Chile Blog Numero 3 Part 1.

I've recently gone through a long writers block. I don't know why, but I just haven't had anything to write about. That is until last weekend when I celebrated the 200 years of Chile's Independence. There were celebrations and parades all weekend, and the streets were filled with people. All the micros had decorations inside of flags and streamers. It made the ride to school much more pleasurable for me. On Thursday the  16th of September I rode to school in the decorated Micro and saw tons of people wrapped around every corner of the supermarkets just like black friday. I found out it's because they close the stores and businesses for the 4 day weekend. Then my favorite thing was seeing the mass of children, jr. highers and high schoolers in the street getting ready for a parade. The little children were dressed in the traditional "cueca" dresses and outfits. The cueca is the national dance of Chile, and very fun to watch. The jr. highers and high schoolers were dressed in their band uniforms and I was smiling so much at the mass of banderas or flags and people in the street. I must say the patriotism shown in Chile during this time is amazing, and you are hard pressed to find a corner or home without a flag. Then on Saturday there wasn't really much going on in the evening on the 18th, but I hung out with some of the students from my group and our new chilean friends we met through the program. Pretty fun. Then on Monday, I went with some other students to Santiago the capital, and that was my favorite thing in the evening. We watched the most amazing light show, and the amount of people was that of the entire country of Chile it appeared. We were all in the streets crowded more than at a concert squished next to each other watching the light show on the capital building. I was in aw of the fire works and the way the voice told the story of Chile and how it got it's independence. Laura and I were definitely in our concert state of mind pushing through the crowd to get closer and we did really good. It was spectacular and the gold fireworks and the color changes of the building were perfectly matched with the music. I can not believe I was here to witness this celebration, and I feel very honored.