A Chilean Christmas...

The first and probably most obvious difference you’d expect between the English and Chilean Christmases is the weather. In Chile, Christmas takes place in summer, a time when temperatures in Cholchol normally reach up to 30°C! However, this year – it decided to be a lot more like an English summer… and rain. This did actually make the atmosphere feel a lot more Christmassy for us at least!

The weeks leading up to Christmas were, much like the UK, filled with crowded Christmas shopping (the lack of Christmas lights in Temuco being the only let down on this point!) and carol services.

the final assembly/prizegiving

In School, it was the end of the school year, as well as breaking up for Christmas and so there were several ‘ceremonias’ over the last couple of weeks including the ‘promociones’ of the Kinder curso (who are now moving up into the Basico section of the school) and Octavo Basico (who are now moving up into the Medio section of the school) as well as the school prizegiving.

girls in 6to Basico at their convidencia

There was also various ‘convidencias’ which we attended with everyone from some of the classes, our colleagues, church and even our aerobics class. These all basically consist of a meal or ‘sharing’ of some kind to celebrate the end of the year. The last few weeks have involved a lot of food!

On the evening of 22^nd December we attended the ‘Culto de Navidad’ (Christmas Service) at church. This involved several pieces by choirs, the Sunday school group and the youth group as well as carols and the normal stuff found in carol services. My partner and I took part in the nativity with the youth group. I agreed the week before to be the angel that appears to Joseph and as a result had to memorise an entire Spanish paragraph! Panic!

The angel and the star - ready for our spanish acting debut :)

“José, Hijo de David. No temas recibir a Maria por esposa. Porque ella ha concebido por obra del Espíritu Santo. Dará luz un hijo, y le pondrás por nombre Jesús, porque él salvará al pueblos de sus pecados. Él será el Rey, el Hijo de Dios.”

Luckily – after rehearsing the words constantly over a period of days, I miraculously managed to pull it off without a hitch! Much to the surprise of Joseph himself! It was a very proud moment. 

la cena de Navidad :)

The other major point about Chilean Christmas is that it is celebrated on the night of the 24^th, not on the 25^th. We were lucky enough to be invited to spend Christmas with our Chilean family and so on the night of the 24^th, about 7 O’clock we went round to their house with our sackful of presents! We had a very lovely ‘cena’ which consisted of a starter of “Palta Reina” (an avocado half filled with some kind of chicken/mayonnaise combo on a bed of lettuce), followed by turkey cooked in a mushroom source, with crochet potatoes and a huge array of various salads, and then brownie and ice cream for pudding.

present time!!! :D

The next few hours were spent trying to digest some of the food and singing xmas songs (we taught them several in English and also sung some Spanish ones). Once midnight struck, the presents were doled out and all opened.  We left about 2am and headed on the 30 second walk back home before collapsing into bed.

We were then back at the Ortiz’s by midday the next day for a very late breakfast of waffles. The day was spent very chilled, watching TV and skyping my family. We had lunch about half 4 and then las once at about 9:00! It was a very good day and a nice, relaxing break, and though it didn’t have quite the same feel as an English family Christmas, it was a good experience and definitely a good insight into other cultures and the different meanings of celebrations such as Christmas in different parts of the world.

And now there’s only 3 days until we head up to Valporaíso for New Year with all the other volunteers and then off on our summer travels! Exciting times ahead!

Hannah :)

Spanglish...

So I have to say... when I thought of coming to Chile, learning Spanish beforehand never really seriously crossed my mind. I mean, yeah I did some self-tutoring via the internet and even went on a weekend cramming course.. but I kinda just thought I'd figure it out once I got here... hahaha.

Now, 4 months in, I kinda expected to be able to communicate in Spanish pretty well by now... well, I can communicate it's true... and a lot of the time I think I'm actually doing OK, though my Spanish abilities are definitely very temperamental.
However, the bigger problem I've encountered over the past few weeks, is that I now can't speak English either. So basically - I'm stuck in some kind of limbo where I can't speak Spanish, or English. hmmm...

This fact didn't really strike me until Sunday afternoon, lying on top of a hill in the middle of the Araucanian countryside with some friends - it was boiling hot and absolutely stunning, you could see for miles into the surrounding hills, and we were playing eye spy (just cause, why not!). We played it first in Spanish, which was OK, though we didn't know the names of some of the things we were seeing, we could get most of them. After, we decided to try it in English. At this point, I realised... I couldn't think of the names of anything I could see in English either! Slightly less good.

