Welcome, Winter

Winter officially arrived yesterday as all you Northern hemisphere folk said bienvenidos to summer! Today the ground was blanketed in frost – definitely a first for me in June. Yesterday I celebreated Father’s Day with my Chilean family by going to grandma and grandpa’s for a big feast and then out to the town of Canteras for… you guessed it! Another huge meal.

When we arrived at grandma and grandpa’s we were greeted with quite the aroma wafting out from the kitchen, where grandma was cooking up a big estofado. This is basically every meat you can imagine along with lots of onion dumped into one pot. It was very, very rico, or delicious. During our meal the family explained to me that this estofado is a very typical Chilean meal usually eaten on el día de San Juan, which falls on June 24 this year. There are all kinds of traditions that come along with this greatly celebrated holiday, including the following: the night before el día de San Juan young girls are supposed to take three potatoes and put them under their beds. Then the next morning, right when they wake up, they should reach under their beds and pull out one potato. The type of potato they grab will determine the girls’ futures. I don’t remember the types and their significances exactly, but I know some mean you’ll have a long life, others (like a potato with lots of marks on it) mean you’ll encounter lots of struggles, etc. The night before San Juan young girls are also supposed to write down the names of all the boys they like, put them in a bag, and then draw one name from that bag. The name drawn will be the boy they end up marrying! Another tradition also involving potatoes had something to do with putting ink on a piece of paper, stuffing the paper into a potato, and looking at the image formed when the paper is pulled out (although that one may have gotten a little lost in translation…).

All this talk of Chilean traditions led my host family to ask me about any American traditions we have. I told them about the tooth fairy, who they found quite hilariuos because they, too, have a tradition of putting a tooth under a pillow in exchange for money. The purchaser of the teeth in Chile, however, is el ratón, or the rat! El ratón replaces the child’s lost tooth with a moneda, or coin, and also puts a better, bigger tooth in the child’s mouth. Little cultural exchanges like these make all the small frustrations of living with a host family so worthwhile.

After our lunch at the grandparents’ we headed out to Canteras, which is where one of my host mom’s sisters lives. There we were again greeted with an estofada (round two), and some delicious tortilla, or a type of homemade bread. The type of tortilla we’re used to in the states is what chileans call a tortilla mexicana, and you’ll generally find it near the international foods section in the grocery stores. This chilean tortilla was delicious, fresh bread that went quite well with the meat stew estofado.

One last cultural exchange story. When we were at the grandparents’ earlier in the day, someone decided to put in a DVD of photos from my host brother Claudio’s trip to New Zealand. My uncle would go through the pictures in a slideshow and then every time have to ask my cousin how to get back to the main menu so that he could choose the next slideshow. Every time, without fail, he had to have her help him, and the one time he tried to figure it out on his own he ended up doing nothing more than continue to rotate a picture 90 degrees, over and over and over. I told my chilean family that the exact same thing happens in my household: my parents can’t for the life of them figure out the new technology that enters their doors, and one of their children always has to come to their rescue. A certain generation’s technological ineptitude appears to be one of many things our two cultures share.

School's Back!

After three weeks, the teacher strike has finally ended!  I realize I should probably explain the strike a bit more...  The teachers are supposed to receive a bonus at the end of every school year, as is written in the law.  The past couple years, however, that bonus has not made it into the teachers’ hands.  When this was brought to the government’s attention, they insisted that they had given the money to the municipalities, who claimed otherwise, which intially led to the strike.  The teachers wanted their money and felt some action was needed in order to get the responsible parties to actually make some moves.  Well, the government was able to quickly prove that the municipalities had in fact received the bonus money; the problem, however, was that the municipalities had spent this dinero on other things, and now there was no money left to hand out to the teachers.  It was finally sorted out, though, and the teachers will be receiving all of the money owed to them over a series of payments to come this year.

