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.

earthquake

saturday morning, 27.02.

i woke up shortly before 4 am, my bed was shaking and there was a deep, loud rumbling noise. i was fully awake but not rationally thinking as somehow the shaking made perfect sense to me and did not seem dangerous at all. i had this idea that i was in a house that was sliding down a hill and that everything was fine because it was not going to break and would stop soon. i must have been dreaming, and integrated my dream into my waking brain and just sat in my bed, holding on and waiting. i did not realize it was an earthquake! i could not make sense of what was going on. my analysis of the sliding house seemed crazy to me but it was the only logical conclusion i could come up with. i could hear someone screaming hysterically, but it just confused me because i was convinced that everything was normal and perfectly safe.

the shaking got stronger and the noise got louder, although my dream brain told me that my house should have stopped moving by now, that's when i started getting worried. and then i realized it was eli, the oldest girl, screaming outside, and then i got scared. around that point i realized where i was and that it was actually an earthquake and started thinking about what to do and whether i should go stand in the doorway. i looked out the window at the two houses to see how the girls were doing and why eli was screaming, and they were all coming outside. i remember thinking that they were standing way too close to our building and the giant pine tree, and then i realized that maybe i should go outside too, that was better than standing in the doorframe. i banged on steffi's door and went looking for vanessa, the other new volunteer from germany who just got here a week ago. the electricity was out and it was totally dark and i couldn't find her so i figured she was already out and then i went groping around my room to find my shoes. the quake was only a couple minutes long and by the time we got downstairs, it was already over.

no one was hurt and there was no real damage to any of our buildings, a few things fell out of shelves and stuff broke, and part of the garden wall broke, but that was it. eli had been screaming out of panic, there was no tia sleeping in the casa azul and as the eldest i think she felt responsible and freaked out. she was taking the kids out through the window, as the houses are locked at night. because there were no lights, the tia took forever to find the key to the door. a few of the younger kids didn't even wake up!
there were over 10 more weak tremors that night, i don't think anyone slept very much. there were only one or two that were somewhat stronger, but they stopped almost immediately. the girls were very scared. however we have already heard from all of their families and everyone is alright.
we found out the next day that the quake was 7,5 on the richter scale, which really surprised me. i had guessed maybe a 4 or 5, it's a good thing no one told me it was a 7 that night or i would have been a lot more scared. in the epicenter in concepcion, 300 km away, it was 8,8. it hit in almost the center of chile and affected a large part of the country. older buildings and taller buildings in the center of temuco were affected.

steffi and i had been planning to go out dancing friday night with some friends and we are now really relieved that we had decided to postpone it to saturday. i can't imagine the panic in the disco...two girls died.

we have no electricity (=no internet), no water, and the phone lines are usually too busy to get through, so we had no way of contacting germany, my international phone card is not working either. i am sitting in a gas station which has wifi. water trucks come around handing out water. we don't know yet when we will have water and electricity again. we don't have tv, so we hardly get any news other than the paper. according to today's paper, around 300 people died in all of chile, 11 of them in our region.

here are some pictures from the center of temuco and from the water line. more later when we have internet again.

marcela and rebeca

we are region IX

our wheelbarrow

weekend trips

on the weekends we've been taking short trips to some of the destinations nearby that we've been missing.

a couple weeks ago, we went to puerto saavedra, a small town on the coast. there we ate crab directly out of the shell and laid on the beach, watching the waves of the atlantic. we saw a bunch of weird bright blue jellyfish washed up on shore, which unfortunately i didn't photograph.


also, we went to pucon again, to finally climb the volcano! villarrica volcano is 2,847 meters high and one of the most active volcanoes in south america. approxiately 200 people go up it every day. sometimes it is not possible to reach the top, due to the poisonous fumes the volcano emits.

the day we went, it was really windy, which was unfortunate. it meant we could not take the chair lift (there is skiing here during the winter) for the first part of the climb, meaning climbing on scree. but once we got a bit higher, to the part of the mountain that is still covered in snow, things got even tougher. we went up in single file, zigzagging across, and always with our ice picks anchored in the snow. it was slow going, but we were one of the fastest groups. it was even more difficult because of the altitude, i developed this awful-sounding cough on the way up, which quickly disappeared once we were back at sea level.

