Seems familiar, until you look more closely.

Fish, meat and cheese are mostly recognizable.

No Oreos or Fig Newtons in the cookie aisle.

Many kinds of rice are available.

Chocolate is a tradition from Spain.

Some familiar products in the cereal section.

The produce aisle.

Tomatoes and avocados galore.

The check out area.

A Walk In The Woods

There were many interesting things to see in the forest. The trail was really well constructed.

A beautiful fall day in Huerquehue National Park and an afternoon hike to Los Lagos.

Conversation Spanish Level

I am up to conversation level spanish. my school is entierly in spanish and it is hard! i dont understand my teachers but that isnt that much diffrent then utah .... Just kidding.... i spent a week in a music school where i was with a lot of students that where from germany! they where quite nice and all spoke english really well. i have some friends at school but not as much as i did in Utah. i take a lot of spanish classes and that has contributed to my learning, and i have been drawing a lot. there are a lot of gringos here! (gringos=people from north america) and that dose not help with our spanish. i really hope that some people will come to visit me! hint hint.... you know where you can stay so thats half the battle! so if you ever need a place to say in the middle of chile you know where to find it....OMG(oh my god) daniel lundgren one of my best friends just called me and told me that he is on World of Warcraft! 

Stoking the Caldera

Chile imports all its petrochemicals and even though our casa has a modern furnace that runs on fuel oil, we have been encouraged by our landlord to use a sustainable energy supply for our central heating instead. That means stoking the caldera, or boiler, with firewood to warm the water that heats the radiators. Now we've learned to make a fire in the caldera and keep it going all day long. It is amazing the amount of wood required, but wood is plentiful and inexpensive, and temperatures have not yet fallen into the frigid range we expect this winter. Indeed, only the hours from medianoche through madrugada (midnight to 6am) are particularly chilly, and we have plenty of blankets, so we've been letting the fire burn down overnight. Come winter we will have to use the other boiler.
The only other concern is that there is no thermostat to shut down the flame when you use firewood and the whole system requires an electric pump to move the hot water around the house through the radiators. Should there be a power failure on a cold and stormy night when the wood is burning hot, por su seguros, for our safety, we've been warned to remove the burning logs from the caldera lest it overheat and explode!

Firewood for Winter

Days are getting shorter in the southern hemisphere as autumn advances and the leaves begin changing colors. A common sight on the roads these days are huge trucks loaded with logs destined to be chain sawed into short cylinders, split into manageable pieces, and delivered to homes throughout the country. We received our delivery just the other day, and now it has all been stacked up in our woodshed. The next step is to split these huge hunks of wood down to a size that will fit into our woodstoves. No one has ever heard of a hydraulic log splitter around here. Fortunately, our jardinero, Juan is assured of employment throughout the winter as he shifts his efforts from mowing lawns and weeding flowerbeds to providing the daily supply of stove fuel with his mighty axe.