-Gringo goodbye party at church
-Church retreat
-Backpacking in Patagonia
-Christmas in Tucumán
But before I get too ahead of myself, I need to finish uploading Chiloé pictures!
The Kennison family, a missionary family in Curaco de Velez (a bordering city of Achao) invited me over for lunch at their home. Their neighbor had a sheep! SO typical Chilote.
The Kennison family, a missionary family in Curaco de Velez (a bordering city of Achao) invited me over for lunch at their home. Their neighbor had a sheep! SO typical Chilote.
Their dining room. Evidence of 5 kids living there. :)
Two of the kids use strollers. Grace and the baby whose name I don't remember...
A cool looking trash can in Curaco.
The church where Daniel pastors. It only has 15 people right now. Thinking about these tiny churches and how much support they need makes me think of more missions opportunities outside of Tucumán and how many other churches there are in need. The pastor is a JMac fan, so he gave me a book in Spanish called, "Distintos por diseño"...also known as "Different By Design" in its English title. Yay Spanish Christian literature!!! It'll always be a book special to my heart. I can't wait to start reading it, tackling theology and Spanish at the same time. Woot!
Me, the kids, and the wife of the pastor went to pasear (walk around) the town, and the church sits at a bay with a view of the water...pretty much common in all of Chiloé. The 8 year old daughter took my picture, since I figured it'd be good to have my face once in a while in these pictures.
The 2nd to youngest one prefers to speak in Spanish.
After I got back from the lunch, I decided to spend some time alone and take pictures. In the corner of this picture was a house/shack made of random materials. I was shocked to see poverty like that in a small town, but it still exists...
The next day, Miguel from Dalcahue called me to hang out. We met at a Bible study class at the church of Pastor Marcelo. He saw me, a gringa and he wanted to talk with me to see how I was adjusting to Chilean life. Finally we got in contact so I hopped on the bus and then the ferry to visit him two towns over. This is the back of the church. A little museum.
Chilote Catholic church stuff.
More pictures of me to prove I was really there.
Miguel and I walked all around Dalcahue as he showed me the sights and invited me to eat milcao, a typical Chilote snack made from potato flour filled with pork and pork fat. Fatty and yummy! Miguel also took me to the pastor's house in Dalcahue, who works with my church in Santiago. There, I found yet another sheep. I wanted to pet it, but here it looks so timid and scared and kept on running away from me.
So Miguel helped me catch it! He is a sheep and potato farmer, so I trusted him to catch that darn sheep!
He caught it!
After the sheep incident, we walked around the bay. I got thirsty so I bought both of us some juice to drink. Miguel showed me an animata of one of his friends, which is a very Latin American tradition where families of the deceased construct a small memorial for the dead in the place where they died. His friend was inebriated and had fallen off the cliff and into the ocean. From there, Miguel told me about his life before becoming a Christian and now how his life had changed, saying that change is necessary as a Christian. It made me so happy to hear him talk about his Christian life--a Chilote sheep farmer and I had something so profound in common. :')
Saying goodbye to Miguel after our paseo (small trip) in Dalcahue. He said bye to me on the bus, we hugged and he said to me, "I hope this isn't the last time I get to see you." I wanted to cry then; even though I had known him for 2 days, we became such good friends and it felt kind of like saying goodbye to the church in Argentina when I left them. Our friendship didn't end after this trip. Miguel still called me a few times a week to check up on me and ask me how I am. On my last day in Chile, I had $3 left on my phone plan, so I used it up to the last peso talking to him and telling him how it was a blessing to be his friend and saying goodbye.
I went back to Pastor Marcelo's house and played with the baby Marco. So cute, this fat little 2 year old. He doesn't talk a lot, but he expresses his fellings in bratty ways: "No puedo!" and "No quiero!"="I can't!" and "I don't want to!" Those 2 phrases work in any situation.
On my last day, Pastor Marcelo and family went to Ancud, and I went with them as I needed to go there as well! They look me to the feria (farmer's market).
This box is an almud. It's a unit of measurement for potatoes because potatoes are a staple in Chiloé.
I invited the family to lunch as a thanks for their hospitality and care for me. Also an excuse for me to eat curanto, which is a typical Chilote dish. It's basically like a barbeque of seafood. It comes in a huge bag filled with potato dough, shellfish of many kinds, chicken, ham, pork, sausage, and potato. And they served the broth of the seafood on the side. It was delicious and an indulgence to the seafood lover in me. And it cost less than $8...another attraction of Chiloé--great, cheap, delicious food.
And I told them about a penguin colony, so Pastor Marcelo drove for 30 minutes on an unpaved road to this obscure place, to find penguin tours!! This is me and Josue.
Biologists from the Universidad de Chile (woot woot represent) who got to do research with the penguins.
Hehe, fat little Marquito with mommy Julia. She's one of the prettiest Chilean women I've met.
Peruvian pelican. The tour guide joked that, since there are a lot of Peruvian immigrans in Chile, that it's not just people are coming over to Chile from Peru now.
The wonderful family that hosted me for 4 days. And they didn't even know me before; I was just some attendee of their friend's church. They told me that they love having people at their home and that they've hosted missionaries from Germany before.
My attractive penguin tour jumpsuit.
Me with the family. I felt like an Asian nanny when I walked around in public with them, as I bet people were wondering what this random Asian girl was doing with a Chilote family and playing with the kids. I even ran into a Korean Catholic tour group on this penguin tour! Being the honorary Korean I am, I busted out my, "ahnyonghasaeyo" to one of them and they asked Julia about me when I was in the bathroom. Hehehe =) Proud of me, guys??
The beautiful, bumpy, unpaved ride back to town where they dropped me off at the bus terminal. This trip being a month ago, I almost forget what it was like to stay with them as I just stayed with Pastor Jorge and his family and the 2 experiences were completely different. But I can recall that I was thankful for their kindness to a complete stranger as well as their encouraging talks with me about Christian life in Chiloé. I really hope I can see them sometime again. I want to own a house in Chiloé when I'm older. =)
I left Chiloé island happy, learning a lot about God, and feeling ultra thankful...things I did not expect to experience in this spontaneous trip traveling alone. Out of all my travels in the country of Chile, this was the most memorable because of all the kind people I met, experiencing being a Christian in Chiloé, and the beauty of such a cute small isolated island. In this picture in Puerto Montt, where my plane left, I was greeted once again by these 2 snowy volcanic peaks, the same ones I saw at the beginning of this unexpected trip. 