Christmas day in Chile

I knew Christmas Eve and Christmas day were going to be a little hard on all of us, but I think we did a pretty good job of trying to make it fun....

On Christmas Eve after getting back from the hogar, two boys in my volunteer class came over to our apartment to make a traditional German Christmas dinner. Apparently in Germany they celebrate Christmas on the 24th so they really wanted to make  big dinner and it was amazing! Half of our volunteer class were at their hogars so it was about 8 of us for dinner. We had homemade dumplings, some red cabbage and this amazing mushroom gravy to go on all of it. All topped off with champagne with pineapple sherbert in it.... a new Chilean drink they had just learned about.

After dinner we headed off to church for the 11:30 Christmas Eve service. It was just like home! It was the English speaking/expat church that we have been going to and we sang loads of Christmas carols and ended the night with Silent night to candle light.... just like home :)

The next morning we woke up early to start cooking brunch and started blaring the Christmas music at 9am. We all made something for brunch and one of the girls families was visiting from the states and even brought us fresh bagels! It was perfect. We opened our stockings (we all bought a little $1 gift for everyone's stockings) and then started with our secret santa gifts.

Jess, Nola, Allison and I on Christmas morning

Opening secret santa presents

Safia, Jess and I at Christmas brunch at our apartment

Our pretend Christmas tree....

Stockings all hung in a row....

After brunch, we headed to on of our friends apartments for another later brunch/lunch and some time in the sun by her pool.

Rooftop pool on Christmas day

We rounded out the day by watching A Charlie Brown Christmas and then Bridget Jones' Diary.... classic holiday movies! We were about to watch the greatest holiday movie of all time.... National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, but unfortunately by the end of the day I wasn't feeling well and now have been sick for 2 days. Not fun to be sick when it's a million degrees outside and you have no air conditioning, but oh well! It was a pretty good Christmas so that's all that matters...

Christmas at the Hogar...

Last week was amazing. It was a total whirlwind of Christmas parties and much longer than normal hours at the hogar, but it is probably something I will never forget.

On Friday we had our big Christmas party at the hogar. It was a big lunch with all of the kids, the tias and a few of the women from the church who are always there. We set up a huge table on the patio and all ate together with all of the food on the table passing it around. It was the first moment that had really felt like Christmas to me. Then they gave our prizes to all of the girls for various things... best grades(because it is the end of the school year here right now), best helper around the hogar, girl of the year. It was so cute! The girls got presents and we all just sat around and relaxed. All week there had been people visiting, bringing gifts, bringing presents and now it was just us. It was perfect and just like a giant family on Christmas.

Christmas lunch on Friday at the hogar

It was an amazing day, but also a sad day because 4 of the girls were leaving the hogar that day. One girl was going to live with her godfather and the 3 others (all sisters) were finally going to get to live with their mother again. So after we wrapped up lunch it was time to say goodbye to the girls. There were a few speeches made, by some of the tias and a few of the girls. Everyone was crying, even  the 3 girls mother. It was happy because they were going to be with family, but these girls had lived there for 2-3 years, made best friends and were all truly sisters. The Director gave a speech that really brought everyone to tears. She said the hogar would always be their home and they were truly all sisters here forever and that the doors would always be open. I was balling my eyes out and I had only known these amazing girls for 4 months. I can't imagine what some of the other girls were feeling, but we all tried to be happy for them. It's an amazing thing that they were actually able to repair these relationships and send the kids back to someone in their family.

At the end of the day we were all exhausted and Jamie (another volunteer) and I headed out to do some Christmas shopping for the girls and get ready for Christmas with the ones who weren't going home.

