first day of school (martes, 3 agosto)

My host dad drove Artemio and me to my school, which is called Colegio Inglés. CI is the oldest school in Iquique, and it used to be a governor´s mansion. No one knows exactly when it was built because it used to be on Peruvian territory before the war. Here, they start teaching kids English at a younger age than what is considered normal in Chile.

Colegio Inglés itself is nice. It´s very different than most American schools. The building is four stories tall and arranged in a rectangular shape around an open courtyard with tarps over it to block out the bright sun. The buildings are a salmon-pink sort of color, and instead of hallways, there are balconies / patios that connect all of the classrooms. The large concrete filled courtyard serves as the gym, where students go for phys ed and recreo (recess). Their lunch tables are also outside. At first I was shocked that gym classes, lunch, and recreo are always outside, but it never rains in Iquique, and right now (mid 60´s F) is winter. Literally, there are many parts of northern Chile that has no recorded history of rainfall EVER. It´s pretty cool how the school is, but the one drawback is having to walk through the courtyard to go to any other part of the school. This means that it is only my first day and I´ve already been nearly trampled by screaming little kids (CI is a preschool through 12th grade Methodist school), hit by soccer balls, and so forth. I kind of wish there weren´t any really little kids here because anything under 7th grade I generally consider to be annoying. I´m just thankful that my students will all be either 7th graders or high school seniors.

The first half of the day I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I had been told I´d be working with one host teacher; when I arrived at the school, I found out in reality I´m going to be working with three. The first class period I shadowed Lilia´s class, which was fine, but I can´t wait to have my own class and teach them myself, because my teaching style is very different than hers.

During second period, Lilia gave me copies of her schedule as well as those of the other two teachers. She told me to go to the library and choose classes from those three schedules that I wanted, and to write down my schedule. When I did that, she started complaining about the classes I´d chosen, and she wasn´t very nice about it. By the end of the day she made me change the schedule three more times. I was getting very frustrated...if you tell me to do something how I want, don´t complain about me doing what you told me to do. Anyway, I figured she was just stressed out or something. I´d heard from numerous people that the program isn´t the most organized, so I kind of just shrugged it off.

Lunch was pretty good. My host mom had dropped off a salad for me at the school. Starting on Thursday I will be eating food that the school prepares for me for free as part of the program. I spoke with the cafeteria staff, who are all very nice. I explained to them that I´m vegan and what I can and can´t eat. The one girl who works in the cafeteria writes my name as Zára instead of Sarah, but that is fine with me because I´ve never really liked my real name anyway. There are way too many Sarahs out there, and I´d rather have a more unique name.

After school I went on a run along the beaches. My host brother Artemio wanted to come with, so we both ended up going. We ran along Playa Brava and Playa Cavancha, and it was really pretty. I enjoyed listening to the tides washing up on the shore, and realized that running through sand is going to make me stronger. Part of the way through Playa Cavancha, Artemio got tired so I kept running. When I turned around and came back I´d been running for an hour and fifteen minutes (pretty normal for me), but he was tired and ended up calling his dad to come pick us up. It was nice running with him, but I´m not used to running with other people. For me it´s more of a solitary, peaceful kind of experience, and I hate just stopping in the middle of a run. But I realized he isn´t used to running longer distances. And his family doesn´t want me to go running alone because they worry. I hope this doesn´t become a problem because running is important to me, and it isn´t realistic to ask someone else to run with me just so I don´t have to go alone, since most people are not accustomed to going the distances I enjoy.

After we arrived back at the house, I enjoyed some vegetable soup with squash, zucchini, and potatoes that my host mom had prepared. She is such a great cook, and I´m very fortunate to have someone who respects the fact that I´m vegan.

After dinner I tried to catch up on some emails and start planning things for my classroom. Next Monday I will have my own classroom, and I´m looking forward to it a lot. Observing other teachers is okay, but I´m my own person, and if I tried to teach a class the way they do, it wouldn´t work at all. It was good seeing what some of my students are like, but it was equally frustrating. One of the teachers has major discipline issues in her class because she´s very softspoken one minute and yells at the students the next, and she doesn´t enforce any rules. Another teacher is really disorganized and wastes a lot of class time getting things ready that should have been ready before class. The other teacher is really mean to the students and nitpicks every single mistake they make, and honestly if I was a kid in her class, I don´t think I´d want to participate or listen to her either. I am excited for when the students become my students and I can wipe the slate clean and start on the right foot with them, mostly by being strict, enforcing rules, and encouraging them to speak English and not tearing them apart when they do speak outloud in class. One of the classes that is greatly complained about by teachers (and which I will ´inherit´next week) is nothing compared to what I´m used to dealing with at my job back in the US. These kids aren´t delinquents--they are just normal kids, and I´m really excited to start teaching them.

written by  Sara Florecita on August 3, 2010 from Iquique, Chile
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)
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