Chile Antofagasta Mission

For New Year's, they have this tradition that they collect newspapers throughout the year and then on New Year's Eve, they create a like a scarecrow type thing and then light it on fire. And so it's it's burning up the old year, you know, kind of like a rebirth for the new year. But my companion and I were a little nervous when we first saw because we didn't realize about the tradition and so we thought that someone, you know, had burned there. Or we saw the, you know, a figure in the dark that was hanging on a, you know, a fence and we didn't know what it was until we asked someone about it. So that's just something to be aware of that. And they party, they party really hard on Christmas, on New Year's. And they sleep in really late and they stay up really late. So their their times are different.

Okay, so very important tip for the culture is really just making sure that you're very open, very loving, very warm because I see our culture is very cold. They are very much people that love to hug and to kiss and to be close to and just even if you can't hug brothers or the elders can't hug the sisters, there's a lot that you can do with your body language and with the way that you talk just to make yourself more warm instead of cold and distant. That's a very big part of their culture. Other things are they care a lot about family, they care a lot about food, they have some crazy holidays that they get really excited for.