New Friends, New Schedule and My Birthday

So its been awhile since my last blog and a lot has happened in that time. First of all, things have been going great down here. I am having a great time and I still love being in the classroom. The weather down here has been a bit unpredictable, sometimes is goes from beautiful and sunny in the morning, to cold, rainy and windy in the afternoon, and then back again. So it feels just like home. My Spanish is impoving quite a bit, as I'd hoped, but I still have a lot to learn. Chileans speak very very fast and have a lot of slang that doesn´t exist anywhere else in the world. So talking with students has had its difficulties, but they payoff will be great.

Last week I continued observing classes and I had the opportunity to work with three new teachers. In one of the classes we ended up spending the entire time just talking about where I was from and what I was doing. So that was really cool. As much fun as that was, the really cool part was that after the class I was approached by two students, Victor and Rosio. Victor and Rosio are a couple and they are studying tourism. They came up to me after class and asked if I wanted to hang out some time outside of class. I of course said yes, that I would love to. I had mentioned in class that my birthday was the next day, so they said that they wanted to do something with me. This was great because up until that point my big plans had been to sit in my cabaña and watch TV. So doing anything would be a big improvement.
Most people who go to a new country for school usually go in groups. Or, if they are there to study a language, they have classes with other foreigners. I, on the other hand, came to Chile alone. So my friend base started at nothing. There are other American students here at UACh, but if I wanted to spend my time hanging out with Americans I would have stayed in the states. So this was a great opportunity for me. We made plans to meet up the next afternoon, so hang out and walk around the city.
The next day, my birthday, I met up with Victor in my office. Then we walked downtown and he gave me a tour of the city. He was very good at this, as would be expected from his major. He mostly spoke English while I mostly spoke Spanish. So it worked out pretty well. We walked arounf for a couple hours until lunch, then we made plans to meet up that evening. After that I went back to Estela's and ate.
The thing about Chile is that the nightlife doesn't really start until around midnight, and things don't really get started until 1am. So I spent some time relaxing at home. We planned to meet up in downtown at midnight. So at 11:30 I left the cabaña, found a colectivo (kind of like a taxi, only shared by others) and went downtown. I met up with Victor, then his girlfriend Rosio, and then one of their friends. So the four of us left downtown and went to the Mira Flores campus of UACh. UACh has two campus in Valdivia, the main campus is Teja, where I work, and the other is Mira Flores, for the engineering students. That night at Mira Flores there was a concert. This was kind of a new concept for me, since we don't frequently have concerts on American campus', and never ones that start at midnight. Nor do they usually take place in the gym, nor do they usually sell alcohol or allow smoking indoors. So there was a lot of new things for me. When we got there things hadn't really started yet. There was music, and some people, but not many. The music for the night was reggae and reggaeton, both of which were very enjoyable. We got some beers, which were terrible, and then started talking to people. I met a lot of new people and got a lot of 'happy birthday's'.
Around 1am things started to pick up. I the states that's usually when the party is winding down, but not in Chile. It got very crowded very quickly, and I'm pretty sure I was the only American there. Then another strange thing occurred. Apparently that night they were crowning Miss Campus Mira Flores. So all of a sudden there were girls on the stage, walking a makeshift runway in their bathing suits and answering questions about why they would be the best to represent the campus. A little strange to me, but oh well, when in Rome. After this was finished the music started again. There was much dancing and talking and drinking and that sort of thing. The band didn't start until around 3 or 3:30AM. They played for about a 45 minutes or an hour. I'm a little fuzzy about the timeline, as I didn't have a watch, and it was so late, and I was a little drunk. After the band played, which was great, we went outside to talk some more.
At around 5, Rosio said she was hungry, so we went back downtown to find food. Food turned out to be giant hotdogs covered with salsa and guacamole. By this time there were a lot of drunk people wandering the street. At one a hilarious point, we came across a very drunk Chilean students who could barely stand. When he heard that I was from America he let fly with some of the things he learned from watching American movies. This mostly consisted of various forms of 'what's up mother f&$%er?!'. In my intoxicated state I thought this was the most hilarious thing I had ever heared. At 5:30am we got into a colectivo and headed home. I wasn't in bed until 6am. It had been a hell of a night, and a damn fine birthday experience. I went to bed with the spins, and woke up with a terrible hang over. Gotta love birthdays.

