Saturday, February 15

Today once again we all got up super late. I was fed up with waiting for the other kids and wasting time, so I went to the fiesta custombrista with the adults and Monse while the rest of them were still sleeping. We ate empanadas with centolla (type of crab) inside, which is a huge delicacy apparently. Then I really just wanted lettuce and vegetables because I had been eating nothing but meat and bread for the past few days. I asked for just a salad instead of meat with a side of lettuce at one of the food booths and they looked at me like I was crazy. After lunch, I accompanied Nancy to start working the Julia’s food stand. I put on the hairnet, took like 3 orders, and then Maxi, Oscar, and Javi came and invited me to hang out with them and so I left the food stand. We hung out for a while watching the dancing and talking. We went over to this really cool machine that utilizes water energy from the river to grind flour. Then we went over to this track nearby where they were doing free rollerblading. Maxi and I took skates and started trying while the rest chickened out and watched. Maxi was absolutely horrible and kept falling down, but I actually took to it. Two little girls came up and started skating next to me and giving me pointers and talking to me, and I slowly gained speed and confidence and ended up having a great time. I pride myself on always being able to try new things and not being embarrassed to look like an idiot doing them. Then Maxi, Monse, and I sat down at one of the tables and played escoba together. While we were sitting there playing and eating empanadas a little boy came over and I offered him an empanada. Then his dad and uncle came over and started talking to me. They were very obviously poor country people (sorry if that sounds mean I have no other way to describe it—one of them was missing teeth), and when I told them I was from the US, they sincerely told me they had no idea where that was and had never heard of it before. They were the first people in Chile that I’ve met who haven’t heard of the US. Later, Monse and I went to see a demonstration of sheep shearing. It was brutal the way they did it and the sheep ended up with a bunch of bleeding cuts from the sheers. 

We didn’t want to watch any more so we went to the track and ran races and flipped around on the bars nearby. I may not be the monkey bar champ I used to be but I still have some skills to do flips and things. Then came the fashion show where Javi and Pia were performing. It was a show of typical Chilote clothing, which is basically socks, skirts, dresses, hats, and jackets all made of different colored wool.

After briefly going to the house to change clothes (it quickly went from burning hot to freezing cold outside), we met up with more new people from Javi’s friend group and watched the dancing and talked until late in the night. I saw this traditional Chilote dance called Chamame that looked really fun and I asked Javi to teach it to me. She taught me the basics but it was actually a lot harder that it looked. The last song of the night was a Chamame, and this old drunk man came up to me and invited me up to the stage to dance with him. I tried to reject, but everyone was cheering me on, so we went up to dance together. I tried to do what Javi had taught me, but the drunk dude was dancing way to fast and running all around the stage and through the other couples and talking to me the whole time and I just couldn’t stop laughing at the ridiculousness of how we must have looked. Anyway, it was definitely a failure, but it was fun anyway and really hilarious for everyone else. After the song, the drunk dude escorted me off the stage and tried to kiss me, and Maxi had to step in and tell him to leave. After that, Nancy, Monse, and I walked home, ate some empanadas de manzana, and went to sleep around 3.