Jamie and I came back Saturday morning to make brunch with the girls who were staying in the hogar for Christmas. Most of the girls left for the weekend to spend the holiday with someone in their family, so that left 8 girls there who weren't going anywhere for the holidays. We came in early and made choclate chip pancakes, eggs, and Chilean fruit cake. Again, it was just another amazing day. Just the 8 girls, Jamie and I and one of the tias. We ate outside on the patio, played, and then made some Christmas cookies. All together as a family then ate and played some more! The night before Jamie and I had picked out a new purse/tote bag for each of the girls so we gave them their presents and they were a big hit. Simple, but we had really picked different purses for each girl. Then.... guess what.... we ate again! It was really starting to feel like Christmas with all of the food at all hours! We headed out around 4, the girls wanted us to come back for dinner and then on Sunday as well, but we couldn't. They had other vistors coming to do parties so we were happy we had our time with them.

Making pancakes with the girls.

The best part of the whole Christmas experience..... the girls told us we were not visitors, we were party of the family, part of the hogar. It even makes me cry typing it! I was sad to be away from home for the holidays, but I really do feel part of the family and we had a great family Christmas this year!

Just another odd day...

Some days I go to sleep and reflect on the day and just marvel at how odd it really is, but how normal it seems to me now..... today was one of those days.

I had a half day at the hogar today. We got there around 1:30 and walked around looking for the girls (it's always a busy time with everyone eating lunch and getting home from school). So we went in the TV room/living room and saw two of the middle girls just sitting there in silence... that's not normal so we sat and (assuming they were upset about something) asked what was going on and why Mari didn't have on pants?? She's 13 and was sitting in her school uniform top and a sweater over her waist.... weird, but not that weird. It is their home.

So then they started to tell us that she went to change her clothes in her room and came back out to get her pants off the couch and they were gone. Just gone. So instead of putting her other pants back on, or asking where they went. She had been sitting there with another 11 year old just waiting. (However, because of the language barrier I still hit everyday I thought she said her pants were drying for about half of the convo and later realized that someone had taken them). Secar vs Sacar - very easy to mistake!! After chatting for about 20 minutes about why she didn't have pants we decided to go have lunch..... it  was an odd mixture of hot dogs, veggies and some creamy thing that made it like hot dog stew, but thick. I ate it all.... just another day with a weird meal.

Then we went to the volunteer room and played teacher with some of the younger kids, made a few Christmas macarroni wreathes and just played for a while. After that, I went to look for some of the middle girls and found them all watching TV (because it was so hot outside we couldn't do anything today). So I sat down and watched a bit of a Jennifer Love Hewitt movie (in spanish) with about 9 grils that was just horrible while one of the girls played with my hair. When she was bored of that we went an jumped on the trampoline for a bit and she died laughing at how high she went when I jumped with her.  ( I found out that she is leaving to go back to her family tomorrow. I love her and am happy, but so sad to see her go so I almost started crying while jumping, thinking this would be one of the last times we did this!)

After that, one of the 10 year olds B showed me her latest magic tricks and then that some how led to looking through my hair for lice. Did I mention that almost all of the girls have lice? It's a bit gross, but I'm used to it. They try to get it out, but with 30 girls it's just hard to get rid of it. So I check my hair for lice quite a bit these days.... I'm ok with it. What am I going to do? Not hug them and love on them for fear of little bugs? I don't think so.

So two girls sat on the steps with me and searched my hair for lice (it's been a bit itchy lately so I was worried). One tried to lie to me and tell me I have it and the other told me I didn't have any and I was ok. I believed her so I was quite happy about that today!

Then around 4 I started to round up two of the girls who won our latest Festival de Arte competition. They won 2 free movie passes so we were going to see the latest Alvin and the Chipmunks movie this afternoon. After they changed clothes and packed a purse. which consisted of a water bottle and body splash (it was so cute) we were off. Me and two ten year olds to see a movie! I was pumped!

 So we got to the theater and handed them our passes..... and they told us we couldn't use them!! So in my broken spanish I had to figure out that the movie was a new release and we couldn't use the passes yet. This was just not going to work for the girls.... they were dead set on seeing a movie today. So we went through a huge list, had a little meltdown and eventually decided to see "The 3 Musketeers".... I told them about 9 times it was in English with subtitles and that we could come back, but they would not have it.

