THUMP

That's the sound a horse makes when it's hit by a bus going 80 km/hr.
My weekend has been fairly chaotic...

The night of the seventeenth, the night before the national independence day of Chile, I was riding home by myself in a micro (bus) around eight o'clock. The ride home is fairly long, 45 minutes or so, and the micro-drivers tend to go fast on the two-lane country road that takes me to my house. I was sitting in the very first seat in front (the only one-person seat on the micro... Between Pedro and Mamá I have my own security force - I'm always in the safest position everywhere I go), bored, watching the road. The driver flicked off his high beams for about ten seconds to let pass a car going in the other direction. In this interval, we rapidly approached two men on horseback riding in the road (at times it's impossible to ride abreast on the side), two men invisible to the 60-year-old bus driver (although I saw them!). By the time the driver became aware of the approaching danger, not only was it too late to slow down sufficiently, but we were also unable to swerve around them as the car approaching in the other direction was in the immediate line of escape. Entonces, there was a sickening thump, a crash, and a horse lost its life. The man on the horse was thrown onto the ground, where a slow trickle of blood flowed down the slight slope... The headlights of the micro illuminated all as the occupants rushed to the scene, swarming around, asking for a cellphone, testing the cavallero's pulse, etcetera. In a series of chaotic phonecalls, I managed to communicate the idea to my family, who zoomed to the scene in the car and hurried me away to a quiet cup of tea in my kitchen. THAT was quite a night! From what I've learned, the cavallero is in the hospital in Rancagua, possibly in critical condition... My community is so small that everyone seems to know a little bit about what's going on.


Anyhow, other less fascinatingly morbid things have been happening too...

NUMBER ONE: Cueca!!
We finally danced the Cueca for real at school on the seventeenth; this is the event which I've been anxiously anticipating for the past month and a half. The day before, a Wednesday, Pedro and I had a final class with a friend of his (from whom he borrowed his boots, chaps, and spurs). I can honestly say that I didn't grasp the concept until this lesson.
It's worth mentioning that when asked how I feel about my Cueca I usually say, "the only difference between Pedro and me is that I KNOW I can't dance..."
Anyway, we finally got it down and had a BLAST at school the next day. We watched the other dances native to Chile performed (some from Easter Island, others from the North)... This one involved a costume slightly inappropriate for the frigid, rainy weather:
The whole school was gathered in the central patio, where there was a whole music class playing guitar and singing for the dancers and a performance lasted at least two hours. Afterwards we all ate traditional Chilean food with our classes. Empanadas de piño and queso con carne, choripan, brocheta, various sweets, and tons of carne asado. Pedro's family attended to watch the spectacle, along with many other parents and visitors.

The next day was the 18th, national independance day of Chile! Huge celebrations all over the country, food, Cueca, defiles (parades), and lots and lots of wine and pisco. Pedro came to my house, along with practically the whole family (TONS of people), where we flew kites, played ping-pong, ate, ate, and ate. We went to nearby Chimbarongo to watch a defile. It was fairly uneventful until the part where about a hundred horses squeezed through the crowd, closely followed by souped-up ancient Beetles, vrooom vrooom!

Yesterday I went to Pedro's house, where I ate MORE choripan, played with his little sister, and watched on TV the military parade in Viña del Mar.

And today, after all this, I'm relaxing in the house of the Abuelita, surrounded by the great majority of my family. Still eating. And eating.

So that's about it.
Chao,

Emily