I haven't seen Victor or Rosio since that night/morning, but they are off on a field trip for their major, so I don't expect to hear from them until next week. This week has been great also, so far. This is the first week that I have my actual schedule, so from now on I'll know where I'll be and when each day. I am going to be working in two classes, both of which meet twice a week. So every week I will go to four classes total. I have class monday morning, tuesday afternoon, and two classes on wednesday. One of the classes is fourth semester accounting class that I knew I'd be working in from the start. The other is a fourth semester tourism class. So the students have all had the same ammount of English, but they are at different levels. The students in the Tourism class are much better at English. I think this is because they can actually see the use in knowing English for their careers. The accounting students weren't very excited about English, and some of them really don't like it. But I think that is all starting to change. I think having a native English speaker in their class is going to help them see the advantages of knowing English. I'm very excited to start actually teaching in these classes.

Yesterday, three of the students came to my office after class. Two of them were from my accounting class, and the third was one of their friends from another major. They came to my office with a letter in English that they had prepared. The letter basically said that they wanted to be friends. That they wanted to practice their English with me and that they wanted to help me with my Spanish. They said that they wanted me to think of them as friends and people I could count on for what I needed. It's difficult for me to say this, because they are all my age and one of them was a guy, but it was really cute. That's the only word I can think of to describe it. So we all talked for a bit about what they wanted to do. When I told them yes, I would love to, they were actually excited and relieved. I think they expected me to say no. One of them even said that she had tried to make friends with some of the American exchange students, but that it hadn't worked. Apparently the exchange students are really clicky and like to stay in their little group of Americans. I on the other hand, was hoping to make some contacts among my Chilean students. So I was very happy and excited about this development. We have plans to meet on Saturday, so we'll see how it goes.

Today was crazy. I have been moving non stop all day. First, I slept through my alarm and didn't wake up until Estela was knocking on my door to leave. So I had to run around and get ready very quickly. Then I had the accounting class first thing in the morning. Today was their oral exam, so I took part in listening and grading them. Then, when that finished, I had another class 10 minutes later. So I had to rush across campus to that class. In that class I taught my first mini lesson. By the time that finished it was 1pm. I was getting ready to go back to Estela's for lunch when Ximena reminded me that I'd promised I would teach the last half of one of her classes because she had a meeting. So instead of going home for lunch, I stayed and prepared for that. it would have taken me half an hour to get to Estela's, and half an hour to get back, so there wasn't really any point in leaving. At 2:45 I went to Ximena's class and spent 45 minutes having a conversation about Easter Island, my life, and how I liked Valdivia. At the end of the class one of the students approached me and told me that he was worried about his English. He told me that this was his last semester of English and that he needed to improve before he stopped taking classes. He said that he understood English fine, but he had trouble speaking, and a lot of problems with grammar. Then he asked me if I'd be willing to help him. I, of course, said that I would love to. He told me that we could go get a beer sometime and talk, if I wanted to. At which point I informed him that I love beer and would never pass on an opportunity to have a beer. So he is coming to my office in about 45 minutes to talk about it.

So things are finally starting to pick up around here. I love working with these students and I love being able to help them. My schedule is about to get a lot busier, and I'm really happy about that. The last thing I want is to have too much free time and get bored. So this is all perfect with me. So that more or less covers the last week. I'll try not to wait so long between posts from now. I hope everybody who is reading this is doing well. Hasta luego.

