Intense.

For real.

Lets see… it feels like years since I last wrote. On Sunday Chile elected Michelle Bachelet, the first female president in the Americas (whoo hoo!).
So cool. I was on the NESsT staff retreat at an old monastery in Lo Vicuna.Our only company was the cows, horses and baby sheep out back – no internet, telephones, TVs - nothing. We had heard she was ahead in the polls on Sunday afternoon. When we heard horns blaring, alarms, shouts, and celebrations at about 11 that night we all looked up from our glasses of red wine and smiled at each other, sighed with relief and exchanged “¡que bueno!”s and “wow!”s. The election was quite close and she was running against billionaire right winger Sebastian Pinera, who owns nearly all of Chile through slightly suspicious monopolies. A pretty amazing woman, Bachelet is a socialist, a single mother (in a country where divorce was only legalized last year), a pediatrician, and the first female Minister of Defense. Her father was killed and she herself was a prisoner during the violent dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.Its been a recent return to democracy (1990) and it gives me a lot of hope to see a real person with real life experiences like Bachelet rise above big business and the plastic smiles of politics to assume such an important post in an emerging country. Of course she has a long road ahead but I was quite proud of Chile and excited to be a (tiny) part of history on Sunday.

Otherwise, I’ve been quite busy. We did a bunch of site visits to the organizations we work with in Valparaiso and Santiago for the board meeting last week. It was a vivid reminder of the reasons I came all the way the hell down here. Even though I felt like I sort of knew them from reading all of the business plans, writing investment briefs, and translating power point presentations, some of the people from the organizations really blew me away. And I was again blown away at the staff retreat this weekend… I’m realizing how much of a difference people can make when they are committed and determined. Not in an idealistic, bleeding heart kind of way, but by really looking hard at problems in their community or their country or society and saying “This has got to change” and then finding a way to do just that. Of course it’s a slow process but quite inspiring to be in a room full of people working towards a goal.

It was also really cool to spend time out of the office with the people I work with. I convinced most of them to do a hike/scramble up this cactus covered cerro before the retreat and we had to jump a fence and got chased by a fat woman and her dog. We scared ourselves by checking out the deserted monastery with headlamps and drank a bottle of horrible Hungarian Unicum which Eva brought from Budhapest, then played Cranium in three languages. By day we pounded out a year’s worth of planning and strategy. Well… they pounded it out. I sat quiet and slightly intimidated, but excited, by the process.

I’m looking forward to a weekend without commitments or things to wrap my brain around. There’s an outdoor jazz festival that’s been going on this week. I went last night with a couple of friends and a picnic dinner and we set up for free on beach towels across the river to watch this crazy Polish elektro-jazz band called “Pink Freud” rock out with a light show and everything. Sweet.

I owe you some photos to keep you entertained. Here are some of my recent favorites:

Ships in Valparaiso's Port

Cerro Alegre.Valparaiso is built into hills rising from the bay and each "cerro" is its own neighboorhood with winding staircases and ascensores which are little box elevators that go straight up the hill on traintracks

Inside an ascensor, I was pretty psyched

On the trail. This was before our run in with the fat lady and her dog

The beautiful walk back to our monastary