Hump Day.

Earlier in the week my fellow co-teacher Danica asked me to teach her Primero Basico Alumnos (1^st grade students) Wednesday morning (7:45) because the Tercer Medio Alumnos (11^th grade students) had their English Test, Cimpsea) and she was asked to moderate. Not giving it much thought I said, “Sure, no problem”. She started handing me Cd’s, Pictures (of leaves, flowers, numbers, colors), and workbooks… well you get the jist.

 While she was handing me all of these things I was thinking,

 I don’t need this stuff, they’re first graders, I’ll just have them color something and I’ll teach them the  Mr. Pumpkin Song

“Mr. Pumpkin
 Mr. Pumpkin
Round and Fat
Round and Fat
Harvest time is coming
Harvest time is coming
Yum Yum Yum
That is that”

 So, I turned down her workbook and games and just took the flashcards and CD with the song about autumn they were learning. Honestly, I hadn’t given the class a second thought… I figured it would just work itself out.

Well, my morning went a little something like this….

My host parents woke up at 6:15, turned on the radio in the kitchen (directly across from my bedroom). To no surprise the radio was set to a Reggaeton station that has about 3 songs total on its playlist, and a commercial that says, “Loving you is like feeling the rhythm”… the boom box will not be turned off again until I force myself out of bed at 11:30 tonight because if I hear this commercial or one of the these three songs again there will be a 4 person murder with a side of suicide. 

Moving on.

I remain in bed, I’ve gotten to be a pro at this, until 7:16. Then I stumble out of my room into the freezing cold house, because there is not central heating in Punta Arenas. I mean it’s only -10, who needs heat… that’s a silly idea. I step on the dog, Princesa, who is lying in front of my door.

Princesa: A small dog that has recently developed a heart condition and blocked arteries due to our host mothers cooking. Princesa had to be taken off the table food diet she was on and is now forced to eat only dog food. She has lost about 12 lbs and is one pissed off puppy. She’s always hungry and ALWAYS laying in front of my bedroom door, because it’s directly in-front of the kitchen.

Anyhow, I step on her as usual… and as usual she bites me right on the foot. Of course, I’d forgotten to put on my shoes so she got a little skin. I scream at her and go to kick her again which in turn starts the whole ordeal over because she bites me…. again.

Moving on.

I enter the kitchen to turn on the pot that boils water for our instant NesCafe (Nestle Coffe), and realize there is nothing for me to eat except bread. Man, I’m a happy kitten.   Seeing as how yesterday I weighed myself for the first since getting here and it was NOT pretty.

Rodrigo, like any brother gives, me a dirty look just because and calls me crazy while I search the fridge for something other than potatoes, bread, butter or marmalade to eat… all the while playing the one of the three reggaeton songs that isn’t currently playing on the boom box on his cellphone.

Sidenote: The children and adults here listen to music on their phones. No biggie right, we do the same thing in the US. Only these are the flip phones they hand out for free at the T-Mobile around the corner and can be compared to the “Egg” Phone I carried in college, because my parents were tired of having to purchase a new phone for me every other month because I dropped mine in the toilet on Halloween or hid it from myself and forgot where I put it until a year later. So, they are listening already to terrible music on sound devices from the early 90’s, SIN (WITHOUT) headphones. Great.

So, I grab a piece of the wheat bread I purchased last week, toast it off, fix my coffee and scoot back to my room remembering to step over Princesa.

It’s getting late at this point so I run to the bathroom lift the toilet seat up to find someone’s remnants from our lentil and potato lunch the day before. I sit down and the cat, Beba, jumps in my lap. My mom asked my not to cuss in my blog… but I think you know what I’m thinking/muttering at this point.

I go back to my room, grab my makeup and get in bed. I now put my make up on while lying in bed because it’s the only way I can get warm in the mornings… because there is no central heating silly.

