....More Pics

Meet Mauricio. He's our favorite. He has great social presence, and whereas most of our patrons patiently wait for us to come to them, whenever Mauricio spots us, he comes jogging over and orders dos burritos por favor.

I think that Alex's smile, the gentleman on the left, tells our entire story with one look.

Our amiga Rosa and her pololo (boyfriend). Rosa would not let us move on to any of her friends until she kissed us on the cheeks. I think her boyfriend might have been a little jealous, because he tried to get a little more than a kiss from our compadre Amanda (featured back right).

Rosa the sweetheart.

This is one of our regulars who told us, "I wait in the park all day for you guys. You need to start coming on the same time, so I don't have to be bothered by these crazy birds while I'm waiting."

Valpo street art. Chomp, chomp, chomp.

The Adrenaline Award goes to the public transit experience. The drivers of the micros (short public buses) evidently play copious amounts of Mario Kart and are under the impression that their skills are readily tranferrable to the bumpy, windy roads of the cities.

There's a few hobbits who live in Valpo. After weeks of searching, we finally found their abode.

Pics from Comida del Corazon

I know what you're thinking... and yes, that is a wee bit of a burrito. That's what happens when the tienda is out of burrito tortillas and only has taco tortillas. Good thing we made a thousand of them.

Honestly, when it comes down to it... It's all about the smiles

Thumbs up for burritos!!

Utilizing all the available space in our spacious and comfy 5-star kitchen.

Rockin the kitchen!

Our weapons against hunger

Walking the streets of Valparaiso looking for the needy

A classic Valparaisian cerro

The graffiti in Valpo can hardly be called that. Many of them are stunning ornately detailed pieces of art

I'm glad I was wearing my sunglasses when I was talking to this man. After saying thanks a dozen different ways, he bowed his head to place it in my hands in one final expression of gratitude. My glasses hid my misty eyes.

There is a subtle juxtaposition hard to see in the picture. On my wrist is my omnipresent Duke Basketball bracelet. Ironically, he was wearing a Purdue basketball jacket.
Last Week Duke 76 - Purdue 60

Burritos!!!

Our burritos are not the hardiest of meals. Knowing this, we give 2 to each person. Immediately after handing the man in the red coat two burritos, he ran over to his friend sitting on the other side of the block to give him one.

Following his kind example, we followed him and gave them another two.

Right after we gave burritos to this man, port security showed up and chased him away. It really highlighted how varied and different human actions can be.

This was the most heart-wrenching moment of the whole experience so far. When this man reached his hands out of the garbage can to take the burritos, he only had 2 fingers out of 10. Too often we judge before we know. "Get a job you bum!" Could you imagine how you would feel in hindsight if you said that to this man in ignorance?

We had seen this man walking around earlier but had missed a chance to give him a burrito. I was excited to have a second chance, and so I excitedly approached him.

What I didn't realize, is at some point between our meetings, he had decided that today was a good day to sit without pants or underwear on. A little awkward.... for both of us....

Doing good in the neighborhood

Our new buddy

Alex finding 2 new friends

Chilean Spanish is still like deciphering hieroglyphics for me, but it doesn't take words to express gratitude as this man proves

Loving life in Chile

Comida del Corazon

"Food from the Heart"

If there is one specific thing the entire Chilean odyssey has taught me it would be that nothing goes according to plan. No matter how thorough the planning, no matter how concrete the agenda, no matter how certain you are, curveballs down here are inevitable.

So, it should have come as no surprise to me when I found out the school that I was supposed to be volunteering for decided to cut their volunteer program. 5 months of planning and expectation washed away in one catastrophic meeting with the school's faculty, with the backup singing group the bad news bears in accompaniment.

Since that time, the organization I work for has tried, so far in vain, to find another volunteer placement for me. One might think, that being a resident of an extremely impoverished city, where half the population lives in homes haphazardly constructed with 4 pieces of sheet metal held together by a piece of rope, would provide ample volunteer opportunities. In principle that seems to be the case. The unaccounted for lurking variable in all my calculations was the rigidness of the bureaucratic quagmire one must wade through to actually lend a helping hand. Organizations want and need workers. Unfortunately for all, they take weeks, doing who knows what, trying to determine if you're a good fit for their organization.

Enough is enough. Earlier this week, Alex and I decided that we were wasting too much of our preciously finite amount of time down here waiting for decisions to be made. Why wait around for an organization to spend weeks analyzing where to place you, when you can just start a new charity yourself?

Enter, Comida del Corazon. To expedite the process of this blogging, I'm simply going to copy and paste our charity's info from our website.

Vision Statement: We fight hunger with food from the heart (comida del corazon).

Mission: To create a perpetual grassroots effort to feed the hungry of Vina Del Mar and Valpairaso by making charity simple.

Description: Charity should be simple. We make burritos and feed them to the people who need them most. Simple.

The Founders: Ganes McCulloch and Alex LaCroix

Hi everyone! Thanks for taking the time to learn about our cause. We are recent graduates of the University of Arizona and are currently living in Vina del Mar, Chile doing volunteer work with impoverished children. Unfortunately, we feel that our efforts have been limited by bureaucratic inefficiencies within the very organizations that seek to help them.

We decided to make things simple. Hunger surrounds us on a daily basis; we need only look around the corner of our house to find those suffering from it. So we are going to put on our chef's hats and feed them--burritos. Simple.

Still, the problem is bigger than the two of us, especially given our lack of culinary expertise and manual dexterity. If you have a heart, or love burritos, or have a heart that loves burritos, please don't hesitate to help us with this cause! Either facebook us, or email us at comidadelcorazon@gmail.com