Sarah Warmker Photography

This girl has some sweet, sweet people in her life.  And she’s an amazing musician, if you haven’t heard.  (You should!)

I was too busy dancing to take photos during the JonBear Fourtet show the other night at the brewhouse, but I did let loose with my camera afterward.  Thought I’d get these silly pictures up before they got lost under an avalanche of wedding photos (to come, of course…)

I am so proud of my friends Jordan and Max.  Jordan is off to the Marshall Islands to teach with WorldTeach and Max is off to South Africa with the Peace Corps.  I have cherished these last few days with them so much – enjoying food with friends and family, laughing, singing, dancing… here’s to watching the mailbox, and to having two really good reasons to start printing and mailing out my photographs again.

May and June are months of rapid growth, everything is fiercely green and storms can whip up out of the bluest skies. These big changes come on so quick that you’ll miss them if you blink, so here’s to staying up late to talk to these pretty gente, and appreciating the ones I love as they leave one by one for the promises of youth and the many corners of the earth…

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Leah and I got together the other day to take some graduation portraits for her family.  She’s an old friend of mine so it was great to catch up with her and enjoy a perfect spring evening on OU’s beautiful campus.  She was a great model with a great smile, and we both had a lot of fun walking around campus.  Congrats to her for graduating, and also for landing a really awesome job last week!

Over the last few days, there has been an eerie silence here in Las Condes – our neighborhood didn’t suffer the proportion of damage others did, thanks to newly constructed buildings that could withstand the force of the earthquake, but the magnitude of the disaster can be felt all the same.  We are here waiting for things to return to normal.   I am truly lucky to be in a house that has food, water, electricity, and even internet.  So, in these days waiting to hear news of a plane to take me back home, I can reflect on all the things I have to be thankful for.

I am so lucky to have such wonderful food to eat!  I found a small grocery store and cafe called La Chakra, where they have many fresh, whole, and organic foods.  I imagine if I were to stay in Santiago longer, I would frequent this place as often as I go to the Earth Cafe and grocery store in Norman.  I enjoyed a glass of a fresh mint lemonade, and the best avocados I’ve had yet in Chile – which is quite a title in the country of palta.

Some of my best moments in Chile were spent with these women, pictured at the end of our third week of class.  Four women, from four different continents, all in different stages of life – I think I learned more in these conversations than I could from reading a wall full of books.

I’ve seen amazing landscapes, buildings, things here in Chile… but the people I’ve come to know here have impacted me in a way that can’t be measured.  These two girls, in particular, I will never forget – Vanessa and Annette, thanks for staying with me in a moment of crisis, while we found our way home in the dark, in a city that, for one night, saw the stars.

Feeling more than a little bit homesick today.  At times, I forget how quickly our hard felt realities become piecemeal anecdotes.  Our present is so present it seems solid enough to stand on.  But, all that surefooted confidence is lost in a pause – every time, trumped by the moment of reflection.  I catch glimpses of that strength of presence, fleeting memories won over in my little fight against time’s passage, and remember a little bit of the future I saw in my past.  Did it look much like this?

I spent a peaceful afternoon with these beautiful women in my life a few days before I left town… there will be someone new to know when I get home.