Turning 25

This past week I celebrated my 25th birthday. December 8th is a Holiday here in Chile. It is the Immaculate Conception, Mary’s, so we had the day off. We drove to Temuco and stopped in at Juanita’s to pick up a package from Jake’s parents. They sent us a jar of Peter Pan peanut butter for Jake and JIF for me. We also got some bite size Snickers, some Simply Sleep, lots of Jerky, and a box of brownie mix. Oh, it was a wonderful! Thank you!

We walked around one of the ferias (market) to finish up our Christmas shopping and then headed to lunch. We enjoyed a very quiet lunch and Ruby Tuesday, very quiet. We were the only people in the entire restaurant. Sadly, there was no salad bar. Jake was a little heartbroken but he enjoyed his trio plate of chicken, ribs, and shrimp. I had a burger, a real burger with cheese and stuff! There was even real honey mustard! Oh and for dessert we had chocolate tall cake, and it was actual chocolate tall cake. Ruby Tuesday used to serve this massive dessert full of chocolaty goodness, moose, ice cream, whipped cream, and crushed cookies. It was awesome! They no longer offer this item so when Jake saw it on the menu he jumped to have it again. Sadly Jake only had it one time before they changed the recipe. There was one alteration to the dessert; it had manjar on top which was an improvement! We ate way too much but it was a nice meal. We then walked back to the mall to catch a movie.

yummy tallcake.....





5 minutes later....







Jake truly loves me to sit through one of the Twilight movies. I told him going in that New Moon was going to be a bad movie, and that I wasn’t going to enjoy it, he defiantly wasn’t going to enjoy it, that he would lose time that he would never get back. He knew this going in and was still a little surprised at how bad it was. He asked beforehand if he was allowed to laugh and I explained that if he didn’t I was going to think something was wrong with him. We giggled our way through enjoying some Skittles.

After the movie we went grocery shopping at the Jumbo and picked up some more Mac & Cheese and found some more Root beers! We headed back to Pucon where I spent the rest of the evening with a killer headache. It might have been one or a combination of the following, the food, the movie, or the weather. It was an enjoyable 25th birthday!

The weather has been better for work but we still haven’t found much. Friday we did find the tip an arrow head and a very specific kind of ceramic. Hopefully we will get a lot of work done this coming week before we head home for a break.
Tomorrow is the Chilean election so everything will be closed tomorrow…..everything….In Chile you have to vote, if you don’t you get fined!

Mandy & Jake

Little trip

After church on Sunday we drove to the base of the volcano. The road, and I use that term loosely, that leads up to the base is very steep and narrow. The truck we are renting as no guts, it barely made it up the road. I couldn’t see how the other little cars made it up there when we finally got to the ski lodge. To my surprise there was a tour bus parked on the side, how they made it up there I will never know. I would have wet my pants had I been on that bus going up that “road”.



Anyway, it was neat up there. The lodge isn’t open right now, but the ski lift just sitting there was kind of cool to see. The volcano was smoking a lot! Turns out it erupted a little last night…..HA! We took a few photos and then headed back down. It was cold up there and we had on shorts and t-shirts. We had no idea what to expect to be up there. After driving back down we headed to Lake Caburga. It is always nice there and we had nothing else to do. The water had not lowered at all but had actually risen a bit. There were a few more people there than the last time we went but still not crowed as it usually is.

Well, the weather forecast claimed that there would be rain in the afternoon today, but the sun was shining when we got up this morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so we thought maybe we would get some work done today! Oh, what a lovely thought. I was on the other side of the site drawing the maps of the first trench. We had been there about an hour when Jake showed me what looked like a few bug bites on his wrist. The first aid kit that we brought contains Benadryl gel. Sadly it was back at the cabin. He came back in a few minutes and showed me that the bites had spread up his arm. Needless to say they weren’t bug bites but Jake was having an allergic reaction to something. There were ugly red bumps all up his arm. We quickly decided that work would have to wait and we would have to get Jake some kind of antihistamine. We were back in the truck within 5 minutes. All the workers were trying to convince Jake he needed to go to the hospital and get a shot. By this time the bumps had spread to his other arm. The woman at the pharmacy had an antihistamine and told Jake that if it didn’t help and he felt like he couldn’t breathe to then go to the hospital in town and get a shot. She made him take the pill at the counter. There were a few of the bumps on his neck now. We got back to the cabin; Jake took a shower, rubbed the Benadryl gel on the bumps. Thankfully they stopped spreading and the itching lessened. The swelling has gone down a lot and he is now knocked out. No throat closing or eyes swelling. He is fine now, just asleep.

