Blue-winged Macaw, or Burrowing Parrot of Patagonia

The wildlife in Patagonia is amazing. As we drive around just going about our business, we often spot some really amazing animals. We've taken up bird watching and animal identification as a side hobby. Its also fits nicely and easily into our homeschooling study of science. I never leave the house for trips without our Aves de Argentina [Birds of Argentina] guide book. I try to make our mission trips around Patagonia count. I think they are highly educational in so many different ways; bird and animal study being just one way.

I have found bird identification to actually be really hard, and we're not that good at it. Wikipedia helps. My bird book says these are the Blue-winged Macaw, but they're really not as big as macaws, and yet seem bigger than most parrots. Wiki helped us further identify them as the Burrowing Parrot of Patagonia.


they are very skittish and very fast, making it hard to get a good picture

After our first day of outreach in the mountains last month, we drove back into the town of Chos Malal for the night. A pastor we met at a conference our first time in the area offered to let us stay at their house since they were out of town. Their house is located downtown, but surrounded by tons of huge old trees. These trees were the perfect place for a huge flock of parrots to spend the night. From the sounds of them, there were more than hundreds, if not a thousand easily.

Parrots are very noisy. A thousand parrots are extremely noisy. They chirped and chittered and chattered and squawked and screamed all night long. It seems no matter where we go here in Argentina we can't get away from the noise! If it's not the twenty million neighborhood dogs yipping at every leaf that moves, it's motorcycles, cars with bad mufflers, neighbors partying into the wee hours of the morning, or a thousand crazy parrots yapping and squawking. Fortunately, this particular night we were so tired after having been up for almost 24 hours driving then doing this and this, that we passed right out and slept like babies all night long. Or I should say I passed out. The birds woke Tony up several times during the night with their squawking.

:)

The Big 4-0!

^3-6 It is only when we obey God’s laws that we can be quite sure that we really know him. The man who claims to know God but does not obey his laws is not only a liar but lives in self-delusion. In practice, the more a man learns to obey God’s laws the more truly and fully does he express his love for him. Obedience is the test of whether we really live “in God” or not. The life of a man who professes to be living in God must bear the stamp of Christ. ~1 John 2:3-6 



Marcela's house





I recently became a member of the 40 Club. Officially Over the Hill. It should be easy from here on out, since it's all downhill from now on, right? I should rejoice that I'm still alive - and that I still fit into my jeans from High School (ha, don't hate). These are both miracles.

For my birthday weekend I wanted breakfast in bed, and to not wash a single dish or pick up a single toy. I'm really not that hard to please, really. I mean, really. How hard is that? You don't even have to spend money on me! I also wanted to go visit our friends in the slums, then visit our little friends in the children's home. Somewhere in between there my daughter and I tried to catch a meteor shower. We laid out under the stars in lawn chairs {in our winter jackets and scarves, boots, and gloves} well after midnight in search of shooting stars. It was partially cloudy, so we didn't see any of this spectacular meteor shower they had told us about. Tony came out for a bit and we searched the skies for the Southern Cross and the Three Mary's [aka Orion's Belt].

Good memories.

It was a birthday I will always remember. We spent most of it visiting: Saturday, the slums. Sunday, the children's home.

I don't like birthday parties. I just don't. Don't ask me why, I still haven't figured that out. I don't like going to them, I don't like throwing them, and I don't want one on my birthday. I prefer the quiet life, I guess - or to do something that is actually fun, instead of standing around small talking over cake. I'm not anti-social, just selectively social. B-day parties are not my gig... although I always get sucked into about a dozen a year or so.

So I managed to keep my birthday fairly secret, and off we went. I am often amazed how open people are to the gospel here. This weekend was no exception. When we arrived up in the slums, I sat in the car waiting for the okay to get out. We have a little thing we do: Tony pulls up, looks around, gets out, and says hi. He goes in, chats, and gets a feel for whether it is safe and whether we are welcome. As we pulled up Saturday, Cefe and his brother-in-law were just walking back to their shack. They were returning from buying beer. Tony talked with them for a bit, saw that they weren't drunk or on drugs at the moment, and then waved that it was okay to come in. We spilled out of the van, locked it, and went it.

It really is depressing how they live. It was chilly outside when we walked into their one room shack. The heat and claustrophobia hit me as I ducked in the place where the door should have been. It was so crowded with people and kids and animals that I couldn't even fully come inside. Tony said good thing I had a cold because it smelled like rotten food and animals. Little Sophia was sitting on the dirt floor in her filthy bare feet, her older brother Mishel was only in his underwear at the little table, Marcela and Cefe were there with her niece, her brother, and three or four of her kids, plus one nephew, several cats, and a dog. In a one-room shack. The wood stove was inches from the kids, blasting heat. Marcela says it get very cold at night when the stove burns out. I'm sure - it's getting down into the 30s right now at night. Brrrr...

Since I could barely stand in there, I went outside to watch the kids. Marcela's kids' bare feet are calloused over and they miraculously don't get cut up, but my kids, even with shoes, always seem to get hurt somehow. Marcela followed me out and we stood in her small, dirt front yard, just a patch of desert sand littered with trash and fruit peels and scrap metal and wood with nails sticking out of it. We talked. I really like Marcela, she is very friendly, warm,  and open with me. She began telling me how she can no longer take her brother and niece living with them, her husband's drug addiction, the kids home all day with her, or this emptiness in her heart. I told her it was normal to want to have some privacy, all families should have their own space. I shared how Tony and I used to have problems, big problems, in our marriage. She looked at me in disbelief with that, "Oh, not you" look. Oh, yes, me. I have a quite colorful past. There's a lot I don't tell people. Been there, done that. When she talks to Tony she thinks, "How does he do it? How is he okay all the time? Where does this peace come from that he seems to have?".

It's only God. That's all. That's the only difference.

I was able to share with her that that peace we have comes only from Jesus. We have just as many problems as they do, just different ones perhaps. I told her my story, I told her Tony's story. It was a blessed moment. A holy moment. God was there with us in the slums. Right there with us. She just looked at me. Like she understood. Like she wants that, too.

We talked for a while. She said she doesn't find purpose in life, no reason to get out of bed in the morning, she thinks of suicide often. No, don't do it, I said. Think of your kids. If Cefe has a drug problem, who would take care of them if she killed herself? I reminded her that Tony is more than willing to come up and help them finish raising the walls of their new house. Winter is coming. It's already very cold at night. Once the house is up, she could move into it with her own family, leaving the shack to her relatives. Think of how nice that would be! She's too depressed though it seems to find the motivation to raise the walls herself. I understand that. I probably would be too if I were her, living in that place, with no Hope. We left, telling her we are praying for her and will see her soon.

The next day, my birthday, we headed down to the children's home.




cakes!

 I don't like cake that much and I never want cake for my birthday, I even get somewhat annoyed if anyone wastes money on one I don't want to eat anyway (I know, such a party pooper. Tony says 'no fun'.). So I thought if we took my cake, the one I didn't want anyway but they always seem to buy no matter what, down to the kids' home, it would make the useless cake okay. Kids like cake. Our kids like cake. I like the children's home, but don't like cake. Problem solved.

We met some of the youth at church (they brought more cake), all piled into our van, and headed downtown. Played soccer, ate cake, talked to and hugged the kids. The kids all sang happy birthday to me. To me? I brought my cake for them, not for me. It was the sweetest. What a birthday present, these kids singing to me... it's so sad to think that their parents don't want them, or can't take care of them, or abused them. One of the girls ended up crying in a corner by herself. When we asked her what was wrong, she said she feels invisible. No one comes to visit her, no one loves her, she's so sad. It made me cry, too. My daughter came over and asked what was wrong. They know each other outside of the home - they both go to the same gym class (sports are free here in the city - one of God's many blessings). I explained to my daughter why her friend was crying, that she doesn't have a mom or dad that love her or take care of her. She looked at me like she didn't even understand that concept - no mom or dad, no love?? So, honey, Why don't you hug her and tell her you love her and you are her friend?

So she did. And we all cried some more.

Even though our time was up and we were supposed to leave, we continued talking to her, reminding her of God's promise, "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up." Psalm 27:10.

We shared the good news of God's love for her, and explained that although He does love her, God is gentleman. He wants to make her happy and to give her everything, but He will wait until she is ready, until she accepts what He wants to give her. We talked some more, and then she said she was ready. Keren prayed, she repeated. It was hard for her to get the words out, but she did it.


"...we are not to save souls, but to disciple them. Salvation and sanctification are the work of God’s sovereign grace" ~ Oswald Chambers

sunset on the way home from the children's home

 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did. -1 John 2:6 NIV

A blessed birthday weekend. In more ways than one.



Field Trip: El Chocón Dam

One of the things I love about homeschooling is being able to ditch the workbooks, seatwork, schedules, curriculum, dry textbooks (well, actually, we don't really do these), pencils, moans and groans, and head out the door for some hands-on, real life learning.

My kids (fortunately for me) love science, so we don't have to do a lot of pre-packaged science curriculum. My boy is almost totally self-taught in the area of science, to the point where my eyes start glazing over when he launches into his mini-collegiate lectures on Basilosauraus, Indricotherium, and Ichthyosaurs. But, because he is getting older and there are other branches of science - to which I believe they should be exposed - when I found out about the dam nearby, a light went on in my head.

SpringboardIntroductiontoHydroelectricity! Yeah!

(geeeek)

So, as soon as our car was released from Car Purgatory, we took off like a family of bats out of hell.

Off we sped to El Chocón Dam, an hour south of us out in the middle of the desert. We got the private tour of the inner workings because Omar, one of the pastors of the church we attend, works in the Control Room. It was soooooo cool. We learned a lot about hydroelectricity - very exciting!


the reservoir and dam

 The dam creates a lake 10km wide by 80 km long. The water is a beautiful, clear blue-green.

Driving down to the bottom of the dam we came across some free-roaming horses

 Below the dam, approaching the Powerhouse where the Control Center and turbines are located.

The overflow channel where water can be manually released from the resevoir in case of a power outage or rising water levels in the lake.

 Below the dam: alamos, desert, and the River Limay.

Beautiful cross-bedding in the sedimentary rocks... The kids were like, "Whaaa?"

A model of the inner mechanical workings of a hydroelectric dam.

 The turbines. This was a six turbine dam.



Control Room

Because Omar speaks Spanish, is really intelligent and uses really big words, talks really fast, and is really passionate about hydroelectricy, the kids didn't really understand a word he said. So we had to look up dams and hydroelectricity and the basics thereof after we got home later on.

We also watched this very informative, simple, and illustrative video on the workings of a hydroelectric dam....

Some interesting things we learned:

• electricity can not be stored, as it is generated it needs to be used immediately or poof! it's gone
• Brazil has the most dams in all of South America and sells much of its extra hydroelectric energy to neighboring countries
• it only takes 40 employees to man this huge dam
• El Chocon Dam also controls the secondary dam 30km downriver, all from on location
• the dam is made of earth, not cement, therefore has a greater capacity to withstand earthquakes
• if the dam goes, all of us downriver on the floodplain are goners (Nice, huh? I actually knew this. I quick peek at Google Earth before we moved here and my geology background could see that right away. In light of the Matthew 24:4-8, not sure I will ever invest in property here. :))

small homeschooling update and a field trip

For six months now I've wanted to write an update on homeschooling here - how it's been going, what we've been doing, how we do it, etc.. But I can't seem to find the time.

I really should have set up the computer in Mommy's room so I could blog in peace - because everytime I sit down to write something, someone starts talking to me, asking me questions, needs something, starts whining or fighting, or someone rings the doorbell (unexpected, as always). Our house has turned into an revolving door. I can't seem to finish a thought, let alone a post. Forget about being alone.

I haven't found a balance yet between being a homeschooling mom, a wife, and now missionary. It's too much most days and something usually gives. Right now it's the bathroom, it hasn't been cleaned in weeks, and I'm not sure when I'll get to it. Someone said they are surprised I post as much as I do. I try to post as much as I can because, selfishly, it's fun - and, in my "free time" (haha, whatever) I'd much rather write and play with pictures than clean the bathroom. So the bathroom will remain dirty for a bit longer.

Crocheting I gave up on. Reading, too. Blogging is my only poison now. Don't judge.

This week, now that our car is fixed, and after a long day (all days seems long), we took the kids on a field trip to the Observatory overlooking the city. Another benefit of living in the largest city in Patagonia: a Ford Dealer AND an Observatory. Sweet. There is even a Museum of Fine Arts here, and the Patagonia Symphonic Orchestra. The circus is also in town. Who knew?

Through the Observatory telescope we were able to gaze upon three planets: Jupiter, Venus, and Mars.

We could see Jupiter and the four largest of its 64 moons; even the colored bands on Jupiter were visible.

We saw Venus in it's blue and orange, crescent glory. {Venus waxes and wanes like the moon. The cooler gases in the southern hemisphere are blue right now, indicating it is in winter; the northern hemisphere is orange, indicating summer}.

When we gazed upon a glowing red Mars, we could also clearly see both of its moons.

It was awesome awesome.

When I feel like I'm failing my kids in their home education, unable to get to all the things I want to do with them due to being pulled in so many different directions, I try to remember that they are doing a lot of amazing things. They are also learning Spanish and doing missions with us along the way.

Here in our neighborhood we've been dubbed the the "weird Americans" that teach our kids at home {Tony is quick to point out, "Hey! I'm not American! I'm from here.}. We are also the only homeschoolers I know of within a 10 hour radius. To our friends back home, we're probably weird, too: our homeschooling probably  doesn't look anything like theirs, at least not as of late. We are weird here, there, and everywhere. I didn't expect that to be challenging to me, what others think of us, but it has a little bit. Sometimes I deal with it well, sometimes I don't. Most days I just pray God will pick up the pieces I drop.

It's a hard life, a crazy life - but a good one, a blessed one. Even amidst the seeming chaos of our days, as we still struggle to find normal and firm up what we are actually doing and where we are going missions-wise, I don't know that I'd want it any other way. My prayer is that this life and path we have chosen in obedience to God's Word, He will use for good. Not just in the lives we hope to reach for Christ, but in our own children's lives. We often pray that this crazy missions life we live will draw our kids closer to their Creator and Savior, not push them away. It is a delicate balance I can't say I can even pinpoint most days. Sometimes I feel only God's grace can push us off the fence upon which we teeter daily, push us from the side of crazy over onto the side of safe and sane and saved.

Venus and Jupiter

We've been wondering for months about those two bright lights in the western twilight.

They just seemed way too bright to be stars.

Now we know that they are not stars in fact, but Venus and Jupiter. Someone was over the other night and pointed out the red "star" off to the right of Venus and Jupiter... Mars! She also mentioned there is a Planetarium here in town.

Ding-dong, light goes on: Homeschool Field Trip! Can't wait to take the kids.

These planets can be seen right now from every corner of the earth. We can see them here in Patagonia. Friends in the northern hemisphere say they can also see them.




So, next time you look up into the sky at dusk, look due west and see if you can see them, too!

the spider pictures you've all been waiting for

...or not.

Scroll down only if you want to see what an Argentinian Black Widow (Red Back) Spider looks like.

















Here are a few of the TEN Red Back Black Widows that were infesting a house just three blocks away.

you can see the red dot on the back of the one in the middle



the one they found behind the washer

Thanks, Dori, for sharing the pics. I think. At least now I know what to look for. Tony and the kids actually saw them live, well, mostly dead, twitching in the glass jars they had them in on top of their fridge. Ick.

So far we've found none here at our casita. Hope we never do. The good news is that Tony grabbed the fumigation guy when he came and talked him in to coming over and dousing our house, too.

Now, every night when I lay my little head down on my pillow, I think of black widows under my bed and flies that might crawl into... well, never mind. It's all just too gross to go on about.

I'll try not to post any more yucky spider pics. Promise.

:)

how to indentify volcanic ash in the sky

The volcanic ash has been pretty good lately - meaning there hasn't been much for weeks.

But yesterday it blew in rather quickly. The skies here are bright blue, so when it gets hazy, it's usually ash. I could tell it was blowing in because there are a few telltale signs.

ONE: Gray, Hazy Skies

This is what the sky looked like when I went out to hang up some clothes...

sky still mostly blue, but telltale hazy gray circle around the sun (some ash)

This was the sky a half hour later when I went back out to take them off the line (yes, sometimes they dry that fast here in the blustery desert)...

obviously hazy gray sky (ashy)

TWO: Blustery Winds

When the clothes go horizontal on the line, this may be an indicator that ash is blowing in...

THREE: Gray Horizon

sky may be blue, but gets noticably grayer towards the horizon

FOUR: Completely Gray Skies

Within hours, the sky can turn almost completely gray - no blue left to be seen. This is ash.

And when the sun becomes one big, hazy gray orb....

...it's time to bring the kids in, shut the windows, and have some mate while remarking to one other, "Wow, did you see the ash today?"

Spiders, Chickenpox, plus other icky stuff

***DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU ARE ICKED OUT BY SPIDERS OR FLIES OR CHILDHOOD ILLNESSES, OR ANY PICTURES THEREOF. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.***

It's been an icky week of spiders, flies, and chickenpox. It all started when Tony went to help build that bathroom for a rural church plant.

