Greetings from Santiago Chile

After months and months of preparation and procrastination I am finally living in Santiago Chile with my wonderful husband Pete. I arrived safe and sound yesterday morning around 8:00 a.m. Santiago time (5:00 a.m. Arizona time) and ignoring the fact that I should have arrived 24 hours sooner things went extremely well. Let me back up a little and explain the 24 hour delay.

Monday morning started off normal with my usual work schedule of 1:1’s, team calibrations and finalizing a few last minute details to prepare for a day without access to the internet. Around Noon I shut down my computer and packed up the wireless system along with checking my luggage to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten anything. Mike (my amazing brother in law) was scheduled to pick me up around 1:15 to drive me to the airport before he snuck in a few hours at the office. My flight was scheduled to leave Phoenix at 3:30, arrive in Dallas around 8:00 (losing two hours due to the time zone difference) catching the final leg to Santiago at 9:30 and arrive Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m.. Well you can guess my surprise when Mike dropped me off at the curb, I walked up to the check in counter with two suitcases and a carry on bag to hear the dreaded words from the lady behind the counter “I am sorry but it looks like the flight to Santiago was cancelled.” As soon as those words came out of her mouth I had to resist the urge to sit down in the middle of the airport lobby and throw an honest to goodness tantrum. I mean after all, I was ready to go. I had procrastinating by telling Pete that I needed a few more weeks to get set up with my new position and now that I was finally ready to go they were going to deny me my flight out of the country. Yes that’s pretty much what they did. Hence the reason I arrived at my final destination 24 hours late.

Santiago is beautiful and Pete found the most perfect place to live. We are on the third floor of a beautiful complex. We have a three bedroom, five bathrooms flat that has fabulous floor to ceiling windows in almost every room with views of the city and the spectacular Andes. I hadn’t been in the house for more than five hours and I had already started a minor electrical fire and locked us out on the veranda without any way to get back in. I would like to blame these minor incidents on lack of sleep however, if you know me as well as I think you do then I’ll have to admit that it was due to my innate stubbornness and my anal semi neurotic personality. The minor electrical fire was due to my lack of knowledge about 120 vs. 220 voltages. I had innocently thought that if you plugged the US 120 electrical cord into a 220 converter plug all would be okay. Well I was sort of right… after a few sparks flew, a little fire started and the carpet burned, all was ok. I must have said a little expletive out loud as I could hear Pete’s heavy steps coming down the stairway before I could hide the evidence. He looked at me with huge eyes to make sure that I was unharmed and then he shook his head in realization that I really had no clue about living in another country. Later that evening I confirmed his assumption as we went out on the back veranda to enjoy the 48 degree warm front. Due to my neurotic nature I closed the sliding glass door behind me. As soon as Pete heard the slider click he turned around and asked “You didn’t shut that all the way did you?” I thought that this was a ridiculous question as I use to get in trouble as a child for leaving the door open. More often than not I was told, “Young lady we don’t live in a barn. Go back and shut that door.” So my response to Pete was “Of Course I shut the door. I always shut the door when I am going outside.” Well you should have seen my husband jump toward the floor to ceiling glass doors and push on them as hard as he possibly could. Fortunately he was able to shift them into a position where they would slide open. Later I found out how lucky we really were. Now mind you we are living in a third floor flat with no fire escape. It turns out that the sliding glass doors onto the veranda have no latches on the outside, therefore if you close the doors completely there is no way to open them. Now I could go on and on about how ridiculous this design set up is but that won’t change the fact that I can’t shut the doors completely without getting locked outside. I am sure that within the two years that we will be living here, sooner or later I will lock myself outside and most likely it will be in the morning while Pete is at work. I am thinking that I should store a few essentials out back as it could be 8-9 hours before I am able to get back inside when Pete comes home to rescue me.

On that note I will bid you farewell and goodnight.