Fechas Importantes

¡Hola! I got back to the apartment a little while ago from an independence day celebration at Mariano Latorre, the high school I volunteer at. This coming Friday is Chile's 4th of July: "El Dieciocho," or "The Eighteenth." It's the 199th anniversary of Chile's declaration of independence from Spain. Class ends at 1 pm on Thursday and by all accounts, that's when the celebratory drinking commences. La Universidad de Chile - one of the other main universities in Santiago - doesn't have class all week. The week leading up to Fiestas Patrias (the name of the whole shabang) has been described to me as "the biggest party of the year." The one thing I don't really understand though is that a lot of people leave Santiago for it. Originally I was thinking it would be sweet to be in Santiago to see all of the celebration, but now it sounds like a lot of my friends are leaving town. Surely there will be a lot going on here, but I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

The celebration at the school was a lot of fun. It was cool to see all of the students come to school on a Saturday to celebrate, and most of them were there all day long helping with their own class' stand. Our stand, Miss Gladys' class, sold empanadas, chips, and candy. I loooooove deep fried cheese empanaditas (Chilean spanish is all about adding "ita" onto the ends of nouns for small things). Other classes sold fresh-squeezed juice, chorripan (chorrizo and pan, aka a Chilean bratwurst), sopapillas, etc. And the cooking students made all kinds of deserts that were sooo yummy. I took a picture of their booth, it was right next to ours. I bought the spiral one. I didn't catch the name, but it tasted fantástico. Those boys are going to make really good husbands. I also took a lot of pictures of the elementary schoolers doing the national dance, the Cueca. It's really pretty when it's done right. The man is supposed to be in pursuit of the woman, which makes it extra cute when there are 10-year olds doing it. Here's a pic of me with the teacher I work with and another volunteer. Miss Gladys is wearing a typical Cueca outfit:


The celebration started on campus last week. There was a fonda, which is kind of like a block party but they're held all over Santiago and anyone can attend, at school on Thursday. It was a lot of fun - they sold typical Chilean asado (BBQ) food and drinks. And when it got dark there was a good band and dancing. I ran into some girls from my soccer class and it was a lot of fun to hang out with them off the field.

The other significant day that passed this week was September 11th, which was a sad day in Chile long before it meant anything in the USA. It was the day Pinochet's government violently took power of the country, and there are still protests and demonstrations to mark the event. We were warned as extranjeros to stay away from big plazas and government buildings. Apparently two people died in incidents related to the date. There are still a lot of people in Chile who think Pinochet was a godsend, and they fly the Chilean flag on the 11th.

On a more light-hearted note (well, maybe not), Chile had another disappointing outing in fútbol this week in their world-cup qualifying match against Brazil. It was a weird one - Brazil was not playing with their first line and therefore were not as dominant as usual, which left Chile with un montón of chances to score, but they couldn't seem to capitalize. Laaaaame. They lost 4-2. But I did get to eat my FIRST chorripan out of the deal because Mathias' host brother had some friends over for an asado. You win some you lose some.