once we were almost at the top, it was unclear whether we would go all the way up. the volcano was smoking a lot, there were a lot of fumes, and the wind was blowing the wrong way. we kept getting drafts of biting sulphur fumes, which burn the throat and nose.
for the most part, we could just follow in the footsteps that were already there. but our guide decided to go a bit sideways rather than the usual route, due to the fumes, which meant more work, namely striking a path. at the top the snow was a bit icy, too. it was a bit scary, because the volcano was quite steep, if you would fall you would just keep on rolling down the snow for quite a while....

but we made it all the way up to the crater, we were the second group that day to reach it. we only hung around for about ten minutes, then our guide made us leave. once we were back out of the stinky fume-y area, we got to the really fun part: sledding all the way back down! we had been given plastic butt-sleds and there were already luges in the snow from the sleds. so we just had to sit down and go, using our ice picks as breaks.
at the first one i was really scared, as it was really steep. but it turned out to be really really awesome. in total we covered about 1,500 meters altitude difference on the sleds. we were soaked through by the time we reached the bottom, despite all our waterproof gear. but it was hot and sunny, and once we got back to pucon, me and steffi hit the beach.

although that way up was incredibly difficult, it was totally worth it for the view, the crater, and the sledding!

here are the pictures:

-puerto saavedra
-pucon

google map: trip south

View trip south in a larger map

puerto natales/torres del paine

09.12.
awake at 6 due to my two israeli roommates getting up early to leave. we made an omelette for breakfast and caught a bus to puerto natales. we crossed the border to chile again, so we had to throw out all remaining fresh food that we had. our hostel in puerto natales was a totally run-down ramschackle house, but kind of awesome.

10.12.

departure for the national park torres del paine. we had been planning on staying in a "refugio" there but it turned out they were booked out so we had to camp. ugh. i was not overjoyed about that. we had to rent camping gear in puerto natales. after arriving in the park we took a boat to our campsite, set up our tent, and started off on our hike, to a scenic viewpoint of the grey glaciar. the hike was okay, but it was really, really windy, to the point where sometimes it felt we would get blown off the trail into the water.

11.12.

we took a bus/hiked to a different campsite where we spent the night. we met some cool isrealis there who were just stopping for coffee on their way further up the trail. (the whole park was full of little groups of young israelis). the next morning we got up a before the crack of dawn to do the obligatory "las torres at sunrise", where with the right light and no clouds, the torres are supposed to turn red, like this:

obviously, the whole getting-up-early-and-hiking-in-the-dark-on-an-unknown-trail-in-order-to-see-some-dumb-rocks-at-sunrise was not my idea. but i did it anyway. my flashlight was not nearly strong enough to be useful and gave up the ghost soon anyway, so we were mainly walking in the dark. it was difficult, the trail was short but quite steep, i don't remember how many meters altitude difference. it took us a couple hours. when we arrived at the outlook point to the torres (we were the last to show up, of course, since we left much later than everyone else, haha) there were a bunch of other tourists there, including the israelis from the evening before. it quickly became apparent that it was not going to clear up enough for the sunrise to be worth it. it was really cold, even more so as my clothes were literally soaked with sweat from the hike. i wasn't interested in hanging around in the cold and we were the only losers without thermoses of hot tea and stuff, so we left fairly quickly. back at the campsite i went back to bed. later i got up and treated myself to a real actual breakfast at the refugio, with eggs and coffee, where eventually the same group of israelis showed up on their way back down:

at some point i got around to asking them why there were so many israelis travelling in patagonia. they said it is customary to travel after their 3 years of military service. they travel for several months, like 5 or 6. so apparently there are huge concentrations of israelis travelling in south america and in asia, where you can travel for long periods of time, switching countries, and not run into visa problems.

anyway, so we took a bus back to puerto natales and the next day caught our flight back to temuco from punta arenas...

the end.

photos:

puerto natales

torres del paine

el calafate

okay so i haven't been spending too much time online since we changed our working hours and also have been taking day trips on the weekend. i am going to try and finally get through the rest of the fotos from our trip south so that i will be up to date and you can see the most recent photos

08.12.

here are my fotos from el calafate, where we spent the day after the glaciar trek. we slept in and made omelette for breakfast. then sat around in a cafe in the sun for a long time. it was really hot and sunny. we walked to the laguna nimez, which is a bird reserve. its free, you can just walk in...first i smeared a bunch of sunblock in my eye though, which really stung badly and meant i was half-blind for 30 minutes while my eye watered. after that i finally got to see flamingos! we walked around the lake, trying to get closer to the flamingos, but they kept moving away from the shore as soon as we got close. stupid birds. it would have been the perfect opportunity to use the telefoto lens i wanted to buy on ebay before leaving berlin. behind the reserve, the fence was down and we walked directly up the the Lago Argentino, largest lake in Argentina, straddling the border with Chile. it was really shallow and there were more flamingos too.

