leaving

i am in santiago airport right now, waiting to board.
i arrived in santiago last sunday to spend the week here. our last days at the hogar were pretty stressful and hectic. tia Gaby was on her honeymoon and the replacement tia was sort of incompetent. we've been doing a lot of work anyway, basically the work of a real tia, since tia Flor has still not been replaced. with the visiting americans and lack of a tia things were really tough on us, we had sort of been hoping to relax in our last weeks and not take things so seriously, but that didn't really work out. also, school started and we began with the sala de estudios again. also, i took a short weekend trip to the north.
we had several farewell parties. one with our party friends in temuco. then one in the hogar with all the personnel and girls, with a special meal (fish) and a photo slideshow that tia Vivia made for us. and there were several short speeches by various people and some of the girls gave us presents, mainly cards. also, Tia Vivi gave us each scarves and rugs from the Fundacion Chol-Chol, a fair trade organization that works with Mapuche artesans in the region.The next day we had our farewell party with the girls, we made pizza and baked cookies with them, then gave small gifts to everyone. each of the older girls also got a cd of the photos that we had of them. we also gave away several pieces of our clothing that we decided to leave behind for lack of space, those were the most popular and fought-after items. afterwards we watched a movie and everyone stayed up late and we made sure to add all the older girls on facebook so we can stay in touch. steffi and i left the next morning and took a bus to santiago.
we stayed with our friend marcelo, who we met on our trip to futaleufu. he took us to the coast the other day, we went to see pablo neruda's house (one of his houses that we haven't seen yet...he had three) and got to hang out on the beach. we bought some last-minute souvenirs, but are both at the weight limit for our flights, not to mention that nothing else really fits in my backpack....we both bought canvas duffle bags for our backpacks for the flight, since last time steffi's backpack broke. also we went to a canyon, cajon del maipu, outside the city for a short bike ride. yesterday we had planned to go to some museums, but all the ones we wanted to go to are closed for repairs since the earthquake...
oh, i need to go. just realized that the time on my netbook is an hour behind....meaning i don't have all the time i thought, i need to board now!! ack!

futaleufu

ok i feel a bit weird posting about our vacation when there are still apocalyptic images of chile all over the news, but it's really like we are not in chile...things are back to normal here in the hogar. however, the mercado, where we had been planning on buying presents for everyone back home, will be closed for three weeks. sorry :( also, we heard that the mall, our main source of everything, including entertainment, will be closed for a year (!). but yesterday we heard that it might open again today, so we are going to go by and check it out. today there is a huge national telethon going on for people to donate money, and everywhere people are organizing events to collect food and non-perishable donations.

a couple weeks ago we had to cross the border again to renew our visa. we decided to go south, cross the border to argentina, and later cross back over and take a boat to chiloe, an island off the coast of chile. pablo, one of the coordinators from our organisation (experiment e.v.), with whom we had our midterm seminar in vina, was driving south to the same area from santiago so he said he would give us a ride. he brought along a friend of his, marcelo, and we ended up having a fun road trip, although we never made it to chiloe due to a lack of boat transport and time.

we went to several places in argentina, and also to this tiny town in chile called futaleufu, which was totally amazing. we were really lucky to be travelling with pablo because he used to work there every summmer and knew everyone in town. which meant we got to use a bunch of equipment for free and went kayaking, and stayed in his friend's cabin and also we got a discount on white-water rafting, something i've always wanted to do and which was totally awesome. it seems futaleufu river is one of the best rivers in the world for rafting, so if we ever do rafting again somewhere else we will be disappointed. there were a bunch of grade 4 rapids and at the end a little one that we got to get out of the boat and swim down! and at the end there was a big rock that they said we could jump off...looking at it from the boat i thought "hey, no problem, piece of cake". once i got to the top of the rock...it looked different. it was only about four meters high but looking down from the top i had a sensation similar to when i went bungee jumping and needed three false starts to finally step into thin air. your mind is logically saying "ok, yeah let's do this it's perfectly safe, you will not smash against those rocks" and trying to convince your body to run those few steps but your body is like "hell, no" and doesn't move. i jumped and then steffi was standing at the top paralyzed saying "i can't, i can't" with this dazed look on her face. i kept trying to convince her, but rational argument doesn't really help in such a situation. so i told marcelo to jump together with her, and that worked.

