Seeing St. Francis (10/28)

We're not Catholic, of course, but our curiosity gets the best of us sometimes. We just had to see the inside of Santiago's oldest church, St. Fancis of Asissi. Fortunately, we didn't have to sneak into this church. It has a rather nice museum. With many paintings detailing the lives of Saint Francis and a few other important priests, it was more of an art gallery than a relic museum. I was amazed to find tucked in one of the little nooks in the labrynth a tribute to Gabriela Mistral who apparently left her Nobel Prize to the church. Another exhibit that was stiking (a terrible pun here) was a display of whips and belts used for self-inflicted punishment. (If you saw the movie The Da Vinci Code, the bishop's "Angel" punished himself with similar tools.) The courtyard garden was nice also. Deb and I just sat there looking at the goldfish in the fountain pool and watching the birds (including a rooster) around us.

Well. While eating a light tea, we realized we have about 8 more weeks here in Chile. So we made a list of things that we want to do before "the end." We are going to work hard to do them all.