Quake, day 3

Today was an organizational day here in our household, and something of a day for digesting all that has been going on. I woke up with the same startled feeling as an aftershock roused me from sleep. Once again, my first thought was, "oh yeah... that really happened." All day it was one tremor after another. I continue to feel completely surreal. It's so strange to have Chile thrust so suddenly into the news, and even stranger to be an American here. Yesterday I got a call about possibly doing an interview for the Today show! (In the end I think they found other people closer to disaster.)

After having lunch at Nick's grandmother's house (which, I have to say, her employee Angelica is a godsend. She stocks so much food in that place that we could eat for weeks because of her), we went to start the Official Recovery Plan. Stop one was to buy nails and steel braces for rebuilding the farm houses. We spent $1100 on those things. $1100!!! On nails! We also spoke to the construction company for the new house we were planning on building and they don't expect to have any delays because of the earthquake. This is a huge relief, although it still means 3-4 months without a house there. We may end up building a temporary cabin of sorts to get by in.

OHHH Man, we just had a big aftershock. Not big in general, but it was really long and you sort of hold your breath during those things. I just wrote an email to someone and we had 3 or 4 just during that time.

I have a lot of random thoughts that don't really fit into a story, so I just sort of have to jot them down...

-All of the water sloshed out of our toilets during the quake. Both bathrooms were flooded!

-Somehow even though we keep the lids down, stuff wound up IN the toilet bowl. Once I determined that the water was working ok, I opened a lid to use the bathroom and there was STUFF in it. Nothing like 4:30 in the morning, after a big quake, no light, and having to reach in the toilet to pull stuff out.

-The only funny thing I have seen so far is that at the farm, the 2 bulls that live there got completely lost and wound up in the sheep corrals. When we tried to shoo them away (they break stuff!), they instead got annoyed at each other and started fighting. Eventually we broke them up but it was the most absurd thing...

-The farm kitties seem to be ok. Yesterday I saw all 4 that we normally feed and try to pet. I gave them some of the food. At the house in Santiago, the 4 kitties that live there also finally turned up today. I was very worried about them. Sneezy is very sick, and I had seen Patchyman skulking about the yard in fear the other day so I didn't know what would happen to them.

Our internet just came back, so I will be able to upload lots of pictures tomorrow. Also, an amazing work contact of ours who is an architect has offered his time to help us rebuild the farm houses, so we are going out to the farm for the day to try to develop a design plan with him. I'm sure I will have lots of news from those parts because we have to head into the towns for supplies, and we understand that things are awful there.

We are still missing our farm friend in Parrall. If anyone sees any information online about survivors or victims from Parrall or Cauquenes, please let me know.