International Thanksgiving

So even though I did miss out on the 8 hour car drive, family stories, black friday and getting a long weekend for Thanksgiving festivities, I did end up celebrating Thanksgiving with the other exchange students. Having never prepared a Thanksgiving, I must say just saying what type of foods you want at the dinner is exciting and 100% guarantee that half the foods you talk about having at Thanksgiving will not be there. Anyway, my two fellow american exchange students made our list of what we were making and then had other people say what they were planning on bringing. Many of which ended up saying they could not bring the dish because Chile does not have their specific items for that dish. Anyway, my friends and I were making the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and green beans since they were the biggest, most necessary for Thanksgiving and since the dinner was going to be held in my house it made the most sense to prepare everything there. We prepared the mashed potatoes and green beans Wednesday night and the turkey Thursday. The turn out was great there were many exchange students about 20ish. Everyone had a great time and we had many dishes from other countries including New Zealand and Australia. All the food turned out great for all of it being prepared by amateur cooks. We got the recipes from our families at home and foodnetwork.com which turned out to be very handy. Even though we did not have measuring cups and all the various seasonings we have in the US everything turned out to be very tasty. The hardest part was "cut" the turkey...it turned out beautiful but when the time came to carve it no one knew how to do it.

preparation for stuffing.

exchange students who are staying in Santiago. the turkey.

10 Weeks

So it has already been two and a half months. Funny how fast the time is going. Everyone in the U.S is probably preparing for the major holidays of the year and bundling up because the temperature, I'm guessing, is dropping rapidly. Here everyone is putting away the winter clothing and preparing for summer. Christmas in EXTREME heat is what I am preparing for. That will defiantly be a change for the wonderful New England Christmas weather. School is pretty hectic because I have exactly 21 days left until summer. All of the people in "cuatro medio" aka seniors are preparing for the PSU - a test similar to the SAT except their life kind of depends on it...The rest of the school is preparing for typical end of the year things, last tests before finals and so forth. Once we get out of school, I have a 4 month summer to look forward to. In that time I am going to Patagonia, on a 20 day scout trip which will consist of bonding activities and community service, and then switching families.

26th of November -Thanksgiving (not celebrated here)

27th of November - LAST DAY OF SCHOOL

13th-19th of December - Patagonia Trip

25th of December - Christmas

27th of December - Switch Families

Public Transportation part 2

Public transportation is the most popular way of commuting for everyone in Santiago. At night around 1130,I think the metro stops working...personally I think that is a really bad decision on the city's part because the public buses are unreliable. You could be waiting for a bus for an hour or two or just not know which buses are running at night. Taxis are still running but it makes transportation from different parts of the city very difficult. I've learned from personal experience. :)

Halloween in Chile

Halloween is somewhat of a new concept here in Chile and has only been around for about 15-20 years...which is why not everyone here gets as pumped up as people in the US. When my friends said that not many people get dress up, I was expecting actually no one and when I left my house in the evening, Iwas quite surprised to see a few kids walking up and down the street asking for candy. Unlike us, mischief night is also celebrated the same night as halloween but all they do here is throw eggs i think because i didn't see any houses tee-peed...In supermarkets and grocery stores they are not banning selling eggs to children at night either because when i stopped by a store, i saw 4 little boys about 12 buying a two cases of about 24 eggs.

As for halloween parties...most of those I heard of were being organized by exchange students, but as for the night, it was basically a regular Saturday and people could dress up if they wanted too...festivities that we have in the US were definitely missed but no big deal, there are costume parties all the time here and costumes aren't as easy to find.

so...i went camping.

I should say it straight out...I am not a camper.

However, I joined scout(yes, girl scouts...very different than in the US) and we had a 5 day camping trip this weekend. basically the entire school does scout and went camping. Around 300 people. All of the scout leaders are alumni of the school and scout is done through schools here. There for everyone who went goes to "San Juan Evangelista."

anyway...

It was really fun...i fell in the mud right when we got there and my
feet got covered in mud because i sank...we arrived at 11pm. we were
able to bath in a lake...gross but i was like i need to rinse off. i
cut my foot on something in the water...it rained saturday, so more
mud...the rest of the days were nice...freezing at night. took a while
to set up our huge 10 person at 11pm with only a flashlight. there were
only 5 ppl in my tent. the food was actually pretty good. i am not a
fan of going ot the bathroom in the woods but with toilet paper is
wasnt that bad...we did a lot of bonding activites which were really
fun. nights were freezing cold and went to sleep everyday around
2/3am and had breakfast at 9am...scout here has wierd cultish ceremonies/song

things that they do alot. interesting but litereally reminded me of a cult haha

i have another camping trip in 3 weeks...halloween weekend...lucky for me halloween doesnt exist here :(

i will be sure to take pictures next time.

A Week of Vacation

Since the 11th is a national holiday in Chile, many schools have the entire week after off. I am pretty sure the 18th of September is also a holiday, but I am not positive. Throughout the city of Santiago there are many parades and "Fondas" which I think a similar to fairs the we have in the US. (I did not go to any of these). The festivities equal out to a combination between the 4th of July and New Years. On the 18th there is a barbeque with tons of meat, salad and traditional foods such as empanadas. This meal would be equivalnent to our Thanksgiving because it is a meal shared with relatives and family members.

For vacation, my family took me to Valle del Elqui a town/area up north where there were not the same festivities practiced. It was the country and there did not seem to be anything going on. My family took me to "nearby" towns that had artisan shops where were cool. The place where we were liked alot like the deserts of Arizona and Utah and did not have much to do. Also there was barely any internet which is why I relate it to my Vermont house, with maybe 3 less stars For those of you who have been there...you know what I am talking about. I was there from Tuesday night until Sunday morning). Not to mention the 6hr car ride up there that was included. The drive home was beautiful, most of the time. The road we took was parallel to the coast. Sad to admit this was one of the highlights of the trip.

September 11

Similar to us in the United States, September 11 is a historic day throughout Chile. In Chile on September 11, 1973 was when President Salvador Allende was over thrown by the military coup. All throughout chile people are celebrating. It is a national holiday and is celebrated for a week. Therefore many schools are out for the entire next week. Mine included :) Before this day in gym classes throughout the country, the students learn the different traditional dances and each grade has a different dance to learn. The dances are so well performed and so fun to watch. The colors, music and enthusiasm from everyone makes it a spectacular performance. I was practicing to perform the dances with them but opted out to take pictures. I am happy I did. My favorite dance was performed by students in "cuatro medio" which is equivalant to our senior year in the US. It is called "la tirana." It is a dance from the north of chile. The music and costumes were beautiful.

This is a photo of what was performed by "tercero medio", equivalent to junior year.

photo 1: performing "la tirana"

photo 2: boys dress for "la tirana"

photo 3: girls dress for "la tirana"