Teaching program is over, officially have moved out of my host family’s house and Mejillones, just had the last days of the closing ceremony here in Santiago, and tomorrow I head to Punta Arenas to start trekking around Patagonia in Torres del Paine. I will be posting more updates and pictures when I have time to spare, probably not for at least another week or so.
Wish me luck on my first Patagonia adventure!
Sorry for the delay, the last few weeks have been so busy!
I went to Arica, a city on the border of Chile and Peru, for a few days with my friend Samantha. We found this adorable little residencial where a family rents out temporary rooms. They loved us as well and we had some great conversations with them, something I like about finding the random places to stay. We went to El Morro, a war memorial site; an archeological museum with MUMMIES from the Atacama desert; and Parque Lauca to Lago Chungara, one of the highest altitude lakes along with stopping at some other pueblos. Great trip, the beaches are well-known as well but unfortunately when we went, it was really windy and we couldn’t stay past eating our picnic lunch. Que triste!
After that, I went to Iquique solo – a friend was supposed to meet me there but had last minute change in plans, but I went anyways. I LOVE Iquique. It’s THE beach city, with beautiful beaches all up the coast. I stayed at this really welcoming hostel with more English speakers and quite a few German speakers than I would have expected. Met other travelers that made me more excited and more secure about traveling soon… some people have been traveling with almost no spanish… and with how mine has improved and is still improving, I’m not worried anymore! I had an amazing opportunity to go paragliding in Iquique, so I went! It is one of the top 10 places in the world to do paragliding, people come from all over the world because it has the perfect weather and the view is amazing, right from the desert to the ocean. I had about a 40 minute tandem flight because the winds were even better than normal, so we went to a further beach to land. Absolutely amazing. Unfortunately I have no pictures, but I will never forget the flight!! The next day, I took a surf lesson! I was pretty good at that too, got up on the board most times… Definitely not ready to go out on my own but apparently better than expected for it being my first try. All good things from Iquique, left to head back to Mejillones and had a long conversation on the bus with my neighbor – further proving that I can communicate in spanish. Only pain was that the customs employees were on strike so we were delayed an hour on the way back… In Chile they check your belongings at the border of the region when coming from the north, I think because of the neighboring countries.
Since I’ve been back in Mejillones, we went to Playa Hornitos, a beautiful beach 30 minutes north of Mejillones, to camp again. Watched the sunset, had a mini-asado, made more s’mores, played some futbol and futbol americano the next day, and tried out body boarding! Really fun, and much easier since I had the recent surf lesson I think. AND I can successfully set up a tent and start a fire! All good news once again because I also decided last week that I am going to do a 5-day trek in Patagonia immediately after the program! My flight is booked for November 28th, I will hike Torres del Paine in the deep south of Chile with two friends, then after that, I will take off on my own to explore more of Patagonia and then the southern regions of Chile and Argentina. Slight change in plans, but after the south, I will end up around Santiago for the holidays at the end of December and head over to the rest of northern Argentina.
Last upcoming events.. Tomorrow is my birthday! And also our Chilean version of Thanksgiving. We are making a FEAST tomorrow for our host families and some friends and their family. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, scalloped potatoes, roasted carrots, green bean casserole, hopefully cranberry sauce, and of course PIES!!! We’re waiting on some carepackages to arrive with some American ingredients… hopefully they do tomorrow. Because of the customs strike, we think there might have been a delay with the mail, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed!!! And then for my birthday, we are going to have a birthday and farewell celebration on Friday. It’s going to be pretty bittersweet because I think we’ve made some amazing friends here… going to miss them more than I realized. Maybe if I have enough money towards the end of my trip when I’m around Peru, I might take a quick visit back here since it’s closer anyways, but we’ll see.
The teacher’s strike has continued, it’s still possible to end this Wednesday, but who knows. Looks like I’m not going to be able to say goodbye to my students. I’m going to school tomorrow morning to clean out my classroom and leave supplies for the other teachers. I hope some of the other school inspectors and profesores are there so I can thank them for their help, but I might not see any of them before I leave too! I feel bad because I had hoped the strike would continue so I wouldn’t have to teach… but I really just wanted it to continue up until this last week when I had only planned to do birthday and farewell festivities in my classes. Still might have a chance, so cross your fingers for that too.
Finally – Here is my birthday wish! I am going to be taking off for about 2 months of travel before I make my next stop to try to work, so I can use any help I can get! If you know anyone living in South America, please let me know their contact information, and also if you would like, I AM accepting donations 
of course!!!
