Orientation

The past week has been filled with full-day orientation classes covering a range of topics. We started off with an overview of Chile and a talk on health and safety, and then we jumped right into learning how to teach English as a foreign language.  While the days have been long, I already know that the methods and activities we’ve learned in such a short period of time will prove to be extremely useful.  We still have over a week left in Santiago before we head off to our towns, and we’re all getting pretty excited to get into our own classrooms and start implementing some of what we’ve learned.

While these classes have been taking up most of our days, we’ve luckily still had some time to see some historical places and meet some interesting people.  Today we went to the U.S. Embassy and met the Ambassador.  He spoke about the increasing importance of English education in Chile in order to help the country continue to move forward - only 3% of the country speaks English fluently, and this number needs to improve greatly if Chile is to continue advancing.

We also discussed the current economic state of the world, which was interesting.  Chile has yet to really be affected by the financial crisis, in part due to deicions made by current President Bachelet.  Copper exports have been huge in the past couple decades, and Chile has actually had a surplus.  When Bachelet came into power she receieved a lot of pressure to spend that surplus – she decided, however, to save it.  An economics official at the Embassy (I don’t remember his title) went into more specifics about how she saved the money, but the point is that Chile is currently doing well.  The country is extremely interested in helping get the U.S. economy back up, though, since so much of the Chilean economy is tied to exports to the U.S. (fruits and veggies) and Asia (copper).  Vice President and Dr. Biden are actually coming down to Chile next month for a summit with a bunch of other “progressive” countries to talk about their common concerns (mostly discussing the environment, I believe), so the Embassy was very busy and excited getting ready for that visit. 

Another interesting visit was to a complex called Villa Grimaldi, which we stopped by as part of a human rights tour around Santiago.  This complex was used for detaining, interrogating, torturing, and sometimes killing prisoners during the early Pinochet era.  It was pretty intense to see the small, cramped sheds that prisoners would be locked in, or the trees that prisoners would hang from as they were interrogated.  Over 5,000 people went through Villa Grimaldi, and a few hundred never came out (known as desaparecidos, which refers to everyone who was killed or disappeared during the Pinochet era).  Pinochet ruled Chile until 1990, and his reign still has quite a lasting effect on Chileans.  It’s still an extremely sensitive topic among Chileans, but important to be aware of as a teacher because our students’ parents and our fellow teachers would have experienced it.  In our region we’ll possibly encounter people who had a family member or friend disappear yet also come across Pinochetistas, or staunch Pinochet supporters.  Many people considered him to be the best option for Chile at the time, which is so hard for outsiders to understand given the terrible things that occurred during the time he held power.  It will definitely be interesting to hear stories and opinions from both sides. 

On a lighter and totally different note, completos are quite the thing here.  They’re hot dogs covered in mayonnaise, avocado, onions… you name it and there’s probably a completo that has it.  I’ve also had my fair share of empanadas already, and we’re quickly learning our “chilenismos,” or Chilean sayings.  Our WorldTeach orientation is wrapping up, and we’ll start our Ingles Abre Puertas orientation on Sunday.  Lots more to come!