Strikes, Soccer, School and Tias y Tios

Hola Todos!!

School is winding down, so I’ve been working on several final projects. One of which is about graffiti as a form of social protest. I’m not sure if many of you know, but in Chile there are constant marches, protests and strikes. Actually, these types of protests are very common in most Latin American countries. Unfortunately, I have had the opportunity to see this first hand. The public school teachers across Chile have been on strike for approximately 2 months. They have been marching and protesting on the main streets of Valpo and in areas of Santiago. The reason for the “paro” aka strike is that the various municipals across Chile were supposed to pay the teachers their bonus for the last two years. However, claiming they did not have the money, the municipal never paid them. Therefore, the teachers refused to work. The seven children we work with in our service project, Tías y Tíos, (Daniél, Romanet, María Jose, Javiera, Kevin, Diego and Julio) all attend public school. They missed a total of six weeks of school. They are also enrolled in the school lunch program which wasn’t distributing the appropriate amount of food to the children during the strike. As you can imagine, they were hungry and bored. Luckily, the teachers returned last week and the kids are back in the classroom, except for Javiera. She broke her leg 3 weeks ago. She ran into a stopped car and now has a cast from her toes to her hip…poor thing!

Despite the bad luck the kids have had with school and parked cars, yesterday we had a great Tías y Tíos event. We had a big spaghetti lunch and then played games because it was too rainy to go to the museum. Jessica and I cooked spaghetti for over 20 people. It turned out delicioso. Then we danced and played Twister, Pictionary, Jenga, etc. We turned the rainy day into a fun day. The kids had a blast. They loved playing Pictionary. It got pretty heated because we split the teams into boys v. girls and as always, boys are too competitive!!

I am also very excited to report that my home Rotary Club of Thousand Oaks, California has donated $2,205.00 toward the various construction projects we want to do at the kids’ house. THANK YOU ROTARY CLUB OF T.O.!!!! We will be constructing stairs outside their house, a kitchen floor, a kitchen wall with window, a bedroom with two walls and a door and many other things. Gina has spent hours with us going over the list of materials we need to buy and plans for building. She has many friends and neighbors that are excited to help which means we probably won’t have to hire any labor workers. I am so excited to see how much this will help her with the everyday tasks she has to do with the kids. The construction projects will practically double the usable space in the house.

Aside from school and various Tías y Tíos stuff I have had a few nights to have fun with my friends. Last week on Wednesday, we went to the Chile v. Bolivia World Cup qualifying game in Santiago. It was incredible. The stadium was packed, and the fans stood the whole time singing cheers (many of which included every bad word I know in Spanish). Chile won 4-0 and will be going to South Africa in 2010 for the World Cup!! Here is one of my favorite cheers, “Vamos, vamos chilenos, esta noche tenemos que ganar…Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le Vive CHILE!!!!” Click on the video below and you can hear it for your self.

I also experienced my first time at the Juevo. The Juevo is the biggest disco tech in Valpo. It has 4 floors with various rooms. Each room has a different theme of music. It is a dance factory. Aside from the smoke that fills every room like a dark cloud (smoking is allowed inside everywhere in Chile), it was a lot of fun. My favorite room was the 80’s music room. We danced and danced and danced!

This week is an exciting week because KEVIN is coming to visit me. He arrives on Thursday night. I can’t wait. I am going to drag him to all my classes and to meet all my Tías and Tíos kids. I want to show him off. He will definitely stick out here being a tall blonde haired blue eyed boy. I might have to put him to work building things up at Gina’s place, but he likes that stuff. On June 29th we will be flying to Arica, a city up north near Peru. We will be traveling around the area for 6 days. The entire region has a high concentration of indigenous populations and a huge national park. It will be much warmer up there too. I hope to get a sun tan!

I hope all is well state side and as always please, please, please send me e-mails and posts. They mean so much to me!!!