Alianzas, Burlesque and Protests...

As promised.. I now have something more interesting to write about!!

Thursday and Friday last week there were no lessons to go to as we were all off celebrating the 116th Anniversary of the school. (Seriously, Chileans don't need much excuse to celebrate ATALL). The school was divided into 3 teams: Amarillo, Rojo & Verde. We were quickly snapped up by the Amarillo team and by 9:00 on Thursday morning we were sporting yellow pompoms and cheering away for the football match going on.

One of the games seemed to involve each team trying to collect as many shoelaces as possible. This meant my shoes were also attacked and after wondering around without any shoe laces for a while (was slightly interesting trying to keep the shoes on my feet!) I managed to get some back.. though now the shoelaces I have are definately a lot grubbier and don't actually match.... hmm.

The crowned King and Queen of William Wilson..

The afternoon consisted of a dancing competition... to Gangnam Style. It was... interesting to say the least!

Friday saw the school assembling in the dining hall, the story of the school was told and then the final scores were given and the queen was crowned. Let me explain: basically, each team had elected a king and a queen, who were dressed up. The winning teams queen was then given a tiara by the queens from last year. Amarillo came 2nd over all so not too bad! Not really sure why this particular tradition is done, but as with a lot of things here, we just kinda went with it!

being made up...

Then on Saturday we had the dance competition in Temuco we'd been preparing for over the last month or so! The competition was at 3pm and so we met in the Plaza at 2 to await our lift, being provided by the municipalidad. Well of course, it didn't come.. so at 3:15 after a few frantic calls, our dance teacher ended up driving back to Cholchol in a minibus to pick us all up!

ready to dance...

We missed our slot and so ended up going on last. We were attacked with make-up.. and then made our way to the middle of el gymnasio... The presenter chose to ask me and Danielle if we were nervous.. the 2 people in the entire gymnasium that didn't understand what he was saying! It was slightly awkward... but then we were away! Dancing to 'Welcome to Burlesque' - it didn't go too badly, though we didn't win, despite the potential gringa points we could have got! But it was a laugh, and we've been able to make quite a few friends too, which is always good!

However, without the dance to detract from the time, aerobics is once again back up to its full power and monday was very hard work! I was going to write that teaching and life was back to normal. However, this morning we were woken up to the girls in the internado making ALOT of noise! Even after they should have been in school they were out there screaming and shouting and banging sticks. After going out to investigate we discovered them in full-swing of protesting against the closure of the internados! They did actually let us leave to go to work which is something atleast! (how nice of them eh?) although not before we'd added our own posters in English to their collection. Once in school - the boys turn out to be doing the same, with numerous posters. They also seemed to have moved all their beds outside too.. that was, until it started tipping it down of course!

I don't know if this protest will make a difference, or even why they want to close the internados in the first place, since it would make it much more difficult for the kids that live there to come to school at all! But I really hope they don't! After all, though I don't think they'd chuck us out as well (since they'd never mentioned it to us before, you'd hope not!) but it's our home too and part of what makes my project so fun is the experience of living with the girls, reckon it'd be kinda lonely in that big old building on our own! :/

Anyway.. that's all for now - back to lesson planning for me!




Hannah :)

routines.....

Tbh, routines are definitively a part of my life now.. as much as it pains me to say it. So I don't really have anything all that interesting to write about over the last couple of weeks.. just work, aerobics and sun sun sun!

a friend we made in Lautaro :)

Our weekends have involved a trip to Lautaro for a friends birthday - a lot of lazing in the sun, eating sopapiallas and drinking of 'ron' was done -  and then a stay in Temuco involving a quiz - which we spectacularly lost (blame the fact we don't speak the language) - and flapjack making with some of Ruth's precious golden syrup brought over from the UK.

The nice thing about routine here, is that it's never routine for too long! The next 3 days are promising to be a lot more interesting as it is the anniversary of the school and so there are no classes, and instead lots of games and activities done in teams throughout the school. Hopefully I'll have some more interesting stuff to blog about once that's through!

But for now I won't bore you anymore...

Chao!


Hannah :)

Another long weekend... Pucon: 1st-4th Nov

In the week beginning the 29^th Oct, we did quite a bit of teaching on our own, we had to plan and take nearly all the classes – all except those who still had tests – which made a nice, though challenging change to our usual assisting. 

Then, thanks to the bank holidays for the ‘Day of the Dead’ on the 1^st November and Reformation Day on the 2nd, we had another 4 day weekend.

This time, we met up with the volunteers who live in Lautaro and went to Pucón, a town about a 2 hour bus ride south-east of Temuco on the coast of Lake Villarica, and the closest town to Volcán Villarica, the active volcano who’s tip we can see from Cholchol on a sunny day. (the base of the volcano is just 14km from Pucón). The town itself is very like somewhere you’d picture in the Swiss Alps, all wooden houses and very very touristy, and to be honest we could have been somewhere in Europe – except for the looming volcano of course. But we spent a very lovely 4 days there, and it was a very chilled and relaxing break.

Upon arrival, we stumbled off the bus and wondered around slightly confused until we ended up in one agency talking to a girl who turned out to be from England! and – even more weirdly – who’s boyfriend is from Cholchol! She gave us the load-down of all the different activities we could do from white water rafting, to a visit to the hotsprings as well as climbing the volcano itself. The later was something that I did, and still do, really want to do. But due to the price we decided to save that one for another time, maybe at the end of our travels if we have any money left!

The view of the lake from halfway up the hill.

In the end the first activity we opted for was horseriding. So on the Friday we set off on our horseride. It was a mapuche-led tour in the countyside which involved climbing halfway up one of the nearby mountains on horseback along some very narrow paths. The chilled attitude of Chileans was quite obvious in this activity from a) the lack of helmets and b) at the beginning of the ride, asking who could/who couldn’t ride and then plonking us all on horses, showing us how to hold the reins, how to turn left and how to turn right before off we set up a mountain! The view of the lake and the town was pretty spectacular and the ride down was, believe it or not, actually less scary than the journey up. We were all feeling pretty comfortable on our horses by this point and so managed a bit of trotting, and I even got cantering a bit too!

me at the bottom of the 'hidden waterfall'

It was so much fun that on Sunday, Beth, Danielle and I decided to do another horseride! This time we went to a ‘hidden waterfall’, which involved about half riding and half trekking down a very steep hillside to reach it but the 80m ‘cascada’ was definitely worth it! And it was just as fun as the first time too!

kayaking on the lake

The rest of the time involved mostly chilling, the weather was absolutely gorgeous – we spent a lot of time lying on the beach. We hired out some kayaks on the lake for an hour and also visited ‘los thermas’ one night, the natural hot springs which lie about 45 minutes out of Pucón – definitely an experience worth having!

All in all, it was a pretty awesome holiday and one less place to travel in the summer (although hopefully we might get to come back and do the volcano climb, financial situation permitting!). I feel very lucky to have already been able to travel quite a bit in this amazing country I now call home and every time I do, it makes me more excited for our proper travels in the summer!

By Monday it was back to Cholchol and back to ‘normal’. We’re hoping to visit Lautaro this weekend as it is one of the volunteers’ 18^th Birthday so yet another town we can cross off our list, and then after that there’s only one week until the 3 month mark! I’ll be writing a newsletter around this point, and I know quite a few people have already said they would like me to send them a copy. If you would like one, please send your email or postal addresses to spitfire062@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get one :)

¡Hasta Luego!

Hannah :)