the gringos next door

One of the more interesting things about my living situation here in Chile is the fact there's a family of gringos living next door. Apparently the parents are missionaries who relocated their family to Santiago to start some kind of a church or do some kind of term of service...I'm not entirely sure. I don't know much about them because my host mom told them I'm Amish when I first moved in, and I think they're afraid to approach me now.

I've tried asking my host parents what kind of missionaries they are -- I'm curious about their denomination because there aren't very many Protestants in Chile. But my attempts to figure it out always go something along these lines:

Tara: So, what kind of Christians are they?

Host mom: They're not Catholic. They're Christians.

Tara: Well, yes, but do you know their denomination?

Host mom: They're the kind of Christians who believe in Jesus Christ.

Tara: Okay...

Host mom: They don't believe in the Virgin Mary or any of the saints.

Tara: Right, they're Protestants.

Host mom: Yes. Definitely not Catholic. They don't even pray to the Virgin! Just to Jesus. They believe in the Bible, too.

Tara: Yes. I understand. Do you know what they call themselves?

Host mom: Christian. Not Catholic.

...and at this point I usually give up. There's only so far I can get in a country that just kicked off a month-long celebration of the Virgin.

But even though I don't have very much interaction with the neighbors, their presence provides an interesting backdrop to my life here in Santiago. For example, their young children always get up early on Saturday and play loud games right outside my bedroom...and I always wake up suddenly, wondering why I'm hearing so much English and thinking I must be back at home with my younger brothers. Also, they're constantly blasting alternative American music in the evenings, and nothing is weirder than trying to get through my Spanish homework with the sounds of Jack Johnson, Death Cab for Cutie, John Mayer, Coldplay, and Bright Eyes drifting through the window. Today it's been a Beatles marathon, but I'm trying to block it out and get back to this beast of an essay. It's weird to think that I've been living here for so long that my fellow gringos now seem foreign to me.