Many of you have commented on the conspicuous absence of any discussion with regard to my classes. To those of you who noticed said absence, I would simply like to point out that I am quite capable of boring you with every detail of even the most exciting moments here in Chile. That said, I felt little need to further elongate your suffering by having you virtually sit through one of my classes.
In all seriousness, yes, my classes have started. And yes, I believe them to be, at times, quite boring. However, the students seem to be responding pretty well (even though some of my students are as old as 55), and as a teacher I am getting better. To imagine what I am like as a teacher of English, simply think of me as a camp counselor or Wyld Life leader, only I repeat myself A LOT, I enjoy the overuse of GRAND, SWEEPING gestures to get my point across, and I speak LOUDER than usual... And, yes, it is possible for me to speak louder! (I often forget that if they don't understand what I am saying, more volume doesn't always help :).
As for the rest of life here in Chile, I have now been here a month (already?!), and I am now one week at my new home. The picture above is of all my house-mates so far. We took it at our first party which was held last Friday night.
From top left, we've got Andrés (a journalist - I think - from Portugal), Amaury (a student from France), Eloísa (a student from Brazil), and Francisco (who I am pretty sure also works as a journalist), our only Chilean. In the middle is Nora (a student from Colombia), below her is Nayara (the other Brazillian student), and the goofy guy next to her is of course yours truly.
Missing from this picture are Adam, the other gringo English teacher from Oregon who doesn't speak much Spanish, and Mari, who is a German girl, but I do not yet know what she will be doing here in Chile. They both move in on April first.
As for the party that we hosted, it was actually kind of a blow-out. Andrés got his friend to dj for us, and the place was bumpin'. Before I left for class, everyone had mentioned that we would be getting some food and drinks for our guests, and Andrés told me to invite whomever I wanted. Not wanting to wipe my muddy feet all over the welcome mat of propriety, I only invited about 6 or 7 people, thinking that any more than that might overwhelm the party. Well only about 4 of my invitees showed up, and when we did, we certainly did not overwhelm the close to 100 others dancing, drinking, and ashing their cigarettes all over our living room floor.
All said and done, the night was pretty successful. We even managed to avoid extensive cleaning duty as we all split the cost of our "Nana" (Cleaning lady that normally comes only once a week) to come for another day.
Having crashed at about 6am the night before, I spent most of the next day watching basketball online, cleaning, and in general lamenting my sorry position in all of the March Madness pools I joined.
Saturday night I headed out with some of the guys from CIEE to the rich part of town, where a girlfriend of Stephen's (not that kind of girlfriend) agreed to host a birthday party for Nick (the blonde in the green shirt) at her house.
There weren't any life changing epic moments at this party, per se... But then, isn't every moment it's own little way, life changing and epic? Profound, I know.
Anyway, when we got there it was just us and Smalls' friends (Smalls is the nickname we gave to the girl whose house it was, because she is... Small. Aren't we clever?). But a number of people joined as the night went on. A little alcohol provided the unguent necessary to lubricate some gringo hips, and before we knew it, we were dancing (exhibit A: Jason cuttin' a rug with Natty in picture below... Although, in fairness, Jason is hardly a gringo, considering he's a Capuera - Brazilian martial arts/dancing - guru, and a salsa dancer extraordinaire - see exhibit A otra vez).
...For a little while, anyway. My tendency to run home back in the States, has been somewhat supplanted by my tendency to get into deep conversations when I can barely express half of what I am saying. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), most of the people with whom I get into aforementioned "deep c's" speak English. So while my Spanish practice time takes a bit of a hit, my philosopher-wanna-be time sky-rockets.
Long story short, I had a pretty good night joking with girls in Spanish, learning some quirky Chilenismos (Chilean Slang), and talking with a Jewish Chilean girl about why so many Christians are so misunderstood... Who likes irony?
This weekend, I will be heading to Buenos Aires for 4 (well, 3 and 1/2) days, so if you read this post before then and know anything about the city - where to go, where to eat, where to sleep - I would love some pointers, as I am flying solo in my explorations.
Que todos de ustedes estén bien.
No comments:
Post a Comment