Mon-Thu, Aug.6-9th: Build, Build, Build...

Hey, Susanne back at it after Chelsea got to tell you about our amazing Andes weekend. Let's start with some noteworthy quotes heard over the last few days....randomly:
-Allie today in the van on way back home: "don't you see the siren?"
-Unknown: "she has everything you need, but it's not here"
-When Amy hit her thumb with a hammer: "good thing I'm not strong"
-Maggie after calling Steve "Paco".... "if I was in Canada, he'd be called Dave or Jim or Steve...." Group response "his name IS Steve ".
-Aaron "I need to stop eating, I can't breathe" (After our meat sweats) -Allie "sorry, I was distracted by the Andes"
-Susanne "looking forward to the Wike and Bine tour this weekend"
-"Unknown" commenting about how tight the space was in the truck "he shifted between my legs"

Monday saw us back at the work sites and it is usually on the second week that a bit of panic sets in as you always feel like you're going to run out of time. We had a few good work days this week and got way ahead past digging trenches and getting floors ready and making walls. We are now into finished roofs, walls that have siding and ceilings that are being built. Drywalls are up and mudding is happening. It is a really interesting build as my experience has usually been with brock builds, and to get our hands on a lot of wood, hammering, using a skill saw (LOVE iT!!!) and basically doing some things that will come in handy at home is really kind of neat. Our evenings continue to evolve around food and wine. Work days are long. We leave at 8:20 and are often not back until 7pm or so. Traffic in the evening is quite challenging as the work days here are longer so that people are on the road at 6:30pm versus 4:30 or 5pm at home. Our team is incredibly committed and everyone volunteered to go in early today and tomorrow, so teams left at 7:30 or so and one team did not get back around 7:30pm or so. Unfortunately you can only work so long as it gets dark around 6:30pm. We continue to have nice weather during the days, chilly at night but it is really nice working weather.

Wednesday afternhoon after work we got to visit Teleton which is a Chilean organization dedicated to helping disabled children. We got a little tour and were amazed at how progressive the centre actually was. They had everything from arts rooms to pools, to robotic treadmills, bracing shops, music rooms. Once a year they have a telethon and it is basically Chilean tradition and almost an expectation to give a donation to Teleton...likely a bit like the IWK at home. Chelsea and I told you about the three work sites and three different families we are helping. The family mteam is building additional rooms for is a family of a Mom, Grandmother, 3 daughters and a son who is quite sick with a lung disease. They believe it is likely cystic fibrosis...due to the condition of the home, he has to stay in a hospital and the Mom arranged for us to be able to see him in the hospical which is a special centre for kids with malnutrition who often have other more severe illnesses like our little Vincente. It was very special to be able to meet him in person. We had to get gowned up, and we got to be in the same room and interact a bit. He will be a year old on September 21st and will be allowed to go home for the night. It has been since March that he was last home. What a special half an hour this was...really brought home the whole reason for the build and our time here. And we could not have asked for a more grateful person and Mom in Francesca who joined us for dinner at the hostel after the hospîtal visit. And since we did not have an interpreter like we usually do obn the site, we had our i-phones and blackberries out with special apps which would translate etc. I had a little dictionary with me, but it was Spanish-German (yes, Mom, from wayyyy back) and it was not much use for anyone else :)

Wednesday was Allison's birthday and after some cake at the work site, and then some cake here, we went to Karaoke at a bar and had a great night out. Happy hour all nigfht, amazing Mohitos and very cheap drinks.... Who would have known we would have so much singing talent on our teram. Needless to say, after a big night out, it was a bit rough getting up today for our longer work day. But everyone worked super hard and we got a ton done!

