Haven't blogged in a while, so this one's gonna be a two-parter. My facebook album pictures are explained here, the rest of what I've been up to is up above. Last week the school celebrated its 11th anniversary. Though schools here don't do homecoming, pretty much every school celebrates its anniversary instead. Just so happens that Colegio de Charles Darwin has its festivities in the fall (with the whole southern hemisphere thing, we're in fall now bracing for winter), around the same time we would have our homecoming. This year's activities were circus-themed. Here are pics and an explanation of what went down:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?fbid=894348271784&id=5321418&aid=2419785&l=e56efea87d
The entire school split into two halves, one representing the Circo Chileno (tradition Barnum and Bailey type with bright colors and clowns) and the other repping Circo Europeo (more mimes, elegance, Cirque du Soleil-esque). Wednesday and Thursday afternoon kids participated in various activities held in the gym and outside. Everyone, including some of us teachers, dressed up in costumes and face paint and played various games. The kids introduced their equivalent of the homecoming court, made designs out of shoestrings, and mashed grapes with their feet, then drank their nasty foot juice. Games included musical chairs, jenga, karaoke contests, and a game in which people sat under an inflating balloon while answering trivia questions. Once your question was answered, the next person took your spot under the balloon, until it eventually popped and spilled some orange gunk all over you. But my favorite games by far were the ones in which kids had to eat and drink nasty concoctions. The younger students drank raw eggs, vinegar, and shoved their faces into plates of flour. The older kids chugged a 1 liter bottle of sparkling water, drank tomato juice mixed with all sorts of stuff, and ate a full onion covered in aji (a hot spice) and manjar (best described as something like peanut butter, though the two are quite different). Though one of the kids puked after chugging the water bottle, I was still disappointed by the lack of ralphing. As one of the students chowed down on the onion, I kept making gagging noises behind him, to no avail. Clearly I'm a positive influence in the lives of these kids.
On Fridays we have half days. So in the morning both teams choreographed and performed a dance and a team chant. We then decorated parents' cars and drove into the center of town, rolling 12 cars deep in our caravan. In the evening we came back to the school for a few more activities. The student council prepared a slide show for the parents recapping the week, and then the parents played a karaoke game to win points for their kids' teams. As as aside, let me just say that the entire week was planned by the student council (a whopping four students, including my host sister) with no help from the teachers. The school tries to teach the kids to be autonomous, and its incredible that everything ran so smoothly without help from the staff. The older students on each team took command and guided the little ones through everything. It was pretty sweet to see.
Finally, after announcing the winning team--the Chilean Circus, my team, naturally--the students in 7th to 12th grades had a dance. Since the school is so small, the dance ended fairly early. It only went until 1am. Yup, in Chile everything goes mad late, and everyone has assured me that its normal for school dances to go until 5 or 6am. That means that people my age go out around 10 or 11, party at the bars until 5 or so, and then hit the after-hours joints until noon if they really wanna. I guess you can afford to do things like that when your entire culture doesn't revolve around binge drinking. I've tried explaining to people how hard it is to stay up past 3 when you're busy chasing keg stands with Jager bombs. And my love-hate relationship with America continues...
Before the night-time activities, I went with a few teachers to eat down at the port. There you can find plenty of palafitos, houses standing on wooden logs inside the water. Since the entire week was unusually sunny and warm, the views outside the windows were as beautiful as the seafood was delicious. Speaking of food, after the dance I went with the family to an asado that ran until about 3 am. Asados, like very big barbecues, are are very popular here. In fact, I ended up at an asado my very first night here in Castro. Basically, giant chunks of meat (pork, lamb, beef, anything that moves on the island basically) are slowly roasted and heavily salted. Then these meats are oftentimes passed around on large trays and shared communally. Eventually everyone gets their own plates and fills them with the meats and salads. Of course, various booze are plentiful. The biggest difference between our own cookouts and the asados here in Chiloe is that weather is never a factor. Since half the year can be filled with week-long downpours, people see asados as a way to stay warm and well-fed during the shitty wet weather, as opposed to specifically seeking out sunny summer days to grill. To read about other times I got drunk and ate delicious meats, check part two (above this post).
-Pablo
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