Lauren: Walking.

So we've been doing a lot of walking around this city. We see really gorgeous architecture, tons of fountains and statues, street vendors, you name it. If it's around Santiago, we've probably seen it. Walking around a city, you just get to see more of it than speeding past it in a car.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a big public transportation/walking fan, and this city is good for the latter. Walking however, can be a bit tricky.

Cars here are extremely pedestrian unfriendly. Crosswalks less designate a place where cars have to stop for people crossing the street, but more accurately mark the place where walkers are allowed to run from cars speeding toward them. No matter what the signal reads at an intersection, cars push forward through pedestrians who often rush crossing the street.

I remember seeing taxies inch through packed crosswalks in New York, but this is far worse. Cars turning on red jolt into crowded pedestrian walkways at alarming speeds.

The boundaries of a crosswalk mean nothing to cars. There are two lines designating the area where people can walk in the street, like in most cities. But here cars zoom up to the first line, regularly sitting in the crosswalk. I almost got hit by a taxi during my early jog this morning, when the taxi driver sped up to the first line of the pedestrian walkway.

There is a lot of jaywalking, though, sometimes across four lanes of traffic. So if you wait long enough you can just walk across the street when there aren't cars.

On a positive note, at least there isn't the car culture that there is in LA and people actually walk around their city on a regular basis.

-- Lauren

Photo courtesy of Flickr.

Lauren: Storage.

It seems like one of those uniquely American values. Storage. We have a lot of stuff, so we need a lot of places, to put all of our many valuable, important things. It sounds like a George Carlin skit, but it's so true. Never did I truly appreciate American household organization, until recently when we moved to our apartment in Chile.

I love our apartment. And Chilean architecture is gorgeous. Tons of cast iron, fountains in the parks, bright, big windows. But when it came to household design, it seems the home builders just ran out of ideas. Or weren't exactly thinking practically. The big windows that overlook the beautiful Inglesia de la Merced are definitely great. But there's no pantry to put dry goods. Everything that is dry (cereal, honey, lentils, instant coffee, cookies, crackers, dry beans, spices, dry soups, teas, etc.) all sit on top of the fridge. All of those things. Because there's no pantry to put them in.

And the sink. We have an "American Style" kitchen which means we have an mini island that has a counter to eat at and hides the washing machine beneath it. But in order to do dishes, you have to lean over the island and reach into the sink that is hidden away by the island. Why would someone make a sink that you can't stand near to do the dishes? It's like a cosmetic sink. It inevitably gets water all over the counter, because you can't properly reach the sink.

My bathroom, maybe because it was intended for children, has no storage whatsoever. Where does one put crucial bathroom items like sunscreen, floss, molskine, headache medicine and other random first aid/beauty products? Where are the cabinets?? And there's no hallway closet. Our closets were barely big enough to hold or clothes.

The source of all my knowledge of Chilean culture Daniela has informed me that this is very common. People are expected to build on to an apartment or house. So basically apartments and homes are sold half finished -- but they look great.

On Daniela's apartment hunting excursions she would find kitchens with no drawers, only cabinets. Where does one put the knives and forks in such a house? In a cabinet? Leave them out in the open, or in the drying rack?

And this isn't just my American hoarding. Everyone has knives, forks, and spoons. At least everyone I know. Asking for a medicine cabinet in the bathroom isn't much. I just want a place to put my toothpaste. After we moved in, Aneya and I had to go out and buy containers to equip our apartment with our storage needs. I now have a huge wicker basket on the back of the toilet to house my bathroom products.

The drawers of my nightstand are a random mishmash of products that really had no better place to go. My desk has papers randomly stacked in the area that is meant for a keyboard because there are no drawers to put them in. All minor sacrifices I guess, for good location, a foreigner friendly landlady, and a view of a castle.

-- Lauren