Very grateful for our time here. Wonderful team. So committed, so helpful and just a great group of people who have bonded quickly, made some great friendships and I am pretty sure some of the newbies will be seen on future Habitat builds.... and PS: I can't find spellcheck on here, so: sorry! :)

Fri-Sun, Aug.3-5: Extreme Horseback Riding & the Meat Sweats

Friday was a half build day as we were leaving to go on our first weekend of R&R in the Andes and Cascadas de las Animas. It's hard to put into words how incredible this place was- tucked in to the Andes an hour and a half away from bustling Santiago. We left the traffic behind and went winding up the road sandwiched between the mountains! We checked into our rustic cabins and headed right down to the restaurant for supper. Turns out meals are a bit of process in Chile. Like most Chilean meals, we started with bread and this spicy salsa, mmmmmm, and ceviche for the fish lovers. Then it was on to the lettuce and peeled tomato, onion, and avocado salad and corn. THEN came the endless platters of meat! And not just platters of one type of meat either- at home you might have chicken or steak, right? no, no, a traditional Chilean bbq consists of pretty much any kind of meat possible.... All at once! First came the sausage, then the chicken, then the steak, and then the pork tenderloin!!!! Talk about the meat sweats! And as if this wasn't enough food to satisfy even the hungriest sumo wrestler, we then had dessert! Ice cream, cake, flambé.... it was 10x the feeling you have after eating turkey dinner! The gigantic awesome meals, heavy on the meat side, continued all weekend and although we enjoyed every bite of them, we could probably not eat until we get back and be completely fine. On to the extreme horseback riding. Susanne and I had been keeping our R&R plans secret from the group until we arrived although we probably could have told since we could have never explained the incredible adventure we were about to go on! Everyone mounted up and we started up the mountain in a single file line. In the front was our head guide and quite possibly one of the coolest people we have ever met. If you ever wanted to be a cowgirl, you would have wanted to be her. She looked the part, dressed head to toe in traditional Chilean attire and riding gear, exuding confidence on her feisty horse, the whole time singing and yelling things like "yahoo" for us to echo in the mountains. The entire trek up was like flipping through a pile of postcards. The snowcapped mountains loomed ahead, behind and beside you- one of the most picturesque landscapes I've ever seen! It was easy to "get lost" in the Andes.... That is as long as you weren't behind Hannah's horse whose last meal didn't seem to agree with him! :) After riding uphill on windy paths we arrived at our lunch site where we enjoyed... Yes, you guessed it- more meat platters!!!! As well as some rice, salad, bread etc. On the side. They cooked for us over an open fire while we ate and listened to one of the men play guitar and serenade us with Chilean music- awesome experience!! They also offered us the usual pisco sours, wine, and beer which... Had we known what was in store on the way down, we would have taken more advantage of! Our crazy cool cowgirl explained that the ride down the mountain would be an "adventure" Let's just say that she was putting it nicely. As we started down the steep cliffside trail you could hear everyone talking to their horses... "good boy" "it's ok, here we go" hahaha most people were really just trying to keep themselves calm. From the very beginning we were told that the most important thing to remember was that we have to trust our horse... And trust we did!!! For an hour and a half we skidded and galloped down steep hills directly on the cliffs edge while making sharp turns on the windy path. After the harrowing adventure and people had both feet firmly on the ground we all agreed that it should be considered an extreme sport but was hands down one of the most amazing experiences ever. After all that excitement and more meat sweats, Sunday was a relaxing day filled with yoga, a short hike to a waterfall and massages. It was a weekend none of us will ever forget.

Thu, August 2nd: Pisco (Gone) Sour!

Salsa anyone??? As promised, Ivan took us out for a night out on the town in Santiago. Many glasses of wine,beer and pisco sours later, we left the hostel and headed for the bar. Unfortunately the subway system had broken down so everyone and their dog were trying to hail cabs. Since we couldn't get enough for the entire group at once, we walked along and just hopped in cabs as they sped past! Quite the adventure! We all gradually arrived at the club where we took salsa lessons. And by learning salsa, I really mean being spun around the room and stumbling over our own feet, In fairness, they really did try to teach us but frankly, we don't move the way that they do. Still, it was a memorable night full of laughs, not-so fancy footwork, and an overindulgence of cervezas and pisco sours which for some, made for tough morning! We capped the night off with a little "Telepizza" which for the record, I strongly discourage unless of course you like dough that pretty much resembles sawdust! off to the Andes for the weekend! :)