So we headed in to the movie and it was hilarious! It's just so fun to take them out of the hogar some times. There was no one in our theater so that weirded them out, then it was a huge process to pick a chair and get settled. All through the movie one of the girls kept looking at me and saying "Que Bakon" (how cool!)  and "Esta bien" (this is good)  or "el esta mala" (he's bad) .... it was hilarious. I honestly forgot I was in Chile it just felt like a normal day. Then we headed out and made the trek back to the hogar. One of the girls left saying "that was just too good! This was so great!"
 It was so cute!

Overall it was a pretty normal day, but for some reason I just think it's funny that this is now "my norm".  Just 5 months ago my norm was going to work everyday at the foundation and then probably hiking in Boulder. It is really amazing how life can change in just a few short months....

Tomorrow we have our big Christmas party at the hogar. They are bringing in dancers, clowns and bouncey machines! Should be fun!!!

Give Love. Give Hope. Give Opportunity.

This past week my volunteer class launched our official class fundrasier, Give Love. Give Hope. Give Opportunity and I want to share a bit more about what VE Global is doing down here and to ask you all to consider helping these kids.

Our class goal is to raise $2,000 (or more...) to help support these kids. The money will go to VE Global to help support the various programs that we're doing with the kids and to support the foundation and it's ability to bring these volunteers down here. 

I have been in Chile for almost 4 months now. I was only supposed to be here for 4 months. I can honestly not imagine leaving so soon now! I have grown to love these girls so much. VE is a really small foundation that only works with 7 institutions (homes for kids or community centers in at risk neighborhoods), but this organization has so much heart and enthusiasm, it is just amazing. The core programs that they have created range from a monthly sports league to a biannual art festival and then to a summer reading program.

They are all common activities in the US, but here they are often things that get overlooked. Sports are not really common in schools here, and art is encouraged, but for these girls in the hogar they don't have that Mom or Dad that they bring their latest painting home to, or the refrigerator that it's hung on for the whole family to see! They are not pushed in school to read in their free time, so the reading program (Vamos a Leer) encourages kids to read over the summer and then based on how many books they read they get to attend a huge carnival party at the end of the summer! On top of that, the volunteers are doing daily activities such as bakingg cupcakes, making pictures frames or kaleidoscopes or playing basketball in the patio.

All of these activities are things that help to kids to stimulate their brains and keep learning new things versus just getting in to trouble or watching TV all day. They also show them that they are good at things, which is something they don't get to see often because of where they live and because of the poor education system.  One of my girls practiced for weeks for our Festival de Arte program and sang Miley Crysus, Party in the USA.... IN ENGLISH and won the whole talent show! I was so proud of her and she was so excited and you could just see how much it meant to her to be able to do that!

The other main part of volunteering here is giving these kids love and attention. They are so tough and independent living in an hogar and while they do have women there to watch after them a lot of women are overworked and don't have time to really talk with the girls or help them do things. So that is a huge gap that we fill. We watch them play and pick them up when they fall down and ask them about school and what they are learning. We also try to encourage them and give them love and affection. Especially at my hogar where so many of the girls were sexually abused it is so important to teach them love and show them that they are loved and we do care about them.

I've kind of rambled a bit now, but the sum of this is that I really am very passionate about this organization and about the kids that we are working with here. If you are considering donating money this Christmas please consider making a donation to our class campaign. Your donation will go towards these programs that help these kids grow in so many ways.

To donate please visit this page Give Love. Give Hope. Give Opportunity or go to our facebook page and like us and then donate: Facebook Class Page.
Also, since I can't post photos on my blog you should definitely visit our facebook page to see pictures and videos of the kids we're working with. They are so cute!

My favorite photo of one of my girls and I at Festival de Arte.

Muchos Gracias y Feliz Navidad!

First Peak at Christmas Chilean style....