Easy and safe to donate to the Whitney cause via internet – Just go to Paypal.com and enter a payment to be sent to my email address – whitney.handrich@gmail.com.
THANK YOU!!!
The national teacher’s strike is continuing in Chile. Schools have the option of returning to schools, especially because there is huge controversy over how much it is hurting the students – 8th and 12th graders who have exams to pass to complete their schooling. We went to a meeting yesterday to hear the update on the strike in Mejillones, and I was impressed. The person that seems to be leading the effort is a teacher from my school and really firm on standing united with the national strike. From what I think I could understand, they have been working on negotiations with the government and basically that the time is now, before the upcoming election. In some cities, some teachers have returned to school, but it is important to stand together and that more should be getting out there for the marches in Antofagasta. Then someone asked when are we going to march in Mejillones and suddenly they decided that we’d do it right then and there! So that was the end of the meeting, strike obviously continuing and we went to march through Mejillones to the municipalidad building, which ironically was also on a 48 hour strike! HA!
Oh South America and your strikes. Love the passion and enthusiasm, unity, creativiness in march chants and songs… but I think sometimes the demands are set so high that it’s almost impossible to be met. Somewhere in the middle might be better when facing such a giant like the federal government. But who knows, I don’t know all of the real details of the historic debt, demands, and agreements, but I do remember how it felt through The Rescue event, with people losing jobs, missing work and school, feeling hopeful with moments of hopelessness, all in protest awaiting for smaller results than giant sums of money from the goverment. I guess what I’m saying is that I admire the drive of the teachers, and hope it’s for a worthy cause and that they can reach some kind of result.
The other inspiration to write today is the recent repeal of same-sex marriage law in Maine. In reading articles on the repeal, I cannot believe how ignorant people can still be. It’s sad that people can use an argument like “if same-sex marriage is legal, children will learn about it in school” to help convince people that gay marriage should be outlawed. It’s SAD. Why is the impact on children thought to be so harmful? I had a similar conversation here a few weeks ago, but in spanish with some Chileans we met. They asked, how do you explain to your child what it is when they see two men or two women on the street kissing? What do you say to them? And we answered – I’m not sure, I guess I would say it’s normal. And the response was, “but if you say it’s normal, they will think it’s normal!” BUT IT IS. We went on to have a pretty uncomfortable conversation about why they think some people are gay and how they feel about it. This has been one thing difficult to accept here… I won’t generalize this for all Chileans, but many that I’ve spoken to over the subject seem to fall in this category. They SAY they have no problem with gays, they SAY they don’t discriminate, but they joke about it and overall are just uncomfortable with it. It’s like they want to say there isn’t discrimination, but they don’t understand that when they feel like others are less than normal, that’s the same! They are okay until we tell a joke about a bisexual friend having a crush on one of them, suddenly they don’t think of that person the same once they know, and all they can say is – oh he did seem a little off, talked really close to me – even though the day before it was fine. Anyways I think of this all because originally when these things happened here in Chile, I thought to myself – “I am so lucky to live in the United States where people don’t react like this”…. but now after reading some of these articles about Maine, and quotes from opponents to same-sex marriage, I am reminded that it IS the same still for some people in the U.S. And it still makes me sad.
I think one problem is that some people will never ever experience discrimination, and for whatever reason, they can’t even realize what their actions and statements really mean. Another conversation we had here once. A woman tried to explain to us that Chile has no discrimination problems… but we tried to explain that it’s only because EVERYONE is Chilean! And the few people that are not Chilean, such as the black Columbians, the Korean workers that live in a separate neighborhood outside of the town, the Peruvians, Bolivians…. they are treated differently, she admitted that! But still “no discrimination” she claimed. Ummm, sorry just because you don’t discriminate against Chileans, doesn’t mean that how you act towards those who ARE different isn’t discriminiation!! It blew my mind. Chile is another world, but there are still the same problems, same attitudes that we have in the U.S. …. but they seem to be in partial denial of it, but I think the U.S. often is too.