I have to say - when you think about living and learning another language, I didn't expect it to be like this. You see people translating from one language to another almost instantaneously all over the TV and they make it look so easy - it's really not. All languages are the same, words translate directly... but then phrases and sentences don't, and that's whats the hardest. So quite often, you can form an English sentence in your mind, translate it perfectly (or so you think) into Spanish and they just look at you like 'what the hell?'. I think this is what's muddling my brain the most, and so I end up thinking the wrong way round... trying to put adjectives after the noun when I'm speaking English or saying things like 'the house of Audrey' (my partner especially has got into saying things like this, much to my amusement). Its also weird how just random words come to you in Spanish when writing or talking in English, and it takes that much longer to think of the English one!

It's a very strange feeling and very very frustrating on the most part. However, I'm gonna take this as a good sign, and though this stage is possibly even harder to when we first arrived and knew nothing (I mean, at least I knew I knew nothing and so did everyone else!), hopefully it means that Spanish is slowly starting to take root and that maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to communicate fluently after a few more months.

I don't even know if this ramble makes any sense - I'll blame it on my scrambled brain if it doesn't. I do think Spanglish should be an official language though, as if it was - I reckon I'm fluent in that one :)

weekends away and terremotos...

Well, Seems like a very long time since I last wrote a blog, and a lot has happened since then!

Firstly, the protest. It all got a bit more violent, and some people from the village got involved at which point my partner and I were (a bit unnecessarily I think), evacuated to the countryside. We stayed with Audrey, a lovely English lady who took us in and looked after us whilst we were panicking slightly about the potential loss of our home!

However, luckily the church stepped in and agreed to pay for the restorations needed in the internado which the school couldn't afford, which means the internado's are staying open and we're not getting kicked out of our house! hooray!!! :D

Work has generally consisted of a lot of films and other more fun activities over the past couple of weeks such as trips to the river to eat ice cream (which, when 2do Medio is involved, is a lot wetter than it should be - definately shouldn't have given them bottles and access to an large amount of water!), performances of plays (including a great portrayal of falling of a stage from one guy - caught on video and everything!) and of course, Gangham style.

Last weekend, we were invited by Ruth to go away with the youth group from her church in Temuco to a place called 'Rio Quino' about 1 hour north of Temuco. We went by train up to a place called Pua and then walked the rest of the way... along the motorway.

Rio Quino

Not even joking, we walked for about half an hour in a single line along the hard shoulder of the PanAmerican Highway in the increasing darkness! Then at the point when there was no hard shoulder, we had to wait for the road to clear and leg it! It was.. a little terrifying to say the least!

Over the course of the weekend, we did a bit of worship and bible study, chilled by the river, played football (I scored 4 goals - only 2 of which were set up for me! :D) as well as a lot of other games. It was very hot and though it was exhausting, we made a lot of friends and had a lot of fun :)

Grupo de Jovenes de la Iglesia Santa Trinidad

Then on Monday 10th, a significant thing happened - I experienced my first earthquake!!! Well, it was more of a tremour really - 5.8 on the Richter Scale apparently but very short. Unfortunately, neither my partner or myself felt it.. at all! Having never experienced an earthquake before and so having no idea what one feels like, I guess it didn't even register, probably assumed it was a table scraping across the floor or the kids running around.. but if I'm honest, I'm a little bit disappointed I missed it! Ah well, I'm sure they'll be another sometime in the next 9 months!

And that's about all for now! Only just over a week until school breaks up for Christmas and then we're off on our travels! How on earth did that happen!? Probably should get back to organizing that one.. so far we've made it to the 8th January! hmmm..

Hannah :)

Alianzas, Burlesque and Protests...

As promised.. I now have something more interesting to write about!!

Thursday and Friday last week there were no lessons to go to as we were all off celebrating the 116th Anniversary of the school. (Seriously, Chileans don't need much excuse to celebrate ATALL). The school was divided into 3 teams: Amarillo, Rojo & Verde. We were quickly snapped up by the Amarillo team and by 9:00 on Thursday morning we were sporting yellow pompoms and cheering away for the football match going on.

One of the games seemed to involve each team trying to collect as many shoelaces as possible. This meant my shoes were also attacked and after wondering around without any shoe laces for a while (was slightly interesting trying to keep the shoes on my feet!) I managed to get some back.. though now the shoelaces I have are definately a lot grubbier and don't actually match.... hmm.

