www.thegilmours.co.uk

Hello again from the mountain. Once more it’s 6am and I’m sitting in the middle of the desert. Only this time it’s raining. Very strange. Supposedly they have only had heavy (meaning you can’t count the spots on one hand) rain here once before in the last 20 years. Just about the opposite of Glasgow. It’s been raining for over 6 hours continuously - at least I feel at home!

The plus side (for me) is that the telescopes are closed, so I can get on with some other work, and get to bed early. My visiting astronomer was not quite so happy. Also, buildings in the desert tend not to be very waterproof. About half an hour after the rain started, the residencia started to flood. Cue lots of frantic people with sandbags, mops and even blankets! My walk to my room requires walking through puddles and avoiding the large bins catching drips in strategic places along the walkways. At least the swimming pool is full.

The telescopes are better protected, as they shouldn’t even get one drop on the mirrors. That’s typical Paranal priorities - humans are far easier to dry out than telescopes.

Congratulations to our friends Joel and Ophelia Arajo-Fox who recently had a baby, Fabio Kai.

However, two weeks after the C-section, Ophelia has returned to hospital with an infection (presumed to be the wound). It has become quite serious and she remains in intensive care, requiring some form of blood transfusions.

Please pray for them both, for comfort for Ophelia, that the antibiotics would work and that baby Fabio would be at peace while staying with his grandparents. I’ll provide an update as a comment when we hear more news.

Moan, moan, moan… but its true! 28 degrees and i come down with a cold! It’s one hour since work started in the UK and I can’t sleep a wink.

Still, we had a great time last night, at a Pizza Party organised by a friend of Rachel’s from ESO. She first held a pizza party in Hawaii, where, surprisingly, there is very little pizza (and none of it with pineapple). Being italian, she decided to learn how to make them from scratch and now makes a mean pizza base dough! She provides this and basic toppings (by basic, we mean Italian extravagance… roasted aubergines, pan-fried garlic with green peppers). Each person had to create and name their pizza.

After tasting each creation, we sat down to vote, over two rounds. Heckling, comments, bets, blackmail, collusion, slander, corruption and buying votes were permitted. Indeed, last year, it is said that one astronomer offered his children and his liver to win. But he was Italian too.

Extra, special toppings were encouraged. Strangely, Rachel and myself were the only ones to provide additional, adventurous toppings. Douglas’ pizza, called The Big Apple, included tomato sauce, chopped apple, peanut butter, mozzarella and black pepper. Rachel’s One-point Pizza included tomato sauce, spinach, mozarella and came complete with a marmite stuffed-crust!

Given our sacrilegious toppings and newcomer status, it probably isn’t a surprise to you that we earned no points and came joint last in the competition, despite offering a free jar of marmite/peanut butter to every participant if one of us won. But we left satisfied…. because a german won!

Today we had breakfast on our balcony for the first time since around April. It’s a beautiful spring day, with 17 degrees and sunshine, despite the snow on the mountains around Santiago.

We’ve not written a blog for sometime now. Life has been rather hectic and stressful. Rachel has been busy preparing and making presentations of her work, one at the University and another to ESO itself. Douglas has been applying for jobs, working with a charity called La Esperanza (Hope) and building websites (a side interest that has proved quite useful to Chilean churches and charities!).

Rachel’s health has not been tip-top recently, with motivational problems, tiredness and difficulty concentrating. Two friends are also struggling with seasonal illnesses- Noemi and Joanne. We’d value your prayers.

Congratulations to our friends Joel and Ophelia with their new baby, Fabio Kai (thats a male for any Brits who are wondering!).

Finally, if anyone knows a church looking to sponsor a children’s shelter home abroad (in Chile), please let Douglas know. He is working to identify regular donors to support the work of two residencias operated by a church in a poor sector of Santiago. They are currently struggling under a burden of a $3000 deficit per month.