Fin de Semana

Update on the weekend :)

So Friday I went with my two sisters to Talca. Its a city about 1 hour south of Curicó. We cut class early in order to make it on time to the ceremony. My program invited all of the volunteers down to get recognized. It was nice, we got diplomas and there was cake :) It only lasted about 2 hours and then we headed back to Curicó.

That night we went to a theater where two of my students were performing! They were so good! I´m really proud. They and the rest of their theatre troop played different characters from around the city, like a painter, a food vendor etc. It was really well done. After the show Amy and I went to a restaurant where we had some empanadas and sang karaoke!!!!!! It was so hilarious. We sang Shakira ¨wherever, whenever¨and Shania Twain ¨Man, I feel like a woman¨. It was pretty embarressing but mostly awesome! We made some friends too which is always pretty sweet.

Saturday I slept in pretty late and then met 2 of the other English teachers for lunch around 1pm. It was super delicious! Then I went to Amy´s house to have tea with her mother and to meet her host brother. Good times! Now I´m just preparing for class, Jeopardy day tomorrow!! Get excited :)

Well thats all for now!
Ciao Ciao!

Back to normal

Since I’ve been back to work things have gone rather smoothly. I started work on Tuesday and have enjoyed seeing my students again. We did short dialogues about natural disasters yesterday and it was hilarious! I wish you could see some of the things they come up with in a matter of 10 minutes. After school I eat lunch as usual with my sister and sometimes host mom (Mary) but then at night I have been going to a gym called energía with Mary. It is a cute little place and the owners are super nice. It is mainly just a good chance for us to spend time together.

I have been talking a lot with people back home getting ready things down at the U of I again. I spoke with my boss and I am very excited to start working the week I get home! We are at a new location this year and it should be a great one. I have also talked with Mahreen and she is already in our new place! It’s so fun moving into a new apartment even thought I’m sure it will be quite a lot of work. This time we have two bathrooms and I couldn’t be more thrilled about that!! Katie is going to Maine this Saturday which is pretty sweet. It sounds like everyone is getting in their last summer flings and then its back to school.

I have to teach in 10 minutes, today is Urban Crime day. I think I’ll focus on new vocabulary and phrases like “I’m INNOCENT!” and “You can’t handle the truth!

Hopefully they will like it :) Talk to you soon! Oh and this weekend I am going to a city called Talca for a day. I think there is some sort of ceremony with the government or something for all the volunteers. I’ll tell you all about it!

Con Cariño

Time for a vacation!

After a long but fabulous week of camp I was ready to head out for another adventure.

There were about 7 of us girls who decided to hop on a bus and see if we couldn’t explore more of what Chile had to offer! The night camp ended we packed our things and took a bus to a place called La Serena. It is a beautiful town right by the coast. We checked out some markets and El Faro (the lighthouse) which is kind of like their pride and joy :) During the day it was gorgeous and a nice change of pace from Curicó. The next day we took a day tour to the surrounding country side. We saw things like papaya plantations and many other fruits that are grown in the winter. The views were absolutely breathtaking!

We also visited a place where pisco is made (pisco is a very well known alcohol made in Chile) We were able to see the whole process which was very cool. We also hit up the town where Gabriela Mistral was born and raised. She is the only Chilean woman to win the Nobel peace prize. She won it for her literary work. I bought a book of her poems and am trying to memorize one called “piececitos” (little feet). She wrote a lot for children. After exploring a little bit more of La Serena and its neighboring city Coquimbo we hopped on another bus to San Pedro Atacama.

The Atacama Desert is one of the driest in the world and definitely worth the travel up north! We stayed in a cute little hostel called Cabañas Candelaria which was about a 15 minute walk from the middle of town. We met a lot of fun people there since it is a bit of a tourist town. People from all over all in this one little town, it was really a fun thing to be a part of. We tried to see as much as week could!

We went sand boarding in these beautiful dunes which is basically just snowboarding but on sand. I had sand EVERYWHERE let me tell you :) We then took a bus to the salt caves where we walked through. It was pretty small in some parts and really dark but of course tons of fun! After that we went to valle de la luna “Moon valley” where we climbed up to watch the sun set over the valley. I tried to take pictures but as most of you know no picture can ever do a sight like that justice. In the evenings we would hang out with people at the hostel and go dancing or wander around. Fun times for sure.

Another day I took a tour of the Tatio Geysers which was worth every penny! I had to wake up at 4am however which wasn’t my first choice lol. We traveled a about two hours where we proceeded to get out of the van and freeze our behinds off! I was soooo cold!!! :) We had breakfast while we watched the geysers erupt from our place inside the volcano. Totally amazing! We wandered around to the different ones and took pictures. Our guide told us there is a big fight right now in the towns because big companies want to use the geysers for electricity but that would mean huge machines would be placed all over and the geysers would practically disappear. It will be interesting to see how that all plays out. It is so sad to think they could all disappear in a few years time.

After that we traveled to a hot spring where a few brave souls got into swimming suits and braved the cold :) Of course I had to do it!! How many times does one get to do something like that?? Once you were in the water you were sure to forget all about the cold J Getting out was a funny sight though! I have never gotten dressed so fast. We headed off again spotting many animals along the way such as llama and Vicuña. So cute :)

We then proceeded to take a walk along a cactus filled field. Some of the cacti were 400 years old! I had no idea how slow they grow. We kept going until we reached a valley. We climbed down next to a little water fall and jumped over a small river to get further in. I think we went further than we were supposed to but it was so worth it!!! The view from inside was great!

