First week of school

Antofasta group: Rio, Cameron, Stacie, Emily, Sarah, Olivia, yours truly, Gregg, and Elliot

I´m very comfortable in my new home and family. I´ve spent the night talking to my host mother, Fresia, about my experience here during the early hours of the morning. Being the gracious mother and gentlewoman that she is, she´s stayed up for me to make sure I had eaten enough after I had spent the night visiting with friends. She had the fixings of a completo (a typical fast food dish of Chile, basically a hot dog with mashed avocado, tomato, and ketchup... a slightly healthier version that usually contains mayonnaise as well). As I ate, she sat watching Peloton, Chile´s dramatic version of Survivor. my yellow room
Me and Fresia, my host mom
We live in a three story aparment house with a metal red door. Upon entering there´s a patio area where Doggie lives in a cage. The patio is his domain and it can be hard to avoid his droppings on my way out to my early morning runs. The front door opens up to the living room where Fresia has entertained her sister visiting

from Mejillones and others. The kitchen is at the back of the first floor and the light plastic roofing gives way to the bright sunlight each morning. On the second floor is my room, Barby´s room, Fresia´s room and the bathroom. Veronica, her husband, and little Benjamin (Ben-ha-min) live on the third floor next to the laundry area. My room is painted in an almost neon yellow, which matches the white and yellow gingham bedspread. I have a single flower picture which sits above my bed. One morning as I was doing my abs I realized that the picture is hung upside down (the painter´s signature is on the top left corner and the flowers point down rather than up) but I prefer it that way. I have one window across from my bed which is covered by a pink and white gingham window curtain patterened with the cartoon Angelica from the Rugrats making various faces at me. I set up my bobblehead Dad (thank you, Auntie Betty!) by my dresser and scared my little brother, little Benjamin, with it this morning. Apparently my Dad can scare children even when he lives thousands of miles away! hehe. Bobblehead Dad
I just finished my first week of going to Cerro Moreno, the community situated outside of Antofa serving the military air base and the pilot´s families. For this reason, the escuela (1st through 8th grade) is more like a private school than it´s reality as a public school. Their one English teacher, Raquel, teaches all grades with me as well as the large Elmo Funes Colegio in the North of the city. I visited her 7th grade class at Elmo Funes. She explained that as Chile still has communist influences, the government is trying to provide for the poorer class by creating beautiful large schools for them. The school is organized like a castle with spiral staircases and a large open area within the center of the school. Emily, another volunteer, presented her Australian calendar to her 7th grade class. Raquel had me
Me, Profesora Raquel, Emily

read a text about Babylon in English which wouldn´t have been a problem until I had to read "King Namazakkadre" or something similar! In comparison, my school is a small.pink one-story building within the air base. The class size is a maximum of 40 students but, as several student are sick, one class only had 18 students present. I visited my 1st and 2nd grade classes on Wednesday afternoon. I sang Head and Shoulders 10 times for the 1st grade class. Thursday is my large day (8:30 to 6:00) and I observed 5th through 8th grade. That was the day for their monthly English test. The 8th graders had to memorize and recite oral presentations about their favorite music groups/singers (Avril Lavigne, Shakira, Evanescence, My Chemical Romance, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Don Omar among others). I admit that half the time I couldn´t understand a word of English besides "1992" but the students are very hardworking and for the most part, attentive. I´m not allowed to speak Spanish to my students and have to feign stupidity until they speak to me in English. I am allowed to speak to the other professors in English, but the faculty and students who stay at school for lunch break eat together. I was a bit worried about having to play dumb for the next 8 months, basically outcasting me during my lunch. My teacher and I had difficulty explaining ourselves as I wanted
Olivia and I at U. of Antofagasta to speak Spanish during my break so I could have someone to talk to. We resolved the problem as the school is going to pay for me to eat lunch with the professors at the casino, which provides lunch for the servicemen there. That way, I´ll be able to speak to the professors in Spanish without having it known by the students my speaking abilities. Raquel knows how much I like to talk and calls me muy sociable.... I suppose I´m her first volunteer that asked to speak Spanish at school. Nevertheless, by Friday I was excited the week was over and observed her 3rd and 4th grade classes. As a volunteer I feel almost like a superstar, receiving kisses from the students (the Chilean way of greeting), had little kids recite in English "You are beautiful" and little gifts of a plastic bracelet and a little pendant) I created a poster for my students with photos of my family from Jenny´s wedding and drew the things I like to do and made it very visually attractive for the kids (important when they can´t read what I´ve written). I´m still feeling out their ability to speak and comprehend English. Tomorrow, I´ll go to school to plan my lessons and do extracurricular activities with the students.

Gregg, TJ, Cameron, Rio, Elliot, Sarah, Stacie, Olivia, Janette, Me, Emily, Jamie

This weekend, the Mejillones volunteers Rio and Jamie, visited us. We went out in a large group to K Zona, a large bar on the main street. Sarah, Jamie and I headed to Telepizza that night at 2am and then returned home as the rest of them stayedout till 5am. Jamie stayed with me and we woke up early and bought fresh bread at Kerolaet and ate breakfast at the beach. We met up with Rio and Janette during the afternoon and went out to lunch at Pizzante. I was later informed by my host mother that this is one of the most expensive restaurants in the city (we ended up spending $60 for four Rio and I at K Zona bar people) and was repremanded accordingly. We saw the girls off at the bus station for their return to Mejillones, and then Jannette and I met up with our avid ping pong voluntarios at the beach. If you want to play ping pong with the boys, you better have your game on as its very competitive (Gregg let me know I Cameron and TJ at K Zona should call out the score each time I serve) but it´s very entertaining to see the games between Gregg, Elliot, Cameron and TJ. They´ve also competed against their host siblings or other locals from the neighborhood. We swam out to the floating raft, la balsa, at sunset and then fearing sharks, headed back to the beach. Although travelling to my school for the next 8 months will take up a good chunk of my income, I love my school, the students, and my ambitious English co-teacher. Days are long here, and on the weekends my family gets up around 10am. Being a morning person, I usually do my own thing in the morning and we gather for our large lunch around 2pm. We have a good sized once (11´s are like tea time, but my family treats it more like dinner). Most families eat cena at 9pm and don´t go to sleep until 11 or even 1am. Most Antofa schools start at 8am. Tomorrow, I´ll take a colectivo (taxi) to the center of the city, Plaza Colon, where I take a minibus to Cerro Moreno. And, that´s my life in a nutshell so far!bunny basket made by my host "sister" (actually, niece) Barby