Week 11

¡Hola a todos!

I´m pretty sure the internet is down again so I don´t know when I´ll actually be able to send this but I´m writing on Thursday as usual. Today is the 14th and I feel like it´s someone´s birthday today but I can´t remember whose...There are a ton of birthdays this month both here and at home. Well, two of my friends here have birthdays this week. This week was super different than normal because it was La Semana del Colegio (The Week of the School). This is our anniversary month and our school´s official anniversary is May 13th. On Monday it was The Day of the Student in all of Chile, I´m pretty sure, and we had a little party for our grade in the morning. My teacher brought in little notes with different life lessons on them and gave them to each of us and we ate cake and played Pictionary, the prize being added decimals to our Lenguage grade. My team came in second which is good because I can always use decimal points. After that a performer came and did, well, a performance for us. It was fine...pretty typical performer stuff. Then after lunch we had our Community Service project. We all went to this home for girls who have been removed from their families and we did activities with them and then all had a snack. The girls were all really fascinated by my gringa-ness and wanted me to speak English to them. I made bracelets with some girls although they struggled to get the hang of it. One of them wanted to know why I had dyed my hair, and my classmate had to explain that some people are born with blond hair. Then on Tuesday we had normal classes in the morning and in the afternoon, the Alianzas began. I can´t remember how much I´ve said about Alianzas so if I repeat myself I´m sorry. The entire school, Pre-K through 4º Medio, divides itself into two teams: the even-numbered grades and the odd-numbered grades. Each year the theme is different but this year the theme is countries. We are Brazil, the other team is Italy. We all have to wear green and yellow and they all wear red and white. There are a ton of competetions and the team with the most points at the end wins! Tuesday we had the girl´s soccer game and sadly we lost, 3-1 but I scored our one goal (lefty!). We played 8v8 and one of the Italian girls has a wicked shot and basically would just wham the ball. It was fun playing though. At halftime all the guys in my grade had advice for me, which they all gave at the same time and I spent an entertaining few minutes trying to ask them how to say “man on”. Then there were a few highly controversial rounds of dodgeball. Yesterday we had our anniversary mass, which was long and Catholic, as many masses tend to be. I really don´t understand very much because it´s hard to understand people when they´re using microphones but I like the singing. My religious vocab is improving. I can now say santificado, pecador, fraile, desayunar, rogar, rezar, pecado and part of Our Father. For Lenguaje we´re reading Los Milagros De Nuestra Señora, which is 12th century Spanish poetry celebrating the Virgin Mary. It´s actually not super hard, because they rewrote it in modern Spanish and it rhymes, which I like. After mass we had two classes and then people went off to do Alianza-related things. I stayed in the gym and helped decorate our side. The gym is divided in half and each Alianza gets to decorate their side. I was really worried because we weren´t getting much done and we had only two hours and then we had to go. Somehow, we managed to pull of an incredible design though. I´m going to send a photo of it when the internet is up again. It´s so awesome. Much better than Italy´s, which was traced. It was really fun seeing our decorations come out so well. Today was the first full day of the Alianzas. We all showed up with country´s colors and there were competitions all day. I competed in Musical Chairs, which we lost. There was a relay race of sorts that involved eating an entire onion raw and drinking a liter of coke (although different people did each) which was pretty disgusting. The poor kid was gagging and crying as he ate the onion. There were also the presentations of each team´s King and Queen and the team dances. Our Queen was accompanied by a group of drummers which was pretty cool. Each King and Queen had to demonstrate a talent. Our Queen sang and our King hit tennis balls at water balloons. This whole thing is pretty intense. People paint their faces and cheer and it can get pretty competetive. Tomorrow is the final day and it culmunates in a school party in the evening for the upper grades. This whole idea of La Semana del Colegio is cool. It´d be fun to do at FRCS instead of Field Day. It takes a ton of work though. The whole thing is run by the Student Council and there´s a ton of preperation involved. Next week is different too because it´s Navy Day so we´re going to have a parade I think. Details to follow...

Let´s see...what else? We had a nice Mother´s Day. We took a picnic to the beach and hung out there and then drove along the coast and saw some seriously rich neighborhoods overlooking the ocean. Yesterday was my halfway mark, I realized. I left home 11 weeks ago as of yesterday, and I leave here in eleven weeks. HOLY GUACAMOLE THAT¨S NOT MUCH TIME!!! It´s hard to be believe I´ve been here for such a short time and I´m leaving so soon. Seriously, in two and a half weeks it´s June and then it´s only four weeks until I have a month left. Yikes. It´s hard to believe that my Spanish is going to improve much in that time but I have faith. Sometimes it´s hard to stay in the moment and I start to worry if I´m accomplishing what I want to accomplish here and all that. Tedious, yeah? So that´s my task: Don´t worry, be happy, learn Spanish. Oh, and see a penguin. I would loooove to see a penguin.

I tried making brownies this weekend with my little sisters. Asher sent me a recipe and I don´t know if it´s the one he usually uses but they came out really different. It was mad hard trying to convert a US recipe to a Chilean kitchen. There isn´t really one food in particular that I miss from the US but it´s really weird going to the grocery store and not finding the things I take for granted, like chocolate chips. I think the have them in the bigger supermarkets but I had to settle for chopping up a chocolate bar. Anyways, the brownies came out funny but they were really yummy and it was fun baking. Asher, if you want a math challenge, convert all the recipes you send me into metric system. That would be incredibly helpful. Actually, what I miss here is breakfast. Chileans do not do breakfast well. We have bread and cereal but no omlets, pancakes or bacon. And bagels are an unknown thing here. I´m pretty sure that this is what seperates developing countries from developed countries: bagels. I really like the whole big meal in the middle of the day thing. On the weekends we have our big meal at around two and I think it´ll be weird to readjust to eating big meals in the evening.

So, here is what I´m wondering, if anyone would like to enlighten me...What´s happening with the playoffs? At a party of Saturday I spent some time discussing them with a guy in my class who actually knows a lot about basketball. For some unfathomable reason they broadcast the entire playoffs except the final. Because who cares about that, when they can watch the first round! Jeezsh.

Hmmm...what else? My camera broke so I think I´m going to have to buy a new one. At least I think it´s broken. Its bateries die literally within seconds and last time I tried turning it on it made a funny loud beap and flashed at me. Grrrrr.

Oh, one last thing. They really have fall here. The leaves turn red and orange (at least some do, although not in vast quantities like in New England) and sometimes when it´s cold it smells the same. South America is not all tropical and warm, let´s be clear on that.

Much love,
Sela