Great Weekend

My weekend started on Friday. I never have class on Fridays, so the three day weekends are going to be very nice. On top of that, monday was a holiday in Chile, so I had a four day weekend. Awesome. Friday started out early because Ximena invited me to go on a sight seeing trip with some students who are here from Asia. They are studying Spanish through their University, and this was a nice way for them to see some of the country, and I was lucky enough to join. We left at 9am, which meant that I had to leave my place at 8am so I could take a colectivo downtown and then walk to campus. I had no idea where we were going, just that it would be near the Andes, so I was pretty excited. When I got to campus I found out that it would be me, Ximena, another teacher, and four students. Two from the philipines, one from Nepal and one from Bangledesh. What I didn´t know was that they all spoke English, so my brushing up on my Spanish was not necessary. Oh well. We went in a van, which was driven by a man named Aladino. So from the start there were jokes about this trip being magical and the van being our magic carpet. Aladino didn´t speak English, but we were able to talk a bit and joke in Spanish. I was in the passanger seat and everyone else was in the back, so Aladino and I tried to talk some. He was a funny guy, and made the long drive bearable. I also got a chance to talk with Ximena quite a bit. So that was really enjoyable. We talked about our families and work and all that good stuff. It was a long drive to where we were going, but I was very suprised and happy to see how much this part of Chile resembles Washington. If it wasn´t for all of the trees being a bit different, and everything being in Spanish, I could have been driving on a country road in Washington.
Our first stop was a city called Frutillar. It´s a little German influenced city on the shore of Lago Llanquihue, a huge lake about 3 hours drive from Valdivia. It´s a beautiful place, with a bunch of little German houses and restaurants. The Lake is beautiful, but unfortunately it was cloudy that day, because on the far shore is Volcán Osorno, a big, perfectly symetrical volcano. We could only see the base while we were in Frutillar, but it was still very beautiful. We looked at the lake and the waterfront for a bit, then we went to a museum about the town and the German immigrants who founded it. It was pretty cool, but after a bit our hunger got the best of us and we left for our next destination.
The next city we went to was further south, but also on the shore of Lago Llanquihue. This city was called Puerto Varas. When we got there we stopped at a little Italian restaurant for lunch and I had my first pizza since I got here. Anyone who knows me knows that going that long without pizza was somewht trying for me. It was very good and I left quite happy. After we ate we continued around the lake to the Parque Nacional Vicente Perez Rosales. Here we went to see los Saltos del Petrohue. This was also beautiful. I was amazed at how much water was shooting out of the falls. We stayed there for a bit, then we left and went further down to Lagos Todos los Santos. This was really cool because the lake was surounded by mountains. By this time of the day the clouds were breaking up and we could see a lot more. Still couldn´t see the top of Volcán Osorno, but almost. I was also able to see the mountains that make up the border with Argentina. So it was pretty spectacular. We stayed there for a while and then we left to go back to Valdivia. In all I saw two big lakes, a waterfall, and a bunch of mountains... So I was really happy. The drive home was long, rainy, dark and kinda boring. Everyone, except me and Aladino, was asleep. So we talked some, or tried to at least, while everyone else slept. We didn´t get back till 9:45, and I wasn´t back in my cabaña till 10pm. So it was a really long day, but it was also a very good day.

Saturday was fairly uneventful, Estela and I went to the butcher shop and bought some beef, then had lunch, then I found out I had TV and cable in the cabaña. Not only that, but half of the shows on the TV were in English with Spanish subtitles. So I spent most of saturday watching TV. In fact, that evening, I watched Chile beat Columbia in a world cup qualifier. I mention it because this win made it so Chile is gaurenteed a spot in the 2010 world cup. Naturally, the whole country went crazy. People running through the streets screaming and celebrating. I could still hear cars honking their horns at 1am. It was pretty great.

Sunday Estela and I went to la Feria to buy some produce and fish. Then we tried to find somewhere where I could buy an international calling card, but since it was sunday everything was closed. We went back to the house and had lunch, then later in the evening she took me to a couple of parks around Valdivia. It was a pretty cloudy day, so we didn´t stay out long. When we got back I called mom and talked for a bit. It was nice to hear all the news from up north. After that I went back to my Cabaña. Estela let me use her computer so I was finally able to put some pictures up on facebook. I still haven´t figured out how to get them on this blog, but I´m working on it.

Monday was a really cool day. After we had lunch, Estela took me down to the waterfront. Then we got on a boat and took a tour of the rivers around Valdivia. It was really cool to see the city from the water. And it was really cool to see all of the lobos marinos (sealions) up close. There are a ton of them here. The just hang out and wait for the fishers to throw them scraps. They crawl up out of the water and just kind of hang out next to la Feria and along la Costanera, a road the goes all along the bank of the river. The damn things are huge, and there´s almost always a crowd of people around them taking pictures. Valdivia also has a submarine parked along the shore. It´s going to be part of a museum in the future, but now it´s just kinda sitting there. After the tour we went to Lider, the store next to where we live, bought some food for the week, then went back to the house.

