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Sunday July 2

We left for Santiago a little before 8. Our driver was Alfredo and he spoke perfect English because he lived in England for 8 years. (Of course it was with a British accent.) He took us to Santiago via the mountain route. I have never gone this way before because the road is winding and at some points fairly unsafe looking. He said that if there had been a mud slide anywhere we would have to go back to where we came. Some parts of the road had alot of dirt on it, but we made it through. He also said he doesn't take this road very often because there are bandits sometimes who hold up the cars. Good thing the scenery was so beautiful that we could think of that instead of the robbers. We went through some really cute little towns. It was a nice trip.

We got to Santiago earlier than we thought. It was about 10:30. We greeted Chonita and her family and hung around with them for awhile. At 1:00 we met with Meridith, a young woman from Canada who was going to translate for us.

We also met with Amanda. Amanda is a young woman from California who will be working with Sharing the Dream on our Santiago projects. She has lived in Santiago for 3 years, is married and plans on staying there for awhile. We have so many projects going in Santiago that it is better to have someone there to oversee them. She will work with us on a very limited basis, but we are excited to have her do it. We planned out the next few days and who was going to translate when. We also met with Salvador who owns some land that we are looking at for the school at Chacaya. You will hear more about this tomorrow.

Later in the day Theresa Ring from Vermillion came over. Theresa is from my home town and is volunteering at Chacaya. It was good to see her. She is really doing wonderful and we hear such good things about her. You can read her journals of her experience here on our web site.  (Click on Trip Journals.)  Theresa, Sara, and I went to the market in Santiago and found Herberto the man who supplies us with some of our wood. We visited, bought some products and just looked around town. Theresa knew of a nice little place that served some good desserts so we had to stop there. I had a piece of macadamia nut pie.. It was wonderful...... so much for roughing it.....

We went back to Chonita's and just relaxed for the rest of the day. It was very pleasant because we knew the rest of the week was going to be very busy.

go to July 3