New Project

Hi everyone. We´ve now been 2 weeks in our new project, and I´m loving it :) Our new church is at the edge of the square in Temuco, so it´s pretty much in the centre of the centre. The house we are staying at is just across the road, and it´s alot bigger and not quite so basic which is great- there are no fleas or rats!

There are alot more youth at this church, and we are already making friends with them, which is really good for my Spanish. The church has more members than the one in Cajon, probably about 40 or 50.

On Saturday we all went and helped out at an English class that Mariela (a girl from church) takes. I´m looking forward to going along weekly to help out, because in many ways it´s like a backwards Spanish lesson for me. After the English class was the grupo de jovenes (youth group), and because it was Sarah´s birthday it was a social. They made us Choripanadas (like spicy hot dogs) , and most of the evening was spent trying to teach us the Cueca (Chilean national dance). It involves alot of weird foot stamping and "vuletas" (turning around your partner in a sort of figure of eight), and not surprisingly none of us were very good at it. It was a good way to break the ice with the youth though!

On Sunday we were taken to a football game (my first ever!) which was held in the Temuco stadium. Temuco were playing another city, and it was a draw 2-2. Other than that I can´t really tell you what went on; I was too distracted by the hilarious man who thought he could stand on the railings, but kept falling off.

Most of the week has been spent sanding benches in the church, ready for them to be re-varnished. This is quite a long tedious job, as each bench takes about 2 hours and there are over 20 of them. Yesterday we were given an electic sander to help speed up the process though, which was a novelty for the boys for about 5 minutes, until they realised it´s actually really heavy and hard to use! We´ve nearly finished them all now though which is good.

We didn´t work on Wednesday as we were taken to the Anglican church school in Chol Chol, where many members of our church work. I´m not sure how many pupils there were, but probably about 700, with an age range of 4-16. Many of the children board at the school because they come from poor families who cannot afford to keep them at home, or because their parents are not fit to look after them due to reasons like alchoholism. We spent the day at the school, visiting classes and allowing the children to ask us about ourselves and about England. I took the guitar, and every class we went to noticed and asked for us to sing a song for them in English! I think the highlight of the day was visiting the music class and hearing some kids play The Beatles on the Xylophone :)

Well I better go. I miss England loads and am looking forward to seeing you all again in August.
Laura
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