Home again, Home again...

After being gone for 11 days, I didn't know how I would feel about coming home.  Not just because coming back from vacation always leaves me a bit unbalanced - wanting to keep one foot in the fantasy life that is vacation and one foot wanting to step on the solid ground of routine again - but this time I had to throw in the fact that I didn't even know if it would feel like I was coming home. We have only been in Santiago for 5 months now, and I just wasn't sure if I would get that feeling of being HOME when I walked through my front door.  You know the feeling...the one that just surrounds you with the knowledge that these are your spaces, your things, your piece of the world that is just exactly as you left it and exactly as you want it.  That this was the place that you wanted to be more than any other.  Was it?  Was Santiago that place for me now, or would I walk in and still be waiting to feel that familiar rush of being home?  We haven't been here very long and I  didn't want to be disappointed if it wasn't so I kept telling myself that it was OK if I didn't feel that way.  That it would take time for me to really accept this new city and my new house, and really make it a home.  I gave myself a pep talk all the way home in the car...but I really didn't need to.  As  we started the climb to our house in the foothills, I felt the familiarity of the streets envelope me.  As we got closer to the house, I grew more and more excited to be there.  And when I walked through the front door, I was relaxed and the house just seemed to scream Welcome Home.  It was a pleasant surprise!

As for that vacation - it was wonderful.  I do wish it could start without the sleeplessness of an overnight flight that isn't really overnight since it lands in Miami at 3:45 am (that is over-half-night).  The girls slept for all of 2 hours and then were wide awake until we got to our hotel room at 6 am.  Then they went down for a 3 hour nap and were good as new.  Can't say the same for myself.  I am getting too old to live on less than 6 hours of sleep and 3 really doesn't even make a dent.  That is just a long nap.  I am very glad we decided to leave a day early so that we didn't have to walk off our flight and onto the boat.  I liked having 24 hours to decompress and catch up on some sleep so that when we hit the big boat, we would be ready to enjoy it, not pass out from exhaustion.  And I really liked that we got to spend some time with B's cousin and his girlfriend - and so did the girls apparently.  We had a 3 hour lunch and they sat like little ladies and never once complained...either they were over tired or enamored of our guests.

I won't bore you with details of each day on the cruise as each day was pretty much a repeat of the paradise of the day before.  Wake up and be served breakfast, put on swim suit, go to the beach, eat lunch, some more beach, nap, drop kids at kids club, B and I have dinner and adult time for a couple of hours, pick up kids, bed and start all over again.  The kids could not have behaved better, loved the beach more or been more fun to hang out with...and B and I see many more family vacations in our future.  I will end with a few  pictures...

MadHatter and her new best friends!

Much better place for my pedicure!

The MadHatter loved her water.

Stinkerbell was happiest splashing and jumping and walking...

A good time was had by all!

Holy Snowstorm Batman!

It really was a snowstorm.  Not just one of those smatterings of snow that get blown into snowstorm proportions by people who don't see snow very often, or ever.  I know snow.  I am very intimately involved with snow having lived with 6 month winters for well over 14 years of my life (OK, so 6 months may be an exaggeration, but when you are living them, they seem even longer). 

It started with a rainy day and a temperature that just couldn't keep itself north of 1 celcius.  I picked up a girlfriend on my way to drop the MadHatter off at school and we both commented on how the weather felt just like it did before an Illinois winter storm.  Lo and behold, about an hour later - it was sleeting.  That wonderful snow/rain mixture that just makes you want to stay at home in bed until it all goes away.  And by goes away, I mean melts and not even the residual runoff water is visible.  Luckily, the sleet only lasted about 20 minutes and gave way to some of the biggest, wettest, fluffiest snowflakes I have ever seen in my life!

 It was gorgeous (if you could just get past the fact that it was August and snowing) and the girls, the dog and I had a blast playing outside in it.

It lasted for 4 1/2 hours.  Long enough to coat everything in about an inch of pure whiteness.  Long enough for me to get a taste, and remember that I don't want to be in the middle of winter right now.  My body is telling me that I should be in the Northern Hemisphere soaking up sun in August.  It just isn't built for two winters in a row without a summer thrown in.  So today I am off to the Caribbean for a vacation with the family.  Great timing, if I do say so myself.  See you guys in two weeks!!!

Death of un Cartero...

Something has been bothering me the entire time I have been here in Santiago (about four months now).  Actually, more than one thing has been on my mind, but this one pops into my head every time I drive over the mail that has been delivered that day.  You see, I don't have a mailbox.  And I have no zip code.  My address is similar to the one I had in the US, as there is a street and a number, but they are in opposite order.  My city is Santiago but that isn't really the important part.  The part that gets my mail here is my barrio - or rather the exact neighborhood of the metropolitan city that is Santiago that I live in.  It just seems so...different.  Not that this surprises me.  Everything in Chile is different, even if it is the same.  So, how does my mail arrive and  who delivers it?  Every once in awhile I catch someone throwing mail through my front gate, and it is always someone new.  A guy on a moped that has a box strapped to the back.  Or some regular Joe that has his i-Pod attached to his ears carrying a stack of bills.  Do they not have mail carriers?  Is there even a post office here in Chile?  And how come there is never any postage on any of the mail I receive?  Yes, these are the things that keep my mind busy...

