going to attack. He started petting her through the fence, and it turned out she was quite friendly.

The bears were pretty anxious. They couldn´t sit still.

We saw this walking home on the sidewalk.

We also saw this little theater hiden away on a side street.

Relaxing Christmas Week

We haven´t been up to much this week, other than enjoying the holidays in a warm climate. The most exciting thing we accomplished was buying some sheets and towels. Here are a few pictures we took on our walks this week. Hopefully we will be able to take some trips outside Santiago in the next month.This is a scary lion killing a lizard or alligator. Two of these felines are placed at every major intersection on the street called Los Leones (The Lions). His friend across the street is killing a snake.


While we were walking we stumbled upon the U.S. Embassy!! Although it was surrounded by bars and a wall it felt rather comforting.

I hate to say it, but it is good to see the American flag!


A tribute to Elvis. I don´t know how I feel about the red paint on his head.


We got brave enough to take the subway again to a different neighborhood. This time we went to the barrio called La Florida. I had read this neighborhood was supposed to be like our suburbs. Ummm...not quite, but it did remind us of Mexico...small houses, bars all around them, and trash every where. There was a big Wal-Mart like store though...that was exciting.

Here is a tree in La Florida. Kind of looks like Florida.

Sunnier times in Santiago

This week has turned out to be much better and safer. We really haven’t done that much, but we were able to post a couple of ads and hang a few flyers advertising our services. Hopefully we will hear from a few people, but I foresee them being more focused on Christmas right now and not learning English. We received my mom’s Christmas card today, so the mail system does work. It only took 11 days during the busiest season at the post office…I thought that was pretty fast. If anyone is interested in our address just shoot me an email and I will send it to you. It costs 90 cents to just send a letter though.

Here are a few random pictures we took this week:

A good ol´pizza and ham sandwich at the cafe close to our apartment.

Here is a statue in front of the Bella Artes museum I believe.

They really like using these packages: mustard, ketchep, mayo, shampoo...many things come in bags like this.

Me putting up fliers along the street. Note I am walking on the street and not being robbed...so it does happen. The streets are safer than what might have been portrayed in the last post.

They even think Bush is poisonious here!!

Nick thought this was unique...the apartment of the devil. The apartment below is the actual place.

With the Good comes the Bad

Things have been going so well here; they were bound to change, right?
12/14/07
Today was a very interesting day. It started out with our electricity going out because of that outlet I mentioned the other day. So the concierge attempted to fix it for about 2 hours, and then finally decided it would be best to call an electrician. We did get everything working, except the outlets in the kitchen. The electrician is coming tomorrow to hopefully fix the problem.

