Holiday Home

Today is a holiday here in Chile and therefore I have some time to do my laundry, wrap my Christmas presents and write a blog to update you all on my life. Today is El Dia de la Virgen, December 8th and its a very big deal here. Now I have told you all about how I live on a hill called Alto Concepcion, which is consequently right next to another hill called Cerro de la Virgen because there is a big statue of the Virgin Mary atop this hill. On this holy day all good Catholics walk up the Cerro de la Virgen to say hello to La Virgen and then they walk down Alto Concepcion. Maybe if I get my other things done I will go visit the Virgen myself, she was a pretty cool lady after all, or so I hear. Today there a steady flow of strangers walking by my house, which is very unusual because normally only residents and visitors walk by my house. So I figure since all the good Catholics of Concepcion are seeing my house today, I figure why not show the rest of you where I live.

Alto Concepcion is a very nice area of Concepcion that I have the fortune to also live in. I have my little space in a nice little house here in Alto Concepcion. Now I say little because I am from the states where we have gargantuan homes, but really by Chilean standards I live in a very comfortable even big house. This first image is of my room, which is wonderfully equipped with a desk, shelves and a nice standing closet with drawers and shelves and all that good stuff. Really the great part of my room is my internet, especially when my computer is working. The rest of the house is very nice also with a big open living area. When you walk into the house you are looking directly at my room and to the right is the big living area. Now this is very nice for when I get home at 5am after a night of dancing, but at 7am when Ian and Claudia are playing a screaming and laughing, being right next to the living area is not so awesome, but this is the price I pay for having playmates when I do decide to come to life. Everyone else lives upstairs, so they have their space. Really my favorite part of the house is the backyard, I love being able to eat breakfast and sometimes lunch in the sun and although I miss having a dryer to shrink my clothes back to normal size, having your laundry dry in the sun is nice.


There are 2 big pieces of news in my life these days:
1- I have a fantastic new boyfriend named Cristian who is making my world smile recently. He is a mechanical engineer from Concepcion who is wicked smart and really funny and thinks that the world revolves around me which is really nice. He is a bit older than me but I think that might put us at the same level of maturity, maybe he's even more mature than me. He speaks really good English although we try to split it with half Spanish and half English so that we can both improve our communication skills. He has actually taught me a lot about emotional communication, these latin men just lay out their emotions with almost no hesitation and while it was a bit overwhelming at first I have come to really appreciate it, it removes the whole guessing game which just makes everything so much nicer. He is amazing and I am sure you will be hearing lots more about him since my world pretty much revolves around him these days.
2- There is a new baby in my house, Sebastian. Pamela (my host mother) gave birth a little over 2 weeks ago and Sebastian is little and precious and maybe a little weird. I think its more that babies this little are weird, they are just so new to world, we clearly have some adjusting to do. But Sebastian and I have bonded and I try to help out when I can, when he needs a hug and other people are occupied. I am not around much but when I am I love to hang out with him. The picture is of Cristian holding Sebastian and hanging out with Ian, my heart pretty much melts when I look at this picture.