A Chilean Christmas...

The first and probably most obvious difference you’d expect between the English and Chilean Christmases is the weather. In Chile, Christmas takes place in summer, a time when temperatures in Cholchol normally reach up to 30°C! However, this year – it decided to be a lot more like an English summer… and rain. This did actually make the atmosphere feel a lot more Christmassy for us at least!

The weeks leading up to Christmas were, much like the UK, filled with crowded Christmas shopping (the lack of Christmas lights in Temuco being the only let down on this point!) and carol services.

the final assembly/prizegiving

In School, it was the end of the school year, as well as breaking up for Christmas and so there were several ‘ceremonias’ over the last couple of weeks including the ‘promociones’ of the Kinder curso (who are now moving up into the Basico section of the school) and Octavo Basico (who are now moving up into the Medio section of the school) as well as the school prizegiving.

girls in 6to Basico at their convidencia

There was also various ‘convidencias’ which we attended with everyone from some of the classes, our colleagues, church and even our aerobics class. These all basically consist of a meal or ‘sharing’ of some kind to celebrate the end of the year. The last few weeks have involved a lot of food!

On the evening of 22^nd December we attended the ‘Culto de Navidad’ (Christmas Service) at church. This involved several pieces by choirs, the Sunday school group and the youth group as well as carols and the normal stuff found in carol services. My partner and I took part in the nativity with the youth group. I agreed the week before to be the angel that appears to Joseph and as a result had to memorise an entire Spanish paragraph! Panic!

The angel and the star - ready for our spanish acting debut :)

“José, Hijo de David. No temas recibir a Maria por esposa. Porque ella ha concebido por obra del Espíritu Santo. Dará luz un hijo, y le pondrás por nombre Jesús, porque él salvará al pueblos de sus pecados. Él será el Rey, el Hijo de Dios.”

Luckily – after rehearsing the words constantly over a period of days, I miraculously managed to pull it off without a hitch! Much to the surprise of Joseph himself! It was a very proud moment. 

la cena de Navidad :)

The other major point about Chilean Christmas is that it is celebrated on the night of the 24^th, not on the 25^th. We were lucky enough to be invited to spend Christmas with our Chilean family and so on the night of the 24^th, about 7 O’clock we went round to their house with our sackful of presents! We had a very lovely ‘cena’ which consisted of a starter of “Palta Reina” (an avocado half filled with some kind of chicken/mayonnaise combo on a bed of lettuce), followed by turkey cooked in a mushroom source, with crochet potatoes and a huge array of various salads, and then brownie and ice cream for pudding.

present time!!! :D

The next few hours were spent trying to digest some of the food and singing xmas songs (we taught them several in English and also sung some Spanish ones). Once midnight struck, the presents were doled out and all opened.  We left about 2am and headed on the 30 second walk back home before collapsing into bed.

We were then back at the Ortiz’s by midday the next day for a very late breakfast of waffles. The day was spent very chilled, watching TV and skyping my family. We had lunch about half 4 and then las once at about 9:00! It was a very good day and a nice, relaxing break, and though it didn’t have quite the same feel as an English family Christmas, it was a good experience and definitely a good insight into other cultures and the different meanings of celebrations such as Christmas in different parts of the world.

And now there’s only 3 days until we head up to Valporaíso for New Year with all the other volunteers and then off on our summer travels! Exciting times ahead!

Hannah :)

Spanglish...

So I have to say... when I thought of coming to Chile, learning Spanish beforehand never really seriously crossed my mind. I mean, yeah I did some self-tutoring via the internet and even went on a weekend cramming course.. but I kinda just thought I'd figure it out once I got here... hahaha.

Now, 4 months in, I kinda expected to be able to communicate in Spanish pretty well by now... well, I can communicate it's true... and a lot of the time I think I'm actually doing OK, though my Spanish abilities are definitely very temperamental.
However, the bigger problem I've encountered over the past few weeks, is that I now can't speak English either. So basically - I'm stuck in some kind of limbo where I can't speak Spanish, or English. hmmm...