The last tour we did was to an astronomical observatory. Now that was something that I seriously will never forget! They taught us a little bit about how to read the sky and pointed out things like the Southern Cross and the scorpion. The Milky Way was so clear it was unbelievable! It’s amazing how much the lights of a city cover up. They had about 7 telescopes set up and we took turns looking up close and personal to clusters of stars, galaxies and tons more! I’ve never seen a galaxy before!! I mean really how cool is that! The closest star to us is actually two starts that circle around each other every 80 years. One of the cooler things to see was Jupiter and its moons! I still don’t understand how we can get that close to things light-years away! We were able to take pictures through the telescope so that was really cool. We also got hot chocolate at the end which is always appreciated!!

All in all, my trip up north was exactly what I hoped for. Saturday morning we headed south on a 24 hour bus ride! It was surprisingly unpainful (however I’m not sure the food was actually eatable). You just have to go with the flow :) I got home yesterday during early afternoon and was grateful to be back in my room with a warm showers whenever I so desire :) Tomorrow I start school again and have 16 days before I go! Crazy to think it’s almost time to leave. It’s been quite the good time but I also miss my family and friends! I feel so torn about leaving. I’m just going to make the most out of the time I have left! I hope you enjoyed the update :) Sorry its so long winded :)

Camp Counselor

Well it has been quite a long few weeks but I want to catch up as much as possible!

So a week ago I started English Camp. Basically it was a week long camp where kids from schools all around the area came to improve their English and get an immersion all week :) There were 4 counselors including me and then about 40 students. So we split them into two groups most days with two teachers each. Now I didn’t know at all what to expect when I first started and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to do it but let me tell you that it was the most meaningful experience I’ve had by far during my time in Chile. We had a total blast all week with the kids! It was a ton of work don’t get me wrong but seriously it was amazing and totally worth it!!

As with many things in South America plans weren’t really settled until the last minute :) Therefore, we didn’t know how many kids would show up or what their abilities were. We were given a rough schedule of what to teach and thrown in to fend for ourselves. As you can imagine I was a little nervous about this aspect. The first day was quite a long one. It felt like I spent most of it scrambling to keep my head above water. We tried to play games and practice with dialogues so as to get an idea of the English level of our kids. I surprisingly learned all their names thanks to a name game. My name was jumpin’ Jessica lol. We were supposed to go bowling the first day but that fell through so we just kind of went with the flow and tried to make it through! After we finished we regrouped at a local food court next to the school and put our heads together as to how we were going to make the next days go a lot more smoothly :) We got ice cream while we brainstormed because they always helps! We decided to take it one day at a time and plan for the next day at the end of every camp day (which was at 6pm)

The planning really paid off because the next days were great! I don’t want to bore you with too many details but I want to tell you a few things we did :)

- We did end up going bowling which was tons of fun and a first for many of the kids! I was so happy because a boy won who had never bowled before and he was just ecstatic!

- We had an Olympic day where we broke them up into teams and they had to complete different tasks at different stations. I had the trivia station where they answered questions like how many stripes are on the US flag, which two states have Disney land and Disney world, and who is Angelina Jolie dating :) I think the hardest for them was naming the two non-continental states of the US.

- We had them in 9 different groups where each was given a state to research. Of course Illinois was one of them!! They came up with hilarious cheers for their states and made posters full of interesting information to share on the last day. The Illinois kids made a great flag and gave it to me as a present :)

- We had a spelling bee which the kids got really into, I was really impressed with their skills! Spelling has certainly never been my strongest subject.

- We had a Christmas day where we made a tree and snowflakes! We had everyone bring a white elephant gift and it turned out really fun!! We also made chocolate chip cookies and watched a Christmas movie. I think that was one of the best days :)

- We also had the kids come up with a skit, a children’s book or a song for the last day where we put on a talent show for all the parents and a few members of the ministry of education. It turned out so good! The kids were so excited to share what they had been working on and it was great way to end everything.

- Another really fun thing we did was have a sort of supermarket sweep! We taught the kids English words of what you might buy shopping and then brought them to a local shopping mall where they had to find all of the objects and whoever did it first and cheapest won! We didn’t check with the store first however so it was interesting to figure out how to not get kicked out :) That was super fun.

- Every day we taught new vocabulary pertaining to the activities and tried to give them time to work with it and speak.

On the last day I was so sad to have to say goodbye to the kids. They all worked so hard and got so close throughout the week. They got together and bought us all aprons because of the cookie making day :) I though that was such a sweet idea! They also surprised us with little homemade gifts which I will keep forever!

I must admit I cried when we had to say goodbye. I feel like I learned so much from this experience. I learned how to think on my feet and go with the flow. There were so many unexpected surprises and things that didn’t workout how we wanted them too that I really feel it helped me to be creative and not worry so much about the outcome. Working with the other volunteers really helped us to become great friends. When you go through that kind of experience you really get to know the other people :) I think we all made a great team!