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 :)