Acción Urbana

During the last weekend in June, Vida Estudiantil had service projects set up.  We lived and worked in some of the better neighborhoods of Santiago, so these activities showed us some of life in the rest of the city.

Sunday morning, we went to an orphanage, where we were going to play with the kids and have a little party for them.  The day got off to a pretty slow start, since we were waiting over an hour for everyone who said they were coming to arrive.  Admittedly, the plan had changed very abruptly when we had to change the orphanage we were visiting, so there was some reason for it.  While waiting, a bunch of the guys left to pick up speakers and other equipment from the Sede.  After finally getting to the orphanage, we still had to wait for them to get there before we could get started.

Nice and organized, before the
children descended

In the midst of the chaos

When we finally started, I found out that I was going to be helping paint nails and do makeup for the little girls, mostly since I'm one of two girls on the trip who wore makeup regularly.  I thought this would be fun, because I've done stuff like this with girls from church, but this was completely different.  There were bunches of little girls swarming the table and grabbing everything, so lots of my time was spent getting back the makeup, instead of putting it on.  It was still fun, though.

The results of the little girls getting a hold of the brushes

Later, we had the party with snacks and lots of dancing.  We also gave out the bracelets we had made and the kids seemed to really like them. 

Monday, we had a birthday party for Bridgette, a girl from the States who works with Vida Estudiantil.  It was a lot of fun to relax with our friends for an afternoon.  There was yummy food and guitar playing, as well as randomly singing the national anthems of all the countries represented (The US, Chile, and Germany).

Warming up by the grill

Random moments of patriotism

That night, we went out to give sandwiches and tea/coffee to homeless people.  We started a little late, so most of them had gone to sleep to conserve heat before we could offer them food.  At the very beginning, though, the group I was in talked with a woman who had studied engineering, and she kept asking us math questions.  People kept telling her to talk to me about it, but she was drunk, so she just kept repeating herself.

Tuesday, we went to help at a special needs school, and the day started by waiting an hour for everyone to show up because different meeting times had been said for this, too.  At the school, we split into groups to work on different projects, including fixing some of the doors, cementing new stones in the patio, and cleaning up their garden.  I volunteered for the last group, because I was expecting it to be overgrown, maybe with some trash or old equipment in it.  I was completely wrong.  The garden had been used more like a trash heap than anything else, with old construction materials, bus signs, and an old air compressor in it.  We had also been warned about extremely lethal spider that might be in the garden, which completely freaked me out, so I wasn't so useful after I found out.

Before lunch, a water pipe was cracked somehow, so we stayed later to make sure it was fixed.  While waiting, people worked on the arbor over the main walkway, securing the crossbeams, and we did the cha cha slide a few times.  It was finally fixed by gluing part of another pipe over the crack, so hopefully that holds.

The temporary fix

Since it was out last night in Santiago, a bunch of our friends came over to hang out for a while.  It was fun, but really sad, since it was the last time we were able to hang out with them.

That night, Belinda and Anne Marie made brownies and peanut butter squares, so we all chilled in the kitchen with the baked goods and watching our Chileans friends plan to surprise us at the airport, even though we'd heard about it earlier in the day and could see the Facebook event for it.  We also checked how long it would take to drive to everyone's homes so we could hang out back in the States.  Luckily for me, one of the other girls on the team lives in Maryland, so I should be able to visit her a lot.