So I asked my professora in class the other day - Is there un cartero in Chile (a postman)?  And the answer is yes and no.  There is a post office but it is for letters only (perhaps the random package too) but it isn't used much.  It seems to have gone the way of the Bee Gees, hip in its day and now just nostalgic.  The reason I keep seeing different people on mopeds throwing mail through my front gate is that most businesses have hired private delivery services to deliver their bills/notices/advertisements.  (This explains why there is never any postage on my mail!)  It has just become more cost effective for the gas/electric/credit card company to print out their billing statements,  hire a handful of couriers and send them on their way.  They can pay a courier $25 US for a days work (and don't hold me to that number, I made it up but I am guessing it is pretty accurate, if not high), and get 100 bills delivered, if not more.  No postage, no waiting.  The bills go out that day and are delivered the same day (which is a plus around here because you will get your gas bill on Tuesday and it is due on Friday).  And it is probably about half of what it would cost to send them by mail.  Pretty smart if you ask me.  Now if I could just get them to stop throwing it on my driveway, in the rain, right where I will drive over it without seeing it until I have already pulled in, so that it is a wet, soggy mess and I need to spend the next day drying it out before I can open it...

So, if you don't get mail from me for the next couple of years, you now know why.  I don't know where the post office is, or even if one exists here.  Do they even make stamps (I have not seen one, and I have gotten plenty of mail)?  And if I do somehow figure out how to mail it to you, it will still take 4-6 weeks to get it at your home.  I will be spending a lot of time on email and facebook keeping in touch.

Eavesdropping

I am in my office this morning, in my own little world, trying to concentrate on the paperwork I am working on completing, when Stinkerbell's voice breaks into my consciousness.  I stop what I am doing and listen for a minute.  Nani and Stinkerbell are working together to make the bed in my room next door.  They always keep up a chatter when they work together.  You really have no choice but to chatter when there is a 2 year old around.  You either talk to her or hear the same sentence over and over (and over) until you finally give in and talk to her...  So, I stop typing for a minute to really listen to what they are saying, and I realize that Nani is teaching Stinkerbell her vowels in Spanish.  Nani says "ah" and I hear a pipsqueak "ah" in return, "eh" and "eh" is echoed back a heartbeat later...and so on.  I smile and that smile is for many reasons.  First, I know that my daughter is safe and loved and happy and that always makes any mother smile.  And I smile because hearing her chipmunk voice always makes me smile.  But it makes my smile even wider when I realize that she is learning a new language in that voice, from a native speaker and doing it in a way that is so natural that she will never remember how much work it really was. Most of all though, I smile because it takes me back to my childhood and how I spent my days the same way she is right now.  Working alongside my Nani, loving every minute of it and learning a second language without even trying.

Learning spanish was one of the reasons that B and I decided to become expats.  Not the only one, but it did rank pretty far up the list, probably higher up the list than most families would put it.  Our reasoning is this: B's family is from South America, so more than half of the girls' extended family speaks Spanish as a first, and sometimes only, language.  We just couldn't pass up the opportunity to have them become fluent at such young ages (trust me, it gets a lot harder when you are in your 30's).  We are adamant that both girls will leave here years from now thinking they were born speaking both languages   We already have a head start.  B has always spoken to the girls in Spanish exclusively while I speak to them in English.  They understand everything said to them in either language, though they have always only spoken in English.  Now, we just need to get them speaking Spanish.  With that in mind, we knew we wanted to put MadHatter in a Spanish speaking pre-school since she would be forced to understand AND speak.  Hmmmm, it was a good thought but try finding a pre-school in Santiago that isn't English immersion!  It makes sense.  Everyone here wants their kids to be bilingual too...We just have opposite language needs.

We did end up finding a great place for MadHatter.  Mostly Spanish speaking with some English lessons during the day.  We are still in a bit of a quandary about what to do when she hits Kindergarten a year from now (or 2 depending on if we use U.S. based schools or Chilean as their years start exactly 6 months apart and have different age cutoffs). I have a couple of months to make the final choice but it is daunting.  You want the best for your children, but what is the best?  Would it be better for her to become fluent first and then go to the best school for academics, or is it better to sacrifice fluency for better academics?   I'll keep you posted on our decision.

As for Stinkerbell, I don't think fluency will be a problem.  I was exactly the same age as she is when I moved to Central America, and I learned both languages concurrently.  I was fluent in both well before I started school, thanks in a large part to my Nana.  And my mom, who let me spend a lot of time with her so I could pick up the language naturally.  (I surely wasn't going to pick it up from my mom - just as Stinkerbell won't be able to learn from me).  I don't worry about her becoming fluent, as much as I worry about her not keeping it up.  I am proof positive that if you don't keep up with it, you will forget it (and no, it is not somewhere in the back of my mind, hiding, just waiting for me to tap into it...it is GONE).  And having to start over is no fun...because it is time consuming, and it is frustrating that you already did this once, and you end up with a Spanglish Accent.