Lets try this again...It has been a month today since my last post and I feel like I have a million and one things to catch up on. So today, tomorrow and possibly the next day I am going to attempt to bring everything up to date starting with New Years and moving forth....

New Years in Puerto Varas was celebrated with traditional fireworks, a kiss at the stroke of 12 and copious amounts of alcohol. Shannon and I decided to help Keko (our boss/owner of the bar) out in the bar that night and boy did that night test our efficiency, perseverance and most of all our patients. We started at midnight after the fireworks and began kicking people out of the bar at 6:30am. My Spanish was still bad at best, so any conversation deviating from anything related to the bar I was useless. Needless to say, by the end of the shift I was mentally spent. I was the first to leave the bar at 7:30am.

This photo is from my trip to Quihua Oyster Farm. What is that? I'm glad you asked, that is called a Piure. It is a filter feeder native to Chile and Peru. I try to make it a point to go along with the customs of whatever country I visit and try the food no matter how unusual it may seem to me. In Cambodia it was a fetal chicken, in Chile it's Piure. This may come as a surprise, but the meat of this creature is absolutely terrible! Not only was it slimmy but it had the strongest metallic flavor of anything I have ever put into my mouth. I had no water to cease my suffering so my only option was to take a few drags of a friend's cigarette...Blah, never again will I do that to myself.

Leo was our beloved French DJ at the bar . Him, Shannon, Keko and I had formed lovely team that has been greatly missed. That he was with us for all of December before he continued on his way to travel through Chile.

My finger is probably the biggest souvenir I am going to leave Chile with. I was working one night in the bar and fell victim to a glass breaking and slicing a very long, very deep cut into the side of my finger. The accident required a trip to the Puerto Varian hospital where an Argentinian doctor put 25 stitches put into it. From there, I had also acquired a fantastic finger splint that kept my finger erect and flipping off all who passed by for the next month. Most people found the humor in it and accompanying their greetings with flipping me off in return. The pictures are the stages from day two to when I got the stitches removed to today, almost two months later.  I was asked so many times what happened to my finger by people that only spoke Spanish that I wrote out the story in Spainsh as well.   The Story is creatively entitled  Mi Dedo (My Finger) and it goes like this:

Yo estaba lavando un vaso en el trabajo y cuando fui a ponerlo para secar se rompió contra la barra cortando mi dedo. Todo ocurrió tan rápido, yo no sentí que el vidrio me cortó, pero luego miré mi dedo, y me di cuenta de que el corte era muy largo y muy profundo. Keko me llevó a la clínica y me pusieron 25 puntos.