I'm officially Chilean!

I just picked up my Cedula de identificacion today, which is basically my Chilean ID!  It has my picture and everything.  Of course it was a huge process of going to the international police and registering my visa, then waiting in a lot of long lines, but it was worth it.  I'm legal!  

So we went to La Serena this past weekend, a city on the coast, to celebrate Easter.  We had a three-day weekend which was nice after a stressful first two weeks.  The coast was amazing.  We ate a TON of seafood, its super cheap here.  They have so much too, some that we don't even have English words for I don't think.  We went to the beach everyday which wasn't too warm, but of course I got scorched.  That Chilean sun is a trickster.  There were six of us that went; three Chilean boys and three American girls, needless to say there were some language barriers, but we made it work.  

School is going a lot better!  I feel like I know what's going on a little bit more, and we have books for our students so they're not completely lost.  They're so great.  Our first quiz is next week and I'm kind of nervous for them!

I'm not homeless!  We had one month of free housing that ends Monday in a university residence and then we were supposed to be out, but Chelsea and I are staying for one more month so we have time to find a place.  I was thinking I might have to live on the streets.  

As if commuting to my campus for an hour each way isn't enough, March 29th is el dia del joven combatiente - day of the young combatant - which commemorates the deaths of two Chilean boys during the military regime, and apparently its celebrated more in the less affluent parts of Santiago AKA right by my campus!  There are protests, and pillaging, and violence, and I'm hoping we don't have to go to work Friday!  Two weekends ago all Americans were advised not to go to the city center because of a protest against the American-led war in Iraq.  There are so many protests and demonstrations here.  

Kind of a boring post, but I guess no news is good news in this case.  All is well, I hope everyone is doing well in the states!  I don't have more pictures right now because my camera broke, but I'll post some when I get a new one.

Back to School

So I've had four days of classes and I looooove my students.  They are all fairly young and really respectful.  I have to very basic classes and one intermediate.  I just tell them I'm learning Spanish while you're learning English so we can help each other.  Hopefully they won't take advantage of me too much!

I've only had four days of classes, BUT, I've commuted to get there 12 hours this week already!  It takes about 1hr 15 min. to get to my school, which is in a bad part of town.  I haven't felt unsafe at all yet, but I wouldn't want to be alone around the area at night.  

The things my students know is hilarious.  I asked them for words they knew in English or other things like that, and they always surprise me.  They do try really hard though, I think they can tell I'm struggling with speaking Spanish so its ok for them to struggle as well.

My boss quit yesterday.  There are coordinators at each site for the English classes and mine quit!  As if we weren't confused enough on the first day of class, now we have no idea who to ask!  We're just trying to scrape by these first few weeks.  Books don't come for the Basic classes until the beginning of April, and we don't have any idea what the curriculum is for intermediate because they're revising the whole program.

Other than that, everything is great!  Chelsea and I haven't started apartment searching yet, but we are going to soon.  Next week is la semana santa (holy week) so that will be very interesting being in a very catholic country.  Hopefully I get a ton of school off, we don't know the calendar yet.  

Chao!

"Certified" Teachers

Hola!  We finished our training at DuocUC where we will be teaching and we start teaching tomorrow...kind of.  The teachers in my program at my campus still don't know their schedules, what level of English they're teaching, or have any materials.  Everyone was on vacation up until last week so things are pretty disorganized.  All we know is we have to show up by 8:30 because 4 out of the 5 of us will have an 8:30 AM class.  That sounds ok, but it is about an hour and 15 minute commute to our campus.  Wish me luck!

Last Friday we had a farewell dinner because half of the people in our program are teaching on the coast and they left us!  Here is a picture of our entire Teach in Chile group:

Everything is still going really well.  I haven't been using my Spanish much because I still live with a lot of people in my program and its been so stressful trying to figure out our schedules we just speak in English.

Todo esta bien!

So we made it!  Chelsea and I got into Santiago about 1:00 p.m. (10:00 a.m. in Iowa) last Sunday.  Both of my suitcases were overweight, of course.  We had training with our organization CIEE - Council on International Educational Exchange - all last week.  It was basically cultural training and learning about how to get around Santiago.  We went to Pomaire a village outside santiago famous for its pottery, and la Chascona - one of Pablo Neruda's three houses in Chile. 

La Chascona.

We had  a few classes on Chilean spanish because its very unique and they speak very fast.  I learned that Chileans love onomatopoeias.  Their cards to ride el metro (the subway) are called BIP cards because they make a beep when you use them and they call babies guaguas - pronounced wah--wahs.  So thats pretty fun.

We started training at DuocUC this week and it has been really unorganized.  We don't know which level of English we are teaching, what book we are using, or our schedule.  Hopefully we find out before we start next Monday!

Right now I'm living in a residencia for international students.  We each have our own rooms and share a few people to one bathroom.  I have all my pictures up on a webpage if you go here and there is also a link on the left side of my page. 

The people in the program are great.  They come from everywhere: Arkansas, Maine, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon, Iowa, and I think thats it.  Here are some of the people in our group in our hotel one night.  We had a little wine and pisco night.  Wine is probably about $4-5 a bottle and pisco is about the same, it makes for some fun nights.

This is a view from our first hotel room.

Some Chilean amigos we hang out with.

Hope everyone is well!  Drop me a line sometime or leave a comment.  You can email me at brookeepalmer@gmail.com.