A change of pace:

It was strange waking up on Monday morning, knowing that work at the church was marked off our list of priorities. It was even more strange hearing the school bus back down the lane, bip for the neighourhood kids and leave again. It happened every weekday morning, but this time it didn’t awaken the normal panicked feeling of sleeping too late and having about ten minutes to dress, eat and walk out the door.

Burning off in the forest.

Cleaning, packing, organizing.

We had a fairly slow start to that day, hanging out with each other as we ate breakfast, putting off the job of packing and cleaning. Consequently, when Juan-Carlos and Gloria dropped by late in the morning, some of us were still in our PJ's . We were told that their visit was a ‘visit to the doctor’ which in Chile means a flying visit, and they didn’t sit down. Instead, they asked us to write down all our names. ‘What for?’ we asked as we complied, ‘Our prayer list’ they replied, at which we all laughed heartily.  ‘What are you up to?’ we asked as they laughed with us, but they merely chuckled some more,  hugged and kissed us and flew back out the door. ‘Adios!’ they cried as they drove away. 

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. We cleaned up and washed the pile of laundry in the bathroom, ironed, packed, sorted, piled, carried and run up and down the stairs. Mum and Dad went for one last walk around Los Alamos, taking photos of buildings and visiting Hermano George and his wife to give them a card and photos. On the whole we were all feeling rather down and out of it, and maybe a little bruised. 

This is one of the first buildings ever built in Los Alamos. We walked past it every day on our way to work, and I think the Chileno's are hoping someone would repair it to it's former glory.

A typical sight around town.

The people who own the house we live in dropped by that afternoon to say goodbye. They said they were really thankful that we could stay in the house for those three months. Before we came they thought they would never be able to live there again, Jaysis said, but having us stay here safely for so long had given them confidence to come back. They told us that if we ever returned to Chile they would love us to stay there again!

We had a light dinner and received a skype call from family in Australia. Almost everyone was gathered at Mamma and Pops’ place, and it was pretty awesome to catch up with them again…we talked for a long time!

Tuesday was more of the same, only the cleaning and packing was more intense. By dinner time all our bags were packed and stacked downstairs, and the house was as close to sparkling as we could get it. The Pastor and his wife visited us and stayed for cenar, as did the Juan-Carlos family, and a couple of other people dropped by also. The Juan-Carlos family gave us gifts which finally curbed our curiosity. They gave us each a hat with Los Alamos written on it, and a neck or head warmer with our names embroidered in blue– and the names were all spelt correctly. 

wearing her presents.

 'sounds like'

Here, the Pastor is reading our Important Words: English to Spanish translations. We were asked to leave it there when we left. :)

Write, write, write!

Everything seemed so comfortable and normal we had difficulties grasping that we would be leaving the next day. We were so happy they came. One of the younger ones had the idea of asking people to write in her diary, which was so sensible that we kept our friends writing for well over half an hour. We laughed at them wickedly as the diaries kept coming, but they got their own back by asking us to write something for them. At the end of the evening we walked upstairs tired, but happy. 'Tomorrow' was a mere dream.