That was pretty much my weekend. It was nice and long and I got to see some cool stuff. So I was happy. The more I´m here the more I love this country. It´s beautiful, and the people are great. I´m very happy I´m having this opportunity, and I wouldn´t be suprised if I find myself back here in the future. This week I just have three days of school, so I´m going to continue observing classes and enjoying myself. Hasta luego.

Cold Showers and Seaweed Stew

Let me start of by saying that I am a person who enjoys the shower. I will somtimes spend fifteen minutes of more just sitting in the hot water thinking. It´s something I have always enjoyed. Now, in Valdivia, I am have to sacrafice that simple pleasure. In my cabaña all of my water is heated with gas. I have to turn the gas off when I´m not home, and when I´m sleeping lest the pilot blow out and I die or something unfortunate like that. There isn´t much time that I´m home because of school. So, I don´t get much hot water. In fact, what hot water I do get can best be described luke warm to cold. If you combine this with the fact that I only have time to shower in the evenings, when my bathroom is as cold as it is outside, you get a Ryan who doesn´t get nearly the same enjoyment out of the shower as he did before. So my showers have been cut down to about two minutes maximum. Not that I´m complaining, as my dear sister pointed out to me, I am living in the lap of luxury comparitively. This is merely an observation.

Another observation I have to make is about the change in my diet since I got here. In the states I subsisted on a diet comprised of frozen pizza and burritos. Vegitables were not on my menu, except for the occasional salad, and fuit had about the same standing. However, since I arrived Estela has been kind enough to invite me over to the house for lunch every day. This is nice because in Chile the main meal of the day is lunch. Not wanting to seem ungrateful I have been eating everything that she puts in front of me. This include many different vegitables and a lot of fruit. Notably, I tried my first brussel sprouts the other day. I was not a fan, but I gave it a try. While that was a new thing for me, I think the most notable thing I have eaten so far has been seaweed stew. Now, I have eaten seaweed before, usually in sushi, so that´s not such a big deal. But this wasn´t your normal leafy seaweed, this could be better described as kelp. Thick, green, salty tubes of kelp. I was hesitant at first, it has a distincly salty/fishy smell. But, I tried it, and to my suprise it was pretty damn good.

So I am trying a lot of new things, and eating healthier here than I did in the US. I´m enjoying it a lot so far and I´m excited to continue learning new things and experiencing this culture. On friday I think that I´m going to go on a tour of the surrounding area with some of the intensive spanish students from asia. I´m excited to see what there is outside of Valdivia, I´ve been to the coast, but I know that there´s a lot more to be seen around here. That´s it for now, hasta luego.

The First Days of Class

Before I start telling about how the first two days of class went I just want to say that I love doing this.

OK, that being said, I observed my first class last night, and then I observed two more today. Also, I now have my very own office and computer with internet. I still can´t get internet with my laptop, but at least now I will have a place where I can use it whenever I am here. Yesterday evening I went to class with Estela, the woman I am staying with. It was pretty cool, but I mostly sat and listened and observed. I did get to read some paragraphs so that the students could hear a native speaker, so that was pretty neat. They were architecture students and they were practicing using the past tense. But I didn´t participate very much. Overall it was a good first class.

Today I had two classes that I observed. The first was with a woman named Alejandra. In this class they were accounting students and they were learning how to describe things. It was very basic descriptive English. They were shown pictures and then they had so describe the people in the pictures, what they looked like, what they were doing, what their habits were, things like that. I got to lead part of the class discussion, so I enjoyed that.

The second class I was in was my favorite so far because I got to participate the most. This class was taught by Ximena and it was also for accounting students. They were learning the same things as in the other accounting class. The class started by me introducing myself. The they took turns asking me questions. This was actually more like Ximena calling on students and telling them to ask me questions. Most of them were very shy about this. I think this was because they were nervous to be talking to a native speaker. It was fun though, but I´m not sure how much they all were able to understand. The reason Ximena wants me to work in this class is because she just started teaching it and they are behind where they should be. So it will be a very interesting challenge. I could tell that they were nervous to have me there at first, but as the class progressed they got more comfortable with the idea. As they wrote down descriptions of thepictures they brought they asked me if they were doing it correctly. So I was being used a lot and I really liked it. Finally, in the last ten minutes of class, Ximena told them that they could speak Spanish to me. So I got to practice my spanish some. It was an interesting experience. There I was, standing at the back of the class, whith twenty Chilean students, in their early twenties, standing around me in a semi-circle... all speaking spanish. It was a bit overwhelming but I think it really helped them. I think it was very good for them to see me struggle with their language. Hopefully this showed them that it´s ok if they don´t have a command of English yet. I´m hoping that this will make them much more comfortable in the future. I will be meeting witht he same group tomorrow morning, so it will be interesting to see how they react. I will also be working with this group for the rest of the time I am here. With any luck they will get comfortable enough with me that they will be able to experiment with English and learn a lot more. I also think it was good for them to see that English is something that they can use to communicate with. It´s not just a theoretical language they have to learn, but something they can really use. We´ll see how it goes.

