Funny story

This morning at 2:00am all over the world clocks were rolled either forward or backward 1 hour. Jake and I changed the time on our phones and his watch. We enjoyed the extra hour of sleep and lazily got ready for church this morning. We were quit confused when we saw the meeting was ending when we got there, not about to begin. Turns out that this past week the Chilean government decided to delay the daylight savings time change until April 3rd, 3 weeks from now. The reason in doing this is to help out the people who are still without electricity because of the earthquake that happened 2 weeks ago. Um………ok. Jake and I were not aware of this because the only news we check out online about Chile is to make sure that something hasn’t erupted, no military coup has taken place, or something to that effect. So, even though the electricity has been restored to almost every city (some have been completely destroyed) we have to wait 3 weeks for the time change. Until April 3rd we will be 2 hours ahead of Nashville.

With fingers crossed this will be the final week of the digging part of the project. Jake and I went to Temuco today to get some supplies we can’t get in Pucon. So after missing church we headed out. We went to the Mall to have lunch first and it was in bad shape. There were stores closed all over and the 3rd level was completely closed off. In the food court the only place open was the McDonalds. Some of the stores were closed due to structural damage while some were closed because they had been looted dry. There is a pharmacy by the main floor entrance that was almost completely empty. There were cracks in some of the walls and ceiling tiles missing all over the place. We drove by the hospital but didn’t see any damage to it. Downtown there were a lot of older abandoned buildings that had toppled over or lost big chunks out of the concrete. There were piles of bricks and concrete all over the sidewalks. I am glad we were in Pucon when it happened, I don’t think I would have done very well if we were anywhere else.

After lunch we went to a store called “Easy” which is kind of like a love child between a Home Depot and a Wal-Mart. We wondered all over the store multiple times until we found someone who actually knew where what we were looking for was located. When we were checking out the lady at the register asked Jake for his passport because he was paying with a debit card. We don’t carry our passports around with us and we have never had to show a passport when paying with a card before. Luckily Jake had taken money out of the ATM before we went to the store otherwise we would have had to leave, go get some cash and come back. Very odd, but we had to get the stuff so oh well.

Tomorrow Jake & I will go to the site to finish up recording and digging out the remaining features and site maps. Then starting on Tuesday we will be back filling all 4 of the trenches. There is one more 2 meter by 1 meter pit to dig, but that will be dug and filled back in over the course of a day. After that we will be completely done with the digging part! Maybe by the time we get back home we will have gotten all of the dirt out from under our fingernails!

We are STILL feeling aftershocks! There was one just about an hour ago, and it wasn’t small. I am looking forward to the SOLID ground of TN. Anyway, hope all is well at home!

Mandy & Jake