The Beisser Blog: Auntie Julie's Visit

Well Auntie Julie had an interesting, somewhat stressful, somewhat fun week with us. The stressful part was mostly the driving. We get lost EVERYWHERE. We took her to the beach and got lost, of course. The beach house was nice, but the area was somewhat deserted so we left a day early and came back to Santiago. In Santiago, we also had tons of driving and/or parking headaches/adventures. It's turned out that this driving thing is the bane of our existance in Chile. If we stay in our little mountain area (Lo Barnechea), we're happy and life is good. When we try to venture out into the real "city", it's total chaos. Oh, and at the age of 42 I've somehow developed a fear of heights, so driving these hairpin mountain curves in this city is a nightmare for me these days.

On the positive side, we had many social invitations this past week, so Julie got to come with us to a lot of places. In fact, we had dinner with friends on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights! It was a bit much, but since we're new here, we hated to turn down any invitations. We've learned that the dinners tend to start around 8:30pm (which is somewhat early for them for dinner, but late for us...so that seems to be the time people suggest). And then they end between 11 and 1. Late...but fun. The girls have come with us to most (but not all) of the dinners. We had our friend, Rodrigo's daughter, Anastasia (the girls love that name since that is Cinderella's stepsister's name!) babysit the girls one night. We've been collecting the names of other possible babysitters to use since it's not great bringing the girls out with us at night. No one brings their kids to anything at night since they all have nannies living at home. And very few teenage kids babysit since there's typically no demand with all the nannies. But we had some nice meals with some great Chileans (and saw some amazing homes too!). The people are so incredibly nice here.

And anyone who knows my sister, Julie, knows that she loves jewelry. Paula told us about a couple friends who have a jewelry/bead business and suggested we call them. So the "bead ladies" showed up at our house on Thursday morning to show us their stuff. Very nice, actually, and quite inexpensive. We bought some necklaces and earrings. They are making a little girl necklace for Ava.

Now it's me alone with the girls for a little over a week. Went to Chuck E Cheese yesterday with Italo's wife, Marcela (I had never been to Chuck E Cheese in the States!). And today we had lunch with Sonia and Mario and their kids (after turning down two other lunch invitations!). Everyone knows that I'm here alone with the kids so I think they are trying to keep me entertained!

Below are a few random photos. Here's a link to more photos that I posted on Facebook (faster to upload to Facebook than to Blogger):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=175692&id=572669870&l=31318ad5a0

Dinner with Paula and Rodrigo at new Peruvian restaurant