Rina, on second thought, don't come.

A friend of a friend e-mailed me earlier this week, asking if she should post-pone her dream vacation to Chile,because of the current travel warnings to Chile, including to Santiago.

No, I told her. Come. Santiago remains the same as ever, I said. Yes, a 20-storey apartment tower in the neighbourhood of ÑuÑoa sank 20 cms, but everyone's been evacuated and the building is under watch. No large-scale buildings have fallen here in the capital. It’s fine.

Now, however, I’m reconsidering my advice, and it’s because of the never-ending tremours which, a week after the initial earthquake, are still a daily occurrence.

Like tonight – three in a row, starting at about 1:15 a.m. Strong enough to wake you; strong enough to make 35-year-old windows rattle. And even though there’s been dozens (hundreds?) since the actual quake, you never get used to them. Your heart still races, your senses immediately go to “fight or flight,” and your thoughts instantly to your children. (Fortunately, the kids slept through these last three... and most of the time, they hardly notice them.)

So, while I’m not quite ready to get on the next plane back to Canada (yet), my advice to Rina has definitely changed to Don’t come. While nothing will likely happen while you’re here, you’ll probably be very scared at times, and that’s no way to spend a dream vacation. So, please ignore my earlier email.  (Thanks…)

On a more positive note, the kids and I did get out to volunteer. We spent all Wednesday afternoon at a large warehouse in the city’s centre assembling cardboard boxes, filling them with food, toiletries and kitchen supplies, taping them shut, and then stacking them up so that they could be loaded onto large trucks headed for Chile’s south.

We joined hundreds of other Chileans in this endeavour, mostly high school students whose back-to-school was postponed to next Monday, but there were people of all ages also there, including very young, female “carabineras,” or police women, in full police gear. A few tried to talk to Nick and Carmen in English, and asked us where we were from; a couple had relatives in Canada.

We hope to get out to volunteer a couple more times, before my two start school, next Monday as well.

Which brings me to the next positive note -- I managed to find the kids a school! I’d seen this school on line, before I left Canada but because it’s private ($$$), I’d stayed away, hoping to find a public school that would accept them for the two or three months they’ll be here. I’ve had no luck with that because, I’m finding out, there’s an extreme shortage of schools in Chile.

Public classrooms are very overcrowded (40-45 students per class is the norm) and it’s very tough to get in, and especially now that some were damaged by the earthquake. Also, over the last three decades, in an effort to keep the young sexes separate, schools have become single-sex only, meaning even if I’d found space, Nick would have had to go to an all-boys school and Carmen to an all-girls school, and I didn’t want that.

Anyway, this past week, after a fruitless public school search, where we saw more than one “go away” face, we ended up at Colegio Altamira (www.colegioaltamira.cl), talking to the principal and wow, what a difference. We were made to feel welcome right away. The school itself is extremely progressive, with great programming, including art, music and after-school activities such as rock-climbing, chess and …. trapeze artistry!!! And best of all, the kids can attend together.

I knew this was the right place when I suggested to the principal that instead of the five hours a week of English instruction that the Chilean kids get at his school, my two should perhaps receive five hours of Spanish instruction a week.

Well, he said, how much Spanish do your kids know? Ummm, not much....yet!, I said, as we’ve only been here a month. Well, he said, then we should see how it goes. We do not want your children to feel like we’re throwing them into a pool when they don’t know how to swim… Let’s get them happy and comfortable here first, then we can see if they can handle the five hours of intense Spanish a week, in addition to all the Spanish they’ll be encountering in all their OTHER classes.

Right, I said. You’re absolutely right. Happy and comfortable, that’s exactly how I want my kids to be...