I make it to school on time and walk into a classroom of 18 first graders that don’t know a lick of English. I stare, they start jumping up and down. I start talking, they start yelling continuing to jump up and down. I start searching for the CD Danica gave me cursing myself for not grabbing the color game she was trying to hand me. I start with the “Autumn Song”… I get nothing. I try to teach them the “head and shoulder’s knees and toes song”… nothing.  I try to teach them the pumpkin song… nothing. I realize one the girls is cutting her hair… well at least that’s something. This goes on from 7:45-9:15.

It hits about 9:14 and I’m thinking I’m scot free; I even begin to enjoy the kids. I see a gentlemen walking in and I assume he’s the next teacher there to take my place. 

He hands me two boxes of chocolate. I’m feeling good. I notice a note tapped to the top of one of the chocolate boxes.

My head starts spinning. But, I regroup quickly and run to my classroom grab paper and markers and decide the kids just need an activity, then they’ll be quiet, no problem. Ignorance is bliss people.  

It says, "Merr, I'm going to be busy until 10:00. I need you to take 2nd B (Second grade, class B) from 9:30 until I arrive. Check the -> student's books at the class please just pray and sign, thanks a lot. Dany"

This time I will be prepared, I am thinking. So, at about 9:40 the kids start trickling into class and by 9:43 they have realized I don’t speak Spanish. By 9:56 one of the boys is laying on the ground screaming in pain and I am holding back two other little boys while screaming SILENCIO, and telling the little girls that yes there pumpkin pictures are beautiful.

10:01 I have kicked one of these three boys out of my room. I later find out he told the Inspector (like a disciplinarian) that I brought him in there because he had a headache; therefore he failed to mention he’d been assaulting a fellow student in class… and with my Spanish speaking inability I sure as heck couldn’t explain to her what had happened in class. I just wanted him out.

By 11:00 the student’s have drawn 4 pumpkin pictures and I’m standing in front of the door blocking them from running out… because it’s funny when Miss Mary yells in English.

It’s 12:27 now and the day isn’t even half over. I’m hiding out in the teacher’s room and I really hope I don’t have anything else worth writing about happen to me today. 

Places/Events I would be attending if I lived in South Carolina instead of the bottom of the Planet

Okay. This is so lame I can’t believe I’m doing it… but when you face a life with no errands, no car, and no real place to be the internet can become your playground.

So, here is a list of things happening in South Carolina that I am missing out on and YOU should do:

1.) The Pecan Festival in good ol’ Florence South Carolina (I totally miss you Flo). I have become an avid blog reader in last year and the Flossip http://theflossip.com/ has become a favorite of mine. She makes Flo come alive with a unique distinction. But anyway for you all Pee Dee area resident's check out her site to learn more about the happening's going on around town.

2.) South Carolina Football Games... more specifically tailgating

Oh, how I miss Miss Jordan Strait screaming at 7 am. for everyone to get up and shower or else they would be left behind when the car pulled out of the parking lot at 8:15 for a 8:00 pm game time. Seriously, there is nothing like SEC Football Season:

-the food (Grilled sausage, Sausage balls, South Carolina Caviar, Hot Wings, Bar-B-Que Chicken Dip, Chick-Fil-A Platters, and Bloody Mary's)

-Playlists specially designed by Caroline Buchan to enhance an already perfect day

-Sandstorm and a ridiculous amount of college football fans jumping up and down on a swealtering day in William Brice screaming USC-USC-USC!

-Having your heart jerked around like a teenage romance because you never know what to expect from the players in those beautiful Gamecock uniforms.

gosh, I miss football.

10/30/10
vs. Tennessee
Columbia, S.C.
12:21 p.m. ET

11/06/10
vs. Arkansas
Columbia, S.C.

11/20/10
vs. Troy
Columbia, S.C.

11/27

vs. Clemson

Clemson, S.C.

go Gamecocks!

3.) My favorite band the Avett Brothers played at the Columbia, South Carolina State Fair... seriously, between missing football AND my FAVORITE BAND playing in my ol'stomping grounds it is almost more than this little gringa can take.

