Tuesday, June 25th

Today Milo and I had a meeting with our students at Colegio Seminario. Everyone is doing well. Ryan seems to have recovered from his cold. A couple of students from Colegio met with us to discuss the important things for Pachacuti service camp. We went through the whole schedule: wake up around 7:00 am, have breakfast, start working with either construction or painting, have lunch, some free time, work again, snack time and continue working till about 7:00 pm when they cook and eat dinner. After dinner they will have a short debriefing/devotional and time to just "hang out."

Our students were happy to learn that they are paired up with one more student from Santa Margarita (Natalie and Sarah looked especially relieved!) This is going to be a fun week where they are in a team of about 20 students from other schools as far away as Chile and Argentina. The Uruguayan students said that having visitors from the United States is something very special and they will be welcomed and treated almost like "VIP"!  They talked about the three most important parts of Pachacuti: Faith, Teamwork, Service. I think that it will be a very good experience for these students to see what it's like to work and live like the less fortunate people in this country.

After the meeting our group had lunch together in the school's cafeteria. We are "hooked" on the yummy desserts in this country: alfajores, biscochos, media ulnas: almost always filled with dulce de leche, a caramel made with eggs and sugar.

We bumped into a couple of students that had traveled to Santa Margarita previous years: Diego Ripa and Sol Monteverde (see picture of me with Sol). On Friday we will meet all of the "alumni" from our exchange program.

Tomorrow we are visiting the Congressional building. Another fun day for SM students and chaperones!