Chilean School System

I've realized I have not done nearly enough posts of Chile. I wish I had. It's harder than you think, to keep a blog updated. I hope everyone has enjoyed my posts, it will probably be more useful for me than anyone else in the future. This specific blog is dedicated to the time I've spent here volunteering in the schools teaching English.

I volunteered for two different programs, English Opens Doors (Ingles Abre Puertas) and American Corner. Both of these programs are worldwide. EOD is a program for exchange students to help out in the high schools or elementary English classes. I spent every Tuesday and Friday in a high school helping students with their English. I was so pumped at the beginning of the program, but it didn't initially turn out to be what I was hoping. Most of the students had no interest in even learning English. It is a subject here that every student is subjected to.

I found the school system a bit dysfunctional. I just want to warn that this is completely my opinion and my critique of the school system here. Many of the students horse around in classes and talk while the teachers talk, and this is with out an end. It is always occurring. I know it happens in the states as well, but the students eventually shut up and show respect to the teachers. To make matters worse, in my opinion the students have little to no responsibility.

The thing about chilean students is that they are not required to grow up until later in life. Down here I am considered a child still that must have things done for her. If I hadn't insisted I would never have done a single dish or ever made my bed once in Chile. It's completely normal to have your mother do everything for you until you move out and get married. The chilean children for the most part live with their parents until they are married. I've noticed that many men are not  required to do anything. Women are a different story. Their culture is very machismo. My host mom has a daughter who lives with her still, but she helps her mom out a lot with laundry and dish washing. I don't know any male students who live with their parents still, but I have heard that they tend not to do anything. I believe that it's part of the culture and the machismo presence in the culture.

Anyway, back to the school system. I was saying that the students have little responsibility and the classes are set up for them to have little responsibility. The students are grouped with the same group of students for the entire year. They stay and sit in the same room all day and the professors come to them. It's as if the culture enables them to live with out responsibility. It's different, but eventually the students clean up their behavior for college. So even though I disagree with their system, it seems to be working for them.

One other thing I've noticed in the classes and among the students is that they don't believe in themselves. The professor when I first met her explained to me the characteristics of each class. She said that 2 class had little to no motivation and that one class had more motivation and that I'd have fun with them. She went so far to say that the students know very little. I think this was completely her opinion. I worked with these students for about 3 months and they knew more than they let on. I was pleasantly surprised how much they did know. A funny thing about the English classes here is that they learn how to speak British English and many of them have British accents. Just as an fyi, British/Spanish accents are one of the best accents I have ever heard in my life.

Nearing the end of my trip, I am so glad that I participated in this program. The students were so fun to work with and I will not be forgetting them any time soon.


The other program I participated in is called American Corner. I had a lot of fun with my students in this group. It was basically a small group of college students and/or teachers who wanted to practice their English. That was the main difference between the two groups of students. The students in American Corner are highly motivated and always come to learn. We basically just bullshit the entire time about culture differences and share stories. Today we played card games the entire time. The pictures on the side are us playing BS and spoons(with pencils). The games got intense and were full of smack talk. I just hope they enjoyed their time with us as much as I did with them!

Thank you to all who made my volunteering experience possible! :D
(Also these are the first pictures I've posted b/c I just learned how...opps on my part!)

What I Would Call an Awesome Weekend

It all started Thursday night with a friend's 21st Birthday. We all know how these go in the states, so I don't really need to elaborate. Plus I'm pretty sure if I did, Ray wouldn't appreciate it. Let's just say I had a lot of fun dancing and singing the night away with amigos!

The next day, Fridays we don't have classes b/c we're abroad and need more time to explore the world around us? It's the best idea since cheddar cheese. Anyway, after a night of a little too much fun some friends and I spent a day in a pool getting tan :) It was so relaxing except that my friend's host sister is TINY, a lot of chilean women are twigs! Other than feeling inferior I soaked in some sol and had a good time relaxing.

The NEXT day we went to the beach, Niebla :) This beach is so gorgeous, we just relaxed in the sun all day(again). At one point I bought an empanada with shrimp! It was super yummy. Alicia, my roommate, and I saw a sign in English that attempted to translate empanadas. "Dough pocket filled with cheese" It's a fairly good description just a bit hilarious. Also, I saw a cute cat. You'd be surprised how uncommon cats are here. There are an abundance of stray dogs here, but no cats :( I think the funniest part of the day was seeing these two grown men on the micro(bus) have a tickle fight! I wondered if they were trying to impress some women. I haven't seen men play like that before especially in public, so I wondered why they would. Anyway, it was just an interesting part of the day.

Sunday :) I have a friend in my American Corner Group (it's a group of chilean students that want to learn English, so the exchange students volunteer at this place) who is a Kayak instructor. He invited us out this weekend and took us to this little town about 2 hours away in kayak. It was a perfect day for it too, the only problem was that most of us are not experienced in kayaking. Sooooo it was very interesting at the end of the day, extremely sore and burnt.

The day started out lovely and everyone was very excited. We passed a bunch of things including a man fishing without pants on. He was a little embarrassed to see a bunch of gringos pass him. It's a part of the river that doesn't get much traffic, so obviously normally he'd be free to not have pants on! About half way there we stopped at this lookout point that I jumped on. It was coming out of the water so I could have easily jumped off. It's spring here, so it's not overly hot for swimming in a river. So, I opted out of jumping. I took some awesome pics of the water though!