Anyways, not much else to update, just some thoughts… Friends visited for Halloween, no school still, possibly will help teach at a University for the last 2 weeks, and plan on going to Arica and Iquique for site-seeing and possibly hang-gliding and surfing this weekend and into the beginning of next week. Only about 20 days left in the program, it’s going to fly by… Here’s the plan so far:
Well the teachers strike is still going on. Apparently there are a few demands but the main one is about a “historic debt” owed to teachers throughout the country that came out of the Pinochet regime, a bill was passed sometime ago that stated this debt would be paid to the teachers it affected, but it has yet to be. There are other points I think pertaining to salaries, but I’m not positive. In Chile, teachers are paid hourly, so I would imagine they would want a salary instead. So strike yesterday and tomorrow, Wednesday it is possible that some schools will decide to start holding classes again but I don’t have classes on Wednesday anyways. Thursday could be my one day of classes this week because Friday I needed to take off anyways because we were invited to help with some kind of English celebration in Antofagasta at one of the universities and then in the afternoon there is an English spelling bee! Maximum of 1 day of work this week, possibly zero. I could go for another week of strike and travel but I think that is unlikely to occur.
The weekend was fun, we played American football in Antofagasta, drew quite a crowd, taught our Chilean friends how to play, and then the second day had about 15 kids want to learn. We tried to teach them how to play but they didn’t understand the concept of only one person being the quarterback and downs, so it ended up being a mixture between soccer, rugby and football – live ball, pass when necessary, but you get to tackle!!
Tomorrow we’re going to try to find Thanksgiving ingredients in the city then go see La Portada, this well-known rock formation in the ocean, and possibly look for Halloween costumes. Wednesday I think I’m going to go to Calama for a tour of the Chuquicamata mine, largest open pit copper mine in the world!
Nothing else to report except that I officially set my return flight date – June 30, 2010 from Quito, Ecuador!
I haven’t worked a full week in about 3 weeks. First we had the anniversary of Mejillones, 2 days of work. Then a national holiday, strike, and went on vacation, 1 day of work. This week, I missed a day from vacation and then found out there will be another strike on Friday, 2 days of work!! I can’t tell if they are serious about striking or just like having days off now that the weather is nice. I also had none of my students show up to class yesterday afternoon. No idea why. Didn’t do too much work to search them out – figured if the teacher wanted to keep them or they don’t want to come, I have no problem with that. Would rather have them not be in my classroom than be there and not want to be. I decided that I’m going to talk to them in spanish in my next class to set expectations for the last weeks (4!!!) here. Because if they don’t want to do the EASY work that I assign, don’t want to participate, keep stealing my materials, I don’t want them in my class. I have other things I could be doing with me time, i.e. not being at school and going to the beach haha or actually helping with other english classes where the students want to learn. So we’ll see. I probably just am getting excited to travel too and have that on my mind too. Speaking of that, I am officially changing my plane ticket finally today!
Last weekend we went to La Serena and Coquimbo about 12 hours south. It was beautiful and a little more reminiscent of home with trees and grass! We were able to go to Elqui Valley and see the outside of the Gabriela Mistral museum since we were too late to go in. On Saturday we took a boat tour of Isla Damas and the Humbolt Penguin reservation so I saw dolphins and penguins close up in the wild. At night we went on an observatory tour which was by far my favorite. In Elqui Valley, the altitude is low so there is no interference in the skies – clearest skies almost year-round. So many stars in sight and with a telescope… incredible. We saw several constellations, Jupiter and the rings that it has on its terrain, star clusters of over a million stars, and most unbelievably… GALAXIES. There were puffs of clouds in the sky that we thought were clouds, but they were actually galaxies! No telescope even needed to see them!
Sunday we wandered around La Serena and Coquimbo, had ceviche and fresh crab meat, saw La Cruz and a mosque, and hung out with our other friends that live around the area plus another visiting from Santiago. It was great to see everyone and hear how their experiences are going. It’s interesting how similar and how different they are!! Definitely happy to have been placed here in Mejillones and excited about how much my spanish has improved… hopefully can keep it up and improve even more! Oh but only disappointment from traveling this weekend is that I missed Dia de profesores, when they had an asado and fiesta for all the teachers in town… Always miss the good celebrations! Would’ve been nice to get to know some more of the teachers at my school, but now I will just have to try to befriend them on my own and convince them to have another party another day haha.
Upcoming plans – Football (american football) game in Antofagasta that we’re organizing, Halloween, Iquique and possibly Arica travels, then our final weeks and my birthday!!
My weekend started last Tuesday and tomorrow will be my first day back at school. What I did… we celebrated the anniversary of Mejillones of course! CLARO!
Tuesday we went to check out the ramada where they have tons of drinks, food, and carnival type games for prizes (next to the actual carnival rides). There, I bought a delicious anticucho (shishkabob), took one piece off of it to eat, and while walking one of our friendly stray dogs leapt into the air to steal the rest!!! I wasn’t holding it low at all, it was shoulder level and it just flew into the air to steal it. So sad. Needless to say, I didn’t bother getting a replacement.
