Ginny Carrithers

A few months ago, while still in Quito, I received my weekly email listing of NYC non-profit and volunteer opportunities from Idealist.org (I signed up a long time ago when I thought it might be interesting to see what leaving the wonderful world of advertising might be like). Idealist.org lets you search ops by country, and it was more out of curiosity than anything else that I looked up Argentina, knowing I was heading there next.  What came up was this:

DESCRIPTION:

Seeking a Personal/Administrative Assistant for an exceptional 60 year old woman artist, Ginny Carrithers, living with Multiple Sclerosis, who leads a fascinating life in a spectacular region of Patagonia, Argentina. She is also still undergoing physical therapy for a back injury suffered about a year ago and, while doing so, is collecting and organizing her life’s story for publication. Ginny is self-sufficient in most aspects of daily living but needs assistance in a few specific areas relating to her art and writing projects ...

http://www.idealist.org/if/i/en/av/VolunteerOpportunity/170379-155/c

So tonight I am leaving Buenos Aires on a bus bound for northern Patagonia to spend the next few weeks with Ginny. We'll be staying at the Hotel Oriplata in the small ski town of Caviahue very close to the border with Chile. One of the projects Ginny's working on is her biography and if you visit the site of her foundation Creativity Heals at http://www.creativityheals.org/ you can read about her life, her vision and her work. The other project will be preparing for an upcoming show of her work at the hotel this July.

I'm incredibly excited about both of these and finally meeting Ginny herself tomorrow - which is when I should be pulling up to the hotel after about 20+ hours of bus travel. I'm also excited to be going back to Patagonia, with its magical, magestic, almost mythical landscape. It will be the beginning of Fall so not quite ski season (which starts closer to June/July) and Ginny tells me its beautiful there this time of year. I look forward to being surrounded by the Patagonia mountains/glaciers/volcanos again.

Chao for now...  see you in Caviahue :)

Love,
Karen