Mi Casa es Su Casa

We are comfortably settled in our new place located in the barrio of Ñuñoa. I was entirely wrong in my original desires to get a place of our own and I’m so glad we didn’t. We have three awesome roommates from France. It’s great to make new friends (esp. from other countries), to practice the language, to hear other peoples stories and to get recommendations for restaurants, weekend trips or simply places to buy a bike.

Our location is both great and not so great. We’re only a few blocks from the metro so that makes it easy to get around- (as long as it’s not rush hour). But the one main drawback is the location right along the main street. It gets semi-quiet from about 2:00a.m. to 6:00a.m. We are quickly trying to adjust our sleeping habits to tune out the sounds of the street but it’s not all that easy. I think we’ll each own a pair of ear plugs by the end of the week.

The view from our pequeno balcony.

Our living room.

Dining Room.

Our cocina.

But aside from that, we love the apartment. There’s a good amount of room to hang out in our room, the living room, dining room and on the roof. And it’s an older building with lots of great character - wavy glass windows, high ceilings, stained glass, old doors and the like. No garden or grapevine laden trellis like at our Chilean madre’s house.. but there are a few cacti on the roof adding a little appeal.

The rooftop terrace at dusk. Our new favorite place to enjoy beers and chilean wine.

I was also so excited to move into an apartment so I could bake some homemade cookies! (which I’ve been craving for over 2 weeks now) So I overcame the first challenge of finding chocolate chips- a feat that was much more difficult than one might imagine. Well last night Henry and I baked some chicken for dinner and I was on oven pre-heating duty, but I couldn’t entirely understand the dial… I called in Pierre- one of our roommates and I asked (in Spanish of course) ‘So where are the degrees on this thing? How do I know how hot it is?’ Pierre responded ‘Oh there are no exact degrees- these little symbols are approximations of most hot to least hot.”He looked at me to verify that I understood his broken Spanish and I just laughed – not at him of course but at the ridiculousness of our oven. Turns out the little symbols are pictures of a flame at different sizes indicating the amount of heat you get inside the oven. Pierre suggested to not go by the little pictures on the dial but to guess the the amount of heat by the actual size of the flames in the bottom of the oven.

You have got to be kidding me! How’s a girl supposed to bake in an oven of approximated degrees?!?! Nevertheless.. the chicken turned out great.. but I am hesitant to mix up a batch of cookie dough only to have each dozen burn in our approximation oven.