I wanted to give you all a little update on Santiago as of late! I also wanted to thank Trimble and Kingston for providing their thoughtful comments on my first blog post, hopefully the rest of the posts are more what you guys are looking for.
As you know, I work at an after-school program called Mi Club Domingo Savio. I usually go in at 12 noon and get home at 830 pm, making for a pretty long day. We eat lunch with the rest of the staff, and I've quickly become best friends with the cook (at least I think we are best friends). Her name is Magali, and as a woman who feeds me; she has quickly become one of the most cherished people in my life. No but really I love her and she cooks a lot for me and gives me bigger portions than everyone else.
Some Latinos I know:
The actual time spent with the kids isn't as much, they don't get there until at 330. My spanish is still pretty limited, but as I've told some of you I've had to make up other ways of communication and getting my point across, especially when the kids act up. For example, when one little kid was annoying me I had to roll a tire at him to make him run away (although he kept coming back so I would roll it again). Another time, the kids were all throwing hard plastic balls at them and even though I told them to stop they wouldn't so I had to pick up one of them and carry them in front of me as a human shield (not as bad as it sounds). Other times I'll just spin them around really fast until they get dizzy and have to run off.
The youngest kids are the easiest to work with considering my level of spanish, and that makes me like them the best, but I feel like my impact could be greater with the older kids, some of whom don't have male figures in their family, etc etc...Anyway, I hope that will change as I learn more spanish.
With that said, I'll tell you about the little kids I've been working with. They are funny, smart, and occasionally smelly, as are most little kids. They range between ages 5-7 (maybe 8) and are really amusing because they are all best friends and interact really well with each other. This was a surprise to me because I feel like throughout school I was kept with kids who were almost exactly my age and I never really went outside that. They are also very funny about acting "grown up", the girls all put the plastic balls I previously mentioned in their shirts and walk around showing everyone how chesty they are and the boys always put the balls in their shirt sleeves to buff up their biceps. Theres also one kid who runs around kissing all the girls on the mouth and being a little casanova. I think he's my favorite and occasionally when I look over at him he'll be blowing kisses to the other girls in the class, causing them to yell and tell the teacher.
As I was saying:
The one on the far left always helps me with my artwork:
Last week was my first week with an actual schedule, and it went something like this:
- First Period: Help Group 2 kids (ages 8-11) with homework and serve them snack around 530
- After snack break for 45 min - where I usually help clean up, play outside, etc..
- Second Period: This is the fun period because it varies everyday - some days I'll help with art projects, one day I cooked pancakes with the girls from group 1, one day was dance lessons, one was sports, etc...
The school also has a lot of special days; the other day a group of high school girls came and played games with the kids, brought food, essentially did our jobs for an afternoon which was nice. I don't know why they came but I assume its part of some community outreach thing they do. Either way it was a lot of fun.
I'm really getting the hang of my place in the school, how things are done, and getting into a routine which is nice. I'm also looking forward to January, when we get to go on a trip with the entire school to a farm in south-central Chile. It should be a great time and everyone is excited about it. My sister also says that she might come in January and if so would be coming on the trip so that is all very exciting.
As many of you saw in Jen's blog, we went on a hike last weekend to a mountain called Manquehue (sp.?). I don't know what the summit of it was, but we left around 1:30 and didn't get back til 8:30 with about two hours of travelling. It was honestly the hardest hike I've ever done; I'm not kidding when I say we were scaling inclines of something like 75-80 degrees. They call it trekking here, and now I know the reason (quote that one). The way down was a lot more fun, if not even more dangerous. We were literally sliding down dirt and clearing rocks as we tried to make our way down. I felt so bad for the man below me, I kept sending rocks barrelling towards him and could only yell "!avalancho!" to warn him. Needless to say he was not happy.
Thats about it here recently, we just got back from Valparaiso, for which I'll make a separate blog post later and hopefully include some pictures. To all of you reading this I hope all is well, message me and/or send me cell numbers so I can call you (google call lets me call US and Canadian numbers for free until 2011).
Love,
Dominic
View from my apartment:
The building towards the left is meant to look like a cell phone apparently
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