Coronavirus and Quarantine

Today is January 25, 2022, and we are on the path to recovery. Yes, both of us have been affected. With COVID-19, we pay more attention to individual symptoms compared to a normal cold, especially since we are in a foreign country. At times, I felt a little worried because I had a dry cough and shortness of breath. A device that indicates blood oxygen saturation reassured us. Since we can only be tested again after 10 days, which will be next Monday, this time with a PCR test, two church services will have to be canceled. Martin already had to reschedule two funerals, which is particularly unfortunate because the deceased's children are here from Germany. Our caretaker has done the shopping for us, so we are taken care of. Now we are especially grateful for the house with a garden and pool.

At the moment, we are dealing with Chilean bureaucracy, especially Martin. Simply presenting the vaccination certificates is not sufficient for entry into Chile. No, you have to fill out everything on a specific website, upload photos of yourself holding your passport, photos of each vaccine, vaccination data and locations, and much more. Yesterday, Martin spent at least two hours on it, and now he's back at the computer. We hope it works out and that the application is submitted early enough. It reminds me a lot of the time when we lived in Chile in the 80s. For our home vacation back then, we had to visit various government offices at least 12 times, and something was always missing. There were multiple copies for everything, and the crucial thing was the required signatures and stamps. And we had to leave our fingerprints everywhere. Even Andreas, who was just a few weeks old at the time, had his 10 fingerprints taken and photos were taken. A short trip from Chile to Argentina was not that easy and required a two-week processing with daily visits to some office. In the end, we were missing two stamps, but they were generous and allowed us to leave anyway. On the other hand, other documents that were requested suddenly became unnecessary. Now we hope that the requested documents will arrive in time before our flight to Santiago de Chile, and also the two hopefully negative PCR tests that are required by then. It would be nice if things could calm down and be less exciting for us soon. - Martin also has a lot to do during quarantine: he is putting together photos and texts for a small promotional film for the pastor position here at Christuskirche in Lima.