It's Christmas in July down here.... literally it's a million degrees, people are planning beach trips.... and it's Christmas time? It's just doesn't feel quite right, but hey I'll take it. It really doesn't feel like Christmas and since none of us really want to invest in Christmas decorations it really doesn't look like it around our home either.

However, I did get my first taste of Christmas this week....
One of the girls at the hogar told us that we could get Christmas trees at a place near the hogar. We were so excited! Briana and I both wanted a tree for our apartments so we asked the tias if we could go with the girl who told us about them and get some. That some how translated to.... we would like to buy a Christmas tree for the hogar. We said if they weren't too expensive absolutely! How can they have Christmas without a tree? It's just wrong!

That is where the fun really began.... Briana and I take off in 90 degree weather with 4 sixteen year old Chilean girls who are getting dressed all nice because they are so excited to leave the hogar for a bit. So they take us to this market near by where we quickly realized we were buying a fake Christmas tree. (I have no idea why I thought for even a minute that we were getting a real tree) So we are in the packed open market with vendors selling toys and decorations for like 10 blocks. We of course found one we liked right away, but one of the girls said no absolutely not. We have to see all of them and compare prices and find the best one. So two gringas and four Chilean teenagers wandered up and down for about an hour comparing prices. For some reason it was just the funniest experience in the world. We finally came down to 2 trees that we liked..... a really tall ugly one and a shorter prettier one. Two girls wanted one and the other two wanted the other one.... great... a tie. Bri and I didn't care (I wanted the one that one of my favorite girls wanted, but I'm not supposed to show favorites). So we did a coin toss and the shorter, prettier one won! They handed us our boxed fake tree and we were on our way.

The next day we got it out and started to put it all together (with 3 of the 10 year old girls that I love so much). It was so fun! They looked putting it together and decorating it with such care (the hogar had ornaments... but no tree? really?) We also sang Christmas songs while decorating... Chilean and American. It was just amazing. Later that day we made little "windsocks", Christmas style, with toliet paper rolls and green and red paper. I was feeling the Christmas spirit.

Not the best picture.... but here's our little tree all decorated!

Our Christmas activity for the day.... it was actually a big hit.

Today rounded out my third day of Christmasy things at the hogar, but this one was a little odd.
We were asked to come in early today to help take some of the girls to a Christmas party..... at their criminal psychologist's office. A few of the girls see a psychologist once a week and they had a Christmas party for all of their patients today. We were asked to take the girls, along with another tia, because it's pretty far and the kids are horrible in the metro. I really thought it was going to be so weird, but it was actually fun and it was really good for the girls. We got there at 10 and they each got a big bag of candy, had their face painted and got balloons. Then there was a "show" where a local ballet group performed, followed by a slightly creepy clown who did a show for like an hour. They wrapped it up by giving all of the girls a really nice gift and lunch. It was like 3 and half hours in the heat, but it was great for the girls. They were all dressed up too. It's easy to forget that they are just little kids sometimes because they act so tough in the hogar. So today we got to see that side of them and it was so nice.

Lots more Christmasy things to come hopefully! I'm planning a workshop for making gingerbread houses this week.... we'll see how messy that one gets!

Lots to be thankful for....

I know I'm a little behind on the blogging... there has been a lot going on so this is going to be completely out of order, but I'm going to try to get all of my updates in over the weekend, but first let's start with Thanksgiving....

For my first Chilean Thanksgiving things got off to a bit of a rocky start. I had just come back from Buenos Aires and no one could decide on the right time to have Thanksgiving dinner. We didn't have the day off since we're in Chile and  we were all really torn between eating at 10pm on Thursday or holding it on another day where we had time to cook.... but then it wouldn't be Thanksgiving. After way too many emails and votes we decided to have our Thanksgiving dinner on the following Sunday at our apartment. So we had 17 people over for our big meal and it was AMAZING!

** Quick side note... on the actual day of Thanksgiving my roomie Jess was kind enough to share her box of Kraft Mac & Cheese that her mom mailed to her. We felt that it was American enough for a Thanksgiving meal! We also made cookie turkeys.... Nola and Jess were practicing for their workshop the next day with their boys.... here's a few pics.

