Beginning of another year...

Well the last few weeks have seen the beginning of the new school year. The first week consisted of a couple of staff training days and 3 days with about 50/500 kids, spent sorting out timetables and new form rooms - pretty much the usual start of the school year rush!

Then soon enough, all the kids were back to school and we were full-swing into lessons! Our timetable is a lot more intense this year and so its proving quite tough... but still good. It's so lovely to see all the students again, especially the girls who live in the internado and to meet all the new students. There are a good mix of new and old students both in school and in the internado and they all seem to have integrated well already which is lovely to see.

Over the last few weeks we've been introducing the new units and topics in classes from 5to Basico to the newly formed 4to Medio class and working with the students helping them to understand what they'll be learning this year and how it builds on last year.

With the girls in the internado, its been much of the same - evenings filled with playing cards, helping with English homework and watching films. I'd forgotten how exhausting and non-stop it all is, but I have missed them!

We're still hoping to get some teaching lessons again this year with the Primer Ciclo classes - 1ro Basico to 4to Basico that is. We have made some curriculum plans and are currently waiting for the approval of the deputy head and to be told when we can have the lessons. True to chilean style, they're taking their time about this, but hopefully our continued pressuring will eventually lead to some kind of result!

international womans day celebrations

On Friday 8th it was International Women's Day. We got a lot of good wishes from various students for this and then in one of the breaks we were ushered into one of the empty classrooms by some of the male staff who had laid out tea, coffee, biscuits and sandwiches to show their appreciation of their female colleagues. It was really sweet and we were all given a little present of a rose and a chocolate.

And thats about it for the last 3 weeks other than a couple of relaxing weekends in which we learnt how to make sopapiallas, went on a birthday picnic, visited Temuco to catch up with friends and generally just tried to recover from the busy weeks!

making sopaipillas

My skillful 'UK-shaped' sopaipilla