Week 1-Exciting and New Adventures

June 23rd, 2013

 This past week was the start to a lot of new and fun adventures with many new frustrations as well. Since we had now been in living in the apartment for a few days, we were finding more and more things that needed to be fixed. Erin's bathroom ceiling had a huge leak and water was streaming in. My sink was dripping and I was filling about 5, one liter pitchers a day (and we're trying to conserve water to save money!) my light in the bathroom didn't work, so I'd been getting ready in the dark, there is no central heating unit, so we were trying to figure out how to "turn on" our gas portable heater, we were on a quest to find cheap cellphones to use for teaching, needed to get VISA photos taken , get our WIFI password fixed and the list goes on and on. Our land lady speaks only Spanish, so communicating is very hard. (My Spanish picture dictionary has come in handy for sure, and google translate!) The Spanish here is spoken so fast and with so much slang, it is hard to understand people. Also, time is taken differently here, which for Americans can be so frustrating, because we (and I mean 'I' specifically) want things down fast and NOW, especially when it comes to things like gigantic ceiling leaks. We kindly asked our landlady to come at noon to go over some issues. She comes at 10am instead. Good thing we were home! The wifi company people are suppose to come at 9 am to fix it, they show up at 11:30. We have to tell the guy to leave at 1:00 because we have training so we tell him to please come tomorrow at 9am because we have training, and need to internet for homework. He shows up at noon this time! AH! So frustrating! This is one thing I know that I will need to just get used to, but it is hard when we have other appointments and people don't come when they say they will. Hopefully it'll get better. Long story short, after having ten different people to the apartment this week, everything seems to be fixed and working for now. We still wear our winter coats in the apartment because the gas heater is pretty weak, but, we don't have a ceiling leak anymore, so I'm not complaining.

As far as training goes, Monday, Erin and I started our official teacher training at Bridge-Linguatec center. The first day, we had homework, which was to plan and teach a demo lesson the next day using the school's teaching techniques and structure. I was pretty nervous since we were going to be teaching volunteers who didn't speak any English. So, the volunteer students would actually have to understand our lesson-yikes! The next day, the demo-lesson went well, and my volunteer student (actually the receptionist at Bridge) seemed to understand my lesson. We finished training by signing the contract and officially applying for our work visas! We even go assigned classes to teach for Friday! I was really nervous and excited at the same time. So far, I have two official students. The students work for big international companies and need to learn English for their jobs. The Chilean government agency called SENCE gives aid to these companies for this, so the documentation of the classes is very strict. For example, for every student I teach, I have to record the lesson we are doing, the time frame, if the student was late, if so, how many minutes were lost, the location, and have the student sign each day. At any time a person from SENCE could pop into the lesson and request to see documentation. Since they are funding the lessons essentially, they want to make sure that everyone is where they are suppose to be. We are required to report grades as well, and if they student misses too many classes, the SENCE could pull funding for that student or company and they would have to pay their own money for English classes. So, a little nerve wrecking! But, I'll get the hang of the documentation after a few weeks. Friday, I had two students. One in the morning at 8:00 am, before the work day starts, and one at 4:00 in the afternoon. The first lesson was pretty far away, took me an hour to get there by walking and taking the metro. But, it has been really neat to get the explore the city a bit, and the view of the Andes from the office building was gorgeous! My student was very nice and the English lesson went well, I'm not too nervous anymore after teaching that lesson, it was fun! So far I have two Monday and Friday lessons, and one lesson that meets Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at 6pm. In a few weeks I'll probably have more.

I've been keeping up with my workouts as well. Luckily the gym is a close 10 minute walk from my apartment. I got a new plan for my Bombshell training that I start tomorrow, so I've been a cooking machine in my free time as well to get ready for the week! I still haven't been able to find measuring cups-I've been to 5 different places.

This weekend was a blast. Erin, Emy, and I went exploring on Saturday. We took the metro to a big market that sells all sorts of cheap clothes. It was really fun! I bought a winter-coat for about thirty dollars! We all agreed if we needed clothes we would come to this market. In the city near our apartment, the clothing stores are "high-fashion" and very expensive. We also got the famous "Italiano" hotdogs. They put tomatoes and fresh avocado smothered on top (see pictures on facebook!) It was delicious Then, we ventured off to another metro station to a Vega, or a fresh fruit and vegetable market. The prices were much better and everything was fresh! Later that night, we found a cool bar and restaurant near our apartment called California Cantina and watched the Stanley cup and drank some Chilean beer. We then headed to Bella Vista, which is a popular hang out among young people. The streets were lined with clubs and bars. We walked around for awhile and took it all in . Young people sat outside despite it being freezing and drank beer and smoked cigarettes (seems like everyone smokes here) and talked. We headed back home around 1:00, (early here, since some of the "Discotecas" don't open until midnight!)

Today, we went back to Bella Vista in the day time. There was a huge concert going on and tons of people. The music was a mix between rock and jazz, which is a very popular type of music in Chile. Bella Vista is also popular for its Graffiti art, so we took a lot of pictures and visited the house of the famous Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. We then finished our day by walking through a big park similar looking to Central Park in New York City, but smaller.  Couples were kissing everywhere! We were told that in Chile, guys and girls do not move out of their parents house until they are married, even if they're 30! We figured most couples don't get to kiss a lot at their parents houses', so they must come to the park. ;)

All in all, it was a long, exciting week. Every day I seem to like Chile more and more. I can't wait to see what this next week has in store.