washing, and washing, and washing

Thursday we took a trip to Temuco so that Jake could talk to the people at the museum and see if he could figure out what was going on with his artifacts. The Conejo told Jake that he should ask if the museum in Valdivia could take the artifacts for a while. The woman who is the director is Jake’s counterpart here. She said that they could take the artifacts for a while, but that they couldn’t stay there for long. When we got the museum in Temuco on Thursday Jake was able to speak to the woman he had been in email contact with. He found out that their shard artifacts were being kept in one particular building downtown, which due to the earthquake was damaged enough that the building is going to be destroyed. The museum will have to find another place to store all their shards, and until then, Jake can’t give them to the museum. They have no idea when he will be able to. The Conejo hasn’t told Jake where they will go for good, but at least he knows they can go to Valdivia for a while.

On a plus side Jake was able to find some calipers and a scale! Yay! Now he can at least get to analyze the artifacts while we wait. While we were in Temuco we had to drop off the truck we are renting so they could change the oil and check it out. They gave us a white version of the truck that we are renting to drive around town. They washed the truck and vacuumed out all the dirt we had tracked in since January. They also polished the rubber floor boards. They polished them so much that they were soaked when we got back in the truck! Oh, the smell was terrible! We were afraid that if we put the mats in the bed of the truck they might fly out so we rolled them up and shoved them into the back floor and rode back to the cabin with the windows down. By the time we got back to the cabin I had one MASSIVE headache and went to bed quit early that night. Ugh!

Since then, we have been washing, photographing, weighing, and measuring artifacts. Oh, and watching “Lost”. Ah, the good times and adventures we will be able to share with our grandchildren someday.

There was a 6.2 earthquake that hit north of Santiago yesterday. Nothing we felt. Still no massive repeat quake that is being expected… yet. That’s a lot of fun waiting around for let me tell ya. The weather had been nice and sunny the last two days, which has been a nice change from the cold and rain.

We enjoyed some French toast this morning. While finding maple syrup is very hard to do in Chile, we did top it with some sweetened strawberries and whipped cream!
Hope everyone will have a good week!

Mandy & Jake