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
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