Balcony Nights

We replaced the plastic chairs on our balcony with some rocking chairs and a little table, and we put some flowers in pots, and I'll tell you, our balcony is our new favorite place to be.  The breeze at night out here is incredible (a lovely relief after the hot "spring" days of 90-something degrees), and the chairs are way comfier than their former hard plastic forbears.  I like to tilt one back until it leans against the window bars like a faux recliner.  We can tilt a lamp from the living room to shine out of the window so we can read out there, and we can still get movies to stream on Netflix.

It's almost like having a new room added to the house.  A room with a broad night view of palm trees and of lights on the mountains and the lit-up monument in downtown Santiago.  When the power goes out on our street, as it does frequently, it's really dark and quiet (most people don't have inverters like the school provides for us) and beautiful.  And one of our favorite things to do is watch the fruit bats swoop up to grab the small red palm tree fruits hanging right in front of the balcony--it gives us a delicious shivery kind of thrill.