ushuaia/el calafate

(note: the more interesting part of this post is the second half, "el calafate", if you don't feel like reading the blow-by-blow)

04.12.2009 ushuaia

at the "museo del presidio", all about the history of the penal colony that was started at ushuaia, we got our passports stamped again with dorky stamps. there was also a lot about the naval history of ushuaia, and lots of model boats. it was one of the more informative museums we have been to. then again, it was in argentina, who knows, maybe museums are better there...

the whole time i had been trying to figure out a way to get to the legendary cape horn, but the only way is a cruise ship that costs a few thousand dollars. we discovered that the glaciar trip we wanted to do in El Calafate did not include actually walking on the glaciar, just around it to the scenic outlooks, so we decided to spring for the more expensive "mini-trekking" instead. we booked our 5 am bus to el calafate and got an unpleasant surprise, it turned out that we would not arrive around 9 pm, as expected and discussed on the previous day, but not until 24:00. however, we had already booked and paid for the glaciar trekking for 7:45 the next morning, so we didn't have a choice, meaning we would be very tired on our glaciar walk.

after getting up at 4, we went to the bus station. the weather was really bad, very windy, cold and rainy. i tried to sleep in the bus as much as i could but that didn't really work. once again we took the ferry across the magellan strait, this time we were even luckier with seeing dolphins. we had to cross the argentine-chilean border twice, because there is no road out of argentine tierra del fuego without crossing the chilean part. we changed busses in Rio Grande, and had to catch a connecting bus in Rio Gallegos. i guess we were fast at the borders, because we were two hours early, meaning we spent 4 hours waiting in the bus station in rio gallegos. we didn't arrive in El Calafate until 1:00 am. of course there were no taxis at that hour, so we walked to our hostel and crashed.

06. 12. el calafate

we got up at 7, breakfast was a banana and a yoghurt drink. then we went to get our bus to the glaciar. first we drove around in the bus picking up people from their fancy hotels. i dozed through most of that. driving into the national park los glaciares offered some spectacular views, but i was too tired to keep my eyes open.

we had great luck with the weather, it was warm and sunny, during lunch we lay around in tank tops soaking up sun while the glaciar was a just a few hundred meters away.

according to what they told us, the glaciar is formed in the "campo de hielo sur" the third-largest expanse of ice in the world, after antarctica and the arctic. there are still parts of the campo de hielo sur which have never been seen by human eyes. there are strong winds travelling from west to east around the lower south part of the globe, where there is not much land, except patagonia, picking up moisture over the oceans. however, the wind gets stuck on the andean mountain chain, where it has to rise up in order to cross the mountains. all the precipitation is left in the campo de hielo sur, which has one of the highest rates of precipitation in the world. therefore the eastern side of the andes, the patagonian steppe, is very windy but quite dry as there is no precipitation left.

so the campo de hielo is like a giant bowl filling up with precipitation in the form of snow, which gets compacted and compacted until it is ice. when the bowl cannot hold anymore it spills out in the form of rivers of ice, glaciars. there are dozens of glaciars in the area. several of them end in lakes.

the perito moreno is one of the few glaciars that are not retreating, in fact it advances up to 60 meters a year. the glaciars can be quite fast, not like the ones in europe, which are essentially frozen in place. the glaciar here enters a warmer climate, the lake or the rock underneath is warmer than the glaciar, so it sort of slides on a film of water. we walked on the side part of the glaciar, where it is stuck up against the rock, and more stable due to the friction. the middle part, in the middle of the lake, is the faster-moving part.

the front face ends in the lake argentino, where it melts or breaks off, occasionally damming the two arms of the lake until the pressure gets too great and the damming part of the glaciar basically explodes. the ice wall rises about 80 meters above the lake, but of course, two-thirds of its mass is actually underwater!

every once in a while, pieces of the glaciar face break off with this awesome loud crunching sound and fall into the water, then bob back as icebergs.

here are the photos from the perito moreno glaciar:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#37

christmas

okay,

so i guess i will interrupt my account of our travels to talk about our christmas.

here in the hogar things have been quite hectic, with last-minute christmas preparations. me and steffi kept going to the mall to print out pictures as presents, and made two big collages. one for each casa, of all the girls that live in each house.

on the 18th, there was a big official christmas party with all these people from the church, and everyone had to get all dressed up and formal. the older girls all got their hair done as a present from a hairdresser from the church, so me and steffi also went to the hair salon and got funky styles.