So, no, not any work done today. We have not had a full week of work since we got here. Crossing our fingers for next week!

Tomorrow is a National holiday, the day of Immaculate Conception. Mary’s conception. So, the workers have to day off and Jake and I are heading to Temuco to celebrate my birthday. We are going to eat at Ruby Tuesdays! Jake is so excited about the salad bar, I hope he doesn’t eat himself sick. We have about two weeks left with this trip. It is strange, it seems that time hasn’t really gone by that quickly but then at other times is seems to have flown by. We are excited to take a break and enjoy ourselves in our house, and sleep in our bed. The cabin is nice but we miss home. The United States is defiantly a country of convenience and we have greatly missed that.

Mandy & Jake

Learning new words

I learned a new word in Spanish this week, cerrajero, which means lock smith. Friday morning we had just gotten to the site and started working and Jake realized that he needed more ziplock bags. Any artifacts that we dig up have to be in a bag that is labeled where we dug it up. We had meant to get some more the night before when we went to store, but we forgot. So Jake left his workers there and we headed to the store. It is about a 15 minute drive from the site to where our cabin is. The cabin is basically across the street from the grocery store we use. Jake parked the truck, I jumped out and he locked the doors. We headed in and got the bags and some treats for his workers and walked out the door. As we got closer to the truck I said, “Does it sound like the truck is still on?”

Indeed the truck was still on, and indeed when Jake’s hand went into his pocket to retrieve the keys they were not there. Now, in Jake’s defense the truck we are renting doesn’t turn off when you take the key out of the ignition. It’s weird, so when you get out of the truck, even if you have the keys in your hand the engine is still running. The sound of the truck still being on when we went inside wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Where do you even begin? If we were at home we would call AAA and they would be there super fast and we would be on our way. There are no public phone books, as they would be stolen, and there is no such thing as 411. Jake called Sonia, she is the woman we are renting the cabin from, and got her voice mail. Strike one.

Jake headed back inside the store to see if they had the number for a locksmith while I climbed in the back of the truck and laughed. He returned with the number and it turned out that he was really busy and couldn’t come and help us. Strike two.

Jake walked across the street to the fruit stand we go to and asked if they had the number of a lock smith, and bought some avocado while he was there. He came back to the truck with one of the guys from the fruit stand behind him. Apparently they have the card of a lock smith at the fruit stand but no one could seem to find it. Strike three.

Mean while I am sitting in the back of the truck eating a Gansito, which is kind of like a little Debbie cake. It has yellow cake, a cream filling, strawberry jelly filling, and is coated in chocolate with chocolate sprinkles on top. They are quite yummy and a recent discovery for me. After 20 minutes Sonia called Jake back and said that she was on a picnic and for Jake to call her husband. He said he would bring someone to unlock the truck. Jake told him that we were in the parking lot of the store, but we watched his white car turn down the road where the cabin is and Jake started walking. About 10 minutes later the white car pulled up next to the truck with Jake in the back seat, wait, with Jake scrunched in the back seat.
It took the guy about 2 minutes to use a screw driver to wedge the door open enough for him to stick a wire down and unlock the door. Yay! We are in the truck! It only cost about $30 for him to do that! Jake is in the wrong business I’m telling ya. Needless to say we were happy to be back in the truck and on the way back to the site. It only took about 40 minutes longer than it should have and wasted about 1/8th of a tank of gas and $30. Jake was able to laugh about it the next day.
From now on we will always lock the door with the key and not use the button on the inside of the door.

Mandy and Jake