Big Events

The big news this week is the huge earthquake in Chile. While we were not affected here in the north, many of our friends and coworkers were badly shaken. The latest news is more than 700 deaths and tons of structural damage from the center to the south of the country. Many are without electricity or water. People are looting the supermarkets for food, water and some not-as-necessary items (big screen plasma t.v. anyone?). As far as our Columban family, we haven't had any injuries or deaths. We are again reminded to thank God for each day of life and to live that day to the fullest.

The earthquake came just a couple days after we arrived back home from a trip to Bolivia. We spent a week and a half in Cochabamba, where we studied Spanish five years ago, in the beginning of our mission. Bolivia is a beautiful country with an amazing and lively culture. It was great to go back and speak with our Bolivian family, much more fluently and to get reacquainted with the culture we fell in love with back then. Our timing couldn't have been better, as we arrived the weekend before lent and got to experience the Carnaval festivities.

Sadly, this was also our last week with Anna's sister Joanna. She has been in Chile for the last nine months and it's been great to have family so close. Joshua will really miss his tía and so will we. She was supposed to fly out of Santiago on March 2nd, but the airport is closed due to the earthquake. So, after a full day of running around the city and international calls, she arranged to travel by bus to Lima, Peru and to fly out of there to Miami. What a week! Here are some photos of the more pleasant times:

Us with our Bolivian family five years ago.

Us with our Bolivian family a couple of weeks ago. The girl on the left is a current student at the language institute and is living with our Bolivian family while she studies.

"Cristo de la Concordia" overlooks Cochabamba. Cochabambinos claim that this is the largest image of Christ in the world... bigger than the one in Brazil. This is a dispute that only Wikipedia can resolve.

Our Bolivian mom's hometown "Tarata." Her aunt continues to live and farm here. These are her very thirsty wheat fields. During the week of Carnaval, Bolivians take the opportunity to ch'llar, or bless, their homes and work places. They invited us with them to ch'llar the wheat fields. It was a very interesting experience!

The front door to their house in Tarata, a very colonial town. The two women in front are neighbors and show the typical Bolivian dress.

Joshua with a friendly baby alpaca!

Our Bolivian mother takes great joy in embarrassing us whenever she can. This time, she dressed us up in polleras (typical skirts) and had us dance in the street during Carnaval. It was a lot of fun, but she forgot to mention to us before hand that the dancers get soaked by the spectators with water guns, shaving cream and water balloons.

These two men are dressed for the "Tinkus," a really interesting dance that we got to perform at language school five years ago.

Our version of the "tinkus" looked something like this.

The Bad Kid

Today at church, we realized that Joshua is "the bad kid." He had two other kids crying because he decided it would be fun to poke their eyes, throw rocks at them, put dirt on their heads and give them a kiss. He'll be spending the rest of the day in his crib, thinking about his actions and then writing an essay on how to make friends.

(Photo stolen from a friend's facebook)

Youth Hostal

Lately, we seem to be running a youth hostel. When we arrived home from Santiago, we drove to Peru and dropped off Anna's sister, who will be travelling around with a friend. On our way out the door, we received a call from a youth we know from our old parish in Santiago. She had been backpacking with her two friends for two weeks and was just about to arrive to Iquique! So, we drove the five hours to Peru, ate some great ceviche, bought a pair of prescription eyeglasses for just $32, spent the night and drove back home the next morning. We were exhausted, but ready for house guests. After hosting the three of them for a few days, we then received another call. A family we know from Santiago was just about to send their 2 daughters off on a bus for Iquique along with a few friends. Could we please give them a place to stay? Since we had promised them a month ago that yes, they could stay with us, we had little choice. The five of them arrived today. We made a nice Chilean lunch (as Chileans are not commonly too fond of our north American cuisine) and sent them on their way to the beach. We then put Joshua down for a nap. Alone at last! With our new found freedom, we did the most exciting thing we could think of... we watched the season premier of Lost online. It was well worth the wait! Now, the only problem is that we have to wait five more days until the next episode. TORTURE!!

Odds and Ends

We finished our course in Santiago and are now back in Iquique. Joshua really missed the dog and his Aunt Joanna here at home. He's been running around the house in a great mood, kissing the dog and saying new words every day. He even said his first sentence, "Eat ball." (meaning that he wanted to eat a peach, because he calls all round objects balls).

Going through all the photos on our computer, we came across these from last October, when we all dressed up for Halloween. Joshua and Anna were Batman and Robin and Anna's sister decided to go along with the super hero theme as well as "Super Cupcake." We had a lot of fun dressing up and Joshua even got some candy. Life is a lot more fun with a little boy.

