Dress Rehearsal in Santiago

More than 150 youth from the La Serena Area took a bus overnight to Santiago for the dress rehearsal for the 50th anniversary of missionary work in Chile.

The youth spent the day in the stadium getting aquainted with the flow of the program that would be happening the next night.

Emily always has a good time with her friends.  Here is Emily, Karina and Sofia.

All the kids who would be performing dances in the program were given red Creemos "We Believe" shirts.  Other groups had yellow or navy colored shirts.

It was a long, busy, but fun day.  After a dry run through the program, the youth got dressed in their costumes to go through the program again.

Dave had the chance to go around and get a few snapshots of some of the other groups. 

We spent most of the day in the stadium.  The boys had to learn to be very patient while waiting through all the practices.  Evan went up the to top of the bleachers to entertain himself and found a new group of friends.  These kids played the part of the pioneers in the program.  They thought that Evan was so funny and talked with him for over an hour.  They spoke English pretty well.  Evan used his best spanglish.  It was so entertaining watching Evan entertain these kids.

Santiago, Chile

Dave promised Evan a dollar if he could catch a pigeon in downtown Santiago.  Evan took that challenge and ran with it.  This is his hide behind a tree and pounce technique.

The pounce technique is followed by the "run around like a crazy person and hope you get lucky" technique.

We saved some bread from our lunch along with an uneaten icecream cone. This was a perfect distraction for the pigeons allowing Evan enough time to grab one of them. (Apologies to animal lovers. I believe that no birds were seriously harmed in the making of these pictures.)

These pigeons are not shy and will surely notify all birds withing miles that someone is sharing food in the area.

Evan at the pigeon party.

 

We took the kids on a tour of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Santiago.  Maybe someday they will appreciate architecture that is nearly 500 years old.  Not on this day I am afraid.  I love the juxtaposition of the old and the new architecture with the glass building behind the cathedral.

We found this chess club playing in the Plaza de armas.  It looks like this is a regular occurance for these Chileans to play chess in the plaza.  Andrew enjoyed watching a timed game and how fast the players could go.

We also visited Santa Lucia hill which is a just that, a hill in the center of the city.  There are a few similar to this in Santiago where there is more vegatation.

A great view of the city awaited us at the top of the hill. 

As we looked out on to the city, we noticed that we could see ourselves in the mirrored buildings across from us. 

Zapallar, Chile

We stopped on our way north to Santiago in this beautiful town called Zapallar.

We found this fun trail down to the ocean and decided to see what we could find.

The first thing we noticed were these rockes with holes carve in them.  I can only assume it that they were created by the spray of the ocean.

Dave spotted something hiding below the rock.  Cay you see it?

This lizard had the most interesting coloring.

This is such a beautiful coastline.  I expecially liked the turquious colored water just beyond the surf.

It was such a low tide this day that we found sea salt in the crevices of the rocks.  The crystals were large enough that we could rub them from the rock and make little salt piles.  A couple of us tried the salt.

We made our way higher and higher up the trail. We didn't know that we would be getting a guided tour. This dog seemed to take the lead and show us the best trail to get to the look out point at the top. He stayed with us the whole time we were there and then followed us all the way back to the parking lot.

Dave spotted a sea lion having fun in the surf.  He was doing flip after flip as if for our own entertainment.

What a great day.  Thanks for taking our picture BJ.

Papudo, Chile

Another stop on our way north to Santiago was this cute town called Papudo.  We got there just in time to see the morning fishermen come in with their catch.

We saw nets full of crabs and fish.

Just off the beach the catch of the day is cleaned and bagged.  We saw women from local restaurants come and buy bags full of different types of sea food.

 The sand is full of iron.  We brought some of it home and used magnets to play with it.

Another beautiful coastal town in Chile.

Concon. Chile

We have had the opportunity to travel with Dave for business.  On this trip we traveled north to the city of Concon on the coast.  We were able to stay in a high rise condominium over looking the ocean.  What a view!

Our room was just perfect for us.  The boys had bunk beds and Emily had her very own room with a double bed.

Just outside our condo was this gigiantic sand dune.  It is really hard to capture how big it really is on film.  Here is BJ climbing to the top.  At the top of this hill we discovered that it was only the first of many dunes lined up one after another.  The kids didn't have too much trouble with the climbing, but I found it to be quite a workout.

Emily is the king of the hill!

We decided to check out the indoor "temporada" pool after our school work was completed.  It is required that one wears a swimming cap in this pool.  Luckily they sold caps at the concierge desk for $2000 pesos each (about $4).

Here we are doing "home school" at the INYA offices while Dad does his work.  We have been trying to squeeze in our school work while we can while on the road.

The day we left Concon, we had to check out early so that we could travel to another city for another business meeting.  Dave was able to capture this moon set out our living room window.

This is the view from our kitchen window on the opposite side or our room.  I have never stayed in a place where there was an ocean view out of both sides.  Pretty impressive.

For the love of avocados!  Isn't this avocado stand just beautiful?