Fall in Santiago (or, Long Time No Blog)

Fall is finally here, and even though it still hasn't rained for more than 2 minutes since October, temperatures are starting to drop and the leaves are turning colors. Here's a picture from a hike we took a couple of days ago:


Claire has been coaching girls' basketball and I've been coaching futbolito (small-field, 6-on-6 soccer), so we've been pretty busy over the past month or so. Claire's team had the chance to participate in a tournament in Uruguay last weekend, where they got to play schools from Argentina, Bolivia, and the rest of South America and ended up finishing in 2nd place overall (behind Ecuador).

In mid-March I went with a few other teachers and about fifty students on an outdoor education trip in Chillan (about 600 km south of Santiago). The site was full of good hikes - here I am with my friend (and fellow math teacher) Jason:


Last weekend was my 30th birthday, and I got about the best gift possible from my friend Aaron when he came down and gave us a surprise visit. He was in Peru climbing Machu Picchu, and he took a detour from his trip to fly down to Santiago and spend the weekend. Super, super awesome, and it made my birthday. Here's a shot from a three-quarters-of-Beardog-rockout-session on our back porch (we missed you and needed you, Boj!):


Thanks for the visit, Arrow. We miss you!!

I did the Santiago half-marathon last weekend, and then another highlight came when our friend Laura (on spring break from LPHS) came into town for a visit. We had Thursday and Friday off of work for Easter (thank you, country of Catholics), and so we took off for Cajon de Maipo after work on Wednesday. After some pretty incredible hiking and a stop off at some thermal springs, we drove to Santa Cruz and the Colchagua valley (one of Chile's main regions for growing red-wine grapes).

Cajon de Maipo:




Claire representing LP at the thermal springs:


This is the time of year for grape harvesting, so we were pretty excited for some vineyard tours in Santa Cruz... but it was Good Friday and so EVERYTHING was shut down for day. All wasn't lost, however, and we spent the morning exploring the Santa Cruz Art and History Museum, which among other things had a pretty impressive collection of Easter Island artifacts and shrunken heads (Yep. Shrunken heads.).

We're in the process of getting our July break plans in order, and even though we only have three total weeks of vacation we're looking forward to getting back to the States and seeing as many people as we can. Until then, we hope everyone is doing well!

Finally - in honor of Easter, this installment of the Mullets of Chile is a photo we took of an actual painting in the Santa Cruz art museum where a chilean artist depicts Jesus confronting the lawyers as a child. El Mullet del Hijo de Dio speaks for itself: