Good news/Bad news

The good news is our computer's fixed.  We've been without it for 3 weeks now and it's been hard.  We communicate with our world with our computer.  Without it it was harder to call home (gmail phone or skype), it was harder to look at and load photos and it was harder to email and blog.  But, thanks to some good luck and an exceptional IT guy, we are back.  The photos, thank the lord, are still in tact and even organized.  This guy was good.

The bad news...The same day we got our computer back, the car died.  We took a nice drive to the beach, walked around and played.  On the way home, we lost 5th gear.  Then, we started to lose 1st and 2nd.  I had to jam the stick into each place to get it into gear.  We also lost reverse.  It is much harder to drive a car in a place you don't know well, with one way streets, without reverse.  I managed to drop Kate and Jaden off at home.  I limped into a mechanico and was in luck, he would work on it.

The good news is that we seem to have our car back.  It's working for now.

The bad news is that all of these broken things:  camera, computer, car, sunglasses all happened in a week and has cost us a bundle.  We are trying to live on very little money and this has blown our budget for the month.  Oh well, I have to keep reminding myself that money can always be made, time cannot.  The time we've had here has been incredible.

After the Aldworths (Kate's parents) left, we packed the shwarma (known as carma before it broke down) and crossed the boarder to Argentina.  The drive across the Andes was amazing.  It started in lush rain forests replete with 5 waterfalls and 2 giant rivers.

As we drove up the hill, the rainforest continued, but it was dead.  A volcano that erupted a couple of years ago and that has been spewing ash ever since, has killed a huge swath of forest in the Andes.  It was a stunning vista to behold.  Pumice berms were piled 3 sometimes 4 feet high on each side of the road.

  We occasionally passed breaks in the forest, that we thought at first glance must have been meadows.  Then we realized that they were lakes, covered in floating rock (pumice).

The destruction that the earth can bring upon itself is awesome.  I suddenly felt my life was but a mere piece of sand in the overall "geologic" scheme of things.  It reminded me of something I use to teach my students.

"If the history of the Earth were a 100 page book, humans would appear half way through the very last line on the very last page of the book."  We haven't been here long.  The proof of our lack of control on this planet is strikingly evident when looking at what one "small" volcano can do.

I'm not caught up on photos at all...due to the computer melt down.  But, will be soon.  Here is a small sampling of the last 3 weeks.