December

Well I guess I should apologize again for letting my blog get so far behind. Its not so much that I have been super busy. We don’t have internet at the house I live at and while I am able to use computers at San Lorenzo (the school) and I use them often, they are pretty slow and I seem to waste most of my time on the internet keeping up with emails and the news. But Cole’s laptop finally arrived here (long story) so now we have a good computer that’s available to us at all times at school. However, the school year just ended (its summer here, well, technically its not summer yet, but its pretty hot). But we will still be at San Lorenzo for a little while doing some stuff. Then we have Trabajos (works) starting in early January. Trabajos is a service trip run by the school every winter and summer. And like everything else, we don’t yet know what we will be doing and where we will be going. After trabajos, we have another trip to Patagonia coming up (Jan 16 – Feb 1) and again we still don’t really know what will happen there. We at least have our plane tickets but I don’t think other essential logistics have been planned yet such as where we are staying, food, etc. After going to two meetings for this trip, one of which was about 5 hours long, all I really know is that Cole and I, and a bunch of other college-aged and slightly older people involved in the Manquehue Movement will be going to Patagonia and we will be split up into three groups, each living and working in a different small town. After that is over, Cole and I are hoping to stay on the farm that the Movement owns in Patagonia and then we would like to travel farther south, hopefully to Punta Arenas, Parque Torres del Paine (supposed to be the best national park in Chile) and Tierra del Fuego if possible. And by the time all that is done it will almost be March and the school year will start up again.

I cant believe it is already the middle of December. It gets pretty hot outside during midday and its really weird to see Christmas decorations (although there aren’t that many up yet) when the weather is like this. I have never been this tan in December. Its still a farmer’s tan but right now I am about as tan as I usually get during a Minnesota summer.

Giant Christmas Tree in downtown Santiago. Not bad, but its missing snow.

The big end of the year kindergarten production. I was chosen to play the role of a tree. I still have no idea what the 5 minute play was about. All the dialogue came from a song on a cd player and I couldnt understand any of it.

End of the year mass.



Andrea (7th grade) and I. I let the kids write all over my nice white t-shirt. Yes, I do wear a plain white t-shirt to work, almost everyday now. Its too hot for me to wear anything else.