Yesterday was Dia de las Glorais Navales, a national holiday commemorating an 1879 naval battle. There were small parades and celebrations in all the towns across Chile. On Friday, the students here had their own Navy Day parade, which consisted of literally walking the distance of one city block. When I got to school in the morning, I quickly learned that parades here require formal wear. Like prom or wedding-type formal. And of course no one told me this ahead of time, and then everyone was surprised to see me wearing a sweater and sneakers to work like I do every single day. As though when I heard the words "school parade" I was supposed to just assume that meant wearing my finest suit that I did not bring to Chile.
In true Chile fashion, the entire morning was ass-backwards. First off, I arrived about 15 late due to cops not being able to direct traffic around an accident on the one road leading to Castro. When I arrived, I realized that I was, in fact, still early since everything here runs on Chilean time, meaning about 30 minutes late. My teacher, for example, was not phased by the fact that he showed up an hour late without any explanation. Then, the teachers just sat around for about half an hour while the kids just kinda chilled, until we all left for the parade.
Every school in town seemed to be at the parade. We wasted about an hour collecting kids' backpacks to put in a van (since I guess there's a strict no backpack rule for parades), just standing around on the sidewalk while others lined up, and finally lining our own kids up. And then came the actual marching. We literally walked straight down the street for about ten minutes or less. We walked past one intersection, alongside the plaza, and then disbanded. After this, I joined a few teachers for drinks down by the harbor. First we walked over to street vendors selling salmon. Two bucks for a bowl of the freshest salmon I've ever had. Then we walked over with our bowls of seafood to a local tavern where we went through a couple bottles of wine. After dropping our bowls and silverware off with the seafood lady, we all went home. It was definitely different to see a street vendor not using disposable styrofoam cups. Along the same lines, last week when we had a barbecue at school for Students' Day, all the kids brought plates and forks with them that they took back home to wash after school. Students also reuse disposable cups when they hold fundraisers. Though the lack of disposable plates and cups seems inconvenient and really weird, the fact is that it's a hell of a lot better than creating the amount of garbage we collect in the US. Just picture the amount of trash we have to take out after having like ten friends over for beer and pizza. Imagine how much smaller that heap would be if we had just washed the plates and cups.
On Thursday I picked up my check (we get paid a whopping $160/mo.) and worked with kids on our English Show. The English Show is like a school talent show, where every grade will present skits, songs, or plays in English. Planning this with the younger kids, who's English is limited, has been challenging. And the teacher I work with in those grades has done nothing to make it easier. Though the show is July 1st and the fifth graders aren't at all ready, she told me last week she "wasn't sure she liked their idea," which is to do a skit based on Open Season. Not sure? The show is in a month. How about you help me type up a skit and get the kids rehearsing, rather than sit around and roll around new ideas in your head? So on Thursday, rather than helping me plot out a script with the class, she just sat at her desk grading papers, while I lost half the class' attention as they congregated around her desk and combed her hair or played with her laptop. What can you expect from someone who became a teacher only after she failed the exam to become a cop?
When I came back to school in the afternoon, after cashing my check at the bank that's only open until 2pm, I was greeted by an empty classroom. Apparently the seniors had scheduled a discussion on cultural identity and death for all of the junior high and high school. I'm not sure if I was just in the dark because I'm a gringo and not really a teacher, or if all the teachers had no clue and were just okay with this. The fact is that people don't ever give you more than a few days notice on anything. As though parade dress-codes, early dismissals, and school-wide pep rallies weren't things that I may want to know about, or know about more than five minutes in advance. It's amazing how an entire country is perfectly okay never know what's going to happen more than five days in advance. The discussion, from what I understood, was pretty interesting. Also interesting: the room we were in offered a view of a rainbow seemingly touching down right on the water outside. Pretty surreal. After school one of the moms, a gringo from NY who's lived here for years, offered me a ride into town. And since she was delivering baked goods to a customer for her home baking business, I got a free loaf of chocolate banana bread, too. Pretty awesome. Weekend has consisted of me watching movies (also just started watching Firefly) and bumming around. Bulls game in a few hours, hopefully the internet connection doesn't give out like last time.
-Pablo
No comments:
Post a Comment