WE´RE STILL ALIVE!!!

As I was perusing other people´s blogs this morning while waiting for my mom to connect on messenger so we could talk, I thought ¨Wow, lots of people haven´t updated their blogs in a LONG time!¨ And then I looked at the date of my last blog entry... September... OOPS! So here I am to update what is going on in our lives.
First and probably most important, we moved back to Chile. We have been here since the 26th of December, and are still loving it! We are living with my in-laws for now, which means 7 people in about 500 square feet of living space, but it has been okay so far. We miss having a little bit more room for each, but I guess we will have to remedy that when we find our own house.
Other exciting news, I graduated! I didn´t walk or anything, so it was actually very anti-climactic, in fact, I didn´t find out that I had graduated until a month later when they finalized all of the paperwork and sent me an email that said that my diploma would be in the mail within a few weeks. My mom has since received my diploma, so congratulations to me! I was thinking that I should have walked or had a major party or something, but I was too busy packing a house to move! I don´t know if this happens to many people, but I kind of miss having classes- I feel like it could have been a waste of time! But hopefully not, I think that it was a good thing that I studied.
Gabriel has four words... Mama, Papá, Hola, y Chauuuu... It is so cute to hear him play with a phone and say hola y chao! And he got his first haircut a few weeks ago, he looked SO big! He has adapted well, must be because he isn´t quite two!
Daniel has been getting pretty good at his Spanish- when we got here he could say a few words, but now he has phrases and some whole sentences. He asked for me to only let him watch movies in Spanish, because he needs to practice... He loves playing outside with all of the neighborhood kids in the evenings, when it is not so hot! We have really missed the air conditioning of the US!
Alin is doing good-- she doesn´t have much to say in Spanish yet, but she just loves her grandma and grandpa! The other day she adopted a stray kitten that some dogs had scared into our fence- so now she has her baby, and it looks like he is going to stay!
We are busy looking for a school for our kids, I guess pre-kindergarten is now almost mandatory for the kids, so we are looking for one for Alin, and Daniel will be starting Kindergarten next month as well. Here it is not that everyone goes to the school where they live in that district, rather you pick what school you want your kids to go to and see if they have room for them- the private or semi-private schools cost, and we are trying to decide how important it is that they have private schooling at the kindergarten level... I don´t know anything about the schooling here, and it has been very interesting to try to find somewhere that I feel they will be safe- maybe it is the mom in me, but I don´t want my babies to be picked on or for them to feel bad for being different!
Let´s see, as far as updates go on everyone, Marcelo is doing well... He is trying to decide what he is going to do, because he really doesn´t want to work for someone else- he got so tired of people with no education telling him what to do when we lived in the States, and so he is working on starting a business here. Not sure what yet- we are looking at the possibility of expanding a restaurant that a friend of ours has, she has a little organic café and ice cream shop, we might add on a little fondue restaurant/family pub type something that would be open basically in the evenings... Or there is the possibility of him starting a furniture business, he really loves making furniture, and with the little bit of capital that we have he could probably have enough to make 15-20 big things like beds and tables, etc, and rent a place in the rich part of town to sell them... that way his income is not dependent on anyone but himself... And he has almost all of the tools that he would need, we just need to rewire a room or something to 110 volts, since here all of the electricity comes in at 220, and we are constantly moving transformers and voltage converters to different rooms. And it would be something that he is very good at- he is finishing a bunk bed for the kids today, and it has taken him 3 days to make it- everyone who sees it tells him he should open his own shop- But that depends on whether I find a job teaching English or something similar here, because that would at least give us the necessary income to live and rent a house for the time being, while not having to rely on what he made at first. So we are weighing our options and thinking and praying and hoping.....
I was thinking of things that I miss this morning, as Alin asked for a glass of milk, and grabbed the powdered milk. I miss real milk, not the shelf-stable-good-for-six-months type. I miss chocolate chips, electric ovens that have temperature controls that you can set-- baking in a gas oven is almost like baking over a campfire! I miss cheddar cheese, cream cheese, etc etc etc... I could go on for a while! But at the same time, I am grateful for the opportunity to be here and to let my in-laws enjoy their babies.
So, that is basically what we are doing now......... LOVE IT!