Chile: Kicking Off 2019

Buena Buena!

Back to the blog to wrap up the first 3 months in 2019. I try to get 4 blogs out a year, thanks for taking the time to catch up with us! 2018 was a great year, and we are really looking forward to having even more fun in 2019.

2018 saw the start of my construction career with the completion and sale of a self built home. In 2019, I have already kicked off two more building projects. We are adding an addition to our current home and beginning the construction of another home that we hope to rent out and, most importantly, make available to YOU our friends and family when you come and visit us 🙂 I am retiring from doing the construction myself and I am working with a team of local builders. It was helpful to learn the building process first hand, and I’m ready to let someone else do the hard work.

The addition of our current house is to grow as our family grows. We are expecting a baby boy August 1st! We will have him in Chile in Viña Del Mar in the same hospital that Renata was born. We are both so excited to realize a dream of having two little ones.

Our love of Chile and Matanzas is still strong, despite the distance and the challenges of building a meaningful career there. We realize this incredibly beautiful environment coupled with the foreign culture and safe slower pace of life is absolutely perfect for raising a young family. We both agree that long term we want our kids to experience a bigger city with more educational opportunities, but for these formative years, 0-6 years old, I couldn’t imagine a better place in the world to be. It’s also amazing that we can spend so much time with Rena and with our second child, if we were in the Bay Area we would probably both have to work full time and pay a ton for nannies or pre-schools with long waiting lists.

In fact, Jenine is right now intimately involved in starting a new nature based pre-school here in Chile with our friends Ellen and Antonia that Rena will be attending in July. The classroom will be the natural world, with a curriculum developed in Germany and USA (shout-out to Jenine’s friend from SF, Shawna, for the help in this area!).

We know that there will be some craziness when #2 is born, but both Jenine and I are also working on our own businesses that we hope to launch and grow in 2019. Nothing meaningful to share now, but it won’t be based on selling land or building houses 🙂

Here is a look back at our lives in Chile Jan – March.

Rena started forming her first sentences in January. The first thing we remember hearing was “Dada is home!” when I came home one day, and “Oh man” when changing her stinky diaper.

Teaching Rena about Kitesurfing and surfing

Expanding the house, this is Rena’s new bedroom!

We were blessed with awesome visitors as well. We got connected through a mutual friend to Greg and Lauren who were traveling South America in a VW Kombi. They are awesome, and we ended up spending a lot of time with them.

Also, one of my best friends from college, Eric Baas came down to Chile and I got to take him to one of my favorite places El Chaltén to hike Fitz Roy.

The kite and surf season was also great this summer

Finally we took a family trip to the island of Chiloe in the south of Chile. It was an spectacular place with amazing food.

Rena had her own ticket for the first time and she was really excited.

Next blog, we’ll get to share pics of the completed addition, the progress of the new guest house and our trip back the USA. It is so wonderful to share these memories with you. We love our friends and family.

George and Jenine.

Link to photo album

Chao!!