No Peanut Butter, No Problem

Chile is a beautiful country!  It has 2,700 miles of coast land and is 109 miles wide.  The Pacific Ocean borders Chile on the west and the Andes mountain range on the aast.  It has some extreme climate zones, including the driest desert in the world (Atacama) and a rainy climate in the Patagonian region/south.  Greg took these pictures out the airport window as we were landing, and here is the view from our apartment.

Santiago is the capital city of Chile, which is where we are living.  To us it feels a lot like Denver, with a population of about 3 million people.  They list the total metro population as 7 million people, but that must include outlying cities – like in Denver there is Boulder, etc.  It is winter in Santiago, and to the Chileans it feels very cold, and most of them walk around wearing winter coats and hats.  To us, it feels quite nice – around 60 degrees Fahrenheit during the day on average.  It’s sunny today, so that helps.  This is their rainy season, and on average they get 2.8 inches of rain in June and 3.8 inches in July.  We brought rain gear and are wearing water proof shoes for those days it does rain.

One of the big questions we had about being in Chile was how the boys would handle not having peanut butter.  From what we have heard, and from what I have seen traveling, there is very little peanut butter in Latin America.  We did find some peanut butter last night at the grocery store around the corner, but it was very small and very expensive.  Today Greg and the boys went for another grocery store run while I worked, and they found a substitute.  It’s called maujar, and it’s kind of like jelly but instead of having fruit in it it’s like caramel.  The boys said, “We love it, even more than peanut butter!”  Well that’s an answer to prayer!  Here’s a picture of Noah eating it.

 Life has been a lot easier today than it was yesterday.  For one thing, it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep does.  None of us slept much on the red eye between Toronto and Santiago, so we were quite tired yesterday.  Last night starting at about 9:00 p.m. everything quieted down outside – the buses weren’t running as much, the car alarms stopped going off and horns stopped honking. The apartment building is also very quiet.  You don’t even really hear people coming and going.  The boys slept from about 8:00 p.m. to almost 9:00 a.m. this morning, and I got a good 11 hours of sleep.  So we’re all feeling really good today.

This afternoon we are going to go check out the metro, which is their mass transportation (subway, buses, trains).  We meet with Daniel (the director of the girls' homes, Casa Esperanza and Hogar) tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 p.m., so we want to figure out how to get there before we actually have to get there.  They have a transit card you can get and then not have to have the right change every time you get on a train or bus.  Should be neat.

We're so grateful to be here.  We have been praying about being in Chile for a long time, and here we are - in Chile!  Here are more pictures of our travel to Santiago and the apartment we're staying in.

Thanks for reading, it helps keep us company and feel less alone.  Hope all is well with you.