everyone was wearing really fancy gala-type dresses, which me and steffi were not really in to, and also, we don't have any such clothes. we were just going to wear skirts. but the girls were all preoccupied about what we were going to wear....the hairdresser lent them a bunch of dresses so they gave us two of them.

the dress i was forced to wear is very, um......pretty.....but then see for yourself...

here are the rest of the pictures from the christmas party:

http://chile.marahtyler.com/#38.0

there were several choirs that sang songs along the lines of "hey it's christmas, jesus was born". then there were canapes which we had prepared and also cookies and cake baked by our culinary arts student who just graduated.

there was a second christmas party, more informal, without outsiders, on the 22nd. that's when there were some presents for the girls, sent by a church in La Serena, in the north. the other presents from other churches did not arrive in time. that's when we gave our photo presents to everyone.

all the employees of the hogar (i'm 2nd from right)

on the 23rd all the girls left to spend the weekend with their families, or with people from church.

on christmas eve we had our third christmas celebration, dinner with the director and her husband and child, with whom we now share an apartment. there was turkey breast and salads, and we watched their really cute kid, javiera, unwrap her presents.

she also gave us presents, as a nice gesture. a coffee mug and a towel set, hahaha. :D



p.s- jessica, the girl who kept flipping out, was kicked out of her school and sent back to the hogar. she kept having breakdowns, getting violent, and refused to eat for 3 days. her school is a boardig school for the deaf, and is supposed to be the center of her life. the hogar is only supposed to be supporting the school, she comes here only on the weekends. apparently, the school sees that differently now. which sucks, they are the ones with pyschologists who speak sign language, but they send her here where no one can understand her properly except tia gaby who signs as well.

anyway, she was assessed by a psychologist, who said her development and understanding is very poor and she should be treated like an autistic child, not like a deaf-mute child with otherwise normal development...

she is now on strong medication, taking three times the dose that josselin was on, who is 18. jessica is 11. on the medication now, she is very pleasant and agreeable.

a 12-hour bus ride to ushuaia. through scenic tierra del fuego landscapes, along lago fagnano and through the garibaldi pass. also we crossed the strait of magellan on a ferry, where we got to see black-and-white "skunk dolphins" jumping alongside.
upon arrival at our hostal we were immediately greeted with lame jokes by a cute argentine with dreadlocks...he recommended a bar, which turned out to be an irish pub, ugh. i ordered pizza and beer and steffi ordered squid rings and a guinness and THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY GUINNESS! that's what you get for going to an irish pub at "the end of the world". so she got a "beagle" which is a beer made in ushuaia.
the next day we took a bus to the tierra del fuego national park to take a walk. there was a tiny post office there, where we got our passports stamped with a dorky "fin del mundo" stamp with penguins on it, thus filling an entire page of my passport!
our hike was totally amazing, through lichen-covered, pre-historic looking trees, along a lake. also, at times it was really really muddy. it reminded me of "the never-ending story" where atreyu's horse gets sucked into the mud. the first half of the hike we had good weather, then it started hailing and then raining. it rained for quite a while and we got pretty wet, and it was all foggy over the lake, but then suddenly it cleared up and got sunny again.we saw a bunch of wildlife, including the patagonian goose "caiquen", and also a calafate plant. they say if you eat the berries, you will return to patagonia. unfortunately, we didn't find out until after our hike what the plant looks like. and it didn't have any berries anyway.

also at some point i had read something about there being lots of "canela" trees in the park, which would be cinnamon. i thought that was a bit weird, but hey, it's tierra del fuego and everything looked weird there. so every once in a while we saw these fallen or cut trees which looked like they could be cinnamon, so i was stopping and tasting them but we never tasted anything cinnamony. then later i was reading some info and discovered that i had misread and there are actually "canelO" trees, "winter's bark". no cinnamon trees in the park. so we were just eating bits of random trees...lol

at the visitor center there i had one of the worst meals of my life, i wanted a soup to warm up and on the soup menu they had "escabeche de pollo', which they translated as "chicken in vinegar". i thought "gee, that sounds interesting" and ordered it. it turned out to be 2 cold pieces of chicken with a few vinegary veggies on top, and SWIMMING in fat. i did not finish it.
in town we went out to dinner and had "centolla", king crab. back at the hostal the argentines plied us with red wine and convinced us to come out to the irish pub again. it was totally packed with tourists and there was no place to sit. and still no guinness.

