Bienvenidos a Chile!

Hello from Santiago, Chile!

We are making our entry into the blog world from South America. We arrived Jan. 1st to find most of the city, including the airport, shut down for the holiday. We walked for a long time trying to find food and a place to use internet/phone so we could let our family know we arrived safely. We finally found a little convenience store where we bought spaghetti sauce and pasta and made our phone call.

Thankfully, everything was back to normal the next day. We have spent the last two days exploring the city and getting used to the time zone (4 hours ahead of Salt Lake City, where we spent the last week before arriving here). Also, the weather is pretty hot. We have been in the high 80s-90, but nights are pretty cool (low 60s).

We have found restaurant food to be more expensive than expected, so we have decided to cook most of our meals at our condo (which is very small but nice & with a great view of the city and the Andes). Fruit and wine are both very cheap and very good. Cherries, both black and Ranier, are especially good and cost around U.S. 50 cents/lb.!!! We have already eaten about 1 kilo of each type in the first 3 days. The wine selection is awesome; we already had a bottle of Chilean Cabernet Savignon Reserve that costs ~$15 in the U.S. for ~$5 here (and it was very yummy).

Well, that's enough for now. We hope to update almost every day. Esma will probably be posting more than Clay because he starts his Spanish immersion program tomorrow. We love you all and hope winter in the U.S. is treating you well. ;)

c&e