Fiestas Patrias - Week 1

September 18th is Chile's Independence Day, and this year they celebrate 199 years of independence from Spain. All of the schools in Los Angeles get this week off for Fiestas Patrias (the celebrations surrounding September 18th), so my school spent all of last week celebrating this huge holiday with the students. It was by far one of the best weeks I've had in Chile due to the full cultural immersion and all out fun I had with my colleagues, students, and greater school community. I filled my belly with delicious Chilean food, wore traditional Chilean dresses, and danced the Chilean national dance (the Cueca) for my hundreds of students and their parents. Each day, starting Tuesday, was devoted to one specific aspect of the celebration, so here's a little recap for ya.

Tuesday - Inauguration of the school Ramada

A Ramada is an official Fiestas Patrias party, decorated with palms and flags and red, white, and blue. All of the students gathered inside our festively decorated gym to watch the school Director dance the Cueca with one of the deans, and after that, pair after pair jumped into the circle to dance the cueca.

I came to school dressed in a traditional, huasa elegante suit, originally worn by the wealthy land-owner type women. I had hoped to just stand on the sidelines and take pictures, but the librarian asked me to dance the cueca and I just couldn't refuse. So dance I did, and thanks to one cueca class taught by one of my colleagues followed by a night of practice with my host mom, I did all right! It was pretty fun to be there dancing a dance that everyone in Chile recognizes as their own, and my students' reactions after were absolutely priceless.

Wednesday - Typical Games

The students and some of their parents gathered outside for all kinds of games typically played during Fiestas Patrias. These included three-legged races, relays, kite-making, and tug-of-war. The teachers all told me that we unfortunately couldn't get a pig to do their favorite game, which also involves some soap. Good thing, I think...

Please note where the kindergardener is in relation to the 5th - 8th graders at the start of the potato sack race. We all agreed he needed a little head start. He won!

Thursday - Typical Food

This day was amazing. The perimeter of the gym was lined with tables, one for each class, and the tables were covered with chilean foods and decorations. The students all got to go around and look at the foods, and after that each class got to go to its respective table and eat up. The gringa teacher, of course, was given food from every table! Deeeelicious!

After the kids all ate their food, cueca dancing of course ensued. I was invited to go dance up on stage ("We have a big surprise for you, kids! Miss Kelly's going to come up and dance the cueca!" This was quite the surprise for me, too, I might add...). After my stellar performance, I was walking around, chatting with the kids and their parents, when these two little third graders in the picture above ran up to me. "Tía, he wants to dance with you!" "No, he wants to dance with you!" "No, he does!" We eventually agreed on dancing the cueca as a trio, and we began dancing inconspicuously among the crowd. Slowly, though, a circle formed around us, and I danced two cuecas with these young gentlemen as everyone cheered us on. Once the second song ended they said, "Tía, we're thirsty!!" and ran off giggling. It was probably one of most precious moments I've had during my time here.

Friday - Final Presentation

Friday morning started off with all the kids in the gym and another "surprise! Let's invite Miss Kelly up on stage to dance the cueca for you all again!" Thanks for the warning, colleagues! This time I was in what's known as a china dress, typically worn by the women who worked for the landowner types. By now I'd gotten the hang of this darn dance and had a great time dancing with these two 8th graders above.

A group of students then performed the traditional dances from all parts of Chile, ranging from the north to Easter Island to the far south. Their outfits were fantastic and their performances were equally as great.

To top it all off, each class ended the week with more chilean food in their classrooms! The head parents of each class did a great job with the decorations, food, and festivities.

This week was filled with a love and pride for all things Chile, and it was wonderful to experience and be a welcomed part of it all. Throughout the week the students constantly asked me what we do to celebrate the 4th of July in the states, and my answers just could not compare to this week of festivities. Granted, when I was first told that we'd be replacing class time with all of these special events, I thought it was a bit ridiculous. But my school community showed me what it means to be chilean and to feel a real sense of patriotism and pride of one's culture. The best part of it all, though, is that there's still a week of celebrating left! Viva Chile!

Spanglish Speakers

Last Saturday Ryan, Katie, and I kicked off our first official Spanglish Speakers meeting. Spanglish Speakers is a mentorship program we started that links some of the fifth graders from Katie’s and my schools with some sophomores and juniors from Ryan’s high school. Ryan’s school, Liceo de Hombres, is the best public high school in Los Angeles, so his students will serve as great role models for Katie’s and my fifth graders, some of whom come from rough backgrounds and all of whom could use a bit more positive attention in their lives.

