Stuffing, Sopaipillas And Strikes

Stuffing

We celebrated Christmas last weekend with some of the other PT volunteers. It's very strange to have winter but not have Christmas and as the two Chiloe vols had some time off, we thought it would be a great chance to get together and celebrate. It's really wet here at the moment. I had a particularly stressful journey to CholChol last Friday as I was carrying three bags and an umbrella in high wind and rain, while being on the phone at the same time. The umbrella kept going inside out (seriously considered just throwing it away) and then I had to run to catch the bus... I'll just say it was a relief to finally get there. 

The girls little home is quite small but the six of us managed to accommodate ourselves well enough. Danielle has mastered the talent of making a fire so the internado was nice and warm. Although some burning fire did fall into my shoe so my shoe is now slightly melted. But hey at least it's one less thing to bring home with me.

I can't say we did much over the weekend. Chatted a lot. Watched films. Cooked food. Our Saturday roast lunch was pretty good. We're all feeling pretty confident at cooking a Christmas dinner but I'm sure this confidence will dissolve when we go home and are asked to cook a roast. I have to admit we did buy a precooked chicken but then we didn't want to make ourselves ill. 

Me and Amina did sneak out Saturday evening to go to capoeira. We all swapped secret santa presents and ate lots of ice cream and a great Christmas cake that the Chiloe vols made. 

Sunday morning we headed into Temuco and have a coffee (hot chocolate) in a cafe before the girls had to get a bus home. It was a really nice weekend. Looking forward to Christmas back home!

Emelia, Amina, Evie, Danielle, Me and Hannah

Sopaipillas

This Monday was the Mapuche New Year, as it was the start of winter and apparently the longest night of the year (although it was the 24th and I'm sure the 21st is the longest night). After lunch there was a celebration of this at school. Basically the director gave a speech and the kids did a really cool Mapuche dance. Afterwards we ate sopaipillas, piñones and mote with the octavo A kids. 

the kids doing the Mapuche dance

Some quinto B girls wearing the traditional Mapuche clothes

Strikes

Yesterday we turned up at school and found out that most of the schools in Lautaro were closed because the teachers were going on strike. There was a staff meeting first thing, where they all voted to go on strike as well. They're unhappy with the education system and the way teachers get treated. We stayed at school until 10 when all the kids got sent home. It's weird, even though we're teachers we're a bit like kids at school. When the kids aren't at school we don't have to be either. I suppose with no kids to teach we don't really have anything to do.

Anyway that's pretty much been our week. The first round of Presidential voting is happening on Sunday and this means that we have no school until Wednesday because the schools are being used for voting and counting the votes. We're going to fill our weekend with seeing friends, going to capoeira and sleeping.