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 :)

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 :)

¡MaryMary!

Well, teaching on our own when Angelica was off sick was… interesting. Let’s just say I don’t think our teaching skills are quite up to scratch – was definitely a challenge, especially with the older years who are a lot closer to our own age anyway and so we don’t seem to have as much authority with them. But we managed ok I think (mostly!) and we made it out the other side alive – always a plus!

We had a very lazy weekend, passing our 2 month mark in a pretty chilled fashion. Thankfully Angelica was back on the Monday and so it was back to normal on the teaching front. Most of the lessons we had this week were tests and so we acted very invigilator-like, patrolling the room and answering questions as best we could. 

The language is still very tough, although most days I am able to understand most of what is being said and am able to communicate what I’m trying to say in one way or another, there are quite a lot of days, when I’m particularly tired, or I just zone out, when it becomes really hard to understand anything, let alone speak it. On these days, it’s so tough and frustrating that I don’t speak Spanish. I know I’ve only been here 2 months and so can’t expect to be fluent by now, but it’s still very annoying!

One evening, we were sitting with the girls in the internado and they taught us a few more Mapudungun words/phrases to add to our very small vocabulary (which prior to this consisted of: MaryMary (hello) and Kofkee (bread) !!). These are now stuck on our wall and once I’ve got my Spanish under control I would definitely like to learn a bit more! A few of my favourite words/phrases are:

·         "¿chumbli?" Which means "how are you?" and "Karuff" which means "cold"

On Friday we went into Temuco to meet Ruth, an ex-PT volunteer we met who returned to Chile and married and now lives in Temuco. She was planning on showing us some of the sights of Temuco but the rain put a stop to that and so instead we just went back to hers. We spent a lovely, and very English afternoon/evening playing the wii and watching films. The next morning, having spoken to us the night before about missing bacon, they managed to get hold of some from one of the larger supermarkets, she cooked us up a full English! We had to settle for a different type of sausage (the longanizas that are used in choripans - no such thing as pork sausages here!) but we still had toast, tomatoes, mushroom and egg and most importantly… bacon! Not gonna lie, it was pretty awesome! We went to a church service with a load of youth from a few different churches in Temuco, including the one Ruth and her husband go to, and also the youth from Cholchol. We watched a film together and did a bit of reflection stuff before catching the bus back to Cholchol with the others.

 It was a really good couple of days, despite the dramatic ending in which Danielle left her rucksack which had all of our clothes etc we’d taken with us in it on the bus! Panic! When we realised about 15 mins after getting off the bus, we ran to the Ortiz’s and they jumped straight into the car and drove us to the bus terminal and sorted it all out for us – they really do take such good care of us, we’d be so lost without them! 

Throughout Chile it has been the municipalidad elections this year, with every town electing a new alcade (mayor) and council (concejales). As a result of this, we have been seeing posters and billboards since we arrived of the various candidates running for office. One thing that is very different here to in the UK is how much the people love their politics! 

The election was on the 28^th October and so in the last few weeks we’ve been seeing the final push by all the candidates. We went to one campaign which involved a lot of music (each candidate alcade seems to have their own ‘theme music’ which drive around in cars being blasted out on repeat – it’s only a little tedious!) and dancing and when the alcade came out, the crowd went absolutely crazy – as if he was properly famous or something! I can’t say I understood much from  his speech, but what I did grasp, or atleast thought I did was that he was going to get free wifi for the whole of Cholchol and give every student in Cholchol a netbook so that they can all do their schoolwork. I did think I must have misunderstood that bit but apparently its not as ridiculous as it sounds and he probably did say it! Well – he won, so lets see if his promise comes through!  Free WiFi would be very useful for us!

Another shortened week next week, just 3 days, as Thurs 1^st and Fri 2^nd Nov are both national holidays due to it being the ‘Day of the Dead’ (originally a Mexican tradition I think, not really sure what it entails to be honest). We’re planning on going to the town of Pucon with the volunteers who live in Lautaro which should be really lovely and maybe we’ll even get to climb a volcano while we’re there! 

ChaoChao – or as they say in Mapudungun: ¡Peukallal!

Hannah :)