I am back in Santiago after a great trip home for the holidays. I made it to Atlanta mid-December and was able to get back to Chile on January 6. I was able to spend a lot of much needed time with family and friends, visit some churches, and generally just catch up with people that I have missed. I only wish that I could have had more time to see everyone.
A few of my highlights from the trip home include playing in the snow with my nephew, spending New Year’s with friends from Georgia Southern, and eating around the dinner table with the entire family.
When I got back to Chile, I went to work at the campus house with the Fortunatos. The team is smaller now as the interns have gone home and Frizz is on his sabbatical. We will be spending the next week planning for the summer and upcoming semester, meeting with students, preparing for the arrival of the new staff members, and working on various summer projects; including our attempt to dramatically clean out and organize our office. We had 9 people sharing the office space last year, and it was difficult to work and keep organized, but we’ve got a plan to update it a bit, which we are all too excited about.
Saturday morning, I joined Niko and Valentina on a trip about 2.5 hours outside of the city to a National Park. The extremely packed bus in which we were traveling wound it’s way around the gravel mountain roads as I slowly became nauseous standing in the middle of the aisle. At one point it was so packed with people that the doors wouldn’t shut in the back. At another point, the bus bottomed out at a rough spot in the road and we all had to get out to remove the weight and move on. When we arrived we did some hiking in one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever been. At the end of the trail there were what looked like two caves with streams coming out of them. When we got closer, we realized that it was a glacier and the streams were formed where it was melting. We were exhausted by the end of the day, but it was well worth it.
I’m glad to be back in Chile and back to work in the ministry. I can tell that my Spanish took a little bit of a hit being in the states. Things weren’t quite as fresh in my mind, so I’ve got some work to do to really improve my Spanish this summer. I’m looking forward to summer events and projects, and having opportunities to build stronger relationships with students like Niko.
