starting to get things figured out at school (miercoles, 4 agosto)

Besides that, school is going well. My 7th graders are pretty rowdy. I really love my high school seniors, especially the poorly behaved ones...My host teacher has problems handling them (it´s a metallurgy class at the trade school and their vocab focuses on metalworking - mining related words, the class is mostly boys). I´m supposed to be observing this week but my host teacher asked if i felt like `dealing with them,` (aka teaching the class), so i did...and I didnt have any major problems!! After those students left, she was happy because I actually got them to participate. It sounds weird but if you act goofy and act out all the verbs and vocab words, they find it amusing. They also like it when you can laugh at yourself and when I ask them to tell me what the word is in Spanish, so then they feel useful and more likely to particpate. My high school kids can speak English well but have poor attitudes and don`t want to do anything. They are also afraid of making mistakes but I try to be encouraging and focus on what they can do and let some of the small mistakes go as long as I can still understand them. I also have an English class for seniors focusing on accounting, one on business, one for students who are mostly girls who are going to be secretaries, and one for students learning electrical work.

Iquique is great. I haven´t seen a whole lot of it bc my host family lives on the outskirts of the city and it´s a 20 min bus ride to the downtown area. I only teach on Mon, Tue,Wed, and Thurs, which is good because I have time to take weekend trips to different places. This weekend my host brothers and I are hiking / climbing to the top of Cerro Dragon, this big hill / mountain right by Iquique, and going to the downtown area to see different places. Next weekend we are driving out to Pica where there are aguas termales where we can go, and on the way we´re going to see geoglyphs such as El Gigante de Atacama. Pica is about 2 hrs away but my host cousin, Manuel, who lives with us has a car.

It´s nice having a set routine that´s the same Monday through Thursday. I leave for school at 8am, and the school day ends at 4:30. On Tuesday and Thursday I have to stay later for choir rehearsal unti 6:30. I am now Colegio Inglés´s assistant choir director. The songs I´ll teach them are in English, but they have to be religious songs bc my school is a Methodist school. The last week in August my choir, which has 20 students, will be going on a week long choir tour trip to Santiago, Coquimbo, and LaSerena. It´ll be fun bc the choir kids are overall good kids w-out behavior issues. The music director in my school, Cristián Villaruel, is really nice too. I have to speak in Spanish w him bc he only knows a little bit of English. Tue and Thurs are long days but they are fun. I love this school and my role here bc I´m involved w- music, i´m working with middle / high school kids, I am actually using my business administration and accounting backgrounds to teach my classes, and I get to use Spanish every day!

My host mom brought me rice and vegetable soup for lunch. I ate with my host teacher, who always eats alone in her classroom, while we discussed details for my classes I´m going to be teaching. Tomorrow I´m going to eat in the teachers´lounge and meet more of my co-workers. I kind of wish I didn´t have to spend the rest of the week observing because I feel like I´m well-prepared to teach my own classes.

After school I went running along Playa Brava in the sand. It´s definitely pretty running here, and I think I should get used to the sand. I can´t wait for it to warm up a little more so I can start taking surfing lessons.

written by  Sara Florecita on August 4, 2010 from Iquique, Chile
from the travel blog: año de dos inviernos (Chile 2010)
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