Feliz Cumpleaños Andrés!!!

Happy birthday to the man I love with all of my heart! Andrés, you are an amazing, generous man and I am so in love with you. And I am so happy that I finally get to share your birthday with you and be here in person. God has blessed us so much already, and I pray that He may continue to pour His graces upon you in this new year of your life. 

Last year on Andrés´ birthday he went to the U.S. Embassy for his visa interview to be able to come and see me. He was denied and it was a really hard and sad day for both of us. Thankfully he tried again and was approved. This birthday is already way better than last year. I love that this is the third birthday of Andrés´ life that I´ve been able to be a part of, and I look forward to many more to come. Andrés, mi viejito, te amo tanto.

This is the wonderful man that I love and that I can have lots of fun with :)

Andrés, sssshhhhhhhooooooooo te amo

Fiestas Patrias

Tonight I write in blue, one of the colors of Chile´s flag, in honor of Fiestas Patrias. This past weekend we celebrated Chile´s Independence Day. Chile and the US are similar in that our independence days aren´t exactly when we had independence from our mother nations but rather when we declared our independence. And for Chile, that was September 18, 1810.

Photo Credit

I had been warned about Fiestas Patrias. I had been told to expect five days of non-stop asados (BBQs), meat and empanada eating, wine and chicha (kind of like homemade sweet wine) drinking, cueca dancing and staying up until 5am every night. Whoo! Thankfully I only had one day of this- so I got to experience everything but still get my precious sleep the other nights. 


I had my big day of celebrating on dieciocho itself, September 18th. Just so you know, I have been waiting two years for this. The past two dieciochos (18ths) I have heard about Andrés and his family and friends getting together and going out. I have wanted to be here for that so bad- and now I was! The 18th was Domingo, or Sunday, often referred to as "fomingo" or the equivalent of boring Sunday, so I thought that maybe Fiestas Patrias would be a little more low key this year. Maybe they were, but I didn´t notice. We started our dieciocho off with Mass at the parish where we also celebrated the priest´s ordination anniversary so the church was very full. After Mass there was cueca dancing in the courtyard and empanadas and wine! Can life get any better than that? Jesus, dancing and empanadas.

Empanadas- que rica!

After Mass we headed over to Andrés´grandma´s house in Villa Alemana which is about 45 minutes away. Pretty much Andrés´mom´s whole side of the family was there. They had already eaten their asado (BBQ) but thankfully saved us some and heated it up right when we got there. So we went around saying hi to everybody and getting reacquainted and then we sat down to eat. A very common activity to do for Fiestas Patrias is to fly kites so after eating we went to the field next to the abuela´s house to see the kites. Let me just tell you, they can go really high! Andrés´ little cousin got hers to go so high it was just a little speck in the sky, and then the line got cut so it flew away.


We left his grandma´s for a couple of hours to go visit his friend Carlos who also lives in Villa Alemana. Carlos´ family is very inviting and it was nice to be around such friendly people. We basically just sat around and drank chicha and ate empanadas while they talked. I´ve now become more comfortable with my spanish but it is still very hard to follow conversations when they´re talking so fast (at their normal rate)! After that we headed back to the abuela´s house and played a game that is very similar to bingo. I think my mom would be proud of me, I won the first game! Then we left to go home.


We got back to la casa at about 10pm, stopping for a Nescafé coffee for me and a Red Bull for him. We rested and watched tv for two hours and then headed out (at midnight!) to the ramadas.  The word ramada means branch in english and the ramadas are called such because they are usually places constructed totally out of branches where people go to dance and drink and celebrate. The ramada we went to in Concón was huge so it was a regular building and on the inside they had it decorated with branches. They had two different groups that switched playing about every half hour. First a half hour of cueca, then cumbia, then cueca, etc. I was really excited for the cueca because this would be my first time getting to dance it with Andrés outside of lessons and I had been waiting to do this with him for a long time. However, it didn´t go quite as expected. It was so packed that people kept bumping into me and the concrete floor didn´t make moving my feet very easy so that it was hard to concentrate on the music and the steps to the cueca. I ended up getting really frustrated, first with not being able to dance the cueca correctly and then my mind started blowing things out of proportion (I chalk it up to it being really late and I was tired). I was thinking that if I can´t do this, then I´m never going to be able to fit in or fully learn the language, etc, etc. I almost started crying on the dance floor. It was bad. This was my first breakdown here and I´ve heard from other expats that more will come- it can be hard adjusting to a new way of living and feeling out of place a lot of the time. Andrés saw that something was wrong and we stopped dancing but then I felt bad for having ruined things, but I couldn´t explain it to him over the music and my emotions. Thankfully, when cumbia came back on they played some fun songs and things turned around.


