El+viaje

Hoy es el día de mi salida para Chile. Tengo mi maleta preparada. Pesa bastante pues tengo muchas cosas para el colegio alli. ¡Tengo que admitir que me siento un poco nerviosa! Ayer recibí un correo de mi anfitrona - Sylvia. Me buscará en la estación de autobuses viernes entonces supongo que voy a pasar una noche en Santiago después del vuelo pues llego a Santiago el jueves por la tarde. Voy a estar viviendo en Machali y el colegio está en Rancagua que está a hora y cuarto de Santiago. Parece estar muy cerca de los Andes. El colegio se llama el Colegio Inglés Saint John.
 * Jueves, 30 de septiembre (1)**

I arrived in Santiago after about 10 hours flying. Although we were a bit late leaving due to computer problems in Sanitago, we actually arrived quite a bit early I was picked up and taken to the home of one of the AFS volunteers (Ana María) in Santiago. I had lunch there and Ana María and I found that we had quite a few things in common - EG: we are the same age and our mothers are the same age. We got on really well. We went for a drive around some areas of Santiago and then to a shopping mall called Alto Las Condes where I changed some money from $US to pesos. There are roughly 300 pesos to $1.00. After that Ana María took me to the AFS offices in Santiago and then I was taken to the home of another volunteer, Claudia, where I had dinner with her and her two teenage sons who are absolutely charming boys and then slept there the night.
 * Jueves, 30 de sept****iembre (2)**

I had to get up early as the taxi driver was coming to take me to the bus station. It was an interesting drive through the city as I saw lots of things I´d like to have a closer look at. I´ll try to get a weekend back there or get to spend a couple of days there at the end. I saw some of those places in 1997 when I was there with the MHS Girls´ Soccer Tour but I´d like to have another look at them and get a better pciture of Santiago in my mind.
 * Viernes, 1 de noviembre**

On the way to Machalí I was fixated on the Andes. There is less snow on them than I expected but they are still so magnificent. It´s such shame the smog in Santiago prevents them from being seen at their best. In Machalí I was met at the bus station by Sylvia and her twelve year old son Diego. Raúl, Sylvia´s husband and Javiera, their 19 year old daughter, were waiting for us at home.They have two dogs - Coto and Kuky - so I feel quite at home. Their house is in a new area. It´s two storeyed with a bit of garden at the front and at the back.Diego put up the flag while I supervised and then Javier and Kuky posed for a photo. My room is upstairs and I have a view of the Andes.

After a delicious lunch prepared by Raúl (Sylvia´s husband) who had to start work in the coppermine in the afternoon as he is on night shift, we took Kuky the poodle to the vet to have her preganancy confirmed. o within the next couple of weeks I will become and honorary aunty! Shortly after we got home, friends of Sylvia´s started to arrive for my welcome party. They are all AFS volunteeers. There were lots of yummy things to eat - I have to remember so I can make some of them back in NZ - and I got to try a pisco sour, which I liked. I need to bring home the ingredients for that too - but I won´t be taking them to school!



I had a bit of sleep in and after breakfast we went to a big hardware type store where we bought some "toys" for Raúl who hopes to get stuck into the garden when he has some days off later in the week. I was appalled to find gigantic spiders for sale when Diego took me to have a look at the pets store. Not my cup of tea at all!!! Who in their right mind would want one of those as a pet! After lunch Raúl went off to work again and we all had a siesta. This morning we went to a market to get some fruit and veges. I bought a huge bunch of pink and white carnations for Sylvia for about $6.00. They were lovely. There were huge bunches of asparagus on sale for about $4. This is an area where asparagus is grown so I´m in the right place as I adore asparagus. There were also huge capsicums and tomatoes and quite a few products that I didn´t recognise and had to ask about.
 * Sábado, 2 de noviembre**
 * Domingo, 3 de noviembre**



We had a typical asado for lunch and ate outside. Kuky and Coto both kept an eye on procedings but without much of a successful outcome as far as they were concerned as no titbits went their way.

