Happy Halloween

We've had some fall weather here in Santiago just in time for Halloween on this side of the equator. A few days of cooler temps, a night of pouring down rain, and a couple of mornings in the 40's later, I was really feeling like I was celebrating this week of pumpkin carving and costume selecting with all of you at home. I've even been participating in spirit with some Granny Smith apples dipped in manjar, a pretty close caramel substitute that's even available in the "light" variety. It reminds me a lot of my former habit of dipping in the individual Marzetti's tubs. Yum.
The talk in the teacher's lounge this morning was all about the Halloween related activities that we were all doing with our students. Scary stories, quizzes on random Halloween knowledge, and just overall discussion about how/if they celebrate were some of the topics that came up. Many of my teenagers indicated that their celebrating was limited to the possibility of going to party where they might wear a mask, and all I have personally seen is an increase in candy and some masks from the Scream movies. Here's to you Courteney and David, and here are a few shots that I documented with my camera on my bike ride home.

Scream mask or notebook case anyone?

Happy Halloween everybody, I hope you're all enjoying your parties tonight and that all of the kids are dressed up in their best costumes yet!

Teaching Here 'n There, Part II

Today I'm fortunate enough to begin two new classes with students that I had already taught during the last session. I feel very lucky, first because I didn't wake-up with those first day jitters from having to walk into a classroom of people that you don't know, and second because these students requested to have me continue as their teacher into the next course. I think that the level of comfort that students feel in a classroom is really relevant in their learning process, and what I enjoy most about these two classes is how much the students like and respect one another. The group dynamic is positive and fun, and I am just lucky enough to have been assigned to them in the first place.

Teaching adults is something that I'd never done before, so it's been nice not only to have adult classes, but to also to have the experience of teaching classes away from a school or from the institute. For example, I just started teaching a new class of 3 students that meets in the corporate office of a business here in Santiago. One of the negatives that I had sometimes felt about teaching in a high school was the monotony. I envied my friends who had different schedules everyday or meetings that would take them out of the office. Although commuting at the height of the day isn't my favorite thing to do, the positive side is that it gets me out and about in my new city and puts me in contact with new adults in different occupations and job settings.

Another big difference to note is the amount of class time that I spend here with my teen students. At home I was teaching them for 50 minutes a day for 180 days. Here my teen classes only meet once a week for 3 hours for about 4 months. Although I started with them in mid-August, it seems like we really only got to know one another within the last several weeks. It's a lot more difficult to establish that rapport with kids that you only see one day a  week instead of 5. It's also very challenging to plan a lesson for that long of a time period. I was accustomed to doing at least 3 activities with my teenagers at home during a 50 minute time period, so having a successful 3 hour class here requires a really tight lesson plan with an even greater variety of activities. I've already become so used to teaching classes of 80-240 minutes that I think going back to the 50 minute schedule will seem way too short!

Taking time to smell the roses

I've been so busy and a little stressed with my teaching schedule lately that I feel like I haven't had a whole lot of time to do anything else. It's not so much the teaching part as it is the random hours, and just when I thought I might have 2 days to breathe in between terms, I got a new class that starts on Monday on one side of the city that will give me just enough time to get back to teach my night class on the other side. That also means having to take the metro at the busiest time of day in the hot months...yuck.
Luckily, I'm always able to ride my bike to my Saturday morning class, and this Saturday I noticed so many of the beautiful flowers that have popped up around the city. Because of my winter arrival in August, I have really appreciated the winter/spring transition, and this Midwestern girl doesn't take these kinds of things for granted. I enjoy the little container gardening that I can do at home and it never involves any of the tropical plants that I've seen here. Geraniums come and go during our 3 hot summer months, and the roses never look anything like this. Other than those two, I'm not even sure what all of these flowers are, so jump in if you are good at that sort of thing!

When where you live becomes your home

After a long travel weekend last weekend (more on that to come), it struck me that I was ready to go home, and that "home" was Santiago. It might not be my permanent home, but sometime into my 3rd month here in Chile, it became the place that I wanted to come back to. I craved the familiarity of my "own" bed, my space in la casita, my comfort zone here in Chile. As much as I've enjoyed running around each weekend trying to see and do as much as I could fit in, I decided this weekend to do the opposite. I enjoy Santiago on the weekends since there is a certain tranquility that you just don't experience during the week. I can ride my bike and not have to carefully weave through both people and cars on every block, I can take the bus or the metro without being a piece of some sweaty sandwich, and I can sleep in on Sunday without having to set an alarm. I did the things that people who live here do. Instead of going to a museum or a new restaurant, I disinfected veggies from the feria, soaked and boiled beans, and organized my winter and summer clothes. I went to yoga, rode my bike, and even went to see "Eat, Pray, Love" with some gringa friends. Although I'm not taking a year to travel around Italy, India, and Indonesia, I am taking a year to go where I want to go and do what I want to do, so I definitely identified with Liz Gilbert's journey. Right now I'm just enjoying the peace that comes with living in a different place in the world and having it be comfortable enough to be called home.

