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So, today marks six months since our arrival in Chile! Seems like a very long time. So much has happened. When we arrived, I didn’t have a job. Now we both have work that we enjoy a lot. We’ve battled with various forms of bureaucracy (and won on most counts: for example, Stu has a bank account, which is a pretty big accomplishment). We’ve made some lovely friends. Our Spanish is a lot better in that we’ve tuned into the Chilean accent and can understand 90% of what’s going on, even if we feel more than a little inarticulate most of the time. We’ve travelled a bit and can’t wait to travel more. We’ve discovered amazing new ingredients (and missed old ones). We’ve moved flats, twice, and accumulated stuff, like plants and pictures and washing machines, I guess as we were inevitably going to do. And, of course, there was the earthquake, as well.

Yet, although it seems like we’ve been in Chile a long time, and I feel at home here now, I can now see the absolute truth in what our Spanish teacher told us before we left: that it takes a full year to feel completely settled in a new country. At first I thought a year was a long time, but now I understand, especially when I look at other expats living here, and how their lives are so much more embedded. We’re still getting the hang of how some things work, particularly culturally. And working on our Spanish is really important. We just haven’t been able to get a good teacher here, and sometimes the motivation to do grammar exercises, or learn vocabulary is lacking because we’re both busy with work, which we do in an almost all-English environment.

Excuses, excuses, I know. And while we’re on that subject, I’d like to apologise for not writing on here very much. The last couple of months we spent a lot of time trying to sort out our housing problem, and the last thing I wanted was to winge online about damp and mould and sleeping on the floor. And I’m not really into blogging to accumulate hits and analyse stats: it’s more about keeping a record of our time here and keeping in touch. Albeit slowly and irregularly. And if anyone we don’t know in person happens to find interest here, then you’re welcome. I was thinking of showing the Internet the mouldiness of our former place as it was quite a spectacle, but instead, have a lovely Viña sunset, which sums up our time here so far in a much better way:

Much, much better! Nothing like a sunset stroll on the beach.

So, to summarise: we like it here. Chile can be hard work sometimes. Of course it is. I don’t think moving to another country is ever going to be easy. Stu’s been back in the UK and is bringing me back a lot of the things I miss: Green and Black’s, books, curry ingredients, an oven thermometer so I can tame the new oven, which only has three heat settings: big flame, medium flame and little flame. It’s a shame he can’t bring me family and friends, because I miss them so so much. But I know that equally, when we eventually leave Chile, it’ll be so so hard to say goodbye to people here, and there’ll be things like food that it’ll be hard to be without whereever we are next. So here’s to the next six months!

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