Changed my mind!

Ok, so I changed my mind - woman's perogative isn't it?!!

Instead of going up through the north of Chile into Peru, I've nipped across into Argentina in an effort to catch up with Luce.

Had an amazing bus ride from Chile to here yesterday - 5 hours driving through the Andes. Reminded me how much i loved the mountains in Canada, except these were a bit less green and more cacti!!

Been horse riding through the mountains today and have a slightly sore bottom!!!

All my efforts to become a svelte, atheletic goddess in time for my 30th seem to be going out the window. I've been fed cake and bread for breakfast each morning., followed by 2 lots of 3 course meals a day! I doubt the manual labour was hard enough to work a quarter of that off!

In addition i've mainly been working inside the houses, so not sight of the sunshine.

So, in summary - I'm still a short, pasty, weeble!

Ah well, beats working!

Adios
xx

Becoming Sarah Beeny and mis 3 amigos!

OK, Ok, so I'm writing in this blog and NO i still haven't sorted out uploading my photos yet!!

Lighty's got me a flickr account so as soon as i have access to a decent computer i'll try and sort the photo thing out.

So....quick update - 3 weeks in, 2 weeks in Santiago staying with granny and having spanish lessons in the city. Just finished my first week of volunteering and i'm knackered - got blisters on my hands and everyfink!!!

Have moved out of Santiago for the volunteering work - about an hour north in a town named Los Andes. Much happier now i've moved out of the city - being in the middle of nowhere feels much more like travelling than just another big city.

The volunteering work is with Habitat for Humanity and concentrates on house building projects all over Chile. Apparently they believe there to be about 30% of the population below the poverty line and with a housing deficit of approx 3 million.

The way Habitat operate is that they work with families who have a small amount of saving or government subsidiary already and match that and then also provide an interest-free loan for the family to pay back. The family also has to commit to "sweat equity" which is time they need to be involved in building the houses themselves and those that may be built near them. The loan is then paid back over a number of 10-20 years and this money goes to fund the next house and so on...

So......the last week i've done the following:

Pounded 3 floors with a big hammer type thing!
Sealed windows!
Scraped walls and thrown concrete at walls to cover up holes!
Put up guttering and dug holes!

And during this week, the 3 favourite words i've learnt are:

Torpe - clumsy
Inutil - useless
Pecaro - naughty

Need i say more!!!!


The 3 amigos!

Don Mario - new adopted grandad!!! Greets me with a "Bonjorno" every morning and warns me about how coffee and cookies leads to marriage before you realise it!!!! The funniest person i've met so far. Can hardly understand a word he says, just know he's hilarious!!!

Pepe - Chain smoking, hard working "maestro". Favourite words are Ok, ok and bye, bye, bye, bye - and singing "tell Laura, I love her" - to the Canadian girl, Laura - been working with her for the past week.

Christian - Head engineer. In my broken spanish, I managed to tell him on my first day that I thought the dog was nicer than him - and by the end of the week he'd thrown me over his shoulder. SO.....I'm thinking it's not such a bad start to the boss-employee relationship type thing!!!!

Right, off to bed as back to a hard day on the site tomorrow!!!

Now, where did i put those builders bum jeans???!!!!!

Adios!