Wednesday, I headed to the beach I think? The weather is so nice here now… perfect beach weather, but the sun is really strong so LOTS of sunscreen! At night, we did another walkthrough of the ramada (that’s what people do) and then went to the beach to watch the fireworks. They were actually really great and I forgot until just now how many amazing pictures we got! Will have to find the person who took them and post them later on. Remind me if I forget!
Thursday was the parade. I was so surprised that there were people there to watch the parade considering how many people were IN it! Every school, club, community group, all ages… And somehow people watching it all too. Best part, when you participate in the parade, they give you empanadas! I didn’t participate though (my school never asked me to) but Amber did… and since she is a vegetarian, she passed her empanada onto us! Hooray! At night we went to another asado in Escuela Mejillones for a double birthday celebration. First of all, I love that the barbeque is in Amber’s school (a friend’s apartment is attached to it so we really are inside the school) and second, I don’t know if I will ever be able to go to barbeques or parties like I did before without having tons of salsa dancing!! Definitely something I will miss here.
The rest of the weekend was days at the beach including a picnic and nights of dancing. I went to have tecito with a friend’s sister and her family and heard the best news ever… THEY CAN UNDERSTAND MY SPANISH! And well! And even better than another one of my friends! I feel much better knowing that I can be understood, I’m not just speaking jibberish, I can communicate!!! And I’m realizing that I can understand a lot too, even when it’s not modified to make it easier for me (more enunciation and slower)… I am better at keeping up with NORMAL conversations. Which makes it fun to eavesdrop because I don’t think people know I can understand more too haha. Que más… Sunday we took a boat out to Punta Angamos, a historic point from when Chile was at war with Peru, and we camped out on a beach, cooked lots of delicious meat, vegetables and I introduced smores to the Chileans! Monday morning we packed up camp and the boat took us out further to the buoy, saw some sea lions that were made we stole their sunning spot for a picture, tried to ride some waves, and then headed back to town to spend the rest of the day, where else, but on the beach.
Tomorrow I will be back at school, kind of, because it’s the anniversary of the school so there may or may not be classes… possibly activities instead but I have no idea. Then at night, we leave to head to La Serena for the weekend. La Serena is in the south and apparently has some amazingly clear skys, beaches, and is close to Elqui Valley where they make Chile’s pisco! We will definitely be doing a tour of a distillery. We also want to go to an observatory at night, head to Isla Damas where there is a penguin reservation (!!!!!), and Fray Jorge (cloud forest) and Valle de Encanta (pictographs and other archaeological fun things from the El Molle culture). Per usual, it will be a packed weekend, but worth it! There are a lot of other volunteers living in that area, so we will be meeting up with them too.
Back to school for as normal of a schedule as possible next Tuesday. Can’t believe how fast time has gone by… I already have most of my final lessons planned out, leaving the last week of school open for festivities and games since not only is it my last week but my BIRTHDAY falls in the same week!!
That’s all for now… More to come next week.
P.S. If anyone is interested in getting some postcards, send me your mailing addresses!!!
Only 5 weeks left of teaching, so here is my final wishlist!!!
It takes about 2 weeks for mail to get here and my last week is the week of Nov 15th. Remember to only send things through the post office (they have flat rate international boxes)… Fedex and UPS gets lost so don’t use those!
Loa 30
Recinto Guanalle
Casa 9
Mejillones, Region II
CHILE
Thanks!!!! I will update later today on the Día de Mejillones festivities, beach camping, and upcoming vacation plans for this weekend!
I’ve definitely been feeling burnt out about teaching but suddenly right now I feel a renewed motivation. Why? I’m not really sure, I think I’m just in a really good mood right now, nothing wrong with that haha… so here are some things that are helping to brighten my mood.
Things I love and appreciate:
October 8th is my town’s anniversary. Entonces, we have been celebrating for the last week. The businesses and the city sponsor competitions that give schools, community groups, and individuals the chance to win some nice plata! My sister has been competing for her scout group, Erica for the cheerleader team Lady Cats, and Amber and I for her school Escuela Mejillones. This has been SO FUN, but ridiculously exhausting. Last Sunday was the first competition (I think) which consisted of wall climbing and paintball, then Tuesday was a remake of a Chilean reality TV show Calle 7 where they have crazy stunt game challenges. I competed in this and had to try to slide across giant tubes over a pool of water. Unfortunately, these tubes move if you set off the balance, and being wet from the pool doesn’t help either. With a partner, we had 6 minutes to try to get as far as possible, and unfortunately we didn’t win, and I was lucky enough to gain about 10 or so bruises.