Celebrating the Miners

I haven't been here in Chile long, but one day I will look back at my blog and remember this historic day. I'll remember that I was here in Chile the day that the trapped miners were rescued, and that along with everyone else in Chile and around the world, I stayed up late watching each miner be rescued one by one. I heard the horns honking in celebration around Santiago as the last miner was rescued. I'll remember that I lived here in 2010, the year of the earthquake, the bicentennial, and the year that the trapped miners were rescued.
I'm truly impressed and amazed by the strength and patriotism of the people in this country.
Thanks to everyone back home who's been asking about the 33 miners since they were discovered on August 22nd. Please continue to keep the miners and their families in your thoughts and prayers.
Viva Chile!

Teaching Here 'n There

I will try to take a break from the "look at all of the day-trips I am taking" picture portion of the blog that seems to have taken over and focus on the reason why I actually came to Chile, to teach English. I haven't said a lot about this yet and I can't give any specifics about my institute on my blog, but let me take this opportunity to report my experience teaching English here thus far.

As a teacher by trade, my observations could be vastly different from those who have never taught in a classroom in the U.S., but maybe not? I think with teaching your first language comes a certain level confidence that one doesn't ever have with their second language. Of course, there are exceptions for people who grow up other countries, live there for many years, have bilingual parents, etc. My experience in learning Spanish was in school so I became a lot more adept at learning grammatical rules of Spanish and how to use it "correctly" and completed ignored all of the English grammar rules in English class and continued to speak as I always had. This combined with several years of teaching Spanish translates to me being able to explain those rules of the Spanish language pretty well. Sure, my students here might laugh because I can't say my "r's" exactly the way that a native can, but I do have the benefit of understanding the grammatical structures of Spanish and how my students think. I know why they want to say "Have your parents any car?" and that learning "do" is difficult concept because it's so opposite the Spanish structure.

What I don't know all that well quite yet is how to explain English rules for things that I can repeat to myself 2-3 times and still not know which is the correct one since they both sound "right" to me! These are the moments that frustrate me since students seem to get caught up on some of those rules that I'm not accustomed to teaching. Meanwhile I'm waving my arms and saying "look over here at this awesome thematic lesson that I've planned" and never mind the picky grammar rule, let's just continue the conversation we were having about gossip and its negative effects. Over the course of the last few years I had stopped teaching grammar as a separate lesson and begun incorporating it a lot more holistically, hence the difficulty I'm having of doing things the "old way". I'm also working on an online TEFL course that wasn't required of me since I have teaching experience, but I want to complete one just to have the extra practice as well as the certification.

Two months into my experience I'd have to say that for me the positives outweigh the negatives. I love the change of teaching adults as well as teenagers. I love not having to spend hours and hours grading papers and being able to put that time into planning lessons for 8 students instead of 27. I'm also fortunate to be able to dip into my previous lessons that I used back home and try to use them here as an English lesson. I love being able to explain vocabulary as it comes up in class and tell an accompanying story in my first language. (last week it was "leftovers")

The schedule isn't always optimal, but I do often have time during the day to catch up on email, Skype with my family and friends at school, and possibly take a quick nap if I'm exhausted from teaching til 9 and then running home and having to be somewhere else at 8 the next morning. When you look at the breakdown of the hours, it doesn't look like much compared to what I was doing at home, but it does begin to wear you down. It's impossible to get home at 9:40 and get anything done and also be in bed at a decent time to feel rested enough for the next day's early class. That combined with also working early on Saturday mornings makes the week feel a lot longer.

Overall, I've found that it's just like anything else in life, create a balance for yourself and learn what works for you!

Mercado Libre

In the States I wasn´t much of an Ebay or a Craigslist kind of girl since if you needed to exchange some kind of goods or services with someone on Craigslist there was always that chance that you could end up well, dead. For this reason I was very cautious about using it to sell any of my belongings before I came to Chile. I know many people swear by Ebay, but I am more of an Amazon girl...yeah, go ahead and click on one of those links on my blog and buy something so I can make 50 cents!
When I began the search for my bike, a friend of mine recommended a site here called Mercado Libre, I didn't really know anything about it and I can't say that I'm an expert on it now by any means, but I can say that I've had two successful experiences here to date and would recommend for people here to at least do a search to see if someone here might be selling what you are looking for. Both of the items that I purchased were right here in Santiago and I was able to meet with the sellers face to face to complete the transactions in cash. Since many of these sites like Ebay rely on seller ratings, the sellers seem to go out of their way to be extra accommodating.
This week I used the site again to find a new camera, and I found an honest young man who was selling a new one in the box with the accompanying sales receipt. It only cost a few dollars more than I would have paid for it in the US, minus the hassle of shipping, insurance, and customs. I met up with him at Starbucks to pick it up, so as soon as class ends in a few hours I´ll be on my way to La Serena and ready to take pictures as if nothing had ever happened!