2 days in Santiago and plenty of provisions

To sum up the last two days as quickly as possible would be to say that God's provisions have been astounding.  Since that still leaves a lot to the imagination I'll actually fill you in on what happened.  After Hans and I arrived at the bus station early Monday morning, we found an internet cafe.  There we picked a hostel to stay at for a few days.  An expensive but necessary taxi took us to Hostal Dominica, our home for the next three days.  On the way to the hostel I, Aaron, was struck with the beauty of Santiago.  I have always had a great fondness for trees, so I was most impressed with the array of Sycamores, pines, palm trees, and many more.  I had not realized it was possible for pine trees and palm trees to live in the same city.  The buildings are the typical Latin style but at the same time are nicer and larger than the other Latin cities I have visited.  The only disappointing scenery is that the mountains surrounding the city appear arid, with little vegetation.  There aren't any trees and hardly any snow on the mountains but I guess it takes a lot of nerve to criticize mountains in South America when you come from the Darby Valley.   It turns out that the hostel is located on a beautiful street in a good part of town and is within a minutes walk of tallest hill and biggest park in all of Santiago.  We have met Germans, English, Australians, Colombians  Brazilians, a Canadian, and some other countries that I can't recall at the moment.  This hostel has been a gift from the Lord.  After arriving at the hostel Monday morning I emailed the most the man with which we had been in contact about the Subaru 4x4.  As luck (haha) would have it, the car was about a 15 minute walk from the hostel and we set up a meeting for that evening.  In the meantime Hans and I needed to do a little shopping for vitamens and electrical outlet converters.  We also had to go to the Chilean taxation office because I needed to obtain a RUT number, which is essentially a social security number for Chile, in order to buy a car.  When I walked into a crowded office I immediately felt overwhelmed.  There were people standing in lines all over the room.  A man, Jorge, must have sensed our confusion because after just a few seconds he came up to us and asked us in broken English what we needed.  We told him and he went and got the proper paperwork and with our help filled out everything we needed.  As he was sitting with us while we waited for a person to process the forms I realized that he wasn't even a worker in the office; he was a just a kindly man there on business that wanted to help los gringos estupidos.  After obtaining the RUT number it was time to go see the car.  The emails I had with the seller made it seem as if he was pretty good at English.  When we met the man with the car, however, he did not know any English.  He still told me to take it for a test drive.  Pulling out into a busy street into one of the biggest cities in South America but was also really fun.  It ran well and we were impressed.  The toughest part was trying to figure out where old Jose Manuel was telling me to go.  When we returned two young men arrived.  They were helping Jose Manuel sell his car.  These were the men I was emailing and the one, Christian, was fluent in English   One more blessing for the day.  More information about the car will be forthcoming because we want to surprise our amigos who are meeting us in a few days.  Let's just say it is in great mechanical shape but has a lot of character in other, possibly inconvenient  ways.

Tuesday morning we confirmed with Christian, Rodrigo, and Jose Manuel that we would purchase the car.  Unfortunately, Chile's car prices are about twice what they are in the U.S. but I guess that just we need that many more prayers that we can return it in one piece and resell it.  At noon we met with Rodrigo, who knows very little English, and Jose Manuel and tried to get bank information so that we could wire money directly to his account.  This turned out to be a great experience of going up to Jose Manuel's apartment and being served some sort of milky coffee drink that was delicious.  We stumbled along in our Spanish and I tried to remember everything that my high school days had taught me.  We finally got the bank information figured out.  After we left the apartment Rodrigo tried to help us figure out if we needed anything other than an international driving permit to drive in Chile.  After a few visits to the police station and the local AAA we learned that we did not.  In the meantime, we made friends with Rodrigo and he offered us a place to stay his apartment with Christian.  God's provisions were just raining down like a Ray Allen three pointer.  That afternoon we went to a local market to buy some groceries.  We were able to get potatoes, tomatoes, beans, bananas, onions, and garlic for a very reasonable price.  After preparing a great meal in the hostel's kitchen, we decided to climb the hill behind our where we are staying.  It was quite a trek up but we finally made it up to the statue of the Virgin Mary at the top.  We watched the sun set over the city and watched the lights come on as it got dark.  It was quite beautiful.  As we were leaving we met a girl from Florida and her two Chilean friends.  As they were quite friendly and seemed knowledgeable, we decided to follow them down because it was getting dark.  Unfortunately, the appearance of knowledge was all that it was: an appearance.  After an hour and a half of walking and turning around we finally made it to the bottom of the park but on the completely wrong side.  Though it took us a long time to get back to our hostel, we were able to make friends with the people.  The Chilean man was a charismatic chemist who gave us a lot of advice on where to go and where not to go in South America.  Hans was able to have a lengthy conversation with the Chilean women about theology and philosophy as the women had her masters in something intellectual that I can't really remember now.  In summary, the last two days have been extremely productive as we get ready to meet up with the tres amigos.  We hope the next days will be just as productive.

P.S. We don't have any pictures because Andrew is bringing the camera.  We'll start posting pictures when he meets up with us in a few days.