Tarde mas Bakan

Before we came here, the wife of one of Rob's graduate students who is Chilean gave the kids (and me) a few lessons on Chilean Spanish.  I believe that "bakan" loosely means "cool."  The school opens the year with a sort of fair for families that they call "Tarde mas Bakan" or "The Coolest Afternoon" (is that right Anita?).  One of the two largest supermarkets chains, Jumbo, provided a lot of the staff and equipment but there were a lot of volunteers as well.  After we dropped Rob off at the airport for a week visit to South Bend (call out to all South Bend friends - that is Rob biking around town this week in the beautiful weather), we grudgingly heading over to school for this event.

Guess which one wanted to hide in his luggage?

Always with the mountains as a backdrop...

It ended up being a lot of fun mostly because they had a group called El Circo del Mundo there that was teaching the kids circus tricks.  There were carnival games, a bazaar, food, and various bouncy things but my kids spent almost five hours in the circus tent learning new tricks.  Renee favored the aerial silk, Jonathan the balance board, and Elisa the ring.

Representatives from Bomba Israel, a voluntary Jewish firefighter group that has been around since the 1950s, were there with a rigged up zipline that caught Elisa's attention as well.  They have a youth brigade that includes the teenage son of one of my friends.

They also had a tent with representatives from one of the more prestigious local clinics (Clinica Alemana where we ended up with Elisa during her asthma attack) that provides emergency services for the school.  Their booth consisted of giving everybody a cast for their wrist.  I was tempted to just send this one photo to Rob ;-)

I keep hearing that spring has really sprung in the midwest so while I can't offer any beautiful pictures of wisteria at this time of year I'll just offer this one from the Estadio:

Swept up with a broom - I assume that bring the rakes out for heavier jobs!