One of the craziest days I've ever had

So yesterday I pretty much had a breakdown...

I'm in the independent study part of my program and I'm living in Arica which has been a cool experience. I'm about halfway through my time up here in the north and I haven't really gotten much done on my independent study.  I'm researching peruvian and bolivian immigration and it has the potential to be really cool but for a number of reasons I haven't done a single interview.  One problem is that my advisor doesn't seem to be the best at communicating with me and hasn't been super helpful with providing me with contacts.  While I'm pretty fed up with her I realize that the situation I'm in right now is partly my fault because I could have been more proactive in asking for and setting up my own interviews and meetings.

Anyways yesterday was my breaking point as far as stress about my project goes and then my chilean mama came home from work at about 5 puking and obviously REALLY sick.  Luckily my sister was home and they went to the clinic to get her help.  I worked on my project for the rest of the night; talked to my academic director and cried a lot.  At about 10 my sister called to see how I was doing and I was like dude, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who should be asking that question.  She said they were still waiting but that it shouldn't be too much longer.  I went to bed at about 11:55 only to be shaken awake - literally rattled by a "temblor" of rather large size 6.5 on the richter scale at 12:05.  My sister called me in the middle of the earthquake to ask me if I felt it, i was like ummm YEAH! Then she told me that I should go out into the street when an earthquake that big happened, and I was like well I was on my way but then you called and I ran back to get my phone... I got another phone call an hour later, 1am - that's late for me! to see if I could wait up for them cause they had forgotten keys.  They got home from the clinic at about 1:45 am (it makes me realize that our "health care crisis" isn't anything compared to a 9 hour wait in a clinic just to get diagnosed with a urinary tract infection... and have to pay for it yourself because the wait at the place where they have insurance would have been even longer!)

Anyways, I'm doing much better today.  I got some work done on my project and actually have a plan (no thanks to my advisor)!  I only wish that I'd been more proactive and less cautious about going over my advisor's head to make contacts. Pictures to come as soon as I start taking some!