He was told a really icky, horrible story about a member of our new church who died last year. While he was sleeping, a green fly crawled into his nose and laid eggs. The eggs hatched and the um, you know, babies... ick. I can't even say it. I'll spare you. The person was dead in a few days.

So Tony comes home, drops that bomb of a story, and begins to freak out over the few flies in the house, wildly swinging a towel at any and every one he could see in an attempt to kill them all. My girlie, who overhead the fly bomb story, sat quivering and shaking in the corner crying, "I don't want to die!".

Great, thanks, Tony.

I have to admit, I was a little freaked out, too. Now, I grew up on a farm, so flies don't bother me. At all. We had fly paper hanging above our dinner table in the summer. No big deal. But I was pretty freaked out by this true, and local story.... noting that this will be a long summer, because we have no screens on our windows. No one here does.

In other news, my baby is just getting over the chickenpox. So I guess we can add that to our ever growing list of health challenges here.

Fortunately it wasn't bad, though - and I'd take chickenpox over croup or even the common cold anyday! The oldest two didn't get it (unfortunately - I actually wish they had), because they were vaccinated before I knew what "Varicella" was.

Varicella is NO. BIG. DEAL here. People still kissed her hello and touched her and sent their kids over to play, knowing we had it. Upon finding out, they would just nod understandingly and say, "Oh, it's better they get it now, when young," or, "Oh, yeah, we've had that. It's better they get it. Stronger defenses!"

After a week of quarenteening her (so as not to spread it, not because she was feeling sick or even had a fever), we eventually started going out here and there. No one stopped, wide-eyed, pointing and screaming,

"AHHHH! Disinfect!!!

Juancito, come here! Stay away from that girl, she has (gasp) chickenpox!"

You know, it really was no big deal a generation ago. Chickenpox is not fatal. We got it and lived to tell about it.

In other news, it's been a week of spiders.

After our big spider friend popping in for dinner last week, my boy got to hold a tarantula. (I earned serious Mommy brownie points with that one.)

Don't worry, it's dead. The pet shop owner, a guy from church, wouldn't let him hold the live one. He was afraid it would get scared, fall, and die. I was actually okay with him holding the live one, though. He is old enough and knows all about spiders. And the bites from these are no worse than bee stings. At least, that's what they say. Well, good thing, because they live here up in the dry cliffs surrounding the city, and all over the Patagonian Desert. Tony has remarked that we never would have come here had we visited first and found all this out.

Our friends and neighbors three blocks away found two mature adult Black Widows in their house last night! (I will not insert a photo for all you arachnaphobes. They are actually Red Back spiders, cousin to the black widow and just as deadly, having a red stripe on their back instead of a red hour-glass on their bellies.)

We actually stayed at their house for 10 days, not ever-so long ago, sleeping on mattresses on the floor, until we were able to find our house here. I was on the lookout for spiders, mostly because we are a homeschooling family and, thanks to my son, I now know way too much about all things venemous than I ever cared to know. I killed whatever ones I found huddling in corners by our mattresses just in case, but, fortunately, didn't see any black widows.

Anyway, they caught and killed one, the other got away. Now they will take it, safe in a glass jar, to the local Police Station. If you can show them proof that you found one, they will come and fumigate your house for free. Nice.

Now, excuse my while I finish cleaning my whole house, top to bottom! So far this morning I haven't found anything, and hopefully I won't!

I will sweep and sweep and pray as I sweep, and check every corner and under everything. More I can not do but trust in God.

:)

Remember the alamos

 
Alamos, or poplars, are very prolific here in Patagonia. Everywhere you look, you see them. They have quickly taken their place in the top three of My Absolute Favorite Trees (lodgepole pines and weeping willows being the other two).


alamos are majestic

 

tall

 and they spring up everywhere

  

planted around the perimeters of fruit plantations, they serve as windbreakers 

 

they love water, so here in the desert they line irrigation canals



and line farms, protecting the animals and crops from the gusty and persistent Patagonian winds

 

even neighborhoods

gearing up

About this picture: this is about as big as our living room is, the carpet is a BIG MISTAKE (but it's going to take a lot more desert dust and volcanic ash being ground into it and a few more weeks to convince the husband {who doesn't clean} of that, and those speakers put out some serious sound!

testing the speakers that hook up to the laptop and projector

We found the box with the speakers in it! Also found the box with the projector and all the ministry DVDs  (thanks Dave and Emmanuel!). They all made it safely. Nothing was lifted. Very thankful. Prayer works. We could have a movie ministry and nothing else, just spend all our time travelling around showing the JESUS film and creation videos, with all that was donated. Sweet stuff.