Sex Ed

We spent 9 hours listening to lectures today. We plan on doing the same thing tomorrow, the next day and every day this week. While we didn't really enjoy the sitting so long part, we are very thankful for the chance to learn a little more about a topic that has us frustrated to no end here on our mission. We're taking a course in Santiago called "Teenstar" that is capacitating us to teach comprehensive, faith-based sex education to teens.

"Sex Ed Teacher" isn't exactly the job title we were looking for when we signed on to come to Chile, but through working with the youth here, it became apparent very early on that the kids needed something more. We learned today that in 2008, 15% of the babies born in Chile were born to teens. And from personal experience, we know that a much higher rate would be found in the neighborhoods where we live and work - poor, underprivileged and poorly educated areas. For example, at the last Confirmation we attended in the parish where we used to work in Santiago, of the 40 teens getting confirmed, 3 were pregnant and at least one already had a baby. Another youth from the group recently found out he has HIV. While we do our best to accompany them and try to guide them on a path to good decision making, it's obvious that we need help.

While we're struggling with teen libidos, Joshua is endeavoring on a new adventure... he spent the whole day with a babysitter for the first time. Anna cut out of class early because she couldn't stand the separation any longer, rushing home to find Joshua contently playing at the babysitter's house and not too anxious to come home. It hurt our feelings that the little guy could actually have a good time without us, but we're happy that he adjusted so well. We'll see how he is after a week.

Things Chileans Do...

... at midnight on New Year's Eve:

1. Run around the block with two packed suitcases if they want to go on a trip that year.

2. Eat 12 grapes to guarantee 12 lucky months.

3. Wear yellow underwear to have luck in love.

4. Create life sized dummies out of old clothes and newspaper and burn them to get rid of the bad vibes from last year and create good vibes for the new year.

5. Hug and kiss everyone in the neighborhood, wishing them a great year.

The Christmas Shuffle

We arrived back in Chile unmentionably early on the 16th. David got smart and decided to black out Joshua's windows with blankets, hoping to trick him into sleeping longer. His plan unfolded flawlessly and we awoke at 2pm, a well-rested and happy-to-be-home family. We quickly realized that there was no food nor Christmas cheer in the house, and we only had one week to prepare. So, we spent the week before Christmas buying a tree, making paper stockings, baking and listening to carols in an attempt to make it "feel" like Christmas. We especially wanted to make it nice this year for Anna's sister Joanna, who was spending her very first Christmas away from home and with us. Plus, Joshua actually seeming to picking up that something different was floating in the air.

We gifted banana bread and cut out cookies this year, making sure to add a diabetic version of both. (Based on no factual statistics, we would guess that Chile has the highest rate of diabetes of any country.) We really enjoyed taking the plates of treats to our neighbors' houses, which gave us a great excuse to visit and see how things were going with each one. We were reminded that the best mission work is done just by being a friend and visiting wit

h families. We wished that we had taken more time to talk with each one throughout the year, and focused less on meetings, activities and administration. Perhaps a New Year's resolution in the making...

We attended "midnight" mass at 9pm. With a shortage of priests and four communities to serve, not every chapel can have a mass at midnight. After mass, we shared hot chocolate and "pan de pascua," a type of fruitcake, with the community. We then had Christmas eve dinner at a neighbor's house. This family is originally from Ecuador and understood

what it's like to be far from home during the holidays. Joshua loved playing with their two 6 year old cousins and rearranging their furniture, a hobby that he's picked up recently. Santa Claus arrives at midnight in Chile and the children open their presents after dinner, then run to the streets to play with their new toys. We walked home around 1 am to a chorus of laughing children and fire crackers. We decided to wait until morning for our presents.

On Christmas morning, we awoke to find that Santa had not passed us by, although we did fear finding coal in a couple of stockings. Joshua smiled and giggled at each new gift and absolutely loved every. single. one. Including the socks and undershirts. We did, however, find our gift to him, a picture Bible, still wrapped in the trash can, two days later. Apparently, he thought it was really fun to throw wrapping paper into the can, and the fact that the paper was concealing a gift didn't really matter that much to him.

We continued celebrating until just recently, when we realized that yet another holiday is upon us. We are now preparing for New Year's, where we'll spend the night celebrating with another neighbor family. We'll let you know how Joshua likes staying up past midnight and eating a bunch of junk food yet again.