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 28th 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 1st
and Fri 2nd 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 :)
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