Our apartment is partially furnished now. Well, I suppose that's an exaggeration. We have a stove, a dish drainer, some cups, and a comforter thrown down on the floor to serve as a bed when we move in (only until we get a real bed). It's a fun-looking comforter, full of vivid blues and greens. The gas stove is tiny, but seems good. They showed us at the fair that it works. Of course, we had to go out and buy the pieces necessary to hook it up to our own place, but the stove came out to 30,000 CLP (about US $60). By the way, henceforth I will write currency the way Chileans do-- with a dot instead of a comma. So: the stove cost us 30.000 CLP.

That reminds me! I did a technical drawing today. I drew two pieces: the thing-a-ma-jig that leads to the gas tank, and the thing-a-ma-bob that hooks up to the stove. I know that sounds super technical for all you newbies, but I am, after all, an expert at such things (if "such things" means baloney). We were looking for the right size hose to connect the two pieces. It worked, too! The man we went to buy the piece from took one look at the drawing and said, "That'll take 7/8 connection on one side and a 1/2 connection on the other. I have just the hose you're looking for." And he handed it to us.

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical, but we bought it, took it home, and tried it. The 7/8 side goes in just right. The other side, well, we haven't found out yet. It's so rusted that while attempting to unscrew the piece the man said was unnecessary, I broke it. We're planning to get a wrench and (maybe?) some kind DW-40-like product. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, we ended up walking around the feria all day, purchasing various items. We did take a break and crash at the apartment for a while (on our improvised bed). I'm exhausted. I can hardly wait until we move into our apartment for good. Until then, I have internet! Yay!

God is good. He has blessed us and shown us His love and His children worldwide. I love Him.

I have been busy lately. Since we got the apartment, we went out to buy a few things for it. I know it doesn't seem like very much at all, but I insisted on starting with the bathroom. We bought a trash basket, soap dish, towels, hand towels, and a shower curtain for it, all in blue or green. I hadn't remembered, but the tiles in the bathroom turned out to be blue, which matched the theme perfectly! As I said, it doesn't do much for the whole house, but it was (to me) a little step toward finishing the whole house.

Tia Nancy and her husband, Pancho, offered us a set of living room chairs and a refrigerator for 100,000 pesos (around US $200), if we can afford it. They're willing to negotiate.

We found out that the street market (la feria) near our apartment is huge! It spans over six blocks and opens three days a week. They sell everything from clothing, to used items, dishes, to washing machines. The people here buy a dolly or a dolly-shaped cart, which they use to carry the items that they buy at the feria. We bought one (sans the basket) so that we can join the many people who are serious feria shoppers.

I've been exhausted lately, dizzy, lightheaded, and my stomach isn't feeling too good. Of course, the typical "are you pregnant" jokes have been cracked. Tia Nancy, however, has decided that I must be very ill and has prescribed me with bed-rest and lots of water. After I cooked a cake today and had lunch, she chased me upstairs to the bedroom, where I slept for a full three hours. I must have been tired.

Ah, and you must be wondering why I baked a cake. Today was Cecily's birthday. We have been conspiring to throw her a surprise birthday party since last week. There ended up being eight guests (ourselves included). One of them had said that he had to go to work. Secretly, however, he managed to get a couple of hours off so that he could come back in time to celebrate Cecily's birthday. It was a very tender moment, when she walked in, saw the balloons, and saw her boyfriend whom she had thought she wouldn't see all day.

I ended up making a chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. I was a little at a loss with how to decorate it, so I traced a heart in the frosting and put colored sprinkles in the heart, leaving the rest white. Cecily gave me a little bit of trouble, because I kept having to hide the thing when she would come around to ask a question about some thing or other.

We plan to fully move into the apartment on Friday (or possibly Thursday). From that point on, I will not have reliable internet. Updates will probably become even more scarce until we can get internet into the house. We've been told that it takes companies a long time to get things done here, so it may take up to two months. Let's hope it's not that long!

So that's about it for now. There are all kinds of plans and delightful things going on. Keep us in your prayers. May God bless you all richly.

There is a curious expression in Chile that makes me chuckle every time I hear it . . . and I hear it a lot. It seems to be a derivative of the word "pues," which in this case means "then," as in, "You go ahead and do that, then." The expression they use is "po," and they like to use it as emphasis, however mild. The more excited they get, the more often they use it. The correct place to put it is at the end of words. Almost, it seems to function as a fill-in word for silences, as well. They pause ever so slightly before they tack it onto the end of a word. So, translated, I end up hearing things something like this:

"Yes-po! You need to use the corn-po if you want to make it good."
"No-po. You just don't understand. The parking lot-po is too small-po. We can't have the whole group here-po."
"Hey-po! What are you doing-po?"

Or, my most amusing experience with it so far:

Tia Nancy was singing along with an impassioned song about Christ saving us and us not being about to live without Him. She got so much into the music that I heard her sing, "I wouldn't be able to live without you-po!"

Love it. This may, of course, be an expression particular to the types of people with whom I'm spending time. The richer areas of town probably wouldn't be caught dead tacking a -po onto their words. And people outside of Santiago may not use it either. I'm not sure if it'll stick to my way of speaking, given enough time, but it sure amuses me for now.