Spring in Fray Jorge!

I’ve been in Chile for 104 days! Now it’s spring, but it is still really cold with some crazy heat spells. We got a lot of rain recently and the flowers are beautiful and the mountains are really green. Here are some of Megan's pics from my site.

September 18^th is huge national holiday for Chile. It is a really big deal and similar to our 4^th of July. We went to Juan’s house for food, drinks and dancing. They grill lots and lots of meat, including sheep that I watched him butcher a few days before in his living room. We drank terremotos (a mixed drink with wine, fruit juice, ice cream, la chicha and grenadine) and la chicha (a fermented beverage made from grapes). It was funny because they had chicha in many many wine bottles and it was the same type of wine that we actually brought. So people kept asking for wine and trying to figure which was actually wine and then asking for chicha but accidentally poured wine. We danced the cueca, the traditional dance of Chile with Juan’s little nephews. Then we kept dancing with Juan to popular folk music and then we started playing the kind of music we like to dance to. We decorated the house with the Chilean colors.

The other morning I was setting traps in the dark, scared as usual that a puma was about to attack me when I heard the sound of something peeing really close to me. There was no way it was Megan and it was a lot of pee so I was afraid it was a big animal. Then I saw the eye shine and new it was a fox. This would usually not freak me out at all but it was night and I had woken up maybe 20 minutes before. Foxes are always curious and ready to play plus I had my head lamp on which I think intrigued this fox. So it was really interested in me and started coming closer and then running away and followed me around. I didn’t like this just because I was on edge so I scared it away.

Here’s some pictures of processing degus. Also, a pregnant lady (she’s only ~162g). My favorite degu Nubz is pregnant and getting bigger every day! The biggest pregnant degus are close to 200g right now. 

Here's a pic comparing the pregnant female with a male (much smaller). 

Katie’s mom left us a People magazine so we had fun looking through that with Juan. He recognizes many American actors and actresses. It was the Emmy edition and he loves The Normal Heart so he liked seeing Mark Ruffalo, Jim Parsons and Julia Roberts. He actually didn't believe it was Julia Roberts because she looks so bad in The Normal Heart and was obviously stunning in the photos.