¡Chile!: Week 6: Thanksgiving, Baxter, & Santiago Fun

Thanksgiving in Santiago was a bit of a feat to pull off, but somehow the boys managed to find the most necessary item - the infamous turkey - and once that was checked off the list, the rest just fell into place. As we had class from 1-9pm on Thursday, we pushed our Thanksgiving celebration until Friday (and instead went out for sushi and pisco Thursday night after class). After a long day of cooking paired with lots and lots and lots of wine, we had our Thanksgiving dinner around 9pm - like true Chileans.

[Matt & Fredrico prepping the turkey]

[Pretty sure we eat more bread and cheese in this house than any other in Santiago]

["Cooks" in the kitchen]

[Pretty much sums it up]

[Yum. The cranberry jelly supplied by Mama O'Neil from the States totally made the meal]

[Apple crisp! I really made that!]

[The whole Thanksgiving crew]

We spent most of Saturday at our favorite ex-pat bar watching college football but took a break mid-afternoon to visit an organization called Domingo Savio (DS), started by a man we met through ND. Steve Reifenberg is the Executive Director of International Studies at ND and spent two years working at DS, which was, at the time, an orphanage - he continues to be actively involved with the organization and helps raise funds to support DS in the US. Although we thought we were going to visit the orphanage, we quickly learned that DS is now actually an after-school program for children ages 5-16 and what we were attending was their end of the year celebration, complete with arts and crafts for sale made by the kids and a show (which felt very similar to a talent show but with only dancing). The entire thing was hilarious and super random - but I think everyone enjoyed it nonetheless.

[A bunch of the crafts for sale]

[Kids all dressed up, ready for their performance]

[All kinds of dancing, confetti, balloons.. quite the show]

Saturday evening, the boys surprised me with a treat at 3AM - they brought home a stray dog that they affectionately named Baxter. We fed him turkey, gave him lots of water, and made a little bed for him on our sun porch. Unfortunately, we all came to the realization the next morning that a) Baxter probably had fleas and any number of other diseases and b) it would be really tough for us to put him back on the street when we leave in two weeks - so we agreed to let him go (much to my chagrin). We've actually seen Baxter around town since - he remembers us and has been chasing after us on our runs - the whole thing is super sad. We have definitely considered him taking with us to the US...

Sunday was a pretty lazy day (we have some work to get done this week so spent a good chunk of Sunday working on group projects). On Monday, we decided to (finally) explore Santiago - Suecia 100 day o fun...