Welcome to the world Zac! Winter 2019 Chile

Hello! Our baby boy Zac Meredith is 4 months old! He was born on August 1 2019 in Viña del Mar at the same hospital as Rena. Jenine was able to do a natural birth again and I’d say it was much more intense than with Rena. Rena was there with us in the birth room watching, playing with her art supplies, and not freaking out too much during the birth.

Zac is a little cutie. They say he looks like me because he’s got little hair, big eyes and darker skin. He’s a nervous little guy that only recently has begun to let dad hold him without fear in his eyes. He’s definitely a momma’s boy. Rena is slowing adjusting to having a little brother, and for the most part there hasn’t been any serious drama. She loves to bring Zac toys in the morning and give him hugs. We can’t wait until they can play together!

Jenine’s parents Joe and Pam came in August to meet the little guy and to help us get settle for a month.  Rena loves her grandma and papa.  It was awesome having them here, thank you!

We are almost finished building our guest house, we’ve fallen behind schedule. But it should *will* be ready for guests by Christmas. I enjoy building houses, especially when I don’t have to do the building 🙂 But it is stressful dealing with the builders and suppliers and hoping you are not making terrible decisions. It will be nice when it’s ready for my parents to stay in for Christmas.

Rena is loving her nature based kinder garden in Matanzas called Waiwen.  She’s already a little Spanish speaker. Jenine helped start the preschool and she recently joined as a director of the school to help on the business side. Our little town is growing and the preschool has a nice opportunity to grow with it. The kids spend all their days exploring the beaches and the forests of this beautiful place.

Chile has been in the news the last few months because of the social unrest that turned into protests and violence/looting. Luckily in our town we didn’t really feel the affects, and things seem normal in Santiago now. But the shockwaves are having an affect on the economy, the currency for example took a nose dive in value. Chile is a wealthy country for South America, but like many “wealthy” countries the gap between the rich and poor is very big. The median salary here is only $500/month and Chile isn’t a cheap country to live. There are no easy ways to close the inequality gap, but the government is now working to raise the minimum wage and improve the pension and healthcare systems. We still feel good about things here and maybe there will be opportunities to invest if prices go really low and the dollar is strong.

We haven’t been too worried about things and we’ve had some fun distractions as well:

It has now been 3 years since we moved to Chile. It’s been an experience where we’ve grown and learned a lot, with plenty of highs and lows.  It is frustrating as heck to get anything done here, and I’ve grown distrustful of people I do business with after being burned countless times.  But our little town and the simple comforts of living where we live have exceeded my expectations.   We’ve really enjoyed raising our kids here so far, and we get to spend a lot of time with them. It is a special place for them.   I really have no idea what the future holds and we are still, 3 years later, trying to figure out our life here and I guess that is kind of exciting… 🙂

Thanks for catching up with us and I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We definitely have a lot to be thankful for.

A little video with some memories of the past months.