the rafting actually gave me this vague desire to learn to kayak, something i was totally uninterested in before, for the sole reason that then i could go down those rapids anytime i want...except i would have to be really good at kayaking and i generally don't have the patience and dedication necessary to become good at things. :@

also we went to chaiten, which is a town on the coast which was partially destroyed after the volcano next door erupted in 2008 for the first time in 9,000 years. the volcanic mudflow of water and ash caused the the river that the town is situated on to change course. the river cut a new path directly through the town and about a quarter of the town was destroyed. much of the town is still covered in ash, but many people have moved back and cleaned their houses. the town is now a source of political controversy in chile as the government refuses to help and has written chaiten off, wanting the townspeople to relocate. there is no running water, electricity, or gas.

due to various complaints i have received about not knowing what i look like anymore, i took pains to appear in the photos on this trip. see how much i care about my fans? i also have spared you many of the landscape fotos that i took....

anyway, so the trip was a terrible idea because futaleufu was sooo beautiful and now i have another addition to the list of lives i could lead and places i could live. i don't know how i will decide between futaleufu, the atacama, and tierra del fuego... :(

photos: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#44.0

when we got back, the new volunteer, vanessa, had arrived. along with 20 southern baptists from tennessee and north carolina who did lots of renovations and work around the home as well as a lot of fruit canning for the winter. Vanessa will be here for four months and in april another volunteer will arrive, who will stay for a year. we are leaving here on the morning of the 21st, this gives us only two more weeks! eek. then we will spend a week in santiago before flying back to germany.

things are getting back to normal, we have electricity, water, and internet! i've unpacked my emergency backpack. (which i packed when they told us on saturday afternoon that there was going to be another, even stronger earthquake that night and i thought the building was sure to collapse). all we talk about at lunch is our different earthquake stories and what was it like when we woke up and who did what and thought what and reacted how and who thought they were going to die and never see their kids again and blah blah...

here's a link to a news story...there is a group of american missionaries here right now working, renovating the hogar. in fact, it is the same group of missionaries who originally built the building around 15 years ago. (thanks pastor jerry for doing a good job in the construction!!) anyway, two of the women left on friday and have appeared on their local news, because the rest of the group was here during the earthquake. there are one or two fotos of the hogar and the girls:
http://www.fox17.com/newsroom/top_stories/wztv_vid_2923.shtml

tomorrow i will post what i was originally planning to post on the weekend, namely an account of our short trip to the south and argentina two weeks ago, with pretty nature pictures and everything...

here are pictures we took in temuco the next day, all the rubble was already pretty much cleaned up. also the pictures from the water line and from our walk in the town center with the girls:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#45.0

shower

ok, i'm in the gas station again... it has been out of gas for hours, but is open anyway.
today the water came back on for two hours and we were able to shower! so i feel 100 percent better. they turned the water off again and we heard through word of mouth that it would be off for the next two days so we filled up all our bottles again. apparently the water tower up our street broke. the water is back again now though, we were able to do a load of wash. hopefully they will leave the water on.
our electricity is pretty flaky though, sometimes we have it, sometimes we don't.
the girls were supposed to go back to school during this week, the start of school has been delayed until next monday. somehow i don't think they will start monday, as our whole sector (where the girls go to school) does not have electricity. apparently just about all of the rest of temuco does though. in lots of places, the electricity and water never even went off. so i guess we are just unlucky, and our area is quite poor, so not necessarily high priority...

i only caught some news for a few minutes today while the tv was working this afternoon, so we still don't have much info about the outside world or chile. we heard about a tsunami on the coast, and fires in concepcion. no one here in temuco is looting so far, we heard they were throwing some stones at the supermarket, but all the big supermarkets have opened again.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/03/01/soledad.obrien.haiti.chile/index.html

whoa

i am only just now reading international news online and realizing how major this quake really was. it really didn't seem that big a deal to us at the time....we are realizing how lucky we are. glad we are in chile which has a good infrastructure. my main concern right now is when i will be able to take a shower again...it is 30 degrees out! also, life without electricity is pretty boring once it gets dark. last night we had a romantic candlelight dinner.

but life here is going on as normal. yesterday we walked around in the center a bit, the mood was strange. everyone just standing around with nothing to do, taking pictures. all the stores are closed. we asked at the mall yesterday and they said they won't be open for another three weeks...but they said that the supermarket will probably open in 2 or 3 days.