it's about time

not a whole lot to update you on, i've been in chile now for 8 weeks, pichilemu for most of that time, the class and schedule here hasn't allowed for much free time, fortunately there are two sessions of sports each week which allows me to get down to try and surf, the water is pretty cold down in these parts, it's an antartic flow and the continent here doesn't take a gentle slope, apparently just a few miles off shore it just drops and that allows all that deep water to surge upward, the 3.2 mil wet-suit isn't going to work much longer, fortunately we'll be up north for the dead of winter

the last week and a half i've been in a town called teno, it's about 3 hours by bus southeast of pichilemu. we have been doing a mini outreach here. this has involved several things; we're working with a church here, the typical day begins with getting up around 7:30 for personal quiet time, although i seem to sometimes wake up at 4 for a few hours, if that happens i'm back to sleep until 9 - which is when we have breakfast. at 10 we go down to the church for some prayer and worship, then if we're lucky we get some academic time but usually it's drama practice. this takes us to 1 pm when we go and have lunch. everyone has been gracious enough with meals to make me meat alternative dishes ( they eat so much white bread down here) on the bright side there is also a great amount of avocados. the produce and fruit here is amazing but very few of the locals really take advantage of all the varieties they have, dishes usually have potatoes or rice sometimes tomatoes.

i got sick about a week ago, there were multiple reasons; the weather here, it's pretty cold, being fall and an agricultural region there is burning in the fields right now (so it's pretty smoggy, much like the san joaquin valley in california), the smog sometimes burns off to give some nice warm days, the hosts were sick and one of the guys staying with me was sick also and not very cautious about trying to get better. i've had one of the worst bouts of congestion ever. we don't have a warm shower available so i've had to use a kettle and pot, this limits full body washes to one or two a week. i feel like i need to get back to pichilemu to get on a better diet.

back to my day at 2 pm we're usually at the local hospital for a time of visitation with the patients and a prayer table for those who may be visiting someone sick or there for their own personal ailments. from there we usually have something else to do then we run back to our houses for a brief snack and back to the church for a service or visitations. the bigger meal is after the evenings events usually around 10 pm so i'm finally in bed by midnight or later, i try to catch up on some of my class work or reading as long as i can stay awake.

getting to the internet has been an issue also, the whole town closes down for lunch so the internet cafe is closed. i've not really even had time to write many personal emails. please forgive me if you were waiting for a personal response. last day an i've discovered the city park has free wireless, go figure.