(Even though this date has passed I still want to give a shout-out... sooo here's the set list-

Columbia, SC State Fair 10/20/10
1) Tin Man
2) Salina
3) Paranoia
4) Rollin' In My Sweet Baby's Arms
5) Down With The Shine
6) HFOD/RFOP
7) PGF Cedar Lane
8) The Fall
9) Murder In The City
10) January Wedding
11) Old Joe Clark (Killer extended bass solo from Bob)
12) I Would Be Sad
13) And It Spread
14) Colorshow (muy rico!)
15) Traveling Song (slow)
16) Laundry Room
17) SFOS
18) Kick Drum Heart
19) ILU
20) Blue Ridge Mountain Blues
Encore:
21) Shame
22) Die Die Die

the songs in bold are my personal faves, in case you were thinking about downloading some of their FANTASTIC tunes.

the song Salina gives a shout out to the Carolinas... check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6g5xsccIVHs

4.) Farmer's Market
The Farmer's Market holds a special place in my heart because my mom and I both LOVE to go and walk around together on Saturday's so that we can pick up the seasonal fruit/vegetable and usually some boiled peanuts... I like to side mine with a ginger ale personally.

Flo: Monday - Saturday all year from 8:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m

Cola: Saturday, 8:00am - 12:00pm

alright... maybe I'm being a little to nostalgic here... Spring in October just has me a little thrown.

I was walking down the street yesterday and all of sudden there are vendors selling strawberries, my all time favorite fruit like EVER. I sampled a few by pretending that I was going to actually pay 2,000 pesos (4 USD) for about 6 strawberries. We have trees blossoming and green grass peeking through as a tell-all sign for a Patagonian Spring looming in the near distance. My host parents have taken to wearing shorts and cut off shirts. All the while I still don't leave the house without gloves, a scarf, and a wind proof jacket (I have been venturing out without my thermal Browning hunting socks... look at me go).

We also have our own form a farmer's market

go and enjoy your farmers market's, pumpkin carving, football, tailgate's and crisp fall weather...

I'll be here, 4 weeks to go.

Going with the flow... the Chilean motto

I haven’t updated on my life in Chile recently. So, here goes…

Liceo ExperimentalNirvana- Smells like teen spirit, “Here we are now entertain us”… haha, it’s actually pretty relevant to my teaching experience so far

Alright, well my kids are pretty stuck in 80’s and 90’s music… and when I say pretty stuck I mean they are actually bogged down and gonna need one of those jacked up 4x4 trucks to get them out. Their musical interest is also reflected in their clothing, I’m talkin’ faded acid wash jeans, Nirvana-Guns-N-Roses-Metallica-Slip-Knot and any other scary/horror (as they call it) music from the Dawson Creek and 90210 days. Luckily for my students my fellow teachers and superintendents aren’t really into school either. Por le ejemplo (for example), last week school was cancelled Monday and Friday and this week ladies and gents school is cancelled Tues and Wed. When I arrived Monday morning I went to my classroom and began preparing for class… after about 20 min and I still had no students staring at me refusing to speak English I went in search of them. As I was walking down the hall to the sounds of music playing from cell phones, teenagers whispering sweet nothings into one anothers ears and “Hey, Miss Gringa” I realized that not only was class not in session but school was literally not in session. I knew exactly where to go, the teacher’s lounge…

Tangent: The teachers hide out in here throughout the day, usually it is the students that have to come find them/us after class was supposed to have started 5-10 minutes earlier. I don’t fight this anymore, it’s one of those things you just have to let happen.

Low and behold I find the teachers… all drinking coffee in the teachers’ lounge/hiding out from the rampant teens. I begin asking them what in the world is going on, even this much chaos is unusual for Liceo. They explain to me it is a continuation of Teachers Day/ el Dia del Profesores … because school was cancelled last Friday for the holiday, of course school cancellation is not enough, we also must celebrate.