I told the kids that their Science this year would be to test drive all the videos in that box. I'm sure my boy will be a big help in setting up all the equipment once we get it all untangled and figured out. He's good that way with technology. He tried to explain to us about the adapter and the TV and why it needed to be on Low; and later: "well, you didn't listen to me..." (um, that would be Tony that didn't listen)... the TV blew up and big wisps of gray smoke poured out of the top. One or two people burst into tears (not me). Who needs a TV anyway? We're here to do missions, not waste our lives away watching TV.

(FYI: We hear it can be fixed. The 120V motor blew out on the 220V here, just needs to be replaced and wound with higher tension copper wiring... or something like that? Embobinado. I guess, in the end, it'll be good to be able to show videos when people come over?)

This week we have been learning all about electricity. Converting Amps to Watts by multiplying by Volts etc., etc., etc. Well, Boy was right. Those adapters should be set on Low. They just don't work for high wattage appliances - not because they're not made for up to 1600 watts on the High setting, but because they just can't handle 220 volts, apparently.

So, back to the speakers... we were giddy happy to be able to test the speakers out on the laptop. Dave had given a little training session (sorry, can't link to that post, internet cutting out on me - it's back in Sept '11 somewhere), but it was just three days before the container came, so we had to seal that box up right away and haven't seen it for two months. I didn't know if I would remember how to work all the cables, and was praying I wouldn't blow the speakers out since we needed to use an converter to plug them in.

But (happy sigh), we did it! Those speakers make it sound like the movies! The kids watched "Creature That Defy Evolution" Part I, and begged me to let them watch Part II pleeeease.

Fun times. Step by step.

volcano update

Since my highly caffeinated post the other day on exploding volcanos, I've chillaxed on the coffee, and we have been gathering some specifics on what has happened, and how it has effected the area we will, I'm assuming, still be moving to in three months. So, as is our way, I jumped on the Web, and Tony jumped on the phone.


Puyehue volcano, Lakes District of southern Chile

Chile's Puyehue volcano recently erupted beginning June 3, 2011, and by June 4th, the ash cloud had reached a height of almost 40,000 feet. By 4:30pm the same day, the ash cloud had shut down the airport in our soon-to-be new home, Neuquén, Argentina. The east-travelling ash plume quickly reached the Atlantic Ocean, and has now made it's first trip all the way around the world arriving once again in Chile. As of June 15, ash is still billowing 9km into the atmosphere, and shows no signs of slowing down.

Here's a map showing the trajectory of the ash plume and relative amounts of ash fall.


Red = most affected; Black = frequent ashfall; Grey/Blue = some ash fall
[photo courtsey of Clarin.com]



[satellite view: Reuters]

 We were finally able to get a hold of our friends in Neuquén, and they said they have received quite a bit of ash. "Bastante" (a lot). It's enough to be "quite bothersome". They have family in Bariloche (in the red zone), and recently made the 5 hour trip to help shovel the 2 feet (70 cm) of ash off the roofs of the houses, just so they don't collapse under the weight. What used to be one of the most beautiful and verdant landscapes Argentina has to offer, is now covered in a blanket of grey.


[ash in the neighboring village of Villa La Angostura, red zone.  Photo credit: Clarin.com]

Volcanic ash is not soft and powdery like baby powder. It actually has the chemical composition of glass. Because it is glass. When inhaled it can lodge in the lungs and cause respiratory infections, hacking coughs, discomfort, and difficulty breathing. And, as you can imagine, getting little tiny flecks of glass in your eyes is quite irritating, as well, and can cause ocular abrasions. The toxic gas emitted from volcanos can also make you feel sick. Those in areas affected by the ash have been told to stay inside; but, for the less fortunate, there is little escape from the ash.

[Imagine not being able to shut your door... because you don't have one.]

Sources say it's hard to tell just yet the affect this will have on tourism and livelihood to the area. I don't know about you, but I'm not so sure I would be running to vacation here and swim in this lake...


[ash along the shore of one of the many lakes in the region]


So, there's an brief little update on the volcano situation. I guess we'll just see how it unfolds.

[photos courtsey of Reuters and Clarín.com]