Chile miners clean up, settle in, wait

COPIAPO, Chile, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- A video shows 33 miners doing their best to adapt to what is expected to be as many as four months stuck inside a Chilean copper mine.

A 25-minute video shot by the miners showed the men with clean clothes, shaved faces and playing music from an MP3 player lowered to them through one of the narrow air shafts connecting them to the surface.

"They're much better," Cristina Nunez, wife of miner Claudio Yanez, told reporters Wednesday after viewing the footage. "They're cracking jokes. I was very happy to see them."

Rescue crews have been busy lowering food and other items to the men while working on the details of a drilling project that will widen the shaft enough to pull the men to safety.

Among the items was a book on public speaking because, CNN said, the miners expressed a desire to be better able to speak to the media once they are freed.

The oldest of the trapped miners is 62-year-old Mario Gomez who has organized a small subterranean chapel and is serving as an unofficial aide to psychologists working at the surface, The New York Times said. Gomez once survived 11 days as a stowaway on a ship.