Celebrate we did. We were all led into the gymnasium where for the next 3 hours the students preformed song (Te Vas, one of my current favorites), dance (bellydancing to be exact, I had to avert my eyes because it made ME uncomfortable), and theatrical skits (the 3rd graders reenacted a group of teacher discussing their classes). Of course, I had no idea what was going on the whole time … but at this point in the game you can longer ask questions without appearing like a dimwit because you haven’t learned ANY Spanish.

So, after the program finished school was dismissed.

Gosh, I love this place.

I am still listening to Enigma's "Return to Innocense" on repeat

My host family and I spent the day in a cabin that overlooks the ocean where we ate, played on the beach and read for hours. Therefore, I haven't written more about Torres Del Paine... yet, but I must share pictures with you.

Into the Wild and Back

Torres Del Paine, a National Park that offered me one of the most challenging weeks of my entire life. I and two other girl friends, Keeley and Carly, hiked the “W” (or Doble V) technically from Monday through Thursday. We arrived in the park on Saturday and remained until the next Friday. I am now laying in bed back in Punta Arenas looking through my pictures and listening to Enigma “The Return to Innocence” and still in disbelief my body and mind are attached after the mind blowing and physical challenges I have faced over our hike through the Andes Mountains.

I’m not sure where to begin, but I will try for you.

First let me explain exactly where I was and what I have been doing. The Andes Mountains has a National Park named Torres Del Paine. They have two very famous hikes, The “W” and the Circuit. Originally my friends and I were going to hike/backpack through the entire Circuit which takes you around the whole park and lasts about 9 days. Unfortunatly, due to Avalanches this time of year we were adviced not to take this route. So, Carly or the embodiment of nature women as I will forever think of her, devised a route to take us through 8 days of hikes which would include the “W”. The “W” is the formation the most famous hike in Patagonia makes, on the map it literally looks just like a W hence the name.

http://www.besthike.com/southamerica/chile/paine.html

Keeley and I arrived in Puerto Natales by bus on Friday afternoon to meet Carly, who is volunteering there. In order to get to Torres del Paine one must take about a 3 hour bus ride (well, depending on how drunk/high your driver is varies on how long it will take to get there) from Puerto Natales( this is where the previous outdoor pictures had been taken that are posted on the blog).

Friday night the three of us went grocery shopping for nine days worth of meals to carry with us for our hike. Our list included everything from avocado, bread, potatoes, chorizo (sausage) to chocolate bars and gas for our stove. We headed back to Carly’s house with full grocery bags and began divvying up our goods so that the weight was equal for each pack. We all carried our own sleeping bag (one of which we discovered the first night did not zip up). Finally, at about 11:00 pm with the tent, various foods and my clothes strapped/packed away we tucked ourselves into bed and fell straight to sleep. What felt like 5 minutes later we rudely awakened by a 6:00 am wake-up call from my cell-phone.

A called in a cab, got dropped off at the bus station and were on our way by 7:30 to Torres del Paine, which Carly and I translated into Towers of Pain (haha, we had no idea how true this metaphor would become).

The weather unfortunately hadn’t gotten the heads up we were planning on spending the next week outdoors so our first hike (Saturday) up to Campamento Zapato was full of mud, rain, wind and lastly snow. About 4 hours into our hike we realized with every step the monsoon looming was getting closer and closer. Luckily, Keeley, had the sense to stop and turn us around so that we could find refuge before we were completely annihilated by all of mother nature’s weapons. We hiked/ran/slid back down the mountain towards Campemento (basically this just means Campsite) Pingo. Quickly, our week in Torres Del Paine was turning into a nightmare. Campamento Pingo could be compared to where they found the guy from the film “Into the Wild” dead. I was having visions of our bodies being plucked from the trees the next day when the Park Ranger came by due to what felt like 70 mph winds, and the rain that was pelting us sideways. Carly and Keeley luckily had noticed an abandoned shack about 50 ft. from Campamento Pingo, so we grapped our tent and packs and ran for it. Ha, my visions now turned from Into the Wild to The Blair Witch Project, instead the actors would be found in an abandon shack inside a tent.

