11 March 2012
Well I finally got my Linksys to connect, so now I can be on the Internet too.

Well where to begin.... we thought we had a house to rent, but that fell through due to its really hard to get to your own money here. The banks here cannot help you unless you have an account, which you cannot get unless you have a residential visa. And the banks in the US think that something is up if you try to wire yourself money.

So it has been an up and down roller coaster, we have to move in two days and still look at houses. I am sure that GOD will have us find something.

Some of the things that we have learned about this adventure are:

1.      Don’t try to fly from the US with connecting flights, if that’s the case, land and clear customs and fly the next day, especially if you have dogs or kids. In our case the dogs are our kids now.

2.      Make sure that your ATM cards work and you can remember your pin number , seems “Walter” has forgotten his…

Some of the things we have learned about Chile so far

 Fire Fighters are called "Bomberos", they are volunteers. All the officers are democratically elected by the volunteers. The government does not finance specialization courses for firefighters. Instead, they have to pay for it on their own. 'Bomberos' is the name given for the firefighters in most Spanish speaking countries ('bomba' is the name of the water pumps).

Founded in 1851, Valparaíso's Fire Department is the oldest of the country. Following it are the Santiago Fire Department established in 1863 and Viña del Mar Fire Department in 1884. Now all cities have a Fire Department each of which has its own officers and companies.

I have been able to make cable in English with Spanish sub-titles on some stations; otherwise, we watch it in Spanish.

Hanna and Kobe are doing well; they seem to have adjusted to city life.  Kobe does seem to miss being the attention of people, Santiagos seem to always be somewhat in a hurry, although at times people do stop and pet them. The only real problem we have with Hanna and Kobe is keeping them clean, they always seem to get dirty.

Well try to up load more pictures

Adiós, hasta luego