this is a long one...you might wanna make a snack...
first part written march 31st
my first week of work and spanish classes has just finished. it was amazing to teach again. i already wrote in this blog about my first english class i taught. it was on march 21st (yes a saturday). then on wednesday i was hanging out with a friend after my spanish class and got a call from my boss. he mentioned that there was a new student who needed to start classes the next day (thursday). so i agreed to take it. im so glad i did because he is such a good student and so fun. he's really excited about improving his english (which is already fairly good!). he had a lot of free time from thursday -monday so i taught him 3 classes. i also received a call from my boss on monday (march 30) about picking up another class. Now i am like an all-star teacher. don't ask why but a lot of my friends that started the same time as me only have one class...whereas i have 3 now. this is awesome news because obviously more classes means more money.
i taught a class this morning (the first time i taught these new clients). there are two students in the class and i teach them at their office building downtown in santiago centro.....at 8 am haha. so it's a little early for my liking...however i can come home and take a nap. plus i do really enjoy living a FULL day sometimes. so that will be nice i think.
i'm into my second (and last....for now anyways) week of spanish classes. i think im doing pretty well. i guess you dont know unless you try right? i try to take risks in the language by talking about things i dont really need to...or i try explaining things in detail...even if i know the grammar is a hot mess. i enjoy practicing spanish and experimenting...but only in an environment i feel comfortable in. if you've ever had the opportunity to attempt to speak a language to those that only know the language you are struggling to communicate in, you've noticed that its much easier than struggling to communicate with people that speak the language you are trying to communicate in as well as the one that you know like the back of your hand. it just feels easier...becuase when you try to speak with someone that only knows the language you are stuggling with...you can feel proud that at least you know SOME of another language other than your own. I don't need to feel like I'm smarter or better than the person i'm communicating with...but it just makes it more comfortable i guess.
i've gotten to the point in spanish class where i'm helping correct my fellow classmates mistakes haha. and that feels pretty good. especially because these people (most of them) have had lessons in spanish before...but a long time ago whereas this is my first time ever taking a spanish class. of course i've tried teaching myself for the past couple months in chile...but i still feel like this is an accomplishment.
this past weekend was a really fun one. on friday i didn't really do much but on saturday night my friend femi (from my tefl teacher training class) came over.
we drank a little piscola (can't remember if i described piscola before but pisco is a hard liquor here and the cola part is...well, coke haha. its a super popular chilean drink) and went out to paint the town red...sorta. 
we met up with my friend breanna and some of her roomies and then made our way down to a bar in a cool barrio (neighbourhood) called bellavista (pronounced baya-veesta). the bar was super fun and really cool. i felt like there were a ton of guys there in comparison to girls but it definitely was not a gay bar. there were not a lot of foreigners there and so the girls i went with were hot commodities. we danced with some of the guys there that seemed more harmless than others haha. it was fun. we left the bar at 4 30 which is actually early to ditch a bar in santiago. most people stay out until 5 30 or 6...and sometimes even later. my friend femi slept over at my place because it's pretty expensive for her to travel back to her place by taxi (which is located in las condes...the neighbourhood my host family lives in). the next day...sunday, i hung out with my friend jamie. he has a pool on the roof of his apartment and so we laid out in the sun by the pool and then went to his friend's place for a bbq. they bbq-ed a huge salmon and some shishkabobs. it was DELICIOUS! apparently one of the guys there bought the salmon from a fish market and paid only 4,800 pesos....like...8-9 bucks. crazy! it was lots of fun. one of the guys there belongs to a chilean band...its a CCR cover band and they are playing later this week on thursday night. i will have to go to check it out! i'm definitely interested in seeing more live music here. the friends i've made here (although amazing and so much fun) they aren't as into going out to see a band perform as say...going out to dance. im not apposed to dancing...however live music can always make for a refreshing night.
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april 6th
for the first few days of my second week of spanish class i was in class alone because the other woman i took classes with was on vacation. that was really fun actually to be in class by myself because i didn't care what i was saying and i didn't have to wait for anyone else to respond when i knew the answer already. and on the other hand...they didn't have to wait for me when i didn't know the answer. on wednesday however...that all changed. i came into class on wednesday so excited that i would be the only one in class and for the first 10 minutes...i was.
but then....joy walked in.
joy is a 30 year old woman traveling through Peru, Chile and Argentina while taking spanish classes. she is traveling alone and is desperate for friends. in the first part of the class when she joined, i was struggling with a concept that apparently she knew really well. that was pretty much the only time she showed me up in class...
However - during our 3 hour spanish class, we have a 15 minute break at the halfway point. so after 1.5 hours of her struggling a little bit and the teacher asking me to "ayuda" (help) or point out her mistakes, she says to me "I think I need to talk to Marie (the coordinator of the classes) and ask to be moved up to the next level because I feel like I already know all of this".
WHAT?!?!?!
I was a little shocked mainly because she was claiming that her spanish was better than mine after the indisputable fact that i had been correcting her mistakes for the whole class! To be fair and not exaggerate like I like to do so much I will say fairly that the ratio of her corrections for me compared to my corrections for her were probably:
10 : 45
that's probably an accurate number. that's not to say that I only made 10 mistakes in 3 hours...but those were the mistakes she could correct of mine in comparison to my ability to correct her. clearly i am still a little annoyed by her statement.....
so being the nice person i am...i suggested that if she felt it wasn't too demanding of her, I was sure that Marie could help her out. (eye roll).
