Well, I have kind of lost track of time here and didn't even realize how long it had been since I have blogged. Yikes! Well, let's see. Things are going pretty well here. I'm getting out of the house a little more which has been great. There is a group of 10 English kids here for a couple months on a missions trip and I've gotten to hang out with them a bit which has been a lot of fun. When I say kids though, I mean two of them are my age and the rest are 18/19. The national dance of Chile is the cuaca and so I have been going to a cuaca class with these English kids for the past 3 weeks. It's just slightly ridiculous. You see, the cuaca is a dance of conquering. The man, a.k.a. the rooster, is trying to conquer the woman, a.k.a. the hen. Our instructors keep stressing the importance of maintaining eye contact with your partner, smiling, and, of course, flirting. Now, you tell a bunch of 18 year old English kids to maintain eye contact and flirt and you have a room full of very uncomfortable and giggly teenagers. It's kind of hysterical. Also, I don't know what it is, but there seems to be some kind of underlying social obligation, that whenever there is an English person and an American person hanging out together, they have to, at some point, have the whole "who is better" arguement. Now, usually, the person with homefield advantage wins, but we're on completely neutral turf here in Chile, which could hypothetically make this the SuperBowl, but the point is, we all have an equal chance of winning. Despite my best arguements, some of them viable some of them not, I still manage to lose just on account that there are 10 of them and only 1 of me. Unfair! This week, I was getting ready to dance a round with one of the guys and he said, "This is all wrong! She's American, she should be conquering me!" I pretty much died, but at the same time fulfilled my social obligation by acting fake offended. I have to say that there is nothing that will draw attention faster on the streets of Temuco than a bunch of white, and mostly blond, kids running around.

A Chilean's plan for Dani's life

About a month ago the family was going to be out of town on a weekend where I needed to stay in town and so, I was handed over to our friend/housekeeper, Erika, and her husband, Lord, to be looked after/babysat for the weekend. I was rather apprehensive about this stay in an all Spanish speaking house, but it turned out to be pretty fun. Sunday morning as we were eating breakfast before church, Lord, who is an extremely charismatic individual, came up with an entire plan for my life before breakfast was over. The whole thing started when he asked me what I studied in university. I told them I studied Media Communications and Theater, and that is where the wheels started turning in Lord's brain. First, a little historical background.

Chile was ruled by a dictator, Pinochet, from 1973-1990 and during his rule he closed many schools, art schools and regular schools combined. This means that not only do a lot of the people I meet here who grew up during that time have very limited education due to the fact that Pinochet closed down their school, but also, young people in Chile have grown up in a country with no real history of the arts.

With this in mind, Lord formed his plan. What I am going to do, according to Lord, is become a missionary to Chile with my mission being to open up a Christian Arts school for kids to come and learn about the arts and get Christian mentoring. I told him I only really studied theater, but this was of no discouragement to Lord Merino. Oh no. He just looked at me and said, "Well, you had to have learned to paint sets and all that stuff right?". I explained I took one class in technical theater. "Wonderful," he said. "You can teach acting, painting, sculpting, and I know you can sing and play guitar so you can teach that too!" Wonderful! All I could really do was sit there and listen to him and this grand plan he had for my life.

After breakfast we went to church where I was doing an English class for the girl's club. I have a couple English songs I teach all the clubs so I played the guitar and we had a little sing-a-long time. After church the Merinos had some friends come back to the house for lunch and while we were waiting for lunch, the ladies said to the men, "Oh goodness, you didn't get to hear Dani sing in the girl's club this morning! Quick! Pull out the guitar and we'll have her sing to everyone!" So, there I was, serenading everyone before lunch quickly followed by Lord explaining to the company his plan for my life. Come evening, a different couple and their son came over for dinner and I was once again made to serenade the group, yikes, and Lord once again explained my life calling. I noticed throughout the day that his plan, and my experiences had quickly been growing and expanding. At breakfast, Lord had an idea for my life, by lunch it was a plan, and by dinner it was my calling. Also, at breakfast I had studied communications and theater, by lunch the communications part no longer mattered and I had only studied theater, and by dinner I was an actor. I was a little worried that I had somehow given them the wrong impression and led them to think I was actually a professional actor in the states, but my aunt assured me that this is just a cultural thing. In Chile, what you study is what you are. It doesn't matter if you have actually worked as that a day in your life, but if you study it and have a degree in it, then that is what you are. You study Political Science, like my aunt, and you're a political scientist; Journalism and you're a journalist; Biology and you're a biologist; Theater and you're an actor. Thankfully, I survived the weekend and the steam has kind of gone out of my "life calling", but I now know that if I am ever at a loss for what to do in my life, or just need someone to run promotions work for me, Lord and Erika Merino are the people to call.