Gather round the wood-burning fireplace stove, weones, because it´s time for an update! I know that you are all sitting in your well-insulated homes in gringolandia, shivering not from cold, but from sheer anticipation.
There is so, so much to tell. I´ve been in Yumbel almost two weeks now and, blessedly, I´m beginning to settle in a little more each day. Things with the host family have been mejorando-ing on the whole. Something happened last night which was less than ideal, but I think it´s going to bring us closer together ultimately, so I´m not too worried about it. A few words on the host family experience, while we´re on the subject... It´s been really interesting to hear about the experiences of my WorldTeach buddies and my fellow current volunteers in Yumbel. It seems like we have all been having some similar things crop up as we adjust to life as gringos in Chile, but we also each have the stories that make each experience unique: some funny, some awkward, some a combination of each.
A bit about my family... my mom is a working mother, a teacher at the basica (elementary school), and separated from her husband (at some point I will write an entire post about the craziness that is modern Chilean family dynamics!). Her younger son, aged 11, lives at home, while her elder son, 18, lives in Concepcion (the nearest big city, about an hour and 15 minutes away) during the week because he is training in the army. I once said that I always wondered what it would be like to live with a brother; now I sort of get a taste of that, complete with noncommunicativeness and one word answers. I suppose it doesn´t help that my grasp on Chilean (no, it is NOT the same as Spanish!) is still in progress.
Others in the cast of characters include my grandma, who lives right next door and wanders in mas-o-menos two times a day and eats lunch with us, and sometimes dinner (colloquially known as onces. Oh, I should do a food post, shouldn´t I? Hmmm.) The other person I see pretty much every day is Gladys, who is an interesting bird. She is kind of the family´s maid, as in she watches the house while everyone is gone for the day, cooks lunch for us, cleans, and does our laundry. Gladys speaks the most Chilean-y of all the Chileans I´ve met so far: super fast, sans recognizable intonation, and words I´ve never heard of in my 6 years of Spanish. Paradoxically, Gladys is the person I feel most connected with my house, and she is rapidly becoming a favorite part of my day. She stands about four feet 10 inches and haunts downstairs, traveling between the kitchen, the living room to watch novelas, and outside to gather more wood for the fire. We were talking about dying our hair yesterday, and I told her that I already have one or two grey hairs. She asked where, and when I pointed to my head, she immediately hopped up and started digging around in my hair to find it. She makes sure I put on my coat before leaving and I´m starting to love her and our awkward conversations to bits.
More on the people of Yumbel. Actually, more on my fellow gringos. Don, another WorldTeach comrade, lives down the street in the same house as Joanna. We had the best time on Tuesday taking over the night English class for adults in the community! I´m looking forward to working more with him and hanging out in the next few months. Joanna is my age and was there to pick me up in Concepcion, which I´m eternally grateful for. She and I enjoy talking about knitting projects and listening to David Bowie on the bus. She is super bacán and a sweetie. I´m going to miss her a lot when she leaves next week!
Because she works at the Basica with Don, I don´t see as much of Joanna as I do of Corey, my favorite Canadian weon who I work with at the liceo. Corey enjoys pretending to be flaite and rattling off chilenismos as if they were going out of style (they´re not, unfortunately for yours truly at the moment.) Corey is also always up for random adventures that require many bus transfers and/or coming home smelling of mariscos. For example, last weekend we hacer´d la cimarra (skipped school... well, kind of. Our teacher was absent due to illness, which in Chile means class is cancelled. Substitute teachers? Such things are for pansies! Or so it seems.) to go to Talcahuano, a small port city most famous for mariscos (shellfish!) empanadas and el buque ¨HUASCAR,¨ a boat famous for being captured by the Chileans during the war with Peru (and perhaps Bolivia) in the late 1800s. We had way more fun than should be legal on a cheesy tourist site, with pictures sure to follow. (If only I could find Horatio Hornblower theme music....)
Other excursions last weekend included a trip to Chillan to try to see the mural depicting the life and times of Bernardo O´Higgins, Chile´s national hero and liberator, henceforth to be known as Bo´ Higgins (or, for those so inclined, Bo´ Higgedy!) On Saturday we went as a group with many of the English teachers in the schools in the area to las Termas de Chillan, a wonderous place of pristine Andes slopes and thermal baths heated by a volcano. We didn´t have time to ski, but we had a blast and a half sledding on plastic sacks (multiple sacks = more people = MORE GOOD TIMES! We saw a family of 9 trying to sled down... welcome to Latin America, my friends. The weather´s fine.). Cool Runnings reenactments obligatory. The weather was perfect - glittering snow on the ground, bright sun in the cloudless sky, and the Andes in the background as we sat in steaming pools of mineral water. And you thought I was roughing it!
What´s that? Teaching? School? Oh, that.
Seriously now. This week has seen me in my classroom by myself for the first time, and so far, so good. I´m having a blast playing introduction games with my students. The challenges of trying to balance the expectations the teachers have for the students and the kind of work their textbook says they should be doing, and my hope that by the time they will actually be able to speak some English and not parrot difficult passges from reading assignments, are going to be great. I´m hoping to get things in order (my schedule, for example!) so that I can plan more difficult, yet still enjoyable and doable lessons for these kids. Such is mi mejor sueño. Thankfully I have a lot of time to get there. I think these students have a lot of potential to surprise me.
One last thing before I go. I have a confession to make. In Chillan on Sunday, in a bout of combined homesickness and wishful thinking, I bought... a sundress. A bright red flowy cotton sundress. A bright red flowy cotton sundress that I will not be able to wear for at least another month and a half.
Don´t judge me!!! I will wear my llama hat AND my alpaca hair mittens tonight in penance. And I will promise to get some pictures posted up for all my weones. Chau for now!
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