Fiestas Patrias

Hola Todos,

How are you all? Well, Anna and I are officially on vacation for the next 4 days. Tomorrow is Chile´s Independence Day and since they celebrate for practically the whole month most people get at least today and Friday off. Anna´s school had activities Tuesday and Wednesday and my school had activities all day yesterday. I dressed up as a Chilean Huaso (cowboy), which the kids loved! Anna and I will try to post pictures of our school´s Independence Day celebrations on Saturday, but today I wanted to finish up with the Independence Day Celebration at our friends´school San Francisco de la Selva (we went on September 5th, so about a week and a half ago). Anna started to post about what we did and I will finish up where she left off. So, here we go!

El Acto

We got to school around 11 am and the first activity was to watch a presentation that the kids gave celebrating their country and its diversity.

La Bandera Chilena

At the end of the presentation these girls came out and formed the Chilean Flag. I thought it was pretty clever :).

The Judge

So, I was given the honour of being one of the 5 judges to decide whose stand was the best. Each grade had a booth that they decorated and from which they sold yummy food. Of course, Chilean style I was never told I was going to do this. They just announced at the end of the presentation who would be the judges and I had to get up and stand with the other judges in front of everyone!!

And of course there was a lot of Cueca, the National Dance.

The Judge hard at work.

Well, judging turned out to be a lot of fun because several booths gave us food! We were all more than willing to accept bribes!


Me, Davis, and Anna
Davis is a professor at my school who teaches Violin. He is super nice and really wants to learn English. He has traveled to the U.S. (studied somewhere in the east coast) and lived in many countries. Anyways, we were surprised to see him there, but I guess he was helping out because he has a son who goes there.


Anna took this picture because she thought it was really funny how we looked under an arch of palm branches. I guess it made her think of a wedding or something :), silly Anna. So, Davis and I decided to hold a Ka-bob I was eating. Not sure why, just to be silly I guess.

Well, that was a little bit about of fun time at the San Francisco de la Selva´s Independence Day Celebration (that´s a mouth full!). I hope you all enjoyed it! Chau!