The crowned King and Queen of William Wilson..

The afternoon consisted of a dancing competition... to Gangnam Style. It was... interesting to say the least!

Friday saw the school assembling in the dining hall, the story of the school was told and then the final scores were given and the queen was crowned. Let me explain: basically, each team had elected a king and a queen, who were dressed up. The winning teams queen was then given a tiara by the queens from last year. Amarillo came 2nd over all so not too bad! Not really sure why this particular tradition is done, but as with a lot of things here, we just kinda went with it!

being made up...

Then on Saturday we had the dance competition in Temuco we'd been preparing for over the last month or so! The competition was at 3pm and so we met in the Plaza at 2 to await our lift, being provided by the municipalidad. Well of course, it didn't come.. so at 3:15 after a few frantic calls, our dance teacher ended up driving back to Cholchol in a minibus to pick us all up!

ready to dance...

We missed our slot and so ended up going on last. We were attacked with make-up.. and then made our way to the middle of el gymnasio... The presenter chose to ask me and Danielle if we were nervous.. the 2 people in the entire gymnasium that didn't understand what he was saying! It was slightly awkward... but then we were away! Dancing to 'Welcome to Burlesque' - it didn't go too badly, though we didn't win, despite the potential gringa points we could have got! But it was a laugh, and we've been able to make quite a few friends too, which is always good!

However, without the dance to detract from the time, aerobics is once again back up to its full power and monday was very hard work! I was going to write that teaching and life was back to normal. However, this morning we were woken up to the girls in the internado making ALOT of noise! Even after they should have been in school they were out there screaming and shouting and banging sticks. After going out to investigate we discovered them in full-swing of protesting against the closure of the internados! They did actually let us leave to go to work which is something atleast! (how nice of them eh?) although not before we'd added our own posters in English to their collection. Once in school - the boys turn out to be doing the same, with numerous posters. They also seemed to have moved all their beds outside too.. that was, until it started tipping it down of course!

I don't know if this protest will make a difference, or even why they want to close the internados in the first place, since it would make it much more difficult for the kids that live there to come to school at all! But I really hope they don't! After all, though I don't think they'd chuck us out as well (since they'd never mentioned it to us before, you'd hope not!) but it's our home too and part of what makes my project so fun is the experience of living with the girls, reckon it'd be kinda lonely in that big old building on our own! :/

Anyway.. that's all for now - back to lesson planning for me!




Hannah :)

routines.....

Tbh, routines are definitively a part of my life now.. as much as it pains me to say it. So I don't really have anything all that interesting to write about over the last couple of weeks.. just work, aerobics and sun sun sun!

a friend we made in Lautaro :)

Our weekends have involved a trip to Lautaro for a friends birthday - a lot of lazing in the sun, eating sopapiallas and drinking of 'ron' was done -  and then a stay in Temuco involving a quiz - which we spectacularly lost (blame the fact we don't speak the language) - and flapjack making with some of Ruth's precious golden syrup brought over from the UK.

The nice thing about routine here, is that it's never routine for too long! The next 3 days are promising to be a lot more interesting as it is the anniversary of the school and so there are no classes, and instead lots of games and activities done in teams throughout the school. Hopefully I'll have some more interesting stuff to blog about once that's through!

But for now I won't bore you anymore...

Chao!


Hannah :)

Another long weekend... Pucon: 1st-4th Nov

In the week beginning the 29^th Oct, we did quite a bit of teaching on our own, we had to plan and take nearly all the classes – all except those who still had tests – which made a nice, though challenging change to our usual assisting. 

Then, thanks to the bank holidays for the ‘Day of the Dead’ on the 1^st November and Reformation Day on the 2nd, we had another 4 day weekend.

This time, we met up with the volunteers who live in Lautaro and went to Pucón, a town about a 2 hour bus ride south-east of Temuco on the coast of Lake Villarica, and the closest town to Volcán Villarica, the active volcano who’s tip we can see from Cholchol on a sunny day. (the base of the volcano is just 14km from Pucón). The town itself is very like somewhere you’d picture in the Swiss Alps, all wooden houses and very very touristy, and to be honest we could have been somewhere in Europe – except for the looming volcano of course. But we spent a very lovely 4 days there, and it was a very chilled and relaxing break.