My plan for today was to walk downtown to see all the historical monuments. Pretty much every book I read about Chile before we moved down here said to be aware of thieves. The books talked about how they would cut the strap to your purse, or cut the bottom of it, or yank your necklace off your neck. I had taken many precautions to prevent this such as buying a slash proof purse and not wearing my wedding/engagement rings. On our way downtown we stopped at a store to buy water and the cashier told me to take my necklace off or somebody was going to tear it off. I fiddled with it for a second but couldn’t get the latch to open, so Nick and I agreed…nobody has tried to steal it thus far it is okay. As we continued on our journey we sat down on a bench to look at my little map, which made the perfect target. I wasn’t paying attention with my face looking down focusing on the map, and my necklace dangling just asking for trouble. I caught someone out of the corner of my eye walking rather close, but before I could think of what he might be doing he had his finger through my necklace and was tearing it off. I managed to say “That Bitch”. Once I said that Nick knew what the guy had done and started running after him. The guy soon found that Nick was faster than him and dropped the necklace thinking Nick would be satisfied and stop chasing him, but he was wrong. Nick stopped picked up the necklace and started chasing the guy again, so the jerk ran across the busiest street in Santiago. Luckily Nick did not follow him. So we were fortunate that nobody got hurt and we got the necklace back so that a**hole didn’t make any money off of us. We learned a lesson to follow people’s advice.
12/15/07
Well maybe we didn’t learn that lesson. Today was also an interesting day. The electrician came and said he had to come back tomorrow to replace all the wires that ran from the breaker box to the kitchen…at least that is what we think he saidJ
After he left we got ready to go to this flea market I have heard a lot about. A person is supposed to be able to get whatever they might want at this place. I noticed the streets were rather quiet and blamed it on the Saturday morning, but once we got to the subway it was a crazy madhouse. We rode the subway a few stops, transferred to another train, and while we were on that one Nick got a funny look on his face. Somebody had stolen his wallet right out of his front pocket. Sneaky bastards! All they ended up getting was our “BIP” card, which is to ride the subway and buses…it had $15 on it, his visa and bankcard, and his id’s. So it could have ended up a lot worse. He had all his money in a separate pocket. We continued to our destination, found a call center, and called my parents since I had made copies of all our cards for them. My dad was the only one home, and he didn’t know where that folder ended up, so we took the subway home, got my cards, and called to cancel them. The a**hole had already made 4 charges with the visa card. After this trying day we decided to indulge ourselves by going to the store and buying a bottle of pisco sour…the margarita here. Once we got home and sat down the building started to shake…it was a damn earthquake!! It was only a tremor, but it was the first time either of us had felt any kind of earthquake. What a day!!!

Hopefully the electrician comes tomorrow and fixes the outlets, and that will start us off on a better foot.

Here are some pictures I managed to take:

This is the San Franciso de Borja. It is church for the police I believe.

This is the Palacio de la Moneda...the White House of Chile. The president used to live there until all chaos broke out in 1973...my book says this image was on TV screens around the world then while it was being bombed.

Here are some eel for Uncle Bud´s get rich quick plan!! This is at the fish market at Mercado Central.

He might not be a looker, but he does have character.

Our first week

This is a statue of the virgin La Concepción on top of a huge hill...the foothills of the Andes. This was a picture taken half way up. I cut off the virgin in the picture I took from the very bottom because I couldn´t see her it was so high. It took us about 35-40 minutes to climb up the hill.

This is us up at the top of the hill with our friend we met at the hostel from Germany.

There she is...the virgin. You can kind of see the long line of people wanting inside her:)

This is the view of Santiago from the statue.

Another picture of the city. You can see the smog blocking the view of the mountains.

There is also two big pools on the same hill. We did not know you could just take a road from the statue to this pool, so we walked all the way down the hill and then almost all the way back up it. Once we got to the pool we found out it was $10 USD to get in...a little too expensive for us. It was really pretty and really big.

Nick found this humorous.

This is a picture of the street we live on. This is about one block up from our apartment. Unfortunately our place is on the corner of this street and a really busy street. Not so quiet and peaceful.

A view of the mountains and a dirty river from a park near our apartment.

This is our bedroom of our new place.

Our living/dining room.

And our kitchen. This is the biggest change for us. It is very small..the floor space is about 5´by 3´. It only has the two burners with no oven, and we only have a small refrigerator.

The electricity is quite scary in Santiago. They do not wire things up to U.S. standards. Last night Nick thought he heard a fly in the wall, but it turned out to be the outlet humming. Everything seems to give off a lot of heat as you can see in this picture. The lights are making the ceiling turn black. Do not worry...I do not plan to leave the lights on for an extended period of time.

Well that is our pictures for this posting. We are having trouble finding internet in our new neighborhood, so we might not be able to post quite so often until we get internet in our place. To answer some of your questions though...the weather is really nice here. It is about 90 during the day and 55 at night. It is very dry...so no humidity really. Santiago is 2 hours ahead of central time, so not a big difference. We have found a lot of people that can speak some English, so we are able to get around pretty well. The do celebrate Christmas here, just like we do. There are Christmas trees everywhere, and there are ads on the TV trying to sell things for Christmas. Well until next time have a great week.

