House Hunters Update – Our New Home!

Happy first day of Daylight Savings to our friends back in the States.  We are now officially one hour closer to you every day.  I have to say, despite the huge distance between Cincinnati and Santiago, being on nearly the same time zone makes communication so much easier.  But I digress…

On to the update! Its hard to believe that we’ve been living here in Santiago for over a month.  It’s been awhile since my last post, and we’ve been busy!  I’m happy to report that we have officially moved into our new apartment!   For those of you who read my previous post about our house hunt, we went with….

House #2!

It was our first choice, and we couldn’t be happier with it so far.  Since we got married last year, we’ve constantly been in a state of flux, knowing that a move was coming, preparing for it, and then the long process of moving itself.   It feels great to finally settle into a place that we can make our own.  Here are a few pictures of the apartment so far (click through to see them all).  More to come as we get totally unpacked and organized.

Another big milestone of the last couple weeks was purchasing a car.  We had no idea what to expect from this process, and we definitely had to work for it, but we are now officially the proud owners of a 2011 Jeep Compass.  Given the close proximity of the mountains, we were really excited to get something with 4WD, and we really lucked out finding a used car from a private seller using a website called chileautos.cl.  A co-worker told me about the site, and we thought we’d give it a try.

I have to admit, we were a little skeptical.  We had no idea how the used car buying process worked here, and our Spanish still has quite a ways to go.  But lo and behold, the first car we inquired about happened to be an incredibly nice couple that spoke great English, and helped us through the entire purchase process (Which, by the way, took 5 hours and trips to 4 different offices around the city to get paperwork notarized, apply for a purchase contract and receive a device that tracks and charges us for our highway usage).

Now that we have the apartment and the car, we can really start to get back into the rhythms of day to day life.  After being in transit for almost 2 months, it’s the little things that you start to miss.  Being able to cook a good meal at home, go to the gym and just simply have your belongings organized can go a long way to making the rest of life run smoothly.

And, best of all, being settled gives us more time and energy to focus on exploring our new country and continent.  Head over to my post about our latest day trip to the nearby beach town of Zapallar to read more, and if you didn’t already check out our day hike a couple weeks ago.  We could really get used to spending our Saturdays this way.

More updates to come soon! For now I’ll leave you with this sunset I caught during a run through Parque Arauco.  Sending love back home to all!