Traditions

In the US we have the Fourth of July, but in Chile, September 18th is celebrated as the birthday of Chile. While in the US the Fourth of July is a somewhat simple thing (you might go to a parade or have a family BBQ), in Chile they take this sort of holiday to a whole other level! We get an entire week off of school to celebrate! Everyone dresses in traditional Chilean clothing and listens to traditional Chilean music and eats traditional Chilean food and dances Cueca, the traditional Chilean dance. I don't know if you caught on to this, but the entire week of the 18th is a very TRADITIONAL Chilean week. To me this is very interesting because in the US we don't have very strong traditions. All week, people go to Fondas which are Chilean parties where people eat empanadas and dance Cueca and just sort of be really Chilean, hahahah. On Friday, we spent the entire day at school celebrating and had a huge assembly where a bunch of classes danced Chilean dances and everyone was happy and it was super fun! This is only my first day off of school for vacation, so I don't have much to tell you about yet, but I promise to update you on all the exciting new experiences I am pretty much guaranteed to experience over the next week. :)

Oh, another Chilean tradition is to basically plaster all of Chile with as many Chilean flags as possible. One of the most common things you will see are cars with two Chilean flags stuck on the front. However, my Chilean parents decided to break this tradition a little bit to make their North American daughter feel a little more at home! I swear they are the most thoughtful people ever.