We have an apartment!!!!!

Today has been a great day!! A woman from France is staying in the hostel with us, and she has helped us tremendously!!! She called several places in the newspaper for us, and even went with us today to see an apartment. We were able to set everything up so all we have to do is pay the rest of what is owed, and sign the lease. I was a little concerned when I seen the lady we are going to rent from because she is older, and looked very proper. She ended up being very very nice, and even offered to ask around at the agency she owns to see if anyone wants to learn English from us. The apartment is 40 square meters, so it is not huge, but it has a big bedroom, living room and dining room together, and a small kitchen and bathroom. The rent is CL$185.000 ($371 USD) plus expenses which is CL $30.000 ($60 USD). It was a little more than I wanted to spend, but the apartments seem to go very fast here. Plus the lady from France is leaving tomorrow, so who knows if we could have found somebody else to help us call. It is completely furnished, and in one of the best neighborhoods. We get to move in tomorrow, so that will be very nice to have our own space.

Before I came here I was warned that people are kind of rude, but so far we have found just the opposite. If I say Hola to anyone they seem to be the kindest people. Today some person bought a whole bunch of food and barbequed for the hostel. It was some of the best chicken and wild boar that I have ever tried. We have met people from Brazil, Germany, and France and they all seem super nice. Last night we all sat around and talked about differences in our countries, and everyone spoke English. I feel very fortunate since English is the language everyone seems to know...at least we could join the conversation.

We just went to a museum where they had clay pottery from around 100 A.D. that represented masturbation, oral sex, and anal sex. It was something to do with the positions representing male supremacy and going on the journey of death. It was very interesting. On the way back we were walking through a fairly busy part of the street, and a woman just pulled down her pants and urinated by a building on the sidewalk. That was very interesting too:)

I will try to post some pictures of this mountain/hill thing we climbed yesterday once we get a chance to go somewhere that has wi-fi. We hope everyone is doing well! Feel free to post comments if you have them so we know people are looking at this. Thank you Tyler and Jim:)

The first three days in Santiago

We are on the plane in Miami, ready for take off. We look rather tired from waiting in the airport 9 hours.

Bye-Bye Miami.

This is Argentina from the plane. It looks a lot like Kansas with all the fields.

We are flying over the Andes now.

This is the Plaza de Armas in front of our hostel, and that is their Coke-a-Cola Christmas Tree.

This is the view from our hostel as well. You can see the foothills of the Andes in the background.

Here is me in our hostel.

Osama trying to call someone?

This is a little side street in the centro that looks similar to a European village.

Another cute little European building.

This is how the horses look down here...muy fuerte!!

This is the plaza at night. The tree was not lit last night, because there was a live performance of the nutcracker right next to it.

As you can see by the pictures it seems to be a very nice city. I think as soon as we find an apartment I will make a blog just with all the statues they have all over the city...they love their statues!! We have discovered there are many many apartments in the newspaper, but it is hard to call the people when we don't know Spanish. I am learning how to ask for help though!! Hopefully we can find an apartment in the next few days so we can finally have our own space. I was warned about the food before coming here, but so far it seems to be really good. My new favorite is empanada de pino...not sure what pino is but it is like a beef stew in bread. It is good, and only costs 80 cents (USD). We explored the subway system yesterday, and it doesn't seem to be that complicated. The buses on the other hand will take some time to figure out. I have attempted to add a video of the music in the plaza, so we will see if it works.

Santiago

We made it to Santiago Chile!! So far it is really nice. The city is huge, but it clean and has really pretty buildings. Our hostel is pretty nice too, and it is right next to the square, so it is a really nice place to people watch. I will post some pictures as soon as I get my laptop connected to the internet.

New York City

Here is the pic of us at the Airport in Dallas heading to NYC.
Rockefeller Center

Snowing in the city.

Dinner with Carlo.