September 2010
11 posts
more than words
Living in a society where you do not speak the language is difficult and frustrating. But I love it. Why? Because you appreciate so much more the grand kindness of strangers and new friends. Like the random person going out of his/her way to interpret a menu or to translate an instruction. Such things we do not take for granted.
Jonathan and I work with 3 other Chileans in a small room. We...
the sabbath year
When we decided to embark on this journey of taking 9.5 months leave from work to travel and experience the world, we didn’t always have a chance to fully explain what inspired us. I’ve been meaning to blog this but it has been hard to capture it concisely and so here is my best effort.
For many people in the Christian faith, the Sabbath is known as the day of rest. We are all called to work and...
WatchThis weekend Chile is celebrating their 200th anniversary with parties and activities all over the country for the next 4 days. Here is some footage from the celebrations we attended tonight.
Correction: Drink that Jon has is not made from beer. It is made with white wine, pisco sour (chilean sweet liquor), sugar, pineapple ice cream and aptly called “Terremoto” meaning...
minor adjustments
Though a lot of things in Santiago are very similar to Toronto, we still have plenty of adjusting to do. Greetings in Santiago are fairly standard; men will shake hands men, while women are greeted with a one-cheek kiss, regardless of the gender doing the greeting. The kiss is much more intimate than our western handshake, especially when meeting someone for the first time, but I think it...
going downhill
Over 5 years ago my parents went on a road trip to somewhere in the States. They did some outlet shopping and my mom bought me a pair of Gortex pants. It was an odd purchase as I didn’t ski nor snowboard, but my mom said they were too good of a deal. I put them away, thinking I would never put that good deal to use.
And finally today, I wore those pants for the first time, and they were...
an update
After a whirlwind adventure we were both looking forward to staying put for a while… in Santiago, Chile.
Our wonderful friend Scott connected us with a contact in Endeavor, a global nonprofit that transforms emerging countries by supporting High-Impact Entrepreneurs. One type of support is to match experienced business people with such companies to provide additional needed resources over a...
Hablas Espanol?
As we plan to spend about 3 months in Santiago, Chile, we thought some Spanish lessons would be helpful. Since we had some time on our hands, we decided to do 8 hours of classes with Carlos in San Francisco. He was a wonderful teacher; very patient and passionate about all things of Latin America. His teaching style was conversational, asking basic questions and having us answer, thereby...
