Alli in Chile!: Alianza Verde!

So basically I'm terrible at keeping this updated, but I've been so busy. Lots of going out with my friends, birthday parties, shopping and all that. I finally made pancakes for my family! Of course they're obsessed with them because their pancakes are more like how we think of crepes. They weren't great because I made them from scratch and I usually just use the box, but they were good enough considering how much I missed them. They also really like syrup because it's not common here, but we were able to find it in one of the supermarkets because Punta Arenas gets a lot of imports. About two weeks ago we also had Teacher Day, which was fun. In the morning we had an assembly kind of thing where some classes or groups sang songs, did dances, gave speeches, or did imitations of the teachers. Then in the afternoon we didn't have classes, so it was kind of like a holiday for the students too.

And now on to the alianzas, which have been my favorite part so far. Basically the alianzas are a big competition where each class is put onto one of three teams and given a color. I was on Alianza Verde (green alliance) and each team also needs a king, queen, prince, and princess, and I ended up being voted queen. The little kids mostly just voted for me because I'm "blonde" and have blue eyes and it's so uncommon here. Also they're adorable and now they all say hi to me at school. Every day last week two people from each team were allowed to skip classes to walk around town collecting money for a charity that helps kids with special needs. Each day the team with the most money got the most points and I thought it was nice that they incorporated raising money for charity into the competition. We also had to pick a mascot, so ours was Oscar the grouch. The yellow team did pac man and the red team did a red angry bird. Every day of the alianzas you have to have someone actually dress up as your mascot, and you also have to use the mascot when decorating the doors of the classrooms of each class on your team. It was crazy how elaborate and creative people were, but they're been doing this for years now so they get super into it. The actual games started last Wednesday afternoon and each team had to do a skit based on a tv talk show. Because I was queen I had to me in it but my friends were smart enough to only give me one line to say. Of course when it actually came time to say it I messed it up and everyone thought it was really funny. Thursday morning we had the pairs dances, the group dances and the imitations. For the pairs dances there were three different typical latin dances for each of the three categories, kindergarten-4th, 5th-7th, and 8th-seniors. Then with the group dances each team had to choreograph something using a bunch of different songs and students from each category. With this too people were really creative and used all sorts of costumes and makeup and all that. The younger kids in our dance did Thriller so of course they looked like zombies and we also had a human swing in the middle of it, which is really hard to explain but looked really cool. The imitations were definitely the funniest because there were lots of guys dressed up as girls and everyone was just over the top crazy. Thursday afternoon and into Friday morning we had Factor Darwin, which was singing, dancing and humor competitions. Friday was also costume day, so I dressed up as Sandy and Danny from Grease with the king of my team. They also gave points to the team with the most creative costumes. Then the rest of Friday morning was these random games like pulling all the tissues out of a box the fastest, stacking dice on the edge of a ruler while it's in your mouth, sticking as many sticks as possible in one person's hair in a minute, throwing sticks in the air and trying to catch them all in one hand, putting cookies on your forehead and only using your face muscles to get them into your mouth, and other ridiculous stuff. That was also really fun because everyone was all excited and cheering and stuff. The last way to get points was by putting together boxes of canned goods, but there was a specific list of stuff that had to be in the boxes. The yellow team didn't have many, but at this point they didn't have much of a chance. We had 16 and the red team had 22, but then they figured out that all but 6 of theirs were missing the rice. Then there was this whole discussion over whether or not they would still count them or not, but basically they were the deciding factor of who would win. So my team decided to rebel and join with the yellow team to make Alianza Azul. At this point the yellow team wanted us to win because there are two senior classes and one was on yellow and the other was on red, and they didn't want the other class winning. They went crazy with it though and Alianza Azul stood on one side of the gym, while Alianza Roja was on the other. Someone even made a flag by tying the green team's flag, the yellow team's flag and someone's blue costume skirt together on a pole. Finally they decided and announced that we had won! It was so crazy and everyone was jumping and cheering and stuff, I can't even begin to explain it. So then Friday night we had a school dance, kind of like homecoming in the US, and I got a crown and a sash because I was now the queen of the school since we won. Everything was really entertaining and I loved it because with the school system in the US the kids are too young to lead it in elementary school and my high school is too big to do it, so it wasn't something I'd ever done before.