This afternon I´ve had time to catch up on emails. Diego came along while I was chatting to my daughter Janine so he exchanged a couple of messages with her. He is only 12 but his English is very good and he is very confident. If that is the result of learning another language from early childhood, then some of the bigwigs in NZ should have another think about what they are advocating!! How can they possbily say there is not advantage to starting language learning early! At Diego´s school, which is where I´ll be based, children start learning English from Kindergarten level. It´s compulsory. Today was my first day at school but I didn´t actually go until 3pm. In the morning Javiera and I went with Sylvia to the hairdresser as she didn´t have any classes in the morning. We went out to the University of Aconcagua to see a teacher there about my sitting in on some classes and then went to a mall in Rancagua where we had a coffee. After lunch I went to school with Sylvia at 3pm to work with a small group of students preparing the Preliminary English Test for Cambridge. There were 12 of them aged 13. I was really impressed at what they can do - mind you they have been learning English since kindergarten. They were lovely and I enjoyed working with them.
 * Lunes, 4 de octubre**

I had an early start today as I had to be at school before 8am to be picked up by Victor, an English teacher from the Colegio Republica Argentina - a state school, unlike the Colegio Inglés Saint John. This was a girls´school for girls up to 12 years of age. The children all wear white smocks over their uniforms. The first class was of 36 girls aged about12 (8 Basico - Year 9). They were very noisy and didn´t pay a lot attention to my instructions when I tried to play a game with them. The class was 2 x 45 minute sessions - my students at home could never focus for so long!
 * Martes, 5 de octubre**

We had a 15 minute break before the next session which was with a younger group aged about 11 (7 Basico - Year 8). There were about 36 of them too. They were really nice and I enjoyed them. We successfully played some games together and I gave out pineapple lumps, to their great delight. It was interesting to discover the tricky points for them as they learn English. It made me glad I didn´t have to study English to learn it - Spanish seems much more straight-forward! There was another 10 minute break after than one and a half hour stint. The last group for the morning were younger - about 10 - and they were great fun. Unfortunately, Ana Luisa from the Instituto Inglés arrived to take me to her school before we had quite finished the game we were playing. We got a colectivo there. That´s like a taxi but travels a set route and you share it with others which makes it a lot cheaper. It was 450 pesos per person which is about $1.50. The Instituto Inglés is another private school where English is taught from Kindergarten to Senior level. I met up with Marcia who came to my party on Friday again as she also works there. I got introduced to so many people that my head was reeling. I was made to feel like a VIP and very well looked after. We lunch in the school canteen: soup, beef and rice, salad and vanilla cream with chirimoya topping for dessert. It was very nice. We went back to the English Dept for a coffee and the Headmaster came to meet me there. The teachers all have to wear checked smocks and look like cleaning ladies so we made a joke of this but I suggested that Ana Luisa and Marcia didn´t tell the powers that be in case they didn´t let me back into the school!

The school is very well equipped. They have an astroturf sports area with an athletics track and football fields.It´s all very modern. My job was to talk in English to the teachers who work with the pre-schoolers in the kindergarten. The school has a programme to upskill them with the English to give basic commands to the children in English. I told them about myself and my professional life and showed a powerpoint about NZ in the auditorium which was set up by their techie who also speaks fluent French as he was a French teacher in another incarnation. French is not taught anymore in Chile, only English.After that I watched while the posters with instructions on that the teachers had made for their classrooms were checked by those running the course for them. When the session was over Ana Luisa, Marcia and I walked into the centre. We the techie on the way and I had a good conversation with him in French. I expected that to send my Spanish haywire as it does when I talk to Kevin, our French Assistant, at school but it didn´t have any impact at all. The other two went their separate ways and Ana Luisa and I continued into the Plaza de Armas which is the main square. I saw the cathedral which was badly damaged in the earthquake along with much of the city centre where there are older buildings. Then we got another colectivo to where Ana ;Luisa´s husband works so I could meet him and then I was taken to Sylvia´s school to get a ride home. It was a long day and I was really tired at the end of it. I had a later start today as we didn´t have to be at school until 9.30. I had a class with Sylvia - 5 Básico (Year 6). They were studying a reader and focusing on comparison of short adjectives - especially in relation to animals. We played my fly swat game with animal names and it went down well as did the jaffas I gave out as prizes.
 * Miércoles, 6 de octubre**

Then I had class with Joanna who had even younger ones (Year 4). They were so cute. At the end of the class I got inundated with drawings.