here are the fotos of ushuaia and tierra del fuego national park, hope you like pictures of trees: http://chile.marahtyler.com/#36.0

punta arenas

so we set off for our 2 weeks of vacation, flying to punta arenas.
the hostel we picked out is cute and small, a run-down house with a bunch of bedrooms and a nice atmosphere. there are tents with people camping in the yard. in the kitchen there is a crazy old stove that provides heat for the whole house.
we walked to the shore, which is the strait of magellan, so that we could stick our hands in and take photos. we are a bit disappointed that we can't enter the port to look at the big ships.we book a boat to the penguin island, isla magdalena, for the next day. and we have already noticed that there are germans everywhere here!
in the evening they fire up the grill at the hostel and make anticuchos (shish kebab) but i go to bed early. at the hostel there is this crazy polish guy who is planning on kayaking by himself to ushaia, through the magellan strait. he plans to do the trip in 3 months. previously, he hiked alone in the torres del paine national park in winter, during which most of the park is closed because impassable. he also hiked across the campo de hielo del sur (the third-largest ice field in the world after the arctic and antarctica) on skis, parts of which have never been visited by humans before because there is no reason to go there. his tent and his food as well as he himself were blown away in 200 km winds, but he continued hiking without food for 3 more days.
there was also a 48-year-old american lady with a bike that folds up and comes apart and fits in its own suitcase. when you are using the bike, the suitcase becomes a trailer for your luggage.
the next morning we got a van at 6:50, to get a boat to the isla magdalena, the penguin reserve. there we walked around the island for an hour, taking pictures of thousands of penguins. back on the boat, we were served coffee with a shot of pisco, and then we went to Isla Marta, where we saw a bunch of sea lions and cormorants from afar. there were huge waves on the way back, the boat was slamming up and down and a few people got sick. it was like an amusement park ride.
here are the photos from punta arenas:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#34.0

and here are the photos from isla magdalena, way more fotos of penguins than are really necessary:
http://chile.marahtyler.com/#35.0

once some american lived on the island for a year as a thesis project to do a complete census of the population and counted almost 200,000.

oh, and the internet at the hogar is broken. the transformer for the router burned out or something. i am sitting in the mall next to a giant plastic christmas tree. they are playing "winter wonderland" and people are walking around in tee shirts and sandals.

back in civilization..

after 2 days hiking in the national park torres del paine. too tired to write, only posting so that my mom knows that i haven´t died of swine flu..

punta arenas

flew to punta arenas today, beginning 2 weeks of vacation.

the timing is bad since apparently on friday the tia of the casa azul was fired. so the kids are without a tia, tia betty will be filling in for the next two weeks and then they will hire a new tia for the casa. the kids are kind of freaked out, some of the newer arrivals have never had tia betty as a casa tia before. and now we are leaving too, they were confused and thought we were going forever. so it´s too bad that we are leaving them now without a familiar tia. but i guess firing the tia wasn´t planned much in advance.

anyway. it is cold here. and really windy, 35 knots today. and the weather changes quickly. it hailed twice today, and drizzled. and in between it was really sunny.

we dipped our hands in the strait of magellan...and tomorrow we are going to see a penguin colony!!


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jessica

on sunday night Jessica (11) also threw a huge tantrum. she was here in the office building watching tv in the dining room, which is actually completely forbidden....but everyone makes exceptions for her. she is the deaf/mute girl and its impossible to control her anyway, she basically does what she wants. since she goes to a boarding school during the week, she is only here on the weekends and somehow there is no way to punish her for not doing what she is supposed to. Her center of life is supposed to be her boarding school, and the hogar is just supposed to be a help to the school, but that has been changing, her center of life is the hogar now. partly because her sister is now here, i guess. also, because we've been taking sign courses, she can communicate better with the tias, she is a little bit less of an outsider.

anyway, at 9 pm Tia Flor came to turn off the tv and send her to bed, but she freaked out and locked herself into the Sala de Estudio. So Tia Flor had to get the keys from the director to unlock the room. Jessica then escaped and went outside, where she then wandered around in the pouring rain and tried to test whether she fits through the bars of the fence to escape.

