Elaboration

To elaborate a bit and to fulfill two of my promises, I figured I would take advantage of a lazy Sunday after my youth group (we talked about upcoming encuentro juvenil activities and the order of the liturgy - and things went smoothly, which was nice after the group split in two because of my other two co-leaders not being able to work together).

So first of all, the Fiestas de las Cruces in which my community mates did the whole dress-up-and-dance-with-a-group (see picture) thing was an incedible experience. On a side note, incredible is a word I catch myself using a lot here (increible). Anyhoo, it basically involved them dancing for long stretches of time (but the morenada dance is a very easy and not so tiring dance), all of us recieving food and bastante beer (at one point, a truck pulled up an unloaded fifty cases of beer that someone was giving as a gift to the padrino of the party. What I really enjoyed the most was the spirit of camaraderie and sharing that penetrated everything. People just had fun, talked for long hours, danced, watched others danced, listened to the band and just generally enjoyed life. The darker side I guess would be that drinking within this context is not just to enhance the enjoyment or to be social - for many, it is to get to the point where they are no longer in control of themselves. This leads to such problems as drunk driving - I, for example, tried to stop a random guy I saw getting on his motorcycle and tipping back and forth as he tried to drive away. I failed in preventing him from driving off drunk, though my friends said they saw him the next day (so at least he survived).

On a little bit less of a mixed note, Chile was a great trip and I loved getting a new stamp on my passport (it helps my little jokes that I am making my way south down the continent - the first country in SA that I ever visited was Colombia, then Ecuador, now Peru and Chile). Arica is right on the beach and has the aura of a beach town. The houses are all low and many are brightly colored (in some ways, it reminded me of Florida in this sense). It has its huge supermarket - and I later found out that the chain is in fact owned by Walmart since this past January. It has a nice strip right in the middle that is closed off the cars and ends in a McDonalds and Blockbuster (oh my god!). I shared the experience with Nate and my host family, and we probably walked over five miles all told in the day (wowy). But it did finish with a stop in an artesanal ice cream shop where we had some sick dessert and cracked open a bottle of beer - which was a great relaxing way to end the day.

On a last, completely random note, this song has made many many many appearances in my life here recently. I´ll leave it to you to figure out: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1328k_boy-george-karma-chameleon_music