Catching Up: The Bicentenario

 Man, it's been a while since I've written anything.  Well, might as well start around where I left off.

The Bicentenario 

   I had the privilege of being in Santiago, Chile's capital city, during the Bicentenario, the 200th anniversary of the birth of Chile as a nation.  The whole city celebrated for the entire four day weekend, there were fondas at multiple locations throughout the city.  These fondas were more or less giant bar-b-cues held in various parks around the city, some of them were free and some required an entrance fee.  Inside there were vendors selling all kinds of things and lots of drinking, or so I have been told.  Unfortunately, due to issues of cost and bad timing I never made it inside one of these fondas, but even outside the parks there was celebration.  People were singing, chanting, and dancing the Cueca, a Chilean folk dance which I attempted to learn (unsuccessfully).

    By far the most impressive aspect of the Bicentenario celebrations was the light show put on by the Chilean government at La Moneda, the capitol building.  The show was put on for six consecutive nights, I attempted to see it the fourth night and was unable to make it within view of the building due to the huge crowd gathered in the plaza.  Some friends and I were linked arm-in-arm trying to snake our way through the crowd, however we were eventually stopped by an immobile mass of people.  Though we didn't get to see the show that night, we did have fun pushing into and out of the crowd.  The last night of the show Amy, Tonya, and I went two hours early to find a place from which to watch the show and were successful.  While waiting for the show to begin we met a very entertaining little dude who got very excited at the sight of the confetti we had purchased.  He very much enjoyed throwing the confetti on us and letting us throw the confetti on him.  He liked the fact that I could shake my head after he had put confetti on it, thus flinging said confetti in all directions.  When we put the confetti away he resorted to using grass, and eventually returned to running around with other children.   Back to the show itself.

    There were three types of display at the show, there were standard projection screens off to the sides of the main area, these generally showed the images that were appearing on the "screen" directly in front of the building.  This was, in fact, a sheet of mist being blown out from a device on the ground which created a semi-circular white surface through which images were projected.  This gave the images a cool effect and also meant that the screen could be taken down at points throughout the show by simply turning off the flow of mist.  Behind this was the main display: the building itself.  Basically, the building was kept completely dark and an image of the building was projected onto it.  This meant that at first the building simply appeared to be well-lit, but anything that was done to the image of the building appeared to be happening to the building itself, such as the ripple-pattern which started at the bottom-center of the building and traveled along its entire surface.  It was also quite impressive when the building appeared to crumble and fall apart.  This may all sound very strange, but I strongly encourage you to watch a video of the show to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.  One good series of videos that I found is at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

=qtRCjtw46To.  This is the first video of the series, follow the links on the page to see the subsequent portions of the show.  It was amazing to be there for it, I feel very fortunate to have been in Santiago for this celebration.