Fiestas Patrias

Chileans sure do know how to celebrate their independence! This past Friday was the technical start of the long weekend, although universities had the week off. Also, 2010 will be Chile's 200th anniversary, so everything was larger this year to start the countdown to 200.

It started Thursday night with a huge concert at La Moneda. La Avenida (the main thoroughfare for Santiago) was blocked off so that myself and 15,000 of my closest friends could gather to count down to midnight:

Then Friday in every park in the city were huge bar-B-Qs with tons of people in traditional dress, dancing the Queca (the national dance):

My family celebrated with a grill out (or asado). Here is my entire extended Chilean family (We're fairly small in number compared to the typical family size):

It was also my Chilean grandmother's birthday. This led to a fairly confusing conversation as to whether we were celebrating Chile's birthday, my Chilean grandmother's birthday, or if my grandmother was Chile:

Then Saturday my Chilean family headed to the beach, specifically Viña del Mar:

In Viña there are a number of fishermen who head out every morning and then sell fresh caught fish throughout the day. They will grill it right there for you. These are their boats:

We did not eat their fish as my family was concerned about my delicate gringa stomach. We did eat at a buffet. Here they're called tenedor libre, which litterally translates to free fork. Here is the view from our table:

This was the view from the apartment we stayed in:

It was still to cold to go swimming, but it was great to sit, read and watch the ocean. My host sisters and I now have a pretty awesome sea shell collection. We also found other ways to entertain ourselves:

Nacha and me hat shopping (I did not actually make a purchase):

My host dad tried to join in the hat search:

Panchi and me:

The sky was filled with kites all weekend:

There are beautiful smooth tourist beaches in Viña as well. But the rocky beaches are the best for sea shells:

THAT was my independence day weekend! :) Unfortunately, classes resumed Monday. After 10 days off and traveling to San Pedro and Viña it was hard to put my backpack back on.

Bueno Bye!