Sept. 18th

Hi!
As I have been telling you, it is Chilean independence week. On Sept. 18th they celebrate their complete independence (as in keeping all revenue from minerals in Chile). So, I will write to you tonight as to not forget anything because I've had some great couple of days.
Beginning with yesterday when my friend Katelynn and Natael went for a walk. We saw this crazy stray dog try to catch a bird, and run into a square metal thing like a glass door. Sad, but true. When we went out at night, we went to a place called Playa Ancha, which was transformed into a "fonda". The fonda is a HUGE festival on dirt. There are so many places to eat empanadas, chorri pan, kabobs, drink chicha, and other chilean stuff that it was wild. Also, you pay to enter the dancing place, and there is a live band and everybody is dancing the cueca, or typical chilean dance. The cueca is a dance of the farm people where the guy pursues the girl the entire time, and gets her in the end, they spin handkerchiefs over their heads, and go around un circles. It is reflective of roosters. Anyways, people also dance the salsa and any type of the cueca (it is different for north and south). So, after we left this dancing part, there was another dance party outside where people were still dancing the cueca, yelling and having a great time. That was only the pre-fonda night.
So, today I woke up at 9ish and got ready to leave with my family. We drove for about an hour to a mountainous farm. Absolutely beautiful. Here, it was basically all family, about 19 of us, and we had a barbecue. Right upon getting there we drank wine with peach in it, and ate boiled eggs and bread. We then ate empanadas warmed on a fire. After this we played many many games. In the family, there were two babies, and one 7 year old little boy who would be called "the adored one". He played hte part very well. Everyone wanted him to win the games and was very excited over the prizes he won. So you ask me, what games did we play. Well, we started off with tug-of-war, boys against girls. That is pointless knowing the boys will always win. Well after that, we used the same rope to mark "100 meters" and did the dash. One for women the other for boys. After this, my father Ricardo got out eggs and said we would play a game to put the eggs on the ground, be blindfolded, and listen to others direct you as to not step on the eggs. Who went first? I did. They tied my scarf around my head and sent me off. Funny thing was, they picked up all the eggs, and played with me/laughed at me, the entire time. Funny. After getting through this, we did an egg toss. Then, we put eggs on spoons, spoons in our mouths, and raced to a certain point. The winner of all these games of course got the prize.
I believe this was the end of the games for we were about to have lunch. The men through Chicken and stake on the fire pit grill. All the women had prepared salad, potatoes and rice so that we could eat it with the meat. Thing was, it was one family for themselves. In general, you ate what you brought. However, the food was tasty. Rosy made tomato and onion salad, bean salad and brought red meat for the grill. We shared a celery salad with one of the three families, but there was a runnin joke the entire time, trading food for food. haha. During this time, everyone continues to drink the peach wine, wine, beer and a chirmoya drink. WE made many salutes to Chile, to children, and to families during lunch. After lunch, I took a stroll with the younger kids, and it was beautiful! When we came back, they were playing soccer and jumping rope. Everyone joined in on the long rope jump and this too was a great time. After that, Rosy and Ricardo had been blowing up balloons. Everyone got a partner and we raced to see which partners could run to the car, grab a balloon and pop five the fastest. We also played musical chairs. Sadly, first round up, I battle out for a chair, "won" but the chair leg broke. It was plastic and it twisted up and snapped. haha. So, I called out for the rest of the chairs. Right before round two was played, one of the old men cut his finger pretty bad. So, we all relaxed and let that situation be figured out until we had tea time, or once. For once we had tea, soup, empanadas, boiled egg and smashed up boiled egg on bread. We sat around and talked until we started up a camp fire. We continued to sit around and talk until we left.
The scenery was beautiful, the food great, the people are fun, and when you see pics hopefully this will make better sense!
So with a quick update, I'm out.
Un abrazo
xoxo... Kati