Wednesday there were mini olympics and a dance competition, Thursday and Friday singing contests, and Saturday was a parade of floats! This was my favorite, much more similar to our types of parades for Homecoming and what not. There were 6 or so teams competing and they had to make the floats, and then the people with the float would give some kind of acting/dancing presentation. My sister’s scout team made the house from Up and acted out scenes with the old man, little boy, dogs, and of course the giant bird (my sister). It was really amazing how they got so many balloons and made the house move! Others were Shrek’s house, a disney castle, transformers (AMAZING float), Circ de Soliel (even more amazing tricks with fire)… but the first place was by a mediocre float and presentation in my opinion. Not even sure what it was, but I think some kind of gyspy wedding?
Anyways, afterwards, my family brought us into this nice VIP section of the hatch shell for the post-parade concert which was really sweet. I’m not positive of his position but I know he’s the boss of some industry in the port here, so his company is one of the sponsors of all of these events (forgot to mention they don’t even charge admission for anything to recoop…. all free! plus the money prizes!) so I think that’s how we got in! There are also carnival rides set up in town that we have to find time to go to before they are gone! Today there was a race where people had to dress up in costumes, and then a cooking contest where we got to taste everything afterwards AND met the mayor! There’s the final queen of mejillones competition Tuesday night and a lot of other events for the rest of the week, so it will be another busy and exhuasting one. But at least I think I only have 2 days of teaching this week! Wednesdays I never have class and Thursday is the anniversary… I have a feeling school won’t happen on Friday but I’m not positive, then the following Monday is a day off too. Oh and next week is the anniversary of my school so there will be more events. Have I mentioned I LOVE Mejillones and every excuse to celebrate and not have school??
Que mas… my host dad’s birthday was this Saturday as well so we made a birthday cake with homemade buttercream frosting. One of my friends has also found an american football so I got to play Friday afternoon! I don’t really have much else to tell. These events have been a lot of fun, exhausting, and I am really slacking on my preparations for school, but hopefully I’ll pick it up again soon. We plan on taking a trip south to La Serena after next weekend, and then I only have a month and a half left here! Crazy. Need to do a little more work on planning out my travels after the program, but at least I know my spanish has improved and hopefully will be even better by the end of November.
Besitos!
Sorry for the delay in updating, I’ve had a very busy last month!!
For Chile’s Independence Day is September 18th so Mejillones got into the festivities that week. All of the schools performed folk dances i.e. La Cueca and some others from Isle de Pascua (Easter Island) one night in the Cultural Center so we were able to watch our coworkers and students dance in the traditional dress too. Wednesday was the parade, which also included some Cueca dancing, and then students and teachers from all of the schooled marched through.
Then for the long weekend, a group of my friends – other volunteers and one friend we’ve made here in Mejillones – went to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro de Atacama is THE tourist spot to go in Chile… where the desert meets the mountains, there are many gorgeous natural sites to see. My first real traveling since arriving in Mejillones, and now I am addicted and can’t wait for our next weekend trips.
To start off with the bad news, my wallet was stolen from my purse while we were in the bus station waiting for our bus to start the amazing trip. So unfortunately, I lost a decent amount of the money that I was finally paid (our stipend for teaching English), as well as student IDs, credit cards, and my license. BUT LUCKILY, I didn’t lose everything. It could have been much worse. I still had my passport, Chilean carnet (ID), and some more money in my pocket and my backpack. We went to the police station to report the incident (a little bit of good news in being able to communicate in spanish that well) but they couldn’t do much since we didn’t see the person who stole the wallet. But they let me use the internet so that I could email my mom to cancel the bank cards so that was good. Still working on getting everything else except the money replaced but it is possible, just a pain.
Second bit of unfortunate events on the trip – my digital camera broke on one of the tours from sand getting in the lens so now the camera can’t zoom or focus for any pictures. We tried to take it to a repair stole but haven’t been able to find one, so it looks like it may just be done for. For the trip and the rest of the time here, I’ve just been making sure to be with others that take pictures for me and share.