Our first meeting was a huge success. To start the morning we gave every student a puzzle piece and had them find their groups – or teams – by finding the other pieces of their puzzle. In total we had four teams, each with two high schoolers and two fifth graders. The teams then chose some pretty fantastic names (Team Awesome, The Brave Race, The Crazy Team, and The Princesses for our group of all girls), introduced themselves in English, and made some amazing team posters. After recess and snacktime (two things we didn’t initially plan for but realized quite quickly would be desperately needed), we regrouped and painted our own Spanglish Speakers t-shirts. It was a great Saturday morning filled with both Spanish and English (hence the “Spanglish”) and lots of getting to know each other.

Spanglish Speakers will not only be a beneficial experience for the fifth graders, who get to spend some time with intelligent and positive role models, but also for the high schoolers, who get to serve as leaders and teachers. Community service is still not a very common concept in Chile, so the fact that these high schoolers are dedicating two Saturday mornings a month to come and speak English with some fifth graders is pretty darn impressive. Katie, Ryan, and I worked really hard in the weeks leading up to last Saturday, and we all agreed that it couldn’t have gone any better! We have some pretty exciting ideas for future meetings up our sleeves, too, so stay tuned!

Antuco

Yesterday Katie, Ryan and I went to Antuco, a nearby town of a little over 3,000 people. Antuco sits at the base of a huge volcano with the same name and is a gorgeous town surrounded by snow-capped mountains. We were invited by Raul, one of the town’s two English teachers, to come and meet his students and get them excited about speaking a foreign language. It was a great day filled with lots of English, good food, and beautiful scenery. Raul also took us on a quick trip up into the Andes, about a half hour from Antuco, and it sure was pretty up there. Here are some pictures from the day!

The adorable Pre-K class. They sang us some fantastic songs in English and were beyond precious.

The high school students after a question and answer session. They all wanted pictures with us and gave us a taste of what it feels like to be a celebrity.

A visit to the school for the kids who live on the extremely rural outskirts of Antuco (there are just over 30 kids in the whole school). They got the three of us to sing our national anthem for them, and in return they sang the Chilean national anthem. They sounded better!

Sometimes I forget how close to the Andes I live. Chile is so beautiful!

Small Victories

This past Friday I was short an English co-teacher. Due to unforeseen circumstances my school is on English teacher number three and in search of number four while number two, the permanent English teacher, heals an injury. That leaves me, the volunteer gringa, to teach all these kids on my own. It’s not an ideal situation, but as I’ve learned over and over here in Chile, you just have to roll with the punches and remember that it’s all for the kids. Normally on Fridays the English teacher and I co-teach a 45 minute 8^th grade class, but because of the school’s little dilemma I offered to take them by myself.

Let me tell you a little bit about this 8^th grade class. They are the class that the other teachers complain about at every coffee break. A class of 44 adolescent boys and girls crammed into a room much too small for them, they are at first glance a teacher’s nightmare. There are six or seven boys who are consistently disruptive, and there are just as many girls who have no problem chatting in the back of the room and rolling their eyes at their teachers. I struggled my first few months with this group, but after setting my boundaries and leveling with them we were able to achieve a mutual respect that, believe or not, makes this one of my favorite classes to work with. There are inevitably still some issues that arise during our classes together, but this energetic bunch never fails to make class extremely entertaining.

Now let me tell you a bit about the teachers at my school. I should start by saying that some of the teachers are great and come up with amazingly fun activities for these kids. A lot of the teachers, though, spend their class time screaming at the students and writing things on the board, and that’s that. To an extent I can’t blame them – I think a lot are just burned out after years of working with so many kids at one time. But some of the stories that I’ve been told are just inexcusable. For instance, I was just recently told that a teacher was caught sending a student to the bank during class time. Her punishment was a slap on the wrist and a warning not to do it again. Another teacher was caught out running errands during school hours, leaving her classroom teacher-less. Kids pick up on adult attitudes, so it’s really no big surprise to see the students rebel against teachers who act so carelessly. It’s so frustrating to witness, though, especially with the knowledge that a large percentage of our students don’t have any caring adults at home, either.

