Differences & Observations, Part I

We have been here for three weeks now!  Some of these differences and observations we have been making are cultural, and some just differences from our previous experience of living abroad in Spain (and without kids) compared to Chile (and with kids)...

Kids are such an amazing cultural bridge; they are the topic of many conversation starters, (mostly for good reasons, sometimes because they're just being a normal 2 year doing something he shouldn't) but either way, we are all humans and kids so far have been the easiest connection point for us to building relationships with those around us.

We are still asking around and trying to figure out what a typical schedule is for young kids here, but so far it seems like they sleep very little.... Haven't quite figured this out yet...  We must be missing something.

We have been here for almost three weeks and I've yet to visit the downtown city center area or any tourist sites (kid museums don't really count...).  Definitely a different style of 'travel' than I am used to!

I have only been outside after dark once, and it was barely dark as I was getting back from the grocery store, but enough to see that their street lights shine differently than at home, and nice and bright.

Living in a big city is always noisy, but you become far more aware of each and every noise when you live in one with kids.  A few prevalent examples:  There are a lot of dogs = a lot of dogs barking during hours when we/the kids are trying to sleep.  There are a lot of car alarms continually going off, figured this one out today while at a park near our house - a big truck drove by on a little street and the rumbling set it off.

I would say probably 90% of the dogs I see here are small and white.  Not just that they are small dogs, but that they are nearly all white ones of different breeds...

The architecture of many of the houses in our neighborhood is very pretty - many of them are older with a lot of charm, but I would describe them as a colonial style as well as houses that you might see in the English countryside, in neighborhood clusters surrounded by tall apartment buildings like ours.

Jimmy pointed out to me that this randomly placed palm tree is actually covering a cell tower.  Kinda takes away some of the charm, huh?  This house seems to me like it belongs in a book we read in a high school English class, like Wuthering Heights or something...

Several houses adjoined under one roof.  

Living on the 20th floor we don't get hardly any flies or bugs coming in. Very nice.

Getting change for the community laundry room is not easy here.  The machines only take two sizes of coins, and many of the nearby businesses don't keep a ton of change on hand and sometimes don't want to switch out all of our little coins for the ones the machines accept.

Everything here is expensive.  We knew it wouldn't be super cheap, but things seem to be much more expensive in reality than we imagined.

People are all very friendly and helpful, especially when I go places alone with Caleb and Landon during the day.  They will help us up and downstair cases, open doors, etc.  Caleb has been enjoying waving to the building concierge each time we come or go, and has started saying "Hola" to some of them, too.  He is getting more comfortable repeating some basic phrases with people lately.

More to come soon...