Today we headed up to Cabildo to have lunch with the Ficher Family. I was very excited to go up and see Mamita y Papito and the rest of everyone else. I lived with the Ficher Family for 7 months during my first visit to Chile. They were wonderful to host me and I love going up to visit them every time I come back to Chile. Cabildo is a small mining town about two and half hours north east of Vina Del Mar. I really like it, I don’t think I could live there full time, but I enjoyed staying there while I was in Chile.

Mamita prepared us lunch. We had wonderful Empanadas, which are absolutely wonderful. They are filled with ground beef, a quarter of a boiled egg and an olive. She also made us some Chilean salads. It was fun to stop and see them and of course my mom crocheted them numerous different kitchen hot pads, towels and pan scrubbers. They were so excited to receive the gifts. I also brought some peanut butter which they love. You can buy it now in Chile, but it is to expensive for them to buy. They are happy and doing well. I would love to come back and visit them for a week and stay with them.

On our way up to Cabildo to visit the Ficher Family, we stopped at the school to playground equipment. Fred and I went up to the school at midnight last night and the playground equipment had finally arrived. The Rotarians hired a few local guys to install the equipment over night. I am pleased to say…these guys worked all night and we got the equipment all set up. There are a few final things that need to be done to the floor and then new playground will be opened up to the kids. There were a few kids that we allowed to play with on the new playground equipment so we could take a few pictures. They were very excited and I think it was a successful project. These kids will really enjoy this new play area.

We changed cities tonight. We are now in Santiago. Santiago is a big city, six and a half million people live within this city. Here you can see the extreme difference between those that have money and those that don’t. There are multi-million dollar homes for sale and down the road there are eighteen thousand dollar houses. Many people here in Chile don’t own homes though. Individuals that have money buy the properties and then rent them. Santiago is an old Spanish city that has a lot of history and I am excited to see more of it tomorrow.

To see more of the pictures from today…

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