So back to Friday. I headed over to this eighth grade class to take on all 44 of them by myself (remember, I usually only work with one half at a time). I was greeted at the door of the classroom by one of the math teachers who had just finished her period with them. She took one look at me and said something along the lines of, “You’re going in there by yourself? You can’t go in alone, they’re such a terrible class and they’re extremely bad today.” I kid you not, as she was saying this there was paper flying through the air, a wrestling match of some sort going on, and kids out of their seats and drawing on the board. I told her that we really didn’t have any other option but that I thought I’d be ok on my own. That didn’t seem to please her, though, as she continued to emphasize their unruliness. “They won’t listen to you,” she said. At that point Seba, one of the “unruly” 8^th grade boys who the teachers often get frustrated with, was standing within earshot of us. “No, tía, we listen to Miss Kelly,” he said. With her feathers all ruffled she shot back at Seba, “Good! You should!,” tossed the gradebook at me and stormed off. While I did feel sorry for the teacher, the satisfaction of hearing Seba say that was unforgettable. And to top it off, I did walk into that classroom, settle down the “unruly” students and get all 44 involved and learning for the next 45 minutes. I don’t mean to brag by any means, but wins like this one don’t come along very often, and this was a victory worth sharing!

Winter Vacation & The Importance of English

I just returned from 14 packed days of travel, and every moment was fantastic. My friend Hal and I started the trip off in the driest desert in the world, the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile. There we visited some huge dunes, saw a breathtaking sunset over La Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley), woke up before sunrise to view geysers more than 4000 meters above sea level, and took a dip in a natural thermal bath. From San Pedro we then took a three day tour into Bolivia, driving through spectacular scenery in the Andes mountain range, freezing our butts off in some rustic refugios at night, and making great new friends. The final stop of that trip was Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat in the world. We stepped out of our jeep onto a sea of salt – white in every direction for as far as the eye could sea. It was really quite a sight, and my friends and I had a good time using the white backdrop to take some cool photos.

After Uyuni Hal and I headed up to La Paz, Bolivia with two Brazilian friends. A capital city located in the heart of the Andes, La Paz was bustling with cars, people, and tourists. Bolivia’s poverty was extremely apparent in this city, unfortunately, as there were so many people living on the streets and begging for money. The number of children on the streets, working and begging, broke my heart. I had never been in a place with so many hungry, dirty children, and it took all my strength just to keep on walking by the kids and not scooping them up and taking them home with me.

La Paz itself is a beautiful city, though, full of life and colors and wonderful markets. While in the capital we did get to catch a glimpse of Bolivia’s President, Evo Morales, along with his visiting friend and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The two walked out of the Presidential Palace to roars of cheers and support from the crowd that had gathered outside, and it was definitely a sight to see.

We also took time to visit nearby Lake Titicaca and the much revered Incan island Isla del Sol. The lake itself is quite beautiful with the Andes off in the not too far distance, and on Isla del Sol we explored an old Incan temple and learned a bit about its history. Near La Paz we also checked out Tiwanaku, the site of temple ruins that were constructed well before the Inca civilization. After La Paz we headed back to Chile and spent the last couple days in the warm weather town of Arica. There we explored some old caves, relaxed on the beach, and tried to avoid the fact that our vacation was coming to an end.

I came upon a couple realizations during this trip. I didn’t really realize how developed a country Chile is until I went to neighboring Bolivia and was faced firsthand with stark contrasts. My trip to the other side of the border made me not only thankful for all that I have been blessed with in my life, but also thankful for all that I have here in Chile. The experiences on this trip also reinforced for me the fact that English is an extremely important language. Regardless of where we were, as Hal and I traveled around and met people from all over the world, the common language was always English. I met people from Germany, France, Denmark, and Brazil who didn’t know much Spanish but spoke great English, and that’s the language they used to get by as they traveled. During one tour I even did a bit of pro bono work as I translated what our guide said from Spanish into English for two girls from South Korea. Tourism is such an important part of the economies down here, and knowledge of the English language is a key component of successful tourism. I sometimes find myself wondering what kind of good I’m really doing down here by teaching English when there are so many health, poverty, and general education issues that need plenty of help. English knowledge has the power to move people up in the world, though, and provides for much greater opportunity. It was nice to see people seizing those opportunities firsthand on my vacation, and now… back to work! Four more months of teaching left, and plenty more stories to come!