Winter Vacay and English Show

The semester ended today, and I leave tomorrow on an overnight bus to Santiago.  I'm working at an English winter camp for a week there, as part of the program I'm doing, and then I'll have 2 weeks free.  My mom flies in for 10 of those days, and we'll probably head up north to La Serena.  It's a city about 6 hours north of Santiago, and I'm hoping the weather is more agreeable on the beach there, though it'll still be chilly seeing as how we're in the dead of winter.  Today all the students brought in food and we just relaxed, watching movies, playing videos games, and eating everything from tacos and pork chops to junk food and homemade brownies.  Also, I tried snapping a rugby ball like a football and accidentally pegged a third grader in the face, giving him one hell of a bloody nose.  Overall, the day seemed like the appropriate way to end a very crazy semester.

Last night we finally put on our English Show.  Technically it was only half the show, since the teacher of the younger grades backed out last minute and claimed that the 3 months we had to work on it weren't enough to get her students prepared.  It actually turned out better this way because we had a 90 minute show, rather than having parents sit through 3 hours or more of their kids speaking what is essentially gibberish to them.  Mauro the English teacher and I also did our best to present everything bilingually to not keep the parents in the dark the whole night.  Overall, the show was an amazing success.  Just fantastic.

The kids spend yesterday morning rehearsing and, little did I know at the time, rewriting/adding lots of scenes.  We had an early dismissal, and when I showed up back at school in the afternoon the kids were there with amazing costumes and props.  They had built fake trees, brought in camping tents, and did amazing things with make up.  We had students turn themselves into platypuses, girls becomes guys, and one girl dressed up as Jigsaw from the Saw movies.  They all spoke loud and clear, they were able to ad-lib if they fumbled a line, and they did an unbelievable job delivering their jokes.  Some of the students did such a great job with the timing and delivery of their jokes that they were funnier than most of the variety show skits I remember from Ridgewood, and these kids are working with a foreign language.  It was just amazing and completely justified/reinforced my decision to stay for next semester.  All the stress, hair-pulling, and cussing under my breath was completely worth it (vale la pena as they say) when I saw these kids put on five separate skits that genuinely had me laughing out loud. 

7th grade did Phineas and Ferb (apparently a very popular American cartoon I did not know about until recently).  In 2 classes they worked on their own to completely create and write out an original "episode" of the show.  8th grade did a Friday the 13th skit involving camping teens and Jason.  The sophomores did their own interpretation of 10 Things I Hate About You.  The juniors made a very odd and hilarious skit involving the guy from Scream, Jigsaw from Saw, and a woman who was popular in the Chilean news for killing her own children.  It may not sound very comical, but I assure you it rocked.  And the seniors did a skit where the Spice Girls faced off against the Jonas Brothers, resulting in them all doing a number from High School Musical.  I have absolutely no idea why a group of 17 year old chose this as a theme (I assure you that the boys did not do it ironically; they seem to genuinely like these Jonas guys), but it turned out awesome.  They choreographed awesome dances and learned the lyrics and just generally did a fantastic job.

Check out pics from the English Show here.

Enough gushing about my students.  Now to pack and focus on getting to Santiago...

-Paul

Random Observations

Various things I've noticed about life down here:

Quiltros: It's illegal in Chile to kill dogs, and as a result the street across the entire country are overrun with stray dogs, or quiltros as they're known here.  It's not uncommon for important soccer games to be interrupted by strays jumping on the field.  This means every Chilean city has roves of random dogs: some laying half-dead idly on the sidewalk, others barking like assholes as you walk past, and others constantly jumping into traffic on the roads.  You may expect to come across lots of dog crap, and you'd be right, but what you may not think about is the fleas.  The fucking fleas.  Pretty much everybody in the country seems to have fleas at home, whether they own a dog or not, due to the uncontrollable number of street dogs.  At any given point, I have about 15 bites itching on my body.

Onces: People don't eat dinner in Chile.  Breakfast and lunch are similar to the States--a quickly toasted bun with jam or a piece of fruit in the morning, and some kind of pasta, stew, or meat with potatoes or rice to be microwaved at 1 for lunch.  But there is not main course at 6 or so after work.  Families sit down anywhere between 6:30 and 9 for once (own-say) which consists of tea and bread.  I'm lucky enough to be living with an amazing family, and thus everything including the meals seems to be above-average.  Our onces usually will also include some boiled hot dogs or eggs with onions to accompany the tea and bread.  We also will normally have like two or three home-made marmalades for the bread.  Friday, for example, was quite interesting.  We had an awesomely delicious lunch at around 2 and then at 8 we had rolls with a new type of cheese my host mom bought from some dude: a brick of Philadelphia cream cheese with a hole cut out in the center.  Inside the hole: soy sauce.  Yup, rolls with philly cream cheese and soy sauce for "dinner."  As a result, almost all volunteers eat a whole lot less here than at home, but since all the foods are super-duper greasy and fatty (this coming from a guy who's rolled a hot dog up inside a slice of pizza) people can still gain weight while volunteering here.  It's very weird.