We ended dieciocho on a good note by stopping by the beach at 4:30am to watch the ocean and listen to the waves hit the shore. Thank God for an overall good first Fiestas Patrias.

La Cueca

It seems like my life has been taken over by... la cueca. The cueca is Chile´s national folkloric dance where the couple mimics the courting ritual between and rooster and a hen. And since the fiestas patrias (independence day celebrations) are quickly approaching, it seems like everybody is dusting off their cueca-dancing boots. Andrés´nephew S is in second grade and he´s learning how to dance the cueca in school. I´ve seen a couple of high schoolers who are preparing for a cueca test at their colegio. Andrés started taking cueca lessons in July at the Club de Cuecas y Huasos (Club of Cuecas and Cowboys) in Valparaíso. He just graduated/passed the first level last Saturday and they had a dance and dinner where all the students got to showcase their cueca skills. It was a lot of fun and now I´ve started taking the beginner level classes while Andrés has moved on to intermediate ones!


The cueca is actually one of the first dances I ever had with Andrés. We were learning it in my escuela and Andrés was my partner. I sucked at it. But now I´m somewhat okay because I have that same partner to practice with outside of class! It´s actually more fun than I thought it would be (I didn´t know I would like folkloric dancing so much), the music is growing on me and I feel so good actually knowing the steps. I can´t wait for dieciocho (September 18th, Independence Day) when hopefully I´ll get some opportunities to use my newfound skills.


Here´s a video of Andrés dancing the cueca on his graduation night:

Here´s some photos from the night:

Andrés´ friend Carlos

It went cueca, chicha, cueca. You would dance one cueca, take a drink in a bull´s horn, then dance another cueca.

The outfit of the huaso

Andrés´ friend Flaco/Ranier

The cueca can begin by clapping the rhythm until the singing starts

They all passed!

First Day in Chile

Now that I´ve been here for two weeks, I´ve decided that I should show you some pictures from the first day I arrived. Our plane landed at 6am and going through customs went really smoothly. In fact, everything went really smoothly and fast until one of my suitcases never arrived at baggage claim! I had to wait about a 20 minutes while they waited for the final pieces to come out and while they double checked all the leftovers. Finally LAN took me to their counter and took down my information, saying that they thought it would come in on the next flight which arrived in an hour and they could deliver it to me in Santiago. Well, I didn´t know yet where or if I was going to be in Santi so I decided to go find Andrés (finally I get to see him!) and thought we could wait for the next flight.

So I left baggage claim with my one suitcase and there he was, waiting for me! Of course it was a glorious reunion, hehe, and it was so nice to be back in his arms after 6 months. Honestly, (those of you who have been in a long distance relationship probably know a little of this) after you´ve been apart that long it is REALLY nice to be together again, but the first few minutes are a little awkward. You think to yourself, Do I remember how to hug him? Where do my arms go? What kind of a kiss is he expecting?! Thankfully for us, the awkwardness and nervousness usually only lasts for a little while. I´ve heard for others that it takes them up to day to fully warm up to each other again! It´s just strange when you´re used to only seeing someone through a computer screen for hours everyday and then suddenly there they are- 3D and all!

Anyways, so we had our glorious reunion and then we decided to wait for my luggage. It was kind of a waste of time because it did not show up on the next flight, but it was kind of nice to sit and chat and catch up. Also, since it was 7am, I doubt there would have been much for us to do in Santiago anyways. I´m going to transition into the pictures now, but in case you´re curious, my suitcase showed up the next day and they delivered it to me all the way out in Concón. How nice of LAN, they seriously were very courteous in all of this.

After we left the airport we headed for Cerro San Cristobal (St. Christopher´s Big Hill) which has a huge statue of Mary at the top, we call her Mega Maria. It is our tradition to always go therre first, enjoy the view and pray a little in thanksgiving for being together again. I love this tradition.

Together at last!

A cute note on one of the fences. It says: Do you want to go out with me?

View of Santiago from Cerro San Cristobal

Who´s this handsome fellow?

Mega María

It was a sunny day

After San Cristobal we went to el Centro to see the markets and we ate lunch at one of them. It was so good! Although the waiters were very pushy, they basically fought over us to get us to eat at their restaurant and not the competition´s.

My  lunch- so yummy

Andrés enjoying his food