Upon arrival, we stumbled off the bus and wondered around slightly confused until we ended up in one agency talking to a girl who turned out to be from England! and – even more weirdly – who’s boyfriend is from Cholchol! She gave us the load-down of all the different activities we could do from white water rafting, to a visit to the hotsprings as well as climbing the volcano itself. The later was something that I did, and still do, really want to do. But due to the price we decided to save that one for another time, maybe at the end of our travels if we have any money left!

The view of the lake from halfway up the hill.

In the end the first activity we opted for was horseriding. So on the Friday we set off on our horseride. It was a mapuche-led tour in the countyside which involved climbing halfway up one of the nearby mountains on horseback along some very narrow paths. The chilled attitude of Chileans was quite obvious in this activity from a) the lack of helmets and b) at the beginning of the ride, asking who could/who couldn’t ride and then plonking us all on horses, showing us how to hold the reins, how to turn left and how to turn right before off we set up a mountain! The view of the lake and the town was pretty spectacular and the ride down was, believe it or not, actually less scary than the journey up. We were all feeling pretty comfortable on our horses by this point and so managed a bit of trotting, and I even got cantering a bit too!

me at the bottom of the 'hidden waterfall'

It was so much fun that on Sunday, Beth, Danielle and I decided to do another horseride! This time we went to a ‘hidden waterfall’, which involved about half riding and half trekking down a very steep hillside to reach it but the 80m ‘cascada’ was definitely worth it! And it was just as fun as the first time too!

kayaking on the lake

The rest of the time involved mostly chilling, the weather was absolutely gorgeous – we spent a lot of time lying on the beach. We hired out some kayaks on the lake for an hour and also visited ‘los thermas’ one night, the natural hot springs which lie about 45 minutes out of Pucón – definitely an experience worth having!

All in all, it was a pretty awesome holiday and one less place to travel in the summer (although hopefully we might get to come back and do the volcano climb, financial situation permitting!). I feel very lucky to have already been able to travel quite a bit in this amazing country I now call home and every time I do, it makes me more excited for our proper travels in the summer!

By Monday it was back to Cholchol and back to ‘normal’. We’re hoping to visit Lautaro this weekend as it is one of the volunteers’ 18^th Birthday so yet another town we can cross off our list, and then after that there’s only one week until the 3 month mark! I’ll be writing a newsletter around this point, and I know quite a few people have already said they would like me to send them a copy. If you would like one, please send your email or postal addresses to spitfire062@gmail.com and I’ll make sure you get one :)

¡Hasta Luego!

Hannah :)

¡MaryMary!

Well, teaching on our own when Angelica was off sick was… interesting. Let’s just say I don’t think our teaching skills are quite up to scratch – was definitely a challenge, especially with the older years who are a lot closer to our own age anyway and so we don’t seem to have as much authority with them. But we managed ok I think (mostly!) and we made it out the other side alive – always a plus!

We had a very lazy weekend, passing our 2 month mark in a pretty chilled fashion. Thankfully Angelica was back on the Monday and so it was back to normal on the teaching front. Most of the lessons we had this week were tests and so we acted very invigilator-like, patrolling the room and answering questions as best we could. 

The language is still very tough, although most days I am able to understand most of what is being said and am able to communicate what I’m trying to say in one way or another, there are quite a lot of days, when I’m particularly tired, or I just zone out, when it becomes really hard to understand anything, let alone speak it. On these days, it’s so tough and frustrating that I don’t speak Spanish. I know I’ve only been here 2 months and so can’t expect to be fluent by now, but it’s still very annoying!

One evening, we were sitting with the girls in the internado and they taught us a few more Mapudungun words/phrases to add to our very small vocabulary (which prior to this consisted of: MaryMary (hello) and Kofkee (bread) !!). These are now stuck on our wall and once I’ve got my Spanish under control I would definitely like to learn a bit more! A few of my favourite words/phrases are:

·         "¿chumbli?" Which means "how are you?" and "Karuff" which means "cold"

On Friday we went into Temuco to meet Ruth, an ex-PT volunteer we met who returned to Chile and married and now lives in Temuco. She was planning on showing us some of the sights of Temuco but the rain put a stop to that and so instead we just went back to hers. We spent a lovely, and very English afternoon/evening playing the wii and watching films. The next morning, having spoken to us the night before about missing bacon, they managed to get hold of some from one of the larger supermarkets, she cooked us up a full English! We had to settle for a different type of sausage (the longanizas that are used in choripans - no such thing as pork sausages here!) but we still had toast, tomatoes, mushroom and egg and most importantly… bacon! Not gonna lie, it was pretty awesome! We went to a church service with a load of youth from a few different churches in Temuco, including the one Ruth and her husband go to, and also the youth from Cholchol. We watched a film together and did a bit of reflection stuff before catching the bus back to Cholchol with the others.