The (little bit too) laid-back atmosphere at school:  Classes never start on time.  Ever.  Teachers sit around chatting or getting their things together about five minutes after class is scheduled to start.  Even if they do get into the room by the correct time, or close to it, neither the students nor the teacher are capable of simply diving into the lesson.  Just last week in 6th grade, though they could have been reviewing for mid-term exams or rehearsing for the English Show, the teacher took an hour and fifteen minutes to slowly explain what would be on the exams, and then write down about ten example sentences on the board.  We could have saved the thirty minutes it took them to copy the problems by simply handing out pre-written worksheets.  But that would have required lesson planning on the teacher's half, which is simply unimaginable down here.

Disciplining your own kids (or there lack of): Judging by my own experiences with my host family, and what other volunteers have told me about their own families, parents here seem to rarely ever discipline their own kids.  The five year old girl here constantly throws hissy fits, hollers at the top of her lungs at (or from underneath) the dinner table, ignores me when I say hello, and yells "dejame!!!" (Spanish for "leave me alone," but in the limited vocabulary of a five y/o that basically translates as "fuck off") at anybody ranging from me to her own father.  Whereas back home a good ole fashioned ass-whooping would have set her straight months ago, here the folks just carry on eating like nothing is happening.  I have no idea of this is how they dealt with their other kids, but if it is I'd be very surprised, seeing as how Ignacia and Camila (the 15 and 21 year olds) are actually good people and very well-mannered.  Other gringos have told me similar stories about host brothers and sisters ranging from adolescent girls moaning and bitching to men in their 30s still living at home and having mommy literally wake up at 6 am when they come home from the bars to rub their back until they fall asleep.  Yes, that's an actual story one of my friends told me.

There are plenty of other random quirky cultural differences I'll get into as I remember them.  Contrary to the cynical tone this post may have, I'm having an absolute ball down here and am very excited about next semester.  I've adjusted to the dogs, smaller dinners, slow-moving (lazy?) attitudes at school and the rude five-year-old, but the fleas bites are pissing me off now more than ever.  Bright side: the first three days of July have been absolutely beautiful, though I've just stayed in and watched movies all weekend.  However, now I'm sure the Chilote gods are cuing the heavy rain clouds.  We had hail here last week, as I understand Chicago did too.  Lightning, however, is rare here.  Unlike downtown Chicago.

-Paul

Happy Independence Day!

For the 4th this year I will be most likely be watching Chile play Mexico in the Copa America tournament rather than pulling several all-nighters to set up a massive fireworks show.  Curiously enough, I think that actually bums be out.  Our semester here is pretty much over.  The students will be presenting their PowerPoints on various English-speaking cities or countries as a final assignment I came up with and we're doing our English Show this Thursday, or at least half of it.  Though we first mentioned the English Show at the beginning of April, and we've been more or less trying to get the kids to rehearse for the last two months, the English teacher of the younger grades randomly decided last week that the kids weren't going to be ready in time for Thursday.  Without consulting anyone, including the other English professor --who is in charge of the show alongside her and also her freaking roommate she sees daily--she decided to simply tell the principal the entire show would be delayed.  If I hadn't gone to get Mauro (the other English teach) then I think the show would have been postponed, but only one of two teachers would have realized it.  In a nutshell, that's how life works in Chile.  Basically, this chick had over 2 months to get the little kids to memorize a 3 minute song and literally the week before decided to bring up her very first complaints/doubts, saying she couldn't do her job because the kids are sick too often and don't come to school.

Another example of how smoothly things here work: I went to the bank a few weeks ago to open up an account (for direct deposit purposes) and was told that I couldn't...because the bank ran out of the form I'd need to fill out.  They simply didn't have physical copies of the form needed for anybody to open up a new basic account.  So this past Friday I went to the bigger location and waited 30 minutes in line, only to find out I was in the wrong line.  Honestly, I wasn't even upset because for the last half hour I was anticipating just that scenario.  Of course, in order to ask anyone if I was in the right line I would have had to wait in that line anyway, so I just sat there thinking "I'm probably in the wrong spot."  I walked over to the correct desk and was told that opening up a basic account takes about a month.  The paperwork (which this location did have) has to be sent to Santiago and probably transcribed into Latin by a monk or something before the account can be opened.  Of course, when I asked my host family about this, they explained that they have never had to wait that long for a bank account to open so....I guess we'll see what happens.

After this week is done I'm catching a 15 hour bus up north to Santiago to work at a winter camp for the EOD program, which is basically a day camp where students can practice their English and participate in run of the mill camp activities.  Then I'll have a few days to myself to travel or whatever before my mom flies in.  My mom will be here for about 10 days, giving me a great opportunity to re-up on some much-needed things from the States, drop off with her random souvenirs I've bought, and get over any homesickness by simply chilllin with my mommy.  Before you know it, it'll be August and I'll be back on the island.

Last weekend two friends came down from La Serena (24 hour bus ride away!) and stayed with me at the house.  My host family was super nice, as usual, and took us all over the island to see places I hadn't even been to yet.  Check out the photos here.

-Paul