Wed, August 1st: Team "Similar Operation"

Chelsea's turn: Our apologies for slacking on the blog. Things have been busy in Santiago! As Susanne mentioned, we are split up in to different groups. My group (Jessie, Kelsey, Aaron, Billy, and Steve) is more towards the countryside on Santiago nearer to the Andes. We are building two rooms for a 5 month old baby boy named Carlitos who has severe respiratory problems. He has a very difficult time breathing, always sounding wheezy and hardly has the lung capacity to cry. However, like so many other builds, everyone is happy and enjoying life. Our typical day starts out with about an hours drive to the house (traffic here is insane!), morning tea and bread with the family, and Julian's (our site maestro)extreme Stretching/ not really! He has his famous "touch the stars" and "feel the country". Every time we ask a question his answer is "its possible" and when he wants us to do something again in a different place he likes to say "do a similar operation" haha-he has us laughing all day and needless to say he is very entertaining. We have two other skilled workers on our site as well- Christan and Pablo- both of which are hard working and fun to work with. Over the past few days, we built the floor, exterior walls, and framed the interior walls. Days are flying by and we are all discovering new muscles we never knew existed! :) If anyone is looking for framer, we've got you covered.

Tuesday July 31st: Build Day 2

Everyone seemed to have slept well and our second day was also a successful one.  We have a busy work schedule and tasks continue to range from demolition to digging trenches to getting floors ready for cement being poured, assembling wooden casings for the cement to be poured into (forgot the real word for it) and getting materials from the store such as gravel and sand which has to be shoveled into our Habitat truck, then driven to the work site, and brought into the yard via wheelbarrows. All of our demolition garbage was on the sidewalk and the municipality sent a big container today that we could load all the garbage into, so it was wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of broken bricks, glass, dirt, wood etc to move the stuff from the front of the house to the container. Took a looong time.

Meals are great here, fruit tastes delicious and consists of apples, oranges, bananas, kiwi and then we also eat yummy tomatoes, avocados etc. Tea is a comfort drink here and is served often.  We all got the kiss on the cheek by the Mom on our site (site 3) and felt very welcome on our second day...the other sites felt the same. Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, and are bonding with the families and kids on site.

Ivan, our Habitat person here, joined us for dinner and we got a promise of going salsa dancing on Thursday night. Should be fun.

Monday July 30th: First Build Day aka. Demolition Day!

We met our team over a 7:30 breakfast of ``real`` coffee (Exciting after days of Nescafe), buns, fruit, yogurt (yum!) and excited faces eager to get the build going. So the 7 of us who had been on Easter lsland now met 12 others. Some were friends from home, and some were brand new friends...what a great group of people aged 18-60 from 4 different provinces and everyone seemed to mesh well already.  We split into 3 groups of 6, 6, and 7 as we had 3 build sites and jumped into our vans to get on our way. The weather turned out great. It`s a bit chilly in the morning but was definitely t-shirt weather after 11am or so. Pants are a must here as the work site really is a place where you need your hard hat, gloves, a dust mask and either sunglasses or safety glasses. Things are being passed down from the roof, things are flying up from the floor as you try to chip away cement to make room for new floor being poured later in the week and to dig little trenches which would house new pipes and plumbing.  It is a busy work site with limited room to move around.

Santiago is an interesting city to drive through. Very busy traffic, a bit crazy about driving and changing lanes. as we are building in a needy area, you can see lots of graffiti which is sometimes gang related (depending on neighbourhood), but often related to the various soccer teams in town. Chileans are crazy about soccer and in some areas, the colors painted on the bottom parts of electricity poles depict the team popular in that part of town. We`ve been told that in those places, you would never be seen wearing the jersey or colours of a competitive team. Too funny :)

Traffic is busy, lots of dogs everywhere, we saw a peddler walking up between cars in between traffic lights and instead of having a squeegee in his hand, he had an interesting assortment of bike tires, windshield wipers and a couple of other random things.  Tons of corner and variety stores with many things familiar from home and lots of bars and fences in front of windows and doors.

