Okay, we're moving. Try checking out our website at sorensen.cl

See ya there.

Tinkering with the Web

So I've started tinkering a bit with the web. One of these days I'll figure it out a little bit more.

However, if you want to see some more pictures, check out

gallery.me.com/ricksorensen

or email me and I'll give you the name and password for web.me.com/ricksorensen

Enjoy.

Visitors

Wow. We have been blessed with visitors.

My parents were able to come down for two weeks at the beginning of May. We had a great time.

Now we are in the middle of a great visit from Zak, our next-door neighbor from Texas. The kids are out of school for the month of July (winter break) and are having a great time. We are headed to a cabin in the mountains tomorrow for a couple of days. We hope that Luke and Hyrum will, for the first time in their lives, be able to play in the snow.

Driving Me Crazy.

People drive differently in Chile (and, I would argue, much of South America) than they do in the United States (except maybe getting on and off the access roads in Texas). It's a little bit dicey at times. When we first arrived here, we borrowed a vehicle and there seemed to be some hesitation about whether or not we would be able to "get around" okay with the drivers here. I assured them that I would be alright. After a couple of days, Tiffany accused me of "being one of them; and enjoying it!" Strong words. I simply smiled, thanked her, and considered it a compliment.

I've been observing the driving now for a couple of months, trying to discover whether there is any rhyme or reason to many of the driving practices seen. I have discovered much. I have come up with a decision tree that, I believe, is used by everyone here that may demonstrate how the lanes work. Here's the deal.

The main question posed is this: Should I occupy the space in the road next to the car in front of me?

To come up with the correct answer, ask yourself the following series of questions, if the answer is ever 'Yes', then occupy the space; if 'No', then proceed to the next question.

1. Is there another lane clearly marked in the space you wish to occupy?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, proceed to question 2.

2. Is there room for two vehicles, despite the lack of appropriate lane markings?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, proceed to question 3.

3. Is there more than the room required for only one vehicle?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, proceed to question 4.

4. Is there any space void of hard objects, such as walls, trees, or poles next to the vehicle in question?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, proceed to question 5.

5. Are you in a hurry?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, proceed to question 6.

6. Do you just want to feel like you're getting somewhere faster?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, proceed to question 7.

7. Are you driving a car behind someone else?

If yes, occupy the space.

If no, speed up until the answer to this question is 'Yes', then begin at question 1 again.

Aw, Nuts!

With autumn approaching, some of the leaves on the trees are beginning to fall; I suspect there will be a lot more of that in the days to come. This is a picture of another thing that has begun to fall in our front yard: Walnuts.
We have a very large walnut tree right in the middle of the driveway. It's probably just a little bigger than the cherry tree we used to climb at my Nanny's house when I was very young, much too young to be climbing cherry trees. (Although, many years later that gigantic cherry tree seems to have gotten a little smaller than the Jack-and-the-Beanstalk sized tree I remember as a child. It was as if we were determined to get that cherry tree to send us to heaven one way or another; either by reaching the highest branches to which no other child would dare climb, or by failing to reach the highest branches and bypassing the rest of our lives altogether.) Regardless, it's a large walnut tree. The walnuts grow in oval-shaped green fruit that dries out on the branch, splits open and then drops the nut. We have started collecting them, as the frequency with which they fall seems to be increasing.

Got Stuff?

It's here!

We finally got our stuff . . . sort of. The movers showed up this morning with about half of our shipment and unloaded it. Once again we are living in a house filled with boxes after boxes after boxes. I believe it won't be long before the suspicions I had as the packers in San Antonio disassembled things which I had absolutely no idea could be taken apart will be confirmed. I'm almost certain that all the parts of all the furniture won't ever fit back together quite the same way again.
But we have stuff.
The house is already exhibiting much less of an echo.
The house is already exhibiting much less of an echo.
Tomorrow they will be back again, to stuff the last half of things into our previously-vacant abode.

Home Again.

Okay, so a funny thing happened to me on Sunday morning. I had spent the week in Tucson, and an extra day in the Dallas airport, so I arrived in Santiago on Sunday. I remember a couple of years ago when I first returned to South America after my mission twenty-ish years prior I stepped off the plane and the smell of the air brought back so many memories. It was an exciting time, and felt very foreign indeed. Then, when I came back a couple of months ago it was another exciting time, yet totally different because I had the entire family and we were embarking on this adventure. Again, very foreign and new feeling.
So I landed on Sunday and got off the plane. And as I breathed in the first breaths of the Southern air, it felt, for the first time here, like home. It was not foreign anymore. I think it may have to do with the fact the this is where my family is. So, the moral of the story, at least for me, is: Home is Where the Family is.