This fact didn't really strike me until Sunday afternoon, lying on top of a hill in the middle of the Araucanian countryside with some friends - it was boiling hot and absolutely stunning, you could see for miles into the surrounding hills, and we were playing eye spy (just cause, why not!). We played it first in Spanish, which was OK, though we didn't know the names of some of the things we were seeing, we could get most of them. After, we decided to try it in English. At this point, I realised... I couldn't think of the names of anything I could see in English either! Slightly less good.

I have to say - when you think about living and learning another language, I didn't expect it to be like this. You see people translating from one language to another almost instantaneously all over the TV and they make it look so easy - it's really not. All languages are the same, words translate directly... but then phrases and sentences don't, and that's whats the hardest. So quite often, you can form an English sentence in your mind, translate it perfectly (or so you think) into Spanish and they just look at you like 'what the hell?'. I think this is what's muddling my brain the most, and so I end up thinking the wrong way round... trying to put adjectives after the noun when I'm speaking English or saying things like 'the house of Audrey' (my partner especially has got into saying things like this, much to my amusement). Its also weird how just random words come to you in Spanish when writing or talking in English, and it takes that much longer to think of the English one!

It's a very strange feeling and very very frustrating on the most part. However, I'm gonna take this as a good sign, and though this stage is possibly even harder to when we first arrived and knew nothing (I mean, at least I knew I knew nothing and so did everyone else!), hopefully it means that Spanish is slowly starting to take root and that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to communicate fluently after a few more months.

I don't even know if this ramble makes any sense - I'll blame it on my scrambled brain if it doesn't. I do think Spanglish should be an official language though, as if it was - I reckon I'm fluent in that one :)

weekends away and terremotos...

Well, Seems like a very long time since I last wrote a blog, and a lot has happened since then!

Firstly, the protest. It all got a bit more violent, and some people from the village got involved at which point my partner and I were (a bit unnecessarily I think), evacuated to the countryside. We stayed with Audrey, a lovely English lady who took us in and looked after us whilst we were panicking slightly about the potential loss of our home!

However, luckily the church stepped in and agreed to pay for the restorations needed in the internado which the school couldn't afford, which means the internado's are staying open and we're not getting kicked out of our house! hooray!!! :D

Work has generally consisted of a lot of films and other more fun activities over the past couple of weeks such as trips to the river to eat ice cream (which, when 2do Medio is involved, is a lot wetter than it should be - definately shouldn't have given them bottles and access to an large amount of water!), performances of plays (including a great portrayal of falling of a stage from one guy - caught on video and everything!) and of course, Gangham style.

Last weekend, we were invited by Ruth to go away with the youth group from her church in Temuco to a place called 'Rio Quino' about 1 hour north of Temuco. We went by train up to a place called Pua and then walked the rest of the way... along the motorway.

Rio Quino

Not even joking, we walked for about half an hour in a single line along the hard shoulder of the PanAmerican Highway in the increasing darkness! Then at the point when there was no hard shoulder, we had to wait for the road to clear and leg it! It was.. a little terrifying to say the least!

Over the course of the weekend, we did a bit of worship and bible study, chilled by the river, played football (I scored 4 goals - only 2 of which were set up for me! :D) as well as a lot of other games. It was very hot and though it was exhausting, we made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun :)

Grupo de Jovenes de la Iglesia Santa Trinidad

Then on Monday 10th, a significant thing happened - I experienced my first earthquake!!! Well, it was more of a tremour really - 5.8 on the Richter Scale apparently but very short. Unfortunately, neither my partner or myself felt it.. at all! Having never experienced an earthquake before and so having no idea what one feels like, I guess it didn't even register, probably assumed it was a table scraping across the floor or the kids running around.. but if I'm honest, I'm a little bit disappointed I missed it! Ah well, I'm sure they'll be another sometime in the next 9 months!

And that's about all for now! Only just over a week until school breaks up for Christmas and then we're off on our travels! How on earth did that happen!? Probably should get back to organizing that one.. so far we've made it to the 8th January! hmmm..

Hannah :)