After lunch Javiera and I got a bus (un micro) into town as I didn´t have any classes in the afternoon. There a busker on the bus so we were entertained as we travelled. Unfortunately he got off shortly after we got on. We had a bit of a wander around the city centre which has a more modern area that I hadn´t seen before. I bought a cardigan in the sales as I´d been so cold and didn´t have a lot of warm clothes with me. However, since then it has been sunny and really quite warm.



Today I started by going to class with Diego. He´s in 7 Básico (Year 7/8). In his class there are 20 students who are together all day long as in our Years 7 and 8. Most of the students are 12 years old. They had Maths to start with (8am - 9.30am), followed by a 15 minuite break. After that they had Chemistry from 9.45 - 11.05. The teachers in both classes did quite a bit of dictating. The texts books are very colourful, well-organised and interesting. At this school the parents have to buy all the books for the students which costs a fortune as books are expensive in Chile. Apparently, in the state schools the government pays for the books and they are leant to the students. There was a trainee teacher working with Diego´s class. He spent his time going around helping individual students. I spoke to him and he said that he mostly did observation and was there for a semester. If I remember rightly, he hadn´t had any opportunity to teach in this practicum.He is doing his degree as he trains as in the primary sector in NZ.
 * Jueves, 7 de octubre**

The Chemistry teacher was very helpful and gave me the class register to have a look at. It is a bulky hard-cover book that each teacher picks up from the Staffroom before the class. Inside it is a mine of information - not just the roll. Each child in the class has a number and all their records are kept in this book - test results, behaviour issues,pastoral care notes etc.There is also a record of the work carried out in class for each period. I wonder if out primary teachers have anything similar but this is for all levels as all the classes stay together all the time and have the same subjects from pre-school to 4 Medio (the equivalent of Year 13). The subjects studied by Diego´s class are: Maths, Natural Sciences Physical Sciences, Social Sciences, Technology (ie: computers), Art, Music, PE and Religion (optional).

I went with Sylvia´s Year 5s after the next break and we did the fly swat game again to revise vocabulary from their reader to prepare for a test next week. This group is also her Form Class. For the last block I went with a Year 9 class. There were about 20 students and they were working on questions about a reader. After that I went home for lunch with Diego and Raúl brought lunch for Sylvia when he came to get us as she had classes after lunch. This morning I had the first two blocks with Paola, another English teacher. We worked with two different classes of 2 Medio (Year 11). They were very good. I did a speaking activity with them and videoed one lot. They were very interested when we talked about NZ and teenage life in both countries.
 * Viernes, 8 de octubre**



For the third block I had English with Diego´s class where I read aloud the last couple of chapters of their reader "The Little Princess" which is apparently a classic although I had never heard of it**.** Has anyone else? In the last block before lunch I was with Sylvia´s Year 4s for Pastoral Care and admin. They were preparing for a trip to Santiago next Tuesday. Apparently Form Teachers take the students on cultural trips. Sylvia was also collecting in money for their second semester birthday party. They celebrate all the birthdays that occur in each semester in one go. Then it was home for lunch. Raúl has been on a break since Wednesday. He works 10 days on and 5 off**.** He works in the El Teniente Mine, the biggest underground coppermine in the world. His last shift was on nights but next week he will be on day shift. In the afternoon (lunch is about 3ish like Spain and dinner about 9.30) Raúl and Sylvia took me for a drive up towards the Andes. First we went through the township of Machalí which seemed to be very quaint. It´s higher up than where we live. I´d like to get a micro up there one day to take some photos. We drove on up into the mountains until we came to a gigantic black metal condor and it was time for a photo stop.



Then we continued up to what the barrier is for the road leading to the mine. Only the mine buses can go on through there. We turned right and went on up to Coya which is an isolated village.We had some nice views from up there.



I also got to see cherry trees in flower and was suitably impressed by their loveliness. On the way back down we passed a big rock sculpture of a mining family - father, mother and son - carved into the mountainside. That evening after dinner when I was thinking of going to bed for a read, Sylvia called me to say we had been invited to Marcia´s for drinks. We had a very pleasant evening there and it was good for my Spanish to be in a social situation like that.