 It was a really good couple of days, despite the dramatic ending in which Danielle left her rucksack which had all of our clothes etc we’d taken with us in it on the bus! Panic! When we realised about 15 mins after getting off the bus, we ran to the Ortiz’s and they jumped straight into the car and drove us to the bus terminal and sorted it all out for us – they really do take such good care of us, we’d be so lost without them! 

Throughout Chile it has been the municipalidad elections this year, with every town electing a new alcade (mayor) and council (concejales). As a result of this, we have been seeing posters and billboards since we arrived of the various candidates running for office. One thing that is very different here to in the UK is how much the people love their politics! 

The election was on the 28^th October and so in the last few weeks we’ve been seeing the final push by all the candidates. We went to one campaign which involved a lot of music (each candidate alcade seems to have their own ‘theme music’ which drive around in cars being blasted out on repeat – it’s only a little tedious!) and dancing and when the alcade came out, the crowd went absolutely crazy – as if he was properly famous or something! I can’t say I understood much from  his speech, but what I did grasp, or atleast thought I did was that he was going to get free wifi for the whole of Cholchol and give every student in Cholchol a netbook so that they can all do their schoolwork. I did think I must have misunderstood that bit but apparently its not as ridiculous as it sounds and he probably did say it! Well – he won, so lets see if his promise comes through!  Free WiFi would be very useful for us!

Another shortened week next week, just 3 days, as Thurs 1^st and Fri 2^nd Nov are both national holidays due to it being the ‘Day of the Dead’ (originally a Mexican tradition I think, not really sure what it entails to be honest). We’re planning on going to the town of Pucon with the volunteers who live in Lautaro which should be really lovely and maybe we’ll even get to climb a volcano while we’re there! 

ChaoChao – or as they say in Mapudungun: ¡Peukallal!

Hannah :)

Santiago+Valpo

A definite routine is starting to develop in terms of our teaching. We are coming to know the timetable fairly well and are taking a lot more of an active part in those lessons. We also have been given our first regular lesson teaching completely by ourselves. So now, every Thursday afternoon we teach Trecero (3^rd) Basico for 45 minutes.

The first time was absolutely terrifying, especially as the class we were teaching was changed last minute (originally, we had prepared ourselves for teaching Primero Basico!) but the kids are absolutely adorable and despite being loud and at times, difficult to control, we have a lot more freedom as to what we teach them (anything we like really, since there isn’t really a curriculum for the primero ciclo) and it’s definitely a lesson I look forward to doing each week.

In the internado we are getting to know the girls more and more which is really nice and are learning a lot more of their names too. On those days we finish slightly earlier we can play games in the afternoon with those girls in the Basico levels (the Medio ciclo don’t finish school until slightly later, about 5:30). Anything from skipping, or playing Uno or card games or even doing crafts such as making bracelets. The collection of films we bought with us from the UK has gone down pretty well too – with constant demands and knocks on our door to “ver un pelicula por favour”. I think we’ll know all these films off by heart by the end of the year!

On Thursday 11^th October, we were off up to Santiago and Valpo for the weekend! We discovered after we booked the bus tickets home on Sunday night that we actually had the following Monday (national bank holiday – no idea what for!) and Tuesday (Teachers day) off school! We arrived in Santiago about 7am on Friday and after a lot of wandering and getting lost, we found a café for Breakfast. The morning basically consisted of a lot of that – getting lost that is. The amount of people we had to ask for directions was ridiculous. But we found our way around (eventually) and after browsing the market at Santa Lucia for a couple of hours, met up with a couple of the other volunteers who lived in Santiago and who’s house we were staying at that night.

We made the 40 minute bus ride out to Quilicura, a suburb right on the edge of the city where they lived and worked. Their host family was absolutely lovely and after some time spent catching up, we headed back into Santiago about 10 to experience the nightlife of Bellavista.