HOWEVER, the rest of the trip was absolutely amazing. So now for all the good parts. We went on three different guided tours and one of our own. We arrived the first night late around midnight after taking a later bus, got a few hours of sleep, then woke up to start our first tour at 4am. We got on a tiny but apparently sturdy bus that took us on pitch black dirt roads, if they can be called roads, in the desert and then up into the mountains. After a few hours of driving, we made it up to the top of El Tatio where we were going to see geysers! We were able to walk around and see some little pools and the steam coming out, learned about why geyers exist and how they are trying to tap into the geysers as an energy source, and then for the finale we watched one of the larger geyers go off. The reason we have to go so early in the morning is so you can see the contrast of the cold air with the hot water. It was pretty cool. On the way back down, we stopped to see different animals that would be near our path now that it was light out – llamas, some kind of cousin of llamas – and giant cacti and best of all, hot springs! This was really just a little stream, but we did get to hop in and swim/sit for a while in the warm water. Plus the air was finally starting to warm up so it wasn’t so bad when we had to get out of the water again.
Then in the afternoon we double booked our day since we arrived so late, and we took a tour of Valle del Muerte and Valle de la Luna (Death Valley and Moon Valley), and these were by far my favorite tours. More active than with the geysers, we could hike around the top and see the incredible views, jumped down giant sand dunes (hence the broken camera), walked through the valley to see the salty stone up close, and did some more climbing. There was a point in Valle del Muerte where we stopped and silently sat in front of a large wall of stone. When silent, you can hear the hot air escaping the stone as the air was cooling off at the end of the day. Pretty neat. Then in Valle de la Luna, we climbed up along a long skinny path through the middle and watched the sunset. As the sun sets, the shadows in the valley are beautiful, but even better, once the sun goes down, you can watch the Andes mountains on the other side change color! They become red, orange, blue, purple…. it’s gorgeous. This would definitely be somewhere I would love to come again someday.
Saturday we went on an all day tour of lagoons, Salar de Atacama, and some desert towns. This was pretty fun, less informative but still interesting and beautiful. We saw flamigos living in small lagoons completely surrounded by salt, volcanoes in the distance, lakes that were the most brilliant blues I’ve ever seen, and in some valleys you can actually find GREEN trees and plants when the altitude is low enough. What I loved about this day and the other tours, is how well preserved everywhere we went was. Yes there are small paths for the tours but that’s it. You’re not surrounded by concessions trying to sell you things, you don’t have paved trailed, it’s all preserved as natural as possible despite the number of tourists that make it there. It’s really incredible.
The last day, we were supposed to head back in the afternoon but there were no bus tickets available, so we bought tickets for the next morning and spent the afternoon renting bikes for our own trip around the little town San Pedro. We biked about 16 kilometers (sorry I have no idea how that translates to miles), and saw another valley – Garganta del Diablo (Devil’s Throat), and some ruins at Plaza Quitor. You climb up into the rocks and reach a point where there is an opening in the top and you can see the sky again. We ended up going even further into a cave since we happened to have headlamps and a flashlight! So fun. Also should mention that while biking, there was a stream going through the path, so we had to walk our bikes through a steam. Like I said, everything is seriously NATURAL. The paths we biked on were barely paths, dirt roads that were pretty rough on the bikes and body!!
Pictures from the trip are all up on Facebook. There should be more eventually that I will add from other people’s cameras, but I have a lot up already.
Since San Pedro, I’ve just been trying to catch up and get back into the swing of teaching, but now we have Mejillones’ Anniversary coming up next week too which means even more festivities. I will just make an Anniversary post after everything has happened since this is so packed with San Pedro stories. Everything else has been going well, teaching has it’s good and bad days but usually I like most of my students, I think we have a good time, they just aren’t used to more strict discipline so that is still difficult at times… i.e. answering cell phones in class, playing with make up, talking when I’m talking… I ended up telling one group that they are my worst class and they were surprised that I don’t like it when they don’t listen to me! I don’t really know how that is surprising, but maybe they will behave better next class now. Life in Mejillones overall has been good, my friends who are volunteering are amazing and our Chilean friends are too… We’ve really made this a home for ourselves.
Things are great with my family, and my spanish is improving but as always, I still have a long way to go. For example, yesterday I was at an event in Antofagasta where students performed English skits and songs, and a few TV and radio people were there to interview English Opens Doors staff, volunteers and students. My friend Levi and I wanted to be interviewed but who are we interviewed by, CNN Chile. Yet we forget how poor our spanish comprehension and speaking abilities really still are… And are probably the dumbest people they could have chosen to interview. Not even sure if we answered the questions he was asking, nor can I be sure that we were really saying what we THOUGHT we were saying as our answers either… but oh well. WHEN IN CHILE!
I have a few wishlist items to be mailed, so if you are interested in sending a care package, let me know!
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