After being here for a few weeks, we are mostly settled in. There are a few things of note though. For one, as you could have guessed, we have very much enjoyed the facilities, especially the pools. Something unexpected but very great is the valet trash collection. You can take our your own trash if you want to, but between 6 and 8 PM Sunday through Thursday, you can put the bin they have provided outside of your door and between 8 PM and 9 AM, they will take the rubbish away. This is great. It means we have had to put a very minimal amount of effort into this sort of task. Also, due to having more space, we can take whatever doesn’t fit (our million Amazon boxes) on the weekend on one of the two days they don’t pick up. It is a winning system. It also works perfectly with our new schedule.
We have persisted in the idea of being morning people. It is a bit chilly to swim in the morning, but soon that will change. Even with the relative cold, we have still been in the pool on a daily basis when Chris gets back from work.
I am just busily applying for jobs, both in person local jobs and upwork jobs. Upwork is a website for freelancers, so I am trying to get work as a teacher, translator or proofreader and anything else that looks like I could do it. We shall see
Here’s a short video of some of our experiences in our new home:
So I was going to ask you how Upworks compares to Guru or Elance (I’ve only worked through Guru and didn’t get very far with Elance two or three years ago), but it looks like Elance is transitioning into Upworks anyway, so that’s interesting! Those writing and translation skills can be very profitable! I hope you enjoy the work!
I have only tried Upwork and freelancer.com. Upwork seems better than freelancer.com. Upwork has many free tests to show your skills even if you don’t have any ratings yet from clients, while freelancer.com wants you to pay in Chilean pesos to take similar tests. I have officially done one Upwork job, but not been paid yet. That was ESL proofreading. I am on the verge of getting some work translating a website. The man who owns it just wanted to make sure he was happy with all of the Spanish first before getting it in English, so here’s hoping. Chris, on the other hand, has managed to get a full part time job from it that he’s been doing since December. It has really helped with moving costs and he has learned a lot from it.
Ah and another difference – Upwork is free. You can pay for more of what they call ‘connects’, but I have found that the amount of connects you get free is enough if you apply for 1-2 jobs a day on average. Freelancer.com is only free for the first month and either way, they still have something similar to connects, you just get a lot less of them.
Ah yes, there was some similar incentive with Guru.com but I never paid for any work there and made a half decent amount of money. I liked it. I hope I can find time to do it again! LinkedIn just invited me (so special!) to beta test their version of Upwork but I’m not ready to commit any more of my time elsewhere right now…
I will have to try guru.com. I did get the Spanish to English translation job yesterday (it’s quite a nice one – it’s a website for a language school in Spain), so after I finish that up, I will have a look.