Well, January marked my 12 months of living in Chile. Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun?

When I left Australia, I didn’t know I would end up living in Chile, I just knew that I wanted to experience living in another country and culture for a while.  South America was a logical choice because I had a little head-start with the language, and I had loved the things I saw when I passed through 5 years ago.

After my first two months in Argentina, meeting some wonderful people in Buenos Aires and enjoying the food scene, I really thought I would end up back there.  I already had one month booked in Santiago and, when I arrived in January last year, it was SO quiet.  Anyone who lives here knows that half of Santiago evacuates for vacation during January or February, leaving the city half of its usual bustling self.

Initially, I thought it was too quiet, and that I would definitely be returning to BA but, after one month, I had also met some wonderful people here and made friends from many different parts of the world.  On top of that, I was really starting to get to know the city a lot better, and was actually enjoying the improved safety, cleanliness, public transport (OK, well, metro at least) and just general ease of living here versus BA.  I was also able to work legally here, getting a contract to teach English part-time, which gives me a little (very little) pocket money, and enabled me to get my temporary visa.  It’s much more difficult to do that in Argentina as so much is done “under the table” and I would have had to commit myself to a life of popping over the border every three months to extend my tourist visa.

That is a very long way to say that, I decided to stay in beautiful Santiago.  I didn’t know at the time that it would be for a year, and I can’t say now how long I’ll be here, but I can say that I enjoy my life here.

So, in order to commemorate my year here, and to get me back into the habit of writing more often, I decided to start a new challenge for the month of February.

Every day, for 28 days, I will post something that I like about living in Chile, with photos of course.  They will be in no particular order and, by no means, a conclusive list.  Some will have more description than others, but my goal is to at least post something every day.  I hope you enjoy reading them.

Here’s the first post!