Catching up and generally rushing around...

Ok - firstly, an apology for the long back between my last blog. Things have been a bit hectic now and I'd love to say they're beginning to settle down... though to be honest, I'm not sure they actually are!

After weeks and weeks of pushing for lessons with the Basico classes in the school (primary school aged, who don't normally have English lessons with the sole English teacher in school), we have finally managed to get some lessons! We now teach ALL courses from Pre-Kinder (eqv. of Year R) right up to 4to Medio (eqv. of year 13!) This means our timetable is VERY full and so we don't find time to do much else, which is a shame, but we'll see how it goes.

Hanging out with the girls...

I love teaching the Basico classes though, I feel a lot more confident with my Spanish in comparison to last year and with the littl'uns I feel a lot more confident as a teacher and we have a lot more authority aswell. The kids there also are more inclined to want to be there and to want to learn, especially from the Gringas - I had one kid announce to me that I had yellow hair, and then he asked me why I had blue eyes and then seemed even more amazed when I answered "because my mum has blue eyes!" After 8 months, its still strange, how things that are normal and very common at home are so rare and interesting to people over here!

us and some of the girls in the internado

We've spent the weeks with the girls in the internado getting to know the new girls really well which is nice and we've finally started catching up with their names which is always a positive! The other day, we had tea with them - they seem to have caught on to the fact that, being English, we need to be regularly supplied with tea to keep us going! - and then lately we've been provided with fruit on a monday from the girls houses in the countryside, which is always delicious!

Us and the girls in Colina on our sunny Easter break

We went to visit the volunteers in Colina for the Easter weekend. They have a very different project as its Social care and they work in a school and home for people with learning disabilities. They showed us round their project and it looks amazing, must be so tough at times, but very very rewarding! We had a lovely weekend involving sushi, icecream and a circus (which actually had a real live lion - we didn't believe the guy at first, but no - they actually had a lion!). Was a lovely weekend and good to catch up with the girls who we haven't seen since briefly in October!

The other day we had our annual visit from the desk officer from PT, Felicity. Having become our desk officer just after we arrived in Chile, we hadn't actually met her before and it was lovely to meet her, chat and show her round our project.
On Sunday 7th we met her, along with the girls from Lautaro, in Temuco. We climbed 'Cerro Ñielol' for a lovely view of the city, went out for lunch (courtesy of PT - thanks for that one! :) ) and generally chatted the day away. In the evening we took her to Cholchol, and she stayed with us in the internado for the night - She was very impressed with our little house and even said we'd made our room the most cosy and homey she'd seen in both Peru and Chile! - before seeing our project the next day. We took her to our lessons in the morning (including two of our brand new ones with the Prekinder/Kinder!) and then showed her around Cholchol, took her to the river and even introduced her to the amazingness of the Sopaipillas provided by our favourite little street vendor in town. She agreed that they were awesome which is always good! :)
All in all, she seemed very impressed with our project and after showing someone around, i realised just how good our project is and how lucky we are to have been placed here. After our struggles with the basico lessons and my Spanish perhaps being not as good as I would have liked by this stage, I was beginning to get a bit negative about the whole thing. But now, I've feel much more motivated and positive about the whole thing and ready to make the most of the last few months!

To top it all off, our aerobics classes have just started back in the evenings which is lovely and a good excuse to meet up with friends and also to get some much needed exercise (running in the morning is now too cold and dark for me!). I have also been to Capaoiera with the vols from Latauro once now, and I think I will definately be going again - even if every part of me did ache for about 3 days afterwards!

And so thats all for now! Our routines changed a little in the last few weeks but I have a lot of exciting things to look forward, including a visit from none other than my very own sister! Becca is coming over to Chile for the last week of May and I'm SO excited! Better get planning lots of exciting things for us to do I spose!

Chao y Dios los bendigan.


Hannah :)

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

Home sweet home!

Well... after 2 months of travelling round South America we are back in Cholchol and back to work. A little bit of a slap in the face with reality it has to be said!

So much has happened in the last 2 months I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to write it all down. I'm planning on writing my 6-month newsletter (yes - I really am halfway through my year would you believe! Time has gone ridiculously quickly!) which will have more details and photos about my time travelling. If you would like a copy, please can you email your email or postal address to: spitfire062@gmail.com and I will make sure I send you a copy!

Ok. So - a quick summary.

For New Year, we headed up to Valparaíso with 10 of the other volunteers for the spectacular fireworks display. We spent a few days sightseeing and enjoying the sunshine and then for new year itself, we climbed up one of the many hills and had an amazing view right across the bay of the most amazing fireworks display I've ever seen! The rest of the night involved a lot of alcohol and a lot of dancing!

We headed north to San Pedro de Atacama after this, staying for several days and managing to go on several excursions and tours to salt flats, geysers, and both Death and Moon valley.

Next was the bus up the rest of Chile, over the border into Peru and then up further to the city of Arequipa.

( I honestly couldn't tell you how many hours have been spent on buses over these months traveling but I will never complain about British Rail again! )

I fell in love with Peru as soon as we arrived, the beautiful architecture, the bustling markets, the street food and of-course, the price! Everything was so cheap in comparison to Chile and for that reason, I decided I never wanted to leave!
We set of on a trek down Colca Canyon which was absolutely stunning and an amazing experience, though it was extremely tough, made a lot worse by the fact that on the last day - the hardest as this was the day we had to walk UP the canyon again - I was extremely ill. It was probably one of the toughest 4 hours of my life but I made it!

After a few days of recovery and recuperation in Arequipa we headed north to Cusco. Here we sight-saw the city, completed the Inka Jungle Trail - a 4 day trail including: biking down in the sheeting rain, trekking through the jungle and zipwiring the longest zip-line in South America! Eventually making it to the Inka city of Machu Picchu - one of the most spectacular sights I've ever seen! After some generic photo taking and a day spent exploring the city we returned to Cusco.
After a weeks volunteering just outside Cusco involving plastering, painting and glazing the floor of a newly constructed 'ecotoilet' we headed off on a bus to Bolivia. 

A few days in Copacabana - a 4 hour trek round the absolutely stunning Isla del Sol and then it was on to La Paz. Days were spent exploring the Witches Market - with the many opportunities to buy llama fetus' - and buying as much tat as we could carry (and afford). A day trip to the Carnaval de Oruro - the biggest in Bolivia and absolutely spectacular - full of extravagant costumes, dancing and a lot of beer. The carnaval continued in La Paz, preventing us from leaving the hostel without being attacked by water bombs and/or snow spray.

After La Paz we ventured to the last city of our travels, the capital of Bolivia: Sucre. We visited several museums, and also went to the nearby quarry where the longest dinosaur tracks in the world can be found, followed by a trek and a swim in a waterfall!

And then we started our journey home, an intense series of bus journeys - a couple of stops in Antofagasta and Valparaíso and then it was back home to Cholchol and back to the reality of daily life!

I've included below a selection of photos from my travels - more will be included in the newsletter so don't forget if you want one, let me know! :)

Hannah :)

In the Atacama desert

Me and my partner at the Atacama salt flats

Colca Canyon

Cusco

Treating ourselves in Cusco

Volunteering

Jungle river on the way to Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu

Generic photos at Machu Picchu

Carnaval de Oruro

Carnaval de Oruro

Carnaval de Oruro

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 :)