Professional Progress

Monday, February 9

Monday was packed with potential. I began with a meeting at the Tompkins House to offer my services for Parque Pumalin. The woman Lily and I met with was extremely nice. We spoke a bit about the park and my background as well as my willingness to help and take on a new project. She seemed very receptive and I am optimistic in hearing from her soon. There are so many possibilities with Parque Pumalin including land conservation in the park itself (a couple hours south of Puerto Varas), the capital campaign in raising funds for the park, as well as their all-natural merchandising business.

Next Lily and I made our way to el centro to meet with Jimmy Langman, the founder of Patagon Journal. We met him at Café Barrista over coffee and discussed his planned publication of a new magazine centered on life in Patagonia. This project is extremely interesting as this magazine intends to offer a greater variety of coverage for Patagonian & environmental enthusiasts. Also the magazine is scheduled to be offered in both English and Spanish, which is not yet offered by any magazine in this area. We spoke about ideas for the magazine and Jimmy asked about our thoughts on his plans and intentions. Everything sounded very promising and I ended by offering my services to help him prepare a business plan for the magazine to aid his effort in procuring financing for the project. This project will be a great use of my time and a great learning experience, and hopefully I can help them get the magazine off the ground and become the next big publication in Patagonia and abroad.

Unfortunately, our meeting ended on the worst note possible as Jimmy’s $2000 Nikon camera was stolen while we were having our meeting. He left his camera under his chair and somehow someone grabbed it while we were distracted during the meeting. None of us could believe what had happened as we were tucked away in a corner inside a café. It was so bizarre and disheartening, and of course Jimmy was crushed because high quality photography was such a huge part of the magazine. He had been financing the whole project himself, and providing much of the initial photography, and now the instrument responsible for the initial blossoming of the magazine was stolen. It was a huge financial loss for Jimmy and a devastating setback for the magazine. I hope this doesn’t destroy my promising involvement in the magazine.

The night ended with my first English lesson with our doorman Jaime. He was so excited to learn and I was so excited to teach. His motivation to learn was quite noble as he plans to work with people in English at a local drug rehab center. Much of the first lesson was spent with very introductory words with extra emphasis on pronunciation. Learning how to properly pronounce English words for a native Spanish speaker can be quite difficult and I knew it would be a challenge for Jaime. However, he is giving his best effort and is very motivated to learn…both good things!

Chile Trivia: The Atacama Desert, located in northern Chile is only the 18th largest desert in the world, but is the world’s driest desert.