Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Random Thoughts

This week the weather has been sooooo nice.  It has only gone down to about 50 in the evenings and mornings, and during the day it has been close to 75 or so.  We're supposed to be getting closer to winter, but I'm not complaining one bit about this abnormality.

Today I had a taste (but a good one) of teaching in Spanish at school.  One of the Spanish teachers was sick and lost her voice completely.  This week the classes are just doing oral evaluations, so it wasn't critical that I was in class.  After checking with the head of the English department she told me it would be fine to go around with the Spanish teacher and be her voice for the day.

Her first class was with a 9th grade class, and when I have them they are usually pretty squirrely.  Seeing that it was the morning they seemed more tame.  We talked about different types of dialogue (interviews, conversations, debates, etc), and it was a good feeling getting to teach in Spanish. 

The other two classes just had study guides to work on, so I got to talk to the kids while they worked.  It turns out that some of them have their own band and already have 3 albums, and they let me listen to their music.  It is really good and they even used a bass instead of a bass guitar in that particular song.  We talked about how much music means to us and our experiences with it, and it was cool having that in common with them. 

On a similar note, a few days before that there was a girl reading a book about ways to prevent cancer, and she had post it notes sticking out all over the place from the book.  I asked her about it, and she had actually had some lesions the year before and had since recovered.  Now she is very interested in healthy behaviors to help prevent cancer, and she is writing her thesis for graduation about it.  It was so awesome to see her writing about something so dear to her, and she told me that she wants to be sure that others at her school know about things they can do to live a healthy life.

I've also picked up on a few more cultural things here.  I now find myself waving my finger at people (like native Chileans) as a way of expressing disagreement or to say no.  One thing that they do here too is that they blink their eyes and smile at you.  This seems to be our version of nodding your head at someone to acknowledge or agree with what someone is saying.

My circle of friends here is expanding, and it is nice getting to know new people.  I am getting to know more and more native Chileans, and they are giving me travel advice and such and are watching out for me so that I don't get ripped off when buying things or when searching for a new place to live. 

I feel like I have been in Santiago for too long and haven't done enough traveling.  Looking back, I think it has been over a month since I last went somewhere.  Part of me wants to travel to Vina or Valpo for the weekend, but another part of me wants to suck it up and stay in Santiago to save a bit of money.  Decisions decisions.....

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