A Blog Without Pictures, Because I Am Lazy. Perhaps Will Do A Blog Of All Pictures Sometime This Week.

Saturday, July 23, 2011
11:40 AM

My time in Chile is beginning to wind down, and I’ve come to the inevitable point where it seems as though there is more still left to do than time to do it. I have nixed traveling outside of Santiago from now on, as it is too time consuming and costly to be worth the effort at this point. Later today I am visiting an artisan fair (one I haven’t already been to) with my family, then tomorrow I am probably going on a vineyard tour. I am skeptical as to how interesting this tour will be in the middle of winter, but I have heard it is worth its somewhat costly price, even in the middle of July when everything is dead. (Still feels so weird to refer to things being dead in July – maybe grass from it being too hot, but from cold?? So strange)

I continue to be extremely busy at work. Just quickly scanned my last couple blog entries, and guess I haven’t made it clear how busy I have been lately, so I’ll go into a little more detail. The past two weeks were winter vacations for most schools, so my schedule changed somewhat – instead of going to teach in La Pintana each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, the time was filled with extra students on vacation. My days have been packed, sometimes with no time even for lunch (okay, self-imposed, sometimes I feel like it’s more worth it to eat while teaching and have a longer lesson than to send them away just so I can sit and eat in peace). Many schools start again this Monday however, so I’ve had to have my first goodbyes with some of the students who will be unable to continue coming in for lessons due to their school schedules. It was surprisingly actually quite sad. One boy asked my supervisor if he could get permission from his school to leave early some days, if he could continue coming in for lessons, and a couple of them have added me on Facebook and chat me when I’m on. It will definitely be sad to leave all of them behind at the end, and I’ll be missing out on some cool things, like a dance recital one of them invited me to ☹

One of my most interesting cases this week was a boy who was forced to come in every day for lessons as part of an agreement after he was expelled from his school. He was only twelve years old, came in every day without a jacket (while everyone else is bundled up to the max), and liked listening to American hip-hop music and drawing graffiti. Unsurprisingly to me, he was actually quite smart, and was able to understand concepts and pronounce phrases better than many of my other students, even though he spent most of his time doodling on his paper. He reminded me of the various people I’ve known in my life with similar stories – smart, hate school, get in trouble, etc. Unfortunately, most of those people haven’t had some miraculous recovery or been able to make the most out of their surroundings. Instead, they become drug dealers or dropouts. Hopefully that won’t happen with him… but I have to admit that I’m not too optimistic. I’m not sure whether I’ll be seeing any more of him during my time here, as it all depends on how quickly he is able to find another school willing to accept him. If I do continue giving him lessons though, I’ll have to start getting creative – although he is always polite to me, and does everything I ask of him, he’s not the kind of person to enjoy the typical lesson. This week we translated a rap song – out of the options he gave me, I picked the least dirty and most intelligible – but I don’t think that will cut it for English lessons every day.

Other events worth mentioning: last Tuesday night, most of the group went to a bar for Karaoke night. I haven’t been going out much here (read: not at all), so of course I forgot to bring an ID. I borrowed a license from a girl in my group who had a copy of her passport with her as well, and so was able to get in :P (the guy appeared to be meticulously scrutinizing the documents and comparing pictures, but I have the suspicion that it was just a ruse, as he let in two “Beth Braitermans” from New York City with only one person in between…). Karaoke was fun, but I just don’t understand why things have to start so late here! It was a weeknight, we all had to be places at 8:30 or so in the morning, and yet the Karaoke didn’t even start until past midnight. Although I’ve always considered myself a night owl, I definitely prefer the US schedule for things like that! It was fun though, and even though my friend Matt and I ended up taking over an hour to get home due to lack of buses running and our lack of desire to take a taxi and finally arriving home around 2:30 AM, at which point the doorman be absent for a good ten minutes leading me to wake up my host mom to come let me in, it was worth it.

Today (because it is now almost 8 pm), my host dad took me to Los Dominicos, the aforementioned artisan fair. It was fun, and he bought me jugo de Chirimoya, one of the many Chilean fruits I had never heard of before coming here, which was delicious. I think at this point I can confidently say that I have almost artisan-ed myself out. Good thing that I have most of my gifts already purchased =)
(Although I did promise myself that I would go back to the feria Santa Lucia, where I went yesterday, as we only had time to check out a fraction of the stuff there)

In other news, as part of our internships here we are each asked to organize some sort of activity to show off what we have been up to for the past month and a half. We are required to go to at least one, but I signed up for three that fit my schedule. Unfortunately, the visit to the Ministeria de la Economía was canceled due to the tear gas surrounding the area (it was the day of the educational protests that turned a little violent), but I was able to visit Fundación Casa de la Paz, an environmental nonprofit, and Fundación Nuestros Hijos, an organization to help kids with cancer. Both were extremely fun and interesting, and kids with shaved heads and bloated faces because of chemotherapy are adorable! (That was probably a horrible thing to say. I’m sorry.) This week, I have my activity – I’m planning to take a small group of students to the school I work at in La Pintana to help teach an English class. In case I haven’t mentioned it before, or whoever is reading this has not read my former entries, or is reading them in backwards order as I sometimes find interesting to do in blogs, La Pintana is one of the poorer regions of Santiago. It’s extremely dangerous at night, but I don’t feel unsafe during the day, especially when I’m with teachers or students from the school. It does take a while to get there though, about an hour and a half on public transportation. I’m really excited to show off the area where I work, because the region is so different from most of the areas of Santiago that we are familiar with. I’m hoping that all four of my students actually show up to school that day… so far, it has yet to happen (I think I got three out of four one day).

Things I’m looking forward to this week: 1) office trip to a traveling Egyptian exhibit currently in Santiago. I actually considered going by myself a couple weeks ago, but decided against it. Glad I didn’t go earlier now, especially since I assume they will be paying for us! 2) the activity thing I talked about in the preceding paragraph. 3) going to see a play at the Universidad Católica with Winnie and Rebecca. 4) Friday activities, which include a tour of La Moneda, the Chilean equivalent to the White House.

Besitos,

Brianna