The next day after a very late start (true Chilean style) we met up with several of the other volunteers at the bus station and all got the bus over to Valporaiso on the coast (about 1 ½ bus ride away). Valpo is absolutely gorgeous. A huge town of mismatched buildings spreading all down the coast and right up the surrounding hills. Its full of street art and stray dogs and has some really interesting transport systems – including the trolley system (electric-powered buses on set routes) which is the oldest in the world and all original, and the ascensors (these are pretty much uphill trains to save the walk up the many hills), and even better than this – ITS WARM. We were staying with a couple of volunteers  who lived there and 11 other volunteers were also in Valpo this weekend (making the most of our long weekend) and so in the evening we hit the town en masse to make the most of the ridiculously cheap drinks!

On Sunday we had chilled on the roof and had an asado at Sammy and Finlay’s house before going off to do some sightseeing. We visited the port before meeting up with some of the others and burning off all those Choripan’s climbing up one of the hills for some pretty awesome views of the town and the sea. In the evening, we went out to dinner with the volunteers from Colina (just north of Santiago) who were also down for the weekend, to celebrate Beth’s birthday. The meal was pretty cheap, but had the BIGGEST portions you’ve ever seen. Trying to be healthy after that asado, I settled for a salad, but it was probably the biggest salad in the world – I couldn’t even eat it all! Anyway, after trying, and failing to change our bus tickets for the next day, we said goodbye to everyone until new year and got on our bus home.

.

We made it home with little drama, back to the cold reality of the south of Chile and after a relaxing Monday and Tuesday to ourselves we now have two days work before another weekend! However, a text at about 10pm last night told us that the English teacher is off sick for the next 2 days and so we have to now take all her classes on our own!!! Hmm.. this could be a couple of interesting days.

Hannah :)

Back to reality(ish)

¡hola!

Well, as the title suggests, it was back to work for us after our week off celebrating dieciocho. The reality part, not so much - everyday brings something new and sometimes things are still very surreal. However, I'm definately feeling more settled and a routine is beginning to form. 

In the week beginning the 24th September, it was back into lessons straight from the onset. We are being trusted more and more with preparing and running activities in the classes too which makes the whole experience much more fun (though it still takes us a ridiculously long time to plan anything!). 

Friday 28th, was of-course, my 'cumpleaños' on which I was thoroughly spoiled by everyone. It was a really amazing day with lots of cakes, and hugs and singing and the fact that we didn't have to work made it even better ;) The weekend was a relaxed one and then on Monday, my birthday was celebrated with the girls in the Internado. 

It was a complete suprise for me, but the girls had prepared a lot of food (annoyingly we'd already eaten, but we did our best!) and sung to both me and Tia Glenis, who's birthday it was too. I thought it was really sweet at the time.. but then they bought out the eggs. 

Now, apparently this is some kind of Chilean tradition, but being a clueless gringita, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. They did it to Glenis first though, which gave me about 1 minutes warning of what was going to happen! Basically, they crack an egg over your head. I put up a fair fight and managed to avoid the majority of the egg as it was cracked, though they then proceeded to scoop it off the floor and smear it into my hair with their hands! which I'm not sure was much better to be honest... They then (well meant I'm sure :S) decided to help me wash the egg out of my hair by pushing me into the shower - fully clothed, phone in pocket! I managed to escape fairly quickly and ran into our house for a proper shower before we went to aerobics, unlike poor Glenis, who was in there for a very long time!

Other exciting news is that we seem to have managed to enter ourselves into a dance competition in Novemeber, and so in our aerobics classes, we are currently learning the Charleston and will eventually have to perform it, feather boas and all in front of goodness knows how many people! I know I came on a gap year to have new experiences and try new things, but I have to admit.. this wasn't quite what I had in mind. 

The rest of this week has been much less dramatic. Wednesday evening, we spent having a lovely asado-type meal to celebrate our Chilean abuela's cumpleaños. The meal was followed by the most amazing cake, which was pretty much layers of pastry and manjar, with chocolate on top - I mean, can't really go wrong there can you!? 

We have done a lot more teaching and today we got to teach our first class completely on our own, which was... terrifying. Not helped by the fact that the class we were teaching was changed pretty much last minute, so having prepared a basic lesson on colours for 1ro Basico, we were stuck in 3ro Basico instead, and so had a lesson which was probably pretty beneath them to be quite honest. But the kids were absolutely lovely and didn't seem to mind too much! Also, now we know how much they roughly know, next week's lesson should (hopefully) be a lot easier! We also have a lot of unused worksheets.. so if anyone wants any colour by numbers or wordsearches on colours - I have about 20 million going spare over here ;)

So that's another weeks work finally completed, if you don't count working with the girls in the internado tonight, which I swear is more exhausting than teaching most of the time! But there you go.. Next weekend we're venturing up to Santiago and Valpo which should be a nice, warm change, and a good excuse to see all the other vols too :)

¡hasta luego!

