Un Techo volunteer group

Sunset

The New Kindergarten

New Building Completely Destroyed

Downtown ConcepcionHello! Matt Philippi, Taylor Felton, Jack Tolan and Aidan Haley here giving you guys a brief update on the start of our trip to Chile. It began with a beautiful sunrise as we landed in Santiago.

We had just enough light to see the jagged peaks of the Andes in the distance. We met Osvaldo Chico , our guide and friend, at the airport and two bus rides and a very tight fit car ride we found ourselves at his families house outside of Chillan.

We are currently in Las Salinas, Concepcion, Chile, and we are half way through our project with Un Techo Para Chile. We began our nine days of work by taking apart a kindergarden in a disaster relief area that no longer needed it.

We salvaged what materials we could and brought them to a new site in Las Salinas. For the last 4 days we have been building a new kindergarden in a community of people displaced by the February earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Two days ago we had the opportunity to go into downtown Concepcion and observe the damage from the quake. We stepped off the bus to see the remains of an apartment building that had collapsed.

Seeing the destruction first hand was a sobering experience and after exploring downtown it became clear that the extent of the damage is much worse than what we had previously thought. There is still much work to be done.

We have very limited internet access and had a tough time trying to load up these photos for you to see. In five more days we will be finishing this construction project and heading east to Nevados De Chillan for some skiing.

We will provide much more detailed media updates from there. Chao.

- The FullCircle Team