The three build sites had three different stories. Chelsea had one group, Alex (who has also done a number of builds already) was kind enough to take on a second group and I had the third group.  We all had separate vans and drives, and would only see each other again at the end of the work day. The houses all needed renovations so that in two cases, children could come live at home again as they were now staying in hospitals and in the other case would provide better living conditions for a child at home.  Some parts of the homes had to be demolished and others prepared for new floors, walls etc. So tasks differed at the various sites and at my site, we took walls down with hammers, chiseled away on cement floors with hammers or crowbars, took roof trusses and metal sheathing down etc. Physically it was a tiring day day but the families made it all worth it.  As a welcome, some of us had balloons waiting for us tied to the front gates, little signs on the wall welcoming us and name tags for our team, the family, as well as interpreters on site and Habitat staff.  Amanda and Michelle are on my site, but Chelsea will be able to provide more detail on her work site once back to blogging on here.

Kids are super cute and the language barrier was quickly overcome by sign language and lots of smiles. All the 3 teams worked very hard and we got a ton done for the first day. Meals at the work sites were prepared by the families and ranged from soup to spaghetti etc. Our work day does not finish until about 5:30pm and dinner was at 7. After that, we all found corner stores, bought some Chilean wine at 2 or 3 dollars a bottle and sat around chatting and playing catch phrase. It was a great first day. Tiring and we would likely have some blisters and sore muscles the next day, but that is what this is all about :)

Sunday July 29th: ``In Transit`` Day

Early morning today. Our flight was leaving Easter Island at 7am or so, so we got up before 5am so that we could catch a ride to the airport at 5:15am

We got up, some showered, we got our stuff all packed and went to the front of the hostel...only to find out that the flight was delayed....by 8 hours!  So back to bed we went. Our flight was delayed until 3pm due to weather over the Pacific ocean, so we got to hang out on this beautiful island for another day and we were lucky to have another nice breakfast, then check into our flight at the nearby airport, grab a ``bag lunch`` from the airline and then be able to stay in the hostel yard for a few hours.  The weather was beautiful. not a rain drop in sight, t-shirt and shorts weather almost...which we had not experienced since getting here.

We caught our flight at 3pm with LAN airlines, a 4.5 hour flight to Santiago. Nice meal and wine on the plane and Amanda ended up charming the flight attendant so much that he somehow gave her a bottle of red to take with her...and we`re not talking baby bottles. Too funny. Michelle sat in the middle of two aisle seats and made use of wine carts coming down both aisles...I have to say: impressive wine talents, ladies. :) 

We had changed plans earlier with our Habitat team as we were supposed to get in at 2pm versus the 10pm that would now be our arrival time. So the 12 team members who were already there had their orientation and supper with the local Habitat staff and we would meet them at breakfast the next morning. All went fine and by the time we got the the hostel around 11pm, most had gone to bed. Chris and Billy, part of our team, were still up and welcomed us which was nice.  We grabbed our things and found our rooms and beds around midnight.  Staff seemed incredibly welcoming with the customary kiss on the cheek and big smiles when we arrived. Loving the hospitality so far!

Santiago is a large city of about 6 or 7 million people. It was dark when we got in and quite chilly, but the city looked busy and big. Our hostel had charm inside and out. Lots of colors. Most team members had triple rooms, some had doubles and Chelsea and I ended up with single rooms. They were tiny with little twin beds, but really cute with warm colors, and little TVs.  TVs are seldom turned on when available on Habitat trips, but with Olympics going on, it was nice to see the little screen. As it turned out, all channels were in Spanish and we are having trouble catching much Olympic coverage...but hoping to be lucky and maybe catch a volleyball game, some track or other fun events.

So the 19 of us were now under one roof and trying to get a good night`s sleep in preparation for our first build day.  Can`t wait!!!