Happy Thanksgiving

Alzar School | 22.11.12

Happy Turkey Day!!! This morning’s festivities began with a Turkey Trot, an adventure race involving running, dancing, swimming, blindfolds, laughing and imagination. It was more than a little silly, but lots of fun and a welcome break from classes.

Working in pairs student and faculty decorated a potato (a small tribute to our home in Idaho ☺) as a mini turkey to be their mascot throughout the race. Contestant number one was Machupavo, created by Lexi and Pat and raced around town to the sounds of Pat’s beat box. Contestant number two was Papa, led by Ellie and Charlotte. During our own Thanksgiving parade, Papa entered aboard a Mr. Potato Head float. Contestant number three was Philip, a sassy turkey/potato carried by Karley and SJ. In a crazy turn of events, Philip lost a portion of his face during our relay. Sam and Evan, the slightly biased judges in our race were not impressed by Philip’s sacri-face during the finals. And the winner of the Alzar School’s First Annual Chilean Turkey Trot was contestant number four, Pepe, a spunky young tator designed by Katherine and Kristin. In the final swimming round of our race Pepe morphed into a reduce, reuse, recycled mermaid that blew the judges away. All-in-all the Turkey Trot was a huge success!

Now we are in the midst of preparing our Thanksgiving feast. On the menu we have Sam’s mother’s specialty cornbread stuffing, Kristin’s mom’s delicious homemade apple pie, Dan’s chicken and dumpling surprise, Karley’s fresh and tasty salad, Katherine’s broccoli casserole and the possibility of spontaneous empanadas for a Chilean main course.

This past week in Choshuenco students have been keeping busy. We learned Spanish kitchen vocabulary at the local restaurant with an afternoon cooking lesson. Under the guidance of the restaurant owner we prepared pastel de choclo and sopapillas, a traditional Chilean dish that we enjoyed for dinner later that night. Our WFR skills are improving each day. Several students have now passed both their medical and CPR exams and we even utilized our CPR skills this morning on the Turkey Trot as each team performed CPR on their turkey/potatoes to resuscitate them after a quick swim in the lake. Finally, Charlotte accomplished her 15 rolls, a technical proficiency landmark skill and Karley mastered raft flip and recovery drills with Pat down the Rio Fuy. Katherine and Lexi have been crushing some big water, technical river sections, and all the girls are excited for this coming weekend when Katherine and Lexi will lead us for our final weekend in South America.

Happy Thanksgiving from Chile!

SJ Byce
Teaching Fellow