The Last Month

So i realize that it has been a LONG time since I have written and am imressed beyond words how uch life has changed in the last month. We left Argentina quite a while ago and have been surrounded by the best people I could have asked for ever since. Chile has stollen my heart and I have found the people here incredibly generous, loving, kind, funny and all around great!!

Some bullets of the last month, because so much has happened:

• Spent our first few days in Santiago with the Swansons, friends of Stacies from a friend at Beyond. Same people that our other friends who came down here stayed with too. They were great and really welcoming, giving us a tour of downtown, letting us sleep at their house, use their internet, vonage phone... everything! It was amazing and so welcome. I felt completely different by the end of that time. Argntina and everything that happened there was a completely different world!
• Chica, a friend of a friend of my dad was the next person we met and I instantly found a kindred spirit. She is amazing and full of so many similar passions for life that we have tons to talk about. The language barrier has gotten way less and we are able to communicate pretty well! Also, she speaks slow enough for me to understand. :)
• We then left for 9 days to Lautaro (where the center of the Earthquake that just hit was) and had an absolute blast with a team from Tacoma, of all places!! I painted and painted and painted primer on everything possible for 6 days and had a blast doing it. Only posible because of the company!!
• We lived with a couple from the town and had a blast with them. They were so much fun and amazing hosts. We had a good time with them and their families. They took us to hidden watterfalls, had a huge Asado (which is the famous chilean bbq) and in general quickly became friends to us.
• Now we are back in Santiago and the earthquak aftermath is just begining to sink in for me. Our area survived incredibly well, but as I am learning, we were very fortunate people. Read Stacies blog for more information on the earthquake itself.... stacieduvall.blogspot.com

We are here in Santiago right now and the earthquake relief work is just getting started. For the last few weeks Stacie and I have been working with an organization called IberoAmerican Ministeries in their work both here in Santiago and down in southern Chile in a town called Lautaro, which coincidencily is where the epicenter of the earthquake was. We formed some amazing friendships there and the people of Lautaro are some of my favorites that i have met on my entire trip! Most of them are doing pretty well, and as far as I know, there were no deaths of anyone associated with the church. There was a lot of structural damage and a lot of work is going to be needed to be done in order to get the town and everyone there back on their feet again. It is a pretty bad situation. They dont have electricity or running water in a lot of places and the main roads to get to and around that region are pretty trashed and impassable.

I've been doing some talking with Doug, who is the team leader of IberoAmerican Ministries here in Santiago (actually right now we are staying at his house because the appartment building we were in during the earthquake didnt have electricity or water for a few days!!) and I asked what he thought the needs were. He mapped out a few things that were of the most importance. First was to get houses or structures up for those whos houses were demolished. Second was to recunstruct the 4 churches who had walls that fell down. (For Example: The church we were working with in Lautaro had an estimated 10,000 dollars worth of dammage done to it... this is a church who's projector was stollen last month and they didnt think they were going to be able to buy another one for a year or so until someone brought them one as a gift!!) Third woud be to do rebuilding on dammaged structures. There are many buildings that have cracks running down them and that kind of thing.

Anyways, as I am here, Stacie and I are going to be working on helping rebuild a childrens home that was dammaged called Casa Esperanza (House of Hope) but I have had a few people from back home ask of ways that they can help and in thinking about that I figured that I would give all of you this information as well.

If anyone does want to donate to the relief efforts here, I can personally vouch for this organization and the work that they do. They are an incredible group of people both from the States and from Chile. I am impressed with their work and feel like they truely are doing good things. They are setting up a way to donate directly to the earthquake disaster relief on their website tonight, and it sounds like that is the easiest and best way to do it. Their website iswww.iamweb.org and they have a ton of information on their website about the people they partner with and the work that is going on.

Learn a lesson! Don´t upset the natives!

Except in this case, it is don´t upset your volunteers, and I am the one who is upset.

Stacie and I were dropped off at the beginning of a dirt road, our bags on our backs and a vague idea that if we start walking in this direction, eventually we will come across the farm that we were supposed to be working on for the next two weeks. We had already had quite the time getting to this point- our limited directions told us to go to a town where there was no street by the name that we needed and, needless to say, our "trucha" driver wanted to charge us double and then some to take us to the correct spot. I was adamant in not paying more for a ride where he said he knew where we needed to go, and I could sense that he just wanted to extort us for more money. So my Spanish of 4 months has payed off and I was able to argue him down from 25 pesos to 10 for the both of us. I felt pretty good about that.

As he drove off (i´m sure mumbling in discontent about his situation) we started walking. and walking. and walking. 3 plus kilometers in the hot mid day sun with our 25 kilo bags on our backs. Eventually we see a corroded old gate with "monistario, privado" scrawled upon it in big letters and assume this must be the farm that we have come so far to be a part of. We walk through the gates and see

nothing

a grand space that looks eerily similar to the area on the outside: overgrown pear trees, weeds up to my shoulders, flies and bugs of all sorts lazily droning by and a small path that can hardly be called a road. Foot path would be more adequate. Taking our chances, we walk on in. We site a building in the distance and make for that, hoping that there will be someone to help guide us to this monastery and all the monks and nuns that we are supposed to be helping. Instead we encounter 5 gringos and a lady with a shaved head who turns out to be the only nun on the place.

We were duped! There is no farm, there is no buddist monastery, there is no yoga classes, there is no mediation house. Instead, there is a dream of the sole buddist nun in Argentina who would like to see it happen. As in, it does not exist in the present. As in, she wants to use our labor to make her dream a reality. At first we just shrugged our shoulders and said, okay, we can give you a hand. No problem. But things have escalate and we no longer think we can stay there. She has sent 2 boys packing because they didn´t agree with her and the other 2 volunteers are on the verge of leaving as well. It is a sad situation, and I really do feel bad for her, but she did not really tell us what we were getting ourselves into and to be honest, appears like she is on a power trip of sorts. I don't really respect her.

I guess it is all a part of the continuous lesson that we are learning here: be flexible, don´t expect too much but always be prepared for the best things to happen. It is all part of our adventure and, frankly, after those mosquitoes last night attacked me, I´m ready for the next adventure!

I don´t really know where we will be going from here. I think we are going to go up to the mountains for a few days (we are in el crus de los andes right now) and will definitely be drinking some more amazing mendoza wine! After that, we will head over to Chile and do some work for people that I know I trust!