Row Row Row Your Boat...

Greetings All!
Well, southern Chile is making a valiant effort to muster up some warmer days as we approach summer. I´m still trying to orient myself around the seasonal shift- it´s just weird to make Christmas ornaments in the spring.
Our Thanksgiving was fun and had all the fixings, save cranberry sauce. We even had "pumpkin" pie made from a local type of squash. But it was after dinner, when the sleepy-belly-full-of-turkey-syndrome was just kicking in in earnest, that the excitement began.
Two of the Hostetter´s (our coworkers) children were thirteen hours drive away up north at the national rowing finals. The father, Mike, had just talked to the coach on the phone and learned that Jordan and Deborah had qualified. The idea started to circulate how neat it would be to see the kids race. With one hours notice, Dustin and I with the Edison and Sophia, Mike, and three of the YES team members were packed in the van and heading up north.
We arrived the next morning, to the surprise and delight of the kids, and got to see them compete. Jordan got second in his race, and Deborah did well too. Mike got us hooked up with a sweet cabin right along the coast in Viña del Mar to spend the night. It was breathtaking, the waves were huge and crashed on the rocks beneath our place. We enjoyed a picnic on the beach and watched the sun go down. Sophia ran around, running from the surf and squealing. Edison dipped his fist in the sand and got a nice mouthful.
As we drove home the next day, we saw the beautiful grape orchards and winerys that butted up against and in some places climbed the Andes´steep slopes. I was struck by how beautiful and quaint the houses were. Even the poorest home had a veranda with a roof of grapevines over it. And the heat was a far cry from the wet, windy, chilly weather of Puerto Montt. All in all, it was a wonderful trip, a time of refreshment.