Overall I think this was a very good first couple of days. It has reaffirmed my decision to become a teacher and I am very excited to continue working with all of these students. Now, I´m off to find some food. Adios

Hola!

So it has been a crazy whirwind last couple of days and this is the first opportunity I have had to sit down and write anything significant. So I´ll start at the beginning. I arrived in Valdivia on Friday at around 11:30AM after over 20 hours of travel. I was a bit tired to say the least. Ximena, the head of the English department at the university, was there to meet me, which was great. On the ride to Valdivia we talked about what we were going to do for the practicum and she told me that she had found a place for me to live. This was really nice because I didn´t have any idea where I was going to sleep that night, much less stay for the next two months. It turns out that one of the English teachers had a cabaña built in her backyard years ago for her daughter to live in. Noone was using it now Ximena talked to her and she said she would rent it to me.
The place is great. I have two small bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchenette and a living/dining room. There´s a gas heater (which stopped working this morning, I think it´s out of gas), a mini fridge, an oven... the works. The woman who owns it is named Estela. I don´t know how old she is but she has a grown daughter, who I haven´t met yet, and a thirteen year old grandaughter who I have met. She lives in the house with her 100 year old mother, who I can´t understand at all. Estela is fluent in English which is really nice, but she is encouraging me to speak only Spanish. So far she has been great.
On the first day, after I put my stuff away, Estela had me over to the house for lunch. Lunch is the main meal of the day in Chile, so it was very nice. Then she took me around Valdivia and showed me the sights. She also took me to the university and we talked to Ximena for a couple of minutes. She is clearly excited to have me here and that is really nice. After that we went back to the store and I bought some food and stuff. This all took place within a few hours of me landing. So it was all a bit crazy and surreal. One day I´m sitting in Olympia, packing my bags, thinking I´ll be sleeping in a hostel when I arrive, next thing I know I´m I have my own cabaña and I´m sitting in a strangers house drinking wine for high tea, talking in spanish with a thirteen year old girl. Very bizarre. But also very nice. Estela has done everything she can to make me feel at home, and it has been great.
The only issue I have had so far is the fact that I can´t get internet on my computer. Right now I am using Estela´s computer. I can connect my computer to her wireless network, but it just wont go the extra step to connect to the internet. I´m hoping on monday I will be able to connect to the school´s internet, but we´ll see.
Yesterday Estela took me to the feria (open market) where I saw a ton of stuff I hadn´t seen before. It was really cool. It´s exactly what you would think an open fish market should be. Also, there are giant sealions that hang out around the market cuz people throw the fish scraps. It´s pretty cool to see them that close. After that she took me to the coast, a twenty minute drive away. It was beautiful.
Today is rainy. This is the first rain I have seen so far since I got here. It´s kinda nice, reminds me of home. I am being continually impressed by the similarities and the differences between the North West and here. The weather and temperature are the same, except it´t the beginning of spring here. Many of the trees are the same, though it is very strange to see pine trees growing next to palm trees. In so many ways I could be sitting down in a little town in Washington, except everything is in Spanish and much much older. Today I think I´m just going to relax, maybe watch a movie or two and enjoy the sound of the rain.
I´m hoping to have internet soon and when I do I´ll post some pictures. But, for now, adios.

Valdivia

This is just gonna be a quick post, but I wanted to let everyone know that I made it Valdivia in one piece. I have a place to live, which is awesome, and I love this city and the people in it. When I figure out how to get my internet to work I´ll write more and post some pictures. Adios.

WTF

So apparently I have internet on the airplane. So right now I'm cruising at 31,000 feet on my way to Dallas. Technology is crazy. I have about an hour left until I get to Dallas and then it will be off to Santiago. Adios.