The problem now is how to recuperate the 13 days of missed classes.  Each community will decide when it wants to schedule the make-up classes, and most are saying that they plan on shortening the two week winter break.  Needless to say, we volunteers are not too thrilled at this idea.  Again, all we can do is wait and see!

Returning to class today was great, though.  It was so fun to see all of the students, receive hundreds of kisses on the cheek, and hear their wonderfully accented English fill the halls (“Hello Miss Kelly!”  “Awesome!”  “What’s up?”).  I also returned to school with some challenges.  The week before the strike began I was told that I would no longer be able to use my classroom on Mondays because the school needed it for reforzamientos, or special classes targeted at the struggling students.  Instead, I would have to use the library to teach my classes.  My initial reaction was one of huge frustration, since having an “English-only” environment is a really important element in teaching the language.  There isn’t a word of Spanish written anywhere in my room, and the ultimate goal is to not let a word of Spanish leave anyone’s mouth, either.  Teaching the students in a different environment, and without my English posters to refer to, is difficult.  In general, taking students out of their normal environment and teaching them in a new and different location is difficult.  I explained all of this to the director of the school, asking if there was any way the reforzamiento could be taught in the library instead.  “Estamos en Chile,” he said.  “We’re in Chile.”  He went on to explain that we’re in one of the poorer schools, which is true, and that we all have to make do with the limited resources and space that we have.  While I understood that explanation, I kept thinking, This isn’t fair!  Why am I the only teacher getting kicked out of my room?  How the heck am I going to play my fun games in the library?  The kids can’t run around in there!  There is no whiteboard in the library, there is a constant distraction of people walking in and out, everything posted on the walls is in Spanish… the list goes on.

Today, though, I made do with my new space and put everything into a bit of perspective for myself: the rest of the teachers at my school don’t ever have their own rooms – the students remain in their course’s classroom, and the teachers come to them.  I am in fact one of only two teachers to have a space I can call my own.  Plus, the rest of the teachers teach 45-50 students in every class, and I never have a class over 25.  Most importantly, though, the students don’t care where they have their class!  The material is what’s important, and hopefully I am clever enough to present the lesson in a fun (albeit different from what I may have had in mind) way using the space that I have.  Today's lesson in the library, while not the "perfect" one I had originally thought of, went just fine.  This little roadbump reminded me to be thankful for what I do have and to use my talents to make the most out of it.  As I was cleaning up my “classroom” in the library today during recess, I was surrounded by students wanting to talk with me, practice their English, hear what I did during the strike, and just hang out.  Times like those are honestly my favorite part of being a teacher, and I don’t even need a classroom at all to have those moments.  Estamos en Chile!

Valpo

The teacher strikes continues, and so does my traveling.  Last week Ryan, Katie, Hal and I went up to Valparaíso, or “Valpo,” a beautiful port town near Santiago.  Before I left for Chile a few different people told me that, as a Bay Area girl, I must visit Valpo.  Now I understand why!  This town is a wonderful mix of the Bay Area indeed – the colorfill hills packed full of homes overlooking a beautiful bay reminded me instantly of San Francisco, and the small, cute shops surrounded by amazing street art made me feel like I was in Berkeley.  The hillside streets wind in every direction, surrounded by the most wonderfully colored homes you could imagine.  Valpo definitely has a hippie, free-spirited vibe floating around the air which was fun to breathe in for a few days.  In nearby Viña del Mar, the feel is much more “resort beach town.”  We lucked out with some great weather the last couple days and were able to spend some much desired time relaxing on the beach.  It, too, had a Bay Area feel to it.  We walked around one of Viña’s big parks, and for just a minute, as we hiked along a dirt trail scattered with acorns and eucalyptus leaves, I felt like I was in Oakland.  It was definitely nice to visit these towns and get little reminders here and there of home!

There is still no end in sight for the strike, unfortunately.  There is a huge national teachers’ protest in Santiago today, and hopefully a compromise will come out of it, but that result is unlikely.  As fun as the travel is, I’m ready to get back in the classroom!