Jess, Nola and I with our cookie turkeys.

We pretended to be Indians.... I think our German room mate (who took the pics) thought we were a bit weird.

My room mate, Cindy, cooked the turkey... I still have no idea where they found it, because it's not like at home where you can just get one at the grocery store. We all signed up for the typical dishes and then all had issues of "well they don't really have sour cream in Chile" or "they don't have fried onions.... or sweet potatoes."  So it was definitely a struggle to try and get in our favorites, but we did it! And all 7 of my room mates manged to each cook a dish in our tiny kitchen where we have one oven, one large pot and one cooking sheet. It was a definite struggle of assigning cooking times.

Once we all sat down and had filled our plates it was totally worth it! We had an amazing meal! I made green bean casserole.... Chilean style... but it turned out to be so good. The best part was when we were all loading up our plates the British girls I live with said "This is just so much food, I feel like I'm taking too much." and then all of the Americans tried to explain that is just how Thanksgiving is and if you can see your plate... then you probably aren't trying enough of the food.

Nola, Jess and Safia at Thanksgiving.

My plate :)

It was also probably the best Thanksgiving I've had in terms of being so excited for the food because it was so hard for us to make it all and  since we are all volunteers, for us to make a big meal and spend a lot of money on food is kind of a big deal!

After dinner, we all went around and said what we were thankful for. It really made me think how much I have to be thankful for right now. I keep having these moments when I'm walking to the bank or to the grocery store and I'm busy and thinking about other things and then I stop and remember that I am living in Chile..... I did it, I moved here and I feel good and I know things about my neighborhood and where places are. I'm just really grateful that everything worked in my life that I could take this time to come down here and have all of these experiences.

I've also been having such an AMAZING time with the girls at the hogar lately. Everyday there is a moment that almost brings me to tears to makes me so happy. The other day Briana and I were picking up a group of the girls at school, like we do everyday now, and  one of the girls (10 years old) was sitting with me in the playground area while we were waiting for another girl to find her book bag and she just put her hand on my arm and leaned her head on my shoulder and just relaxed while we waited. It was such a small gesture, but it just meant so much to me. She's 10 and surrounded by all of her friends and she just leaned on me and was relaxing. It happens all of the time with the little ones, but for a 10 year old that is kind of big.

Today, I had two amazing moments.....
When we first got there I saw Little V in the patio, but I couldn't find her sister, Pammy, (3years old) and so I saw her in the laundry area and waved and she squealed and screamed "Tia Romy!! Tia Romy!!" She was being "punished" for something she did during breakfast and couldn't leave that area so she started yelling to the other tia "Can I go? Can I go? I see Tia Romy!!" I went over and picked her up and she was just so excited to see me and gave me the biggest hug and I carried her out of there and she just wouldn't stop hugging me. It's just amazing to see how far we've come with the little ones in the past 3 months.

Then, this afternoon, after Briana and I had lunch we were sat down at a table in the patio with 3 of the older girls (20, 17 and 16). We are pretty close with them, but sometimes we don't get to talk to them that much because we're always watching the little ones. We sat today and chatted with them about boys and other silly things for like 30 minutes (the other big thing was that it was like a normal conversation IN SPANISH!!) and it was just so fun. Then about half way through.... V (I can't use their names) looked at me and said "Tia Romy, you really have learned a lot of spanish. When you first got here you couldn't understand anything I said and I had to repeat everything and speak so slowly, but now you get it for the most part." I was so excited!!!! I think I'm getting a little better, but coming from her.... the same girl who asked me if I was speaking Chinese in the first week when I asked her a question in Spanish.... it meant a lot!!

This ended up being a very long post! All in all, holidays away from home are going to hard, but I think I will be ok because all of my friends are so great and the girls are just amazing..... I don't know how I am ever going to leave them!