Dieciocho

So this month in Chile is very special as it leads up to the eighteenth, which is Dieciocho. Dieciocho is 'Chile's Birthday' the day the Chileans celebrate Independence from Spain in 1810. Everyone is listening and playing Chilean music, the bunting and Chilean flags get put up and everything is happy. Everyday wherever you go there are people flying kites, I have yet to ask why, but I can only assume that seen as it became so popular only in September that it is to do with Dieciocho.
All school's put on dance shows with all the national dances from Chile, Easter Island, and Mapuche dances too. The typical Chilean dance is the 'Cueca'. My class choreographed and learned dances of the 'Cueca' we had four dances in our routine. 
La Bandera: This sort of opens up the dances and sort of honors that they are from Chile ( I was in this dance)
 El Chincolito: Which is just for the boys.
La Jota: This dance is very pretty, I also danced in this one.
La Cueca Fantasia: This was choreographed by two girls and they did so amazing it looked very good .... during practice.

 Link to the video:    My class's performance

My time in Easter Island

Day 1
As we flew nearer the island, the plane made a big swooping u-turn so we could land, giving me the perfect view of the island. The sun was shining bright, the extensive lengths of surrounding water was gorgeous. And the Green!!!! I hadn't seen green grass and foliage in such a long time. The moment I popped my head out of the cool air-conditioned plane I walked straight into a wall....of humidity. We bundled our way through to the baggage claim room and was amazed at how familiar and comforting it was to be surrounded by a culture that was very similar to what I know in New Zealand, this feeling was constant the whole trip.
We dropped our bags off at the motel we were staying at and wandered down the road to see our first in-real-life Moai statues right on the shore the golden sky behind the awesome statues. After learning about the theories and known history of the Moai we walked along the quay-side to the town waterfront, to get ice creams while we sat on big rocks and watched the sunset. We were right at the edge of the water/island and couldn't see any further than the end of the world. It was just beautiful.
Wherever we seemed to go was never more than 5 minutes stroll or 5 minutes drive away.

This is not my photo, it was taken by a fellow exchange student at the time I described above.

Day 2

Drove around to the other side of the island to see the fallen Moai, we were told that the 'hats' on the top of the statue's are actually representative of their hair. The hair of the fallen Moai had rolled quite far away from the statues, and they were bloody ginormous it really helped me to understand just how big these statues are. As I said before the island was so familiar, well if you look inland from the statues, there is a mountain/hill that is exactly like a mountain/hill near where I live in New Zealand, I used to pass it every day on my way to school. We then drove down the road a bit to a huge mountain where the Moai were carved out from, we took a trail round the mountain to see the half carved Statues, there were so many! There was like a hole in the side where there were two adjacent facing statues on their backs half carved out of the mountain and the longer you looked in the space you could see more 'beginnings of statues', sadly my camera couldn't pick up any good images of it. we then walked up the mountain to the crater where there where a row of more statues, on the side looking in. Once well rested and fed, we went round the island to the most beautiful and clear beach I have ever set eyes on. On the way we stopped off at a rocky part of a beach to see 'the belly button of the earth' it is one big smooth boulder with four smooth boulders around it.Now back to the beach, we spent the whole afternoon there relaxing, taking pictures, swimming and sun bathing, Oh there was another row of Moai at the beach too! As we trundled away from the beach in the bus, we saw a group of wild horses gallop onto the beach, jumping and rolling in the sand. In the evening I walked into town with my friends, and we bought little trinkets and things to take home. And again watched the sunset.

The Moai in the crater: they are in the middle-ish of the picture.

Belly button of the earth

Day 3 
Before lunch we took a bus to the mountain at the end of the island, so we could walk around the rim of the-well actually I think it was a Volcano, at the outer most edge is where the Bird Man competition was, there where look out huts and we could see the rock that the men had to swim out to and retrieve the egg from. It was really windy up there. On our way back to the motel we stopped off at a rocky cave type thing, and the wave that came in where absolutely massive! After lunch we drove back out to the beach we went to yesterday, and the first thing all the girls did was walk round to a little cliff place that was just around the corner from the main place, so we could take some pictures. Well the woman supervisors of the trip weren't too pleased with what we did, and they sent all the girls back to the motel for the rest of the day. So us girls hung out by the pool and signed flags and gossiped. After dinner we went to go see a cultural show. It was very entertaining and one of the other beautiful kiwi girls went up on stage to be danced with ( that sounds like bad English but that is the only way I can describe what happened).

Day 4

This day was Sunday and after breakfast a whole bunch of us went to morning mass, and the church was packed full! When we got back the rest were getting ready to leaving to explore the many underground tunnels, one we went into opened up on a cliff side so we had to be careful not to trip and fall out onto the rocks and ocean. We walked around so much popping into random caves. We learnt a Rapa nui dance in the afternoon and sadly I didn't video it, I wasn't that great at it so it wasn't a big loss. Some movements were so hard to do, like we had to swirl our hips while going down into a crouch and then go up again, every time I tried standing up my legs sort of seized up and I fell over, the woman teacher made it look so easy. In the evening we all went for a walk around the town and Rotary shouted us ice cream, we walked a wee bit out of town to where a whole bunch of lodges were. This was our last full day in Easter Island and we spent the night signing flags and cards and things because for many it would be the last time we spent proper time together.

Day 5 ( last day)

We walked back into town to a kindy and me and my friend got so far behind because I couldn't walk very fast with my rolled ankle from yesterday, that a woman supervisor got us a taxi to take us the rest of the way, ( it was literally just round the corner). Well the rest of the day was just waiting around at the airport and flying.

I hope you enjoyed what little I wrote about my trip, I am so grateful to Robin and Derek, and the  Franklin Masonic lodge who funded this trip, It made such lovely memories. 

Easter Island Video's

So I was looking through my camera and found a few video's which I forgot to post. So here they are.

Sorry these aren't quite in order but they still tell the story.... That Easter Island is AMAZING!!!!!

Easter Island 14-18 May 2015

Below are all the pictures I took of our trip to Easter Island, starting at the Airport in Santiago and the last pictures were taken as we were boarding the flight to return to Chile.

Enjoy!