It took 3 people to forceably drag her into the building, then she was kicking and screaming on the floor. She can't talk, but she can make sounds, when she crys she makes a weird moaning/howling sound. They couldn't really move her, so they just held her down on the floor, hoping that she would get tired out and calm down. After about half an hour I didn't hear her anymore, so I guess they had taken her back to the house.
But a few minute later, she was out front again, this time only in her socks, standing in the rain. Then she took off her socks and was running around barefoot. They called an ambulance and got 2 paramedics to take her inside again. They said that her symptoms were typical of a nervous breakdown and took her to the hospital. There they said that it's possible that she has schizophrenia, but didn't want to give her any drugs because of her age. In any case, they need to get her checked out, they have found a neurologist who speaks sign language. Obviously,, her treatment is going to be expensive and the Hogar will have to pay for it. Which is really bad timing because at the moment the Hogar is going through a financial crisis...more on that later.

Last week she was in such a good mood and really well behaved. She had just won a gold medal in some Special Olympics in Santiago, in running, and was super nice to everyone. Generally though, she is badly behaved. You can't yell at her because she can't hear, and if she wants to ignore you she just looks away, then you can't communicate with her at all anymore.

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tantrums

Sometimes I have to do things that I don’t like. For example, a couple weeks ago the Tia was gone, accompanying Ceci to the hospital. I was trying to get all the younger ones bathed. I asked Camila (7) several times to get ready for her shower, but while I was looking for her towel, she put her pajamas on instead. I gave her a chance to take off her pajamas, but she wouldn’t do it, so I had to do it for her. Then she started crying, which eventually turned into a full-on flipout session as I pulled her up the stairs to the bathroom. She was refusing to get in the shower and even once she was in she kept shrieking and fighting with me and flailing her arms around. Carolina had to help me, holding her arms down so that I could shower her and wash her hair. Forceably showering crying little girls is not something I had in mind when I came here.

It happens every once in a while, sometimes she starts crying uncontrollably for really no reason at all and doesn’t calm down for a long time, sometimes hours. Usually at some point she starts screaming for her mother, which is so horrible to hear because her mother is never going to be there for her. Sometimes the older girls yell at her, "Shutup, stupid! Your mom is not here!" Something is going on with her, they were going to take her to a psychologist, but it’s gotten a lot better recently.

The other girls say that Linda (7) also has her tantrums, where she gets violent and starts scratching the tias. I have never seen her in that state though, so I guess she has gotten better as well.

Maria (9) has been acting weird lately, refusing to do her work in study hall. It’s as though she flips a switch. For no reason, she refuses to do anything, goes completely stiff, we can’t even move her because she grabs on to tables and chairs and refuses to let go. If we try to carry her out of the room she starts a crying fit and throws herself on the floor and makes a scene.

new post

Recently I decided to get out my summer shoes….pulled them out from the bottom of my closet and they were completely moldy. Nothing else in my closet is moldy, and I didn’t notice at all cuz the light down there is not too good. But there was no evidence of mold on the walls or anything. And my backpack was not moldy at all. Just the leather of my shoes. It was really gross and I've never seen anything like it. The photos don't do it justice.
It is pretty irritating, since it means I have to buy shoes now. The orange moccasins are irreplaceable and were a brand-new going-away present. The sandals I bought cheap in Pakistan. The Birkenstock were the best and most comfy, practical summer shoes, and expensive, but at least I can get them again back in Berlin. I don’t mind having to replace them so much because now I can buy them in the color that I actually wanted. :D





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We went to the theater to see some of our girls perform. All the special education schools of Temuco were present, each school had a short piece on stage. Three of our girls are in special ed, Jessica, who goes to the deaf/mute school, and Catalina and Cynthia. Jessica wasn’t performing, but Catalina and Cynthia were in a short “Flintstones” dance. Here are some photos:

Catalina is standing behind the wheelchair, she was "Betty" from the Flintstones. Cynthia is the white bird in the middle.

Cynthia and Catalina after the performance. They are both 13 years old. Cynthia has a growth problem, she is very small for her age. They don't know much about her condition, apparently her aunt had the same thing and died in her 30's.

my photo site is currently full, so i am not uploading fotos right now, i have to rent more webspace.

hogar

here are a few fotos from recent life in the hogar.

Once we went out to the grassy area by the mall to fly kites…the kites wouldn’t fly, probably because the building was blocking all the wind, but at least the kids had fun anyway, and got some much-needed exercise:

kites

There is an old ping-pong table which we got out of storage and bought some paddles for.

Also the Hogar had a big bazaar to get rid of some of the old clothes.

The other day we had a wellness afternoon where we invited some of the older girls up to our apartment and made peelings and masks with them, and cocktails from fruit juice.

I also posted some pictures out around town in Temuco, so you can get an idea of what it's like.

http://chile.marahtyler.com/#33.0