So, yes, we pitched our tent in the house, hung our clothes from the nails sticking out of the walls, and cooked our dinner which we lovingly named “Pingo Mix”. Unfortunatly, our “Pingo Mix” which was hamburger, potatos and peas would be traveling with us for the remained of our trek because we spilled it in the bottom of our tent and there’s something about that smell you can’t get rid of. Eventually it just becomes part of your sweat, skin and sleeping bags.
We awoke the next morning (Sunday) to more rain (seriously I still don’t understand how it could possibly rain that much). We packed up our wet clothes and knew hitchhiking was in our near future because walking in that monsoon was no longer possible and the park doesn’t have transportation inside the park for broke English teaching campers.

… more to follow.

a little bit of this and a little bit of that

I have been trying to figure out why I feel I have nothing to blog about… I posed this question to one of my volunteer friends and he said, “it’s because it’s not new anymore, you’re used to being here”. I’ve been marinating on this comment for the last two days.

It’s. Not. New. Anymore. I’m. Used. To. Living. Here. How and when did Punta Arenas, Chile start to not only feel comfortable but somewhat like home?

What should have been my tell all was when my roommate Susan and I were walking down the street and we were honked at (which isn’t out of the usual) pero (but) it was a friend of ours just honking a hello. Say what… I have friends?!

I’ve been doing a lot of bike riding lately because spring has officially sprung. My kids are gearing up for graduation and the looming “summer” holiday. My cuarto media alumnus (12th graders) could not be less interested in school much less the English teacher who doesn’t speak Spanish. They are giving me and my patience a run for our money.

I only have 7 weeks left here and one of those I will be hiking Torres del Paine, below is our (volunteer friend Carly, and Keeley) schedule. I am so excited. The circuit in Torres del Paine is supposed to be one of the best hikes en la mundo (in the world). It’s going to be an amazing experience. I’m thinking it could break my writers block and give me something pretty good to write about.

More details:
Friday Night:
Arrive in Natales- Buy food- Sort gear
Saturday:
7 - 10 am bus to Hosteria Las Torres in Torres Del Paine
HIKE Hosteria Las Torres to Campamento Serón (4 hours, 5.5 miles)
CAMP Campamento Serón $4,000
Sunday:
HIKE Campamento Serón to Refugio Dickenson (6 hours, 11.8 miles)
CAMP Refugio Dickenson $4,000
Monday:
HIKE Refugio Dickenson to Campamento Los Perros (4 hours, 5.5 miles)
CAMP Campamento Los Perros $4,000

Tuesday:
HIKE Campamento Los Perros to Campamento Los Guardas (9 hours, 11 miles) * I hear this will be the hardest hike but it will have beautiful view of glacier grey.
CAMP Campamento Los Guardas $free
Wednesday:
HIKE Campamento Los Guardas to Campamento Italiano (7.5 hours, 14 miles) *We´ll put a lot of miles in this day, but it will be on easy terrain.
CAMP Campamento Italiano $free
Thursday:
HIKE Campamento Italiano to Campamento Británico & Lookout then back to Campamento Italiano (6 hours, 8.5 miles) *We can leave our stuff at our campsite and hike through Valle Frances and back this day- my big backpack turns in to a day pack we can pack lunches in.
CAMP Campamento Italiano $free
Friday:
HIKE Campamento Italiano to Campamento Torres (10 hours, 14 miles) *I think we should push to hike this long day.. if we can´t do it we can cut out 1.5 hours and stay at Campamento Chilena for $4,000.
CAMP Campamento Torres $free
Saturday:
HIKE Campamento Torres to a lookout of the towers (1 hour) and then back to Hosteria Las Torres (3.5 hours) Total miles= 6.
FINISH!!