After class joy asked what I was up to and i was supposed to be meeting a friend later that afternoon so I let her know that but said that if she didn't have anything to do, I was going back to my place for a little bit and she could join me (even though i had no desire to spend any more time than necessary with this girl). We came back to my apartment and chatted about Chile and traveling and whatnot. I told her that I loved Chile and that it was really starting to feel like home for me. Because it was her first day in Chile I let her know about the strange quirks of Chile but that overall...i loved the place. I did share my opinion though about how I felt that Chileans had never heard of the words "conservation of resources". The concept that water especially was a resource and might one day run out...had never crossed their mind. "Why do you say that?" she asked.
I told her that at any given moment in Chile, someone was watering their grass or the small patches of grass in front of their apartment building or something. I know this from trusting what my own eyes have seen since the day I arrived and that is that - every piece of grass has always been and will always be showered with water under unnatural circumstances - water from a hose...and not clouds (on a regular basis I might add). Her abrasive response was that if no one watered the grass, it would all be yellow and that would be a problem for 'Santiagoins' because the green grass makes their city look beautiful and think of how much revenue they bring in due to appearance of their city. No joy wasn't just giving an alternate opinion...oh she was serious and adiment about this point. I'm sorry joy....I don't know about you, but, I did not come to Chile for the grass....
I had just met this girl 3 hours earlier, offered to hang out with her at my apartment and she shuts down my idea of Chile...a place that I have started calling home 2 months ago...and she had just arrived earlier that day. Give me a break joy.
maybe joy is a nice lady...maybe its a fact for other people that know her well...but for me...i didn't agree. i had to spend 2 more days in spanish class with this woman...and i was not excited about it. that's all i have to say about joy...
thursday april 2nd was a good day. i taught my 8 am class downtown at the office building and then had spanish class and later that night, jamie, joseph and i went out to a bar where jamie's friend's band was playing. we met up with our friend paul there and it was so much fun. the band was fantastic! they were a CCR cover band (cause cover bands are hugely popular here for some reason) and they sounded excellent. we left a little earlier than expected because of jamie's sudden drunkenness but it was a really fun night none the less.
saturday was also a great day. i taught my morning class to one of my favourite students (actually...i dont have any students I don't like...) which is good because it's a 3 hour class and we go over a lot of grammar so it helps that she's a good sport. i got home with my friend Leslie to our mutual friend Stefano's apartment for a bbq. (yes bbqs are very popular here). He lives really close to me and we actually met him through my roommate Felipe.
speaking of Felipe, here is a picture of us!
so anyways Stefano had a little bbq on top of his apartment building where they have a bbq area and a pool! it was pretty hot out but the water in the pool was pretty cool. i had been in chile for 2 months and had not been swimming...so with this in mind i braved the cold water and so did everyone else. there are windows on the side of the pool that people on a nearby room can see in (kinda weird...but it was fun to have in order to take pictures of us!). here is one of my faves from that day.
later that night my TEFL teacher Katie was having a party at her apartment and so I met up with Jamie and Paul at Pauls apartment downtown.
He had a few friends over that are living in Chile but are from Germany. They were really cool and fun to hang out with. We went out to a nearby pizza place and had some mad delicious pizza and had some drinks back at Paul's. After that we went on over the Katie's apartment. We all hung out chatting about teaching and things like that. My friend Femi and her boyfriend arrived and my friend Joseph came later.
We played charades (in spanish of course so i needed a translator for some of the words haha) and danced and stuff. it was really fun. Katie's boyfriend (the guy with the white and grey/green shirt) is a photographer but he also loves to cook so we had some great food at the party as well! and their whole apartment is decorated with his photos that he has taken over the years. it was a fun place and i enjoyed the company.on the 6th (monday) was my first week day in two weeks where i didn't have to get out of bed. I didn't have spanish class because my two free weeks were over and I didn't have to teach any english classes on mondays. So I was supposed to go to this street called patronato which is located in downtown santiago (here is a map) with my friend Leslie but she was busy.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=santiago,+chile&sll=-33.432802,-70.642304&sspn=0.017764,0.027637&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.432229,-70.644021&spn=0.017764,0.027637&z=15&iwloc=A
i called jamie to see if he wanted to go to this phenomenon called patronato. he said yes and so we went. we took the subway down and walked around. when we reached patronato i probably resembled a starving child in a candy store. what is patronato im sure you're wondering....its a massive street with clothing stores all along the street (on both sides) AND out on the sidewalks are stalls where clothing is also sold.
the fantastic thing about this place is that the clothing is CHEAP! suuuper cheap. you can buy jeans for 4,000 to 6,000 pesos (about 8-14 bucks or so). so if jeans are that cheap imagine how cheap the shoes, purses, dresses, tops and sweaters are.....yeah. it's kind of like heaven...but with more dirt and ghettoness. i havent been there...but im assuming heaven isn't very ghetto. i hear about this place by my TEFL teacher Katie who is from the States but has lived in Chile for 4 or 5 years now...she knows all the good places haha. I said thank you to her for letting know about the place and also informed her that I probably would be boycotting all malls in Chile for as long as I lived here because of Patronato haha.
that is all for now. I am finishing this post on April 12th so I still have to write more...however I think I should give your eyes a break haha. i hope you enjoyed it.
thanks for reading!
un beso (a kiss). I'm not sure if I've explained why I'm so kissy since I've come to Chile. Chileans greet each other and say goodbye (chao) with a kiss on the cheek. I greet my students when they walk into class with a kiss on the cheek and that is how I greet and say goodbye to my friends here as well (whether they are chilean or american or canadian). and when i overhear people's phone conversations they say "un beso chao!" right before they hang up. it's very sweet.
love and miss! and happy easter! x
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