september is in full bloom...

just wanted to touch on a few lil shananigans that are getting me excited during the month of september...

1. spanglish speakers. our new program which i introduced in my last post. after a stressful week of collecting contracts, finalizing horarios (schedules), trudging through the rain to find fabric paint, and shaking in our boots wondering whether the kids would actually come, yesterday our first activity was carried out with grace and awesomeness. we had a total of 15 kids show(7 high school kids and 8 fifth graders). we had them find their "teams" by giving a puzzle piece to each child, and they, in turn had to find the kids with their "matching" puzzle pieces. they found their teams, came up with some rockin' team names (including: the brave race, team awesome, the crazy team (who lived up to their name), and the princesses (our team of all girls)), painted t-shirts, and encouraged conversation amongst the different age groups which, otherwise, would be a bit unnatural. much of the meeting was held in english... the kids were all about it--- no puzzled looks, just faces with big fat grins, which us teachers love to see. it turned out to be a great success and i can honestly say that us LA (los angeles) volunteers have really dedicated ourselves to something pretty damn cool.

the activity was held at kelly's school... its over 100 years old.

all of the puzzles had english words... awesome, sweet, radical etc.

introductions in english. love how alexis (the older kid) is encouraging his 5th grader to use english!

girls from my school making their princesses sign.

bruno playing some soccer (with a plastic bag as a ball!) with the other boys at break... something we failed to work into the schedule until we saw the 5th grade boys getting ants in their pants after an hour of being in the classroom...

the girls and high school kids didn't have as much energy to expel...

everyone working on their spanglish speakers official t-shirts! group photos next activity...

2. fiestas patrias. chile's independence day (or should i say week!). september 18th is the "official" day of independence, but chileans go all out and celebrate the entire week surrounding the holiday. unfortunately for us, we are missing an entire week of school (shucks!). it should be a good time. apparently there are people everywhere in the streets just having a wicked time. while during 4th of july the police officers are working overtime to catch drunken crazies in the states, the cops work a bit differently here during chile's independence day...when ryan ask

ed my chilean sister, clau, what a carabinero (police officer) would say if you had a beer on the street during fiestas patrias (which any other day is illegal), her response was "salud!"

ry and i preparing our cueca rutine... i think we have a ways to go before september 18th...

3. my new ocd tendency: the weather. so a few weeks ago mother nature decided to play a little trick on us. she gave us about 4 days of absolutely beautiful weather... i'm talkin' sunshine, big fluffy clouds against a piercing blue sky, and oh yes, my favorite part: temperature: high 60s. mother nature then decided to stick out her tongue and throw us a "nanny nanny booboo." not nice. we're now stuck in the low 50s with rain pretty much every other day again. now you may think i seem a bit obsessive about this weather issue. well, you're correct. i have become an avid weather watcher. you'll find me on accuweather.com and freemeteo.com at least once a day looking at the

extended forecast ... praying (okay its more like begging) that i will find a slight increase in the temperature. well. today was the day! thanks to www.accuweather.com, i have found that the next two weeks are full of sunny, high 60s days similiar to mother nature's little joke. needless to say it pretty much made my day seeing this. if i've learned one thing since i've been here... its that i'm a desert rat and i feel terribly sorry for anyone who lives in this type of climate. they dont know what they're missing. bring on that heat baby.

so the combo of these fun or exciting things goin on here in LA and multiple little weekend getaways we have planned to ensure we're living up our last few months here in good ol' chile, i have a feeling these next 2 1/2 months are going to fly faster than the speed of lightening.

short funny story to end here. i have a passion for the street dogs here which others may think is a bit loony. i feel terrible for them. most of them are gimping around because they've been hit by an apathetic chilean driver. they sleep in the rain and freezing cold weather. they are thin to the bone and have never seen a dog bowl. worst part: they don't get any love! so anyways, you'll usually find ryan and i with a dog or two following us home because we took the time to give them some love and in turn, gave them the wrong idea that we were their new mom and pop. usually we give them some bread and water, and send them on their way. long story short, here i am with a little dog friend following me home... beautiful shepard mix. i do the usual, go grab some bread and a bowl for water and take it out for the lil pup. but... dun dun dun!!! BUSTED!! chilean mama came home to find a street dog in front of her house. not so happy. trying to hold back any sort of anger for her ignorant foreign daughter, she simply stated this was the last time this would happen. apparently not everyone has the same fondness for the street perros.

hope your septembers are blooming into something beautiful!

xo from chile!