Hannah :)

¡Feliz Dieciocho!

¡Hola a todos!

Sorry for the unreliability of these posts.. but Internet access is fairly sporadic here.. so we'll blame that! :)

So the last 2 weeks have been all about Dieciocho - the 18th September, and Chilean Independence Day.

We started off the week starting on the 10th with a little work and some lessons happening on Monday and Tuesday, but a lot of time was spent focusing on preparing for the Parade on Wednesday. We helped out in some really difficult classes on these days which was definately a big challenge since no matter what you did - they were NOT going to listen.. I'm suprised they even bother to turn up atall to be honest..!

Wednesday 12th was the day of the big parade! The entire school all on their best behaviour and uniform walked the streets of CholChol. In true Chilean-style of course it didn`t actually start until a good hour after it was supposed too! But it was a very good day.. and pretty impressive to watch I`m sure! Annoyingly.. both me and Danielle left our cameras in the Staffroom - so no pictures to show for it I`m afraid! :/

Friday was another relaxed day, with displays of the kids work, lots of dancing (including an attempt at dancing the Cueca, the traditional Chilean dance - which was... interesting, to say the least!), games etc. We finished the day with a big Staff lunch of Empanadas and in the Afternoon we went for a walk around CholChol with one of the other teachers.. which was good, until it started tipping it down!

We had an entire week off for Independence week - but forget a relaxing holiday.. that was definately not on the agenda! It was however, a pretty awesome week and I think over the course of 3 days, I ate enough meat to last me about a month!

On Monday we went with the Ortiz family out to the countryside, to Lorenzo`s (one of the teacher`s at the school) parents house. We walked to the top of a nearby hill for a spectacular view of the valley and also later on ventured down to the river. We also tried our asado here (a traditional Chilean BBQ) in which you get about 3 absolutely huge chunks of whatever meat is going and then a multitude of salad besides!

For Dieciocho itself we went to Temuco. Well, atleast we eventually went to Temuco after running for the bus, before finding out that it was a different timetable and then having to wait over an hour for a bus..!! We went to Angelica`s (the English teacher) house and had our second Asado in 2 days! This time we got to help out cooking it.. well, I say cooking - hacking at the meat with a knife is probably a more accurate description!!

After lunch, we went to a fair at the Town Stadium, which involved a rather annoying mime, churros, and a very proud Llama.

In the evening we went to a music/battle of the bands type thing in which Angelica`s husband was playing. It ended with a Reggae set and lots of dancing at about midnight.

After this, no joke, we were invited to DINNER. So at 1am we were sitting in a very fancy apartment in the centre of Temuco munching on empanadas and crisp sandwiches - the Chileans thought we were absolutely MAD for having crisp sandwiches (says the people who have dinner at 1 in the morning!) but hey.. thats Gringitas for ya :) A few entertaining taxi/car rides, and several hours later, we finally got to bed.

No lie-ins for us though! and by 11 we were back on a bus to CholChol and to the Ortiz`s for lunch. It tipped it down all day and so we spent it huddling by the fire and watching TV. I had a bad cold and so they were very fussy over me, giving me paracetemol every 4 hours on the dot as well as hot lemon and honey and letting me take a nap in the afternoon.. It seemed a bit over the top at the time but I have to admit - when you`re feeling rotten, it`s pretty lovely being so well looked after!


The volunteers in Latauro came down for the final 4 days of the holiday and so we had a very English few days, watching films, showing them CholChol and cooking lots of English food - including our first roast!!!!

The fact that I got to experience something so important to the people here after just a month is pretty awesome and really reminds me why I`m bothering to do this atall - which believe me, is a question I quite often ask myself, especially when the work is tough and I`m not feeling brilliant. Its nice to finally have an answer - because experiencing something like the Dieciocho celebrations is why I`m here. An entirely different culture, way of thinking and way of celebrating is what I`m trying to get a grasp of, and I`m actually now beginning to do that after just one short month!!

Back to reality now though - work. A different kind of challenge entirely, but one which is pretty rewarding and where every day is different! Never a dull moment in Chile thats for sure :)


Thanks,

Hannah :)