What we've been up to lately...

We've been pretty busy since we got back from our summer trip in February. Our German friends Thomas and Kathryn, who we bumped into various times while we were traveling, came to stay with us in Vina for a few days, before heading north. We showed them around Vina and Valparaiso - here we are on one of the ascensores.




In March we went to Santiago to visit our friends Clayton and Petra, who had just moved there from Vina. Here is the beautiful couple celebrating at their engagement party. They're getting married in May.

A typical "asado" (roast or barbeque) at Clay and Petra's party



Although we were sad to see Clayton and Petra move, on a positive note, we got their awesome apartment! Here's Jo in the living room- see the balcony?


Here's a view from the balcony before the week of forest fires...



...and here's the same view during the forest fires. The city was enclosed in a thick cloud of smoke for a week, the sun was a distant red blob and it rained ashes for days...


Here's our full sized kitchen! (for Chile it is huge!)


The "dining room"

In February we also celebrated our friend Daniel's birthday. Here's Jo and Claudia making pulpitos (little octupi) - you cut up hot dogs and slice the ends open so that when you boil them in water they open up like little tentacles. Do they taste better? I don't know, I don't eat pig...but they sure look cool!


Here's Jack, Daniel, Patrick and Paolo at Daniel's birthday party.

Here's a group of gringo friends in the elevator at our moving in party at the new apartment


Jack has been DJing a lot since we've been back. Here we are with our friend Margaret.



My colleague, Laura, a fellow English teacher, celebrated her birthday - she invited some colleagues over for food and drinks and cake.


School has been a little chaotic for Jo. Every week her schedule has been changed and the last few weeks the students have been on strike due to, among other things, rising bus prices. Many days she has shown up for school only to discover that the students have taken the day off! The nice thing is that she is still doing her cooking classes, which she loves!, and she doesn't have classes on Mondays.