escuela

I woke up this morning to the vacuum cleaner ringing in my ears. Well, this is something that shouldn’t bother me to much considering who my mother is. In fact, I was slightly perplexed when I opened my eyes and I found my walls to be bright orange instead of the pale green that decorates my bedroom back home. Is it really time for school again… I mean I feel like I never got a break from it. Although, I am now on the other side of the classroom and the one standing in front of dozens of children providing educational stimulation for the next four months. It’s somewhat intimidating to have fellow teachers asking me about my lesson plans and how I plan to teach English. Yikes. The educational system down here is somewhat… shall we say … different than in the States. First of all, the teachers switch rooms while the students stay in the same room all day. The first day I visited with my school I was confused ha, it took about half the day for me figure out that no my co-teacher did not have her own room. Well, luckily for me since I came through the English Opens Doors program provided by the Ministry of Education and it is mandatory that we have our own classroom, which I am very thankful for. I started decorating last week, but have yet to use the new room. For the past two weeks I have been co-teaching with four other teachers. I will still be “co-teaching” but half way through the class period I will take about 15 students to my room where I will teach them for about 45 min. More than likely the first couple weeks of this we will barely get through the role because just like Chilean Spanish people names are impossible for me to pronounce correctly. It’s strange but I have life here. I have a job, family, friends, and a city that I am familiar with. I love Punta Arenas, it’s the perfect size has pretty decent scenery and the people are friendly. I have gotten used to the stares at this point. All weekend I was with all gringos and people don’t know what to think when we are speaking English with our “blonde” hair and boisterous personalities. I had dinner Sat. with about six girls, well of course the restaurant didn’t open until 9 pm so we got there and ordered everything on the menu. We started with the Punta Arenas specialty, King Crab, and it cost about 8 bucks. No kidding. Okay, so Southern Chile has literally one good meal under its belt the Crab unfortunalty that’s where it abruptly comes to an end. We also ordered off of the tapas menu so we got big plates that we passed around family style… and here’s what was on them:
- Hot dogs on skewers
- A plate of papas fritas (fries) with eggs, small pieces of chicken and carne, carrots and peas
- Salt, doesn’t really matter what the food was because salt is the only/main ingredient
Oh yeah, bread. Duh. My host family thinks my bread obsession is hilarious. But, when there’s literally nothing else to eat pan and marmalade look pretty good. During every meal time mi mama serves everyone and then puts the bread bowl beside me. Mi papa has started warning me pan will make me gordo (fat)… and then he laughs and puts more on my plate. Well, again this should not surprise me at all considering who my father is, throughout my entire life whenever I would be in the kitchen eating my dad would poke me and yell Suiiii, as in little piggy. My Australian roommate and I have taken to searching the kitchen when the families gone for something, anything that we can recognize. We have yet to have good results. Susan has been a wonderful roommate and a helpful translator. Unfortunately, she speaks Australian. I know what you’re thinking, Merrette Australians speak English… duh. Well, they speak a form of English but apparently their use of idioms is much like the Chileans, as in they use words and phrases that actually make no sense to outsiders. So, whenever Susan may be explaining something to me our host parents said I have to in-fact translate her translation. My brain hurts, every night I am exhausted from just pretending to understand what’s going on all day. Luckily, one thing Chileans are fascinated over is karaoke. I know that I said earlier in the blog I would never be caught karaoke-ing, well I have eaten my words my friends, several times over actually. No meal is complete around here with singing karaoke as the postre (desert). I have now sung Guns and Roses, I will survive, Brittany Spears, Michael Jackson and several Latin songs that I don’t understand.

i love you