When we finally got to the town, we wanted to eat right away. We ended up finding a place with empanadas filled with cheese or beef. They were really good and their dogs loved us by the end even though we didn't feed them. There was a cute little girl there too who was VERY talkative. She was also very hard to understand b/c of her squeaky voice. She told us all about her dogs and how all of their names were either Camilo or Camila depending on the gender. On our walk towards the beach we ran into a cute dog who just wanted to play. She followed us, even into the water. She wanted to come with us so bad :( I felt bad and just wanted to take her back to Valdivia, but that really wasn't possible.

By the end of the trip everyone was done for. Either you were burnt or your arms were noodles, or both. The trip was difficult, but so worth the good times. One of the best things to think about is that up north ya'll have cold weather, while we on the other hand are headed towards summer. I'm loving Valdivia right now. I hope this feeling continues. There's no reason it wouldn't, I mean we have Harry Potter coming up :D To all the peeps in America we get to see it an entire day earlier than you :P Sometimes being in another country pays off!

Can't wait for another weekend full of sun(please Valdivia please don't PMS next weekend)!

Argentina

In September a group of 8 of us gringos travelled to Mendoza, Argentina. It's a little town in the northern part of Argentina. The trip was spectacular. There was sun everyday and comfortable temperatures. Nothing bad happened not even a bad feeling came to me while on this trip. I swear it was absolute heaven. I decided I wanted to go back to Argentina simply because I loved it so much. I mean, good reason right?

Well, it turns out that not every trip can be as amazing as the one I had to Mendoza. This time my friend Maggie and I went to Buenos Aires, the Europe capital of South America. I mean what could possibly go wrong? Okay, maybe I'm building it up a bit too much. The trip just wasn't the best. It left me tired and worn out. It also left me missing home after 2 months of already being here. Anyway...

My friend and I ended up busing it the entire way to Buenos Aires. It wasn't actually that bad. It was a total of 30 hours of travel, which sounds painful but in the end it was alright. I woke up in the middle of the night to thunder storms. It was surprisingly very beautiful. The thunder would light up the sky and I could see the ground and what was around us. It was all flat with a few trees. Thats the trip from Mendoza to Buenos Aires.

When you get to Buenos you can immediately tell. It's a huge city and you don't miss something like that. The first building I took a picture of had a gigantic clock on the top. One of the very many breath taking sights in Buenos. When we arrived we took a very expensive taxi to our hostel. They made us wait for an entire hour before we went to our room. Obviously the only thing they did was put blankets on our beds. The room was still a disaster and hostels never put sheets on themselves. On the plus side my friend found some brazilian money that the last hostelers left. It was good too b/c she was on a strict budget. The first thing we did as Americans in the city was find a Starbucks. It was as good as the real thing.

After that we went to the capital building, La Casa Rosada. To be honest I feel a little bad. I've been to two capitals and capital buildings in two South American countries, but I haven't been any where near my own. One thing thats very interesting to me is their pride down here. All Latin Americans are very proud of where they come from. I wish my people were like that. I mean, the USA has done a lot of bad, but I was born there. It's my own country. Instead of talking shit about my own country I should embrace it's defaults and help fix them.

Throughout our time in BA we went to three different well known communities San Telmo, La Boca and Recoleta. In San Telmo we had little adventures trying on old hats and meeting other Americans. There were so many people at this market, it was a little insane. La Boca was very beautiful. I loved the colorful buildings and all the tango dancers in the streets. Also the jotes(in other words creepers) that would not leave my gringa friend alone. She heard SO many pick up lines in the 5 days we were in BA. Some of them included...

"Is your name Barbie?" -Jote
(just playing along) "Yeah" -Maggie
"Well I'm Ken" -Jote

We were taking a run in the city and as soon as we step out the door...
"Holy Shit?!!!" -Another Jote

"Oh look, my future wife." -Yet again...Jote

"Can I give you my number?" -Jote

"Hermosa" "Chica linda" The list goes on and on and on.

One of the creepiest "pick up" lines was when this guy started throwing money at us. This day we were both wearing skirts. I thought for a second the money was coming out of my purse. We looked at him and he was like yeah yeah... Oh Argentineans who just don't know what to do when they see Maggie. It was the entertainment on our trip.

The reason BA left me tired was because I got really sick. One day after a night of partying out on the town I got a fever. It wasn't very pleasant and all I wanted to do was lay in bed. I felt bad for my friend b/c she wasn't sick at all and wanted to enjoy our time in BA. I was finally getting better the day we left. We ended up going to catholic mass that morning. The church was overwhelming gorgeous and epic. I mean all the architecture in BA is gorgeous. Many of the buildings have the classism style of architecture. I love this style. None of the pictures I took in any way shape or form do any justice to the city. Everything looks so tiny when everything was just gigantic and epic.

It may have just been because I was sick, but I felt like the city had chewed me and spit me out to fend for myself. I felt defeated and started thinking about how much I missed home. I haven't been missing it until now. When you get sick in a foreign country there really isn't any of the comforts you would normally have when you're sick at home. I can handle it when I'm in Valdivia b/c it now feels like home, but I was alone in a strange HUGE city. There's just no clear way to explain how I felt. Anyway, It all ended well and I made it back to Valdivia safely.

Even though the trip wasn't as amazing as Mendoza was I enjoyed it none the less. I mean I went to Buenos Aires. That in itself is amazing and I never thought I would actually get the experience to go there. I'm reminded every day how lucky I am to be down here in Chile. It's an amazing experience I wish everyone could get to experience.

Until next time...