wow, a lot of catch up to do

hello everyone, i have been seriously slacking and have to catch up a bit. so, since the last time i posted there was a big ass earthquake down here..... quite a big deal too. as i´m sure you all have seen on the news the quake was an 8.8 and caused a lot of damage and loss. tunuyan, argentina is almost at the same lattitude as the epicenter but on the other side of the andes. however, even after its journey through the mountains it still measured around 5.5 when it reached us and woke me up in the middle of the night on the second story of a building that is still under construction, shaking me around for somewhere around a minute and a half while i made my way down the ladder to the ground level...... quite the experience, i´ve never felt such a strong one before. there was a strong aftershock about fifteen minutes later, and yet another aftershock strong enough to wake me up the next night. luckily the house was not damaged at all and we have been able to continue working as usual. life on the farm has been quite nice with good people coming and going. now, vida, sarah, and i are on a little vacation down south. with the way the timing of the season is working out both vida and i had to renew our visas so we took a little trip into chile and spent a few days in a little cabin on a beautiful lake in a town called entre lagos. it was truly spectacular with vivid green pastures, epic mountains, swimming in the crystal clear lake, and indulging in a little bit of television. now we are hanging out in el bolson, a great little hippy mountain town in the lakes district (northern patagonia), drinking really good beer, going hiking in the mountains and haning out on the farm of some friends of vida´s. anyway, i´ll be in touch again soon and hope that you are all have had a lovely winter as i imagine that the first signs of spring are starting to come around now. love you all........................

ps. here is a link to a blog from our friends jeff and tamara who were a couple of awesome volunteers on the farm. these particular posts have a lot of pictures of the farm and of tunuyan.
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bakpaknbizclass/2/1267124808/tpod.html
http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/bakpaknbizclass/1/1267000696/tpod.html