School Administration - The Same Around the World

Ok, so we actually did start teaching English on Tuesday. It was kind of a surprise that there were no more roadblocks that the Assistant Principal threw in our way, but he still managed to be kind of a jerk. In conversations with him before, he and Sarah's father talked about a little photo display/exposition of some of our travel photos. So we went to the trouble of getting them printed and then we matted them on some really nice paper that we picked up at an art supply store. All in all, while not much, the whole deal cost us around $20. Then we bring them on our first day and the secretary (who happens to be one of the nicest people ever) is in love with them and we go over everything with her. Then we find out our classroom and we go there to wait for the students. Just as we are about to start, the Assistant Principal comes in holding the photos all riled up. He starts going on about "what are these?" and "what am I suppose to do with these?" and "how am I supposed to understand what these are?" Apparently he had no recollection of talking about the photos and was also angry with us that we had not labeled all of them for him. I happen to think that the Machu Picchu photos speak for themselves and that in general, most of the other photos could have had a title or explanation but that it was not necessary. So, apparently, the work that we had put in getting these printed (and printed again since they overexposed everything the first time) and then mounting them on backing wasn't enough for him. However, after that day, he was nothing but nice to us. God only knows why he was so strange the first two days. Either way, it was a terrible first impression to give and it proves that incompetant administration can be found all around the world.

However, the students and teachers completely redeemed the odd actions of the assistant principal. Our first day was great. We divided the class into boys and girls. I had 5 boys and Sarah had 8 girls. All of the students were in their first year of studying English. This is (obviously) not the ideal group for a conversational English class, but this was the assistant principals idea of the group of students who would benefit the most from us. So we had all these grand plans of talking about and comparing life in the United States and Chile and talking about the school systems and university and everything. But we had to cut everything down so that these students could understand us and get something out of this class. We found out that they have an oral exam coming up in a few weeks and decided that the best idea would probably be to talk to them about things that we likely to be on the exam. So this included sports, family, school, neighborhood etc... The time flew and before we knew it, we were done with our first day. An English teacher had come in to observe us and we stayed for almost an hour chatting with her after class. She was dumbfounded as to why only beginning students were with us and also why our class was scheduled for 6-7 when the students actually end class at 6:15. Oh well, class still went well.

For the rest of the week, our classes were similar, but with other students who had heard about it and those from the first day who really wanted to be there. We had some more advanced students come on Wednesday and we talked to them about in depth about the university system and that was really awesome. It is good to know that the kids who did stay after school for this completely voluntary activity were actually interested in learning more and improving their English. We went over things like daily routines and what people want to study in university. We also tried to have them go around in a circle and make up a story by each person adding a sentence. It worked ok, but the level of comprehension and their confidence levels were not quite there for it to be really complex. I do believe that between Tuesday and Friday, some of the students showed much more confidence in trying to put together sentences and realizing that they actually did understand what we were saying even if they were not completely sure and that was awesome. For the last day (with all of three students who were awesome and dedicated) we brought in snacks and watched Harry Potter. It was a movie that all of them had seen and we stopped it a couple of times to ask them a few questions in English about the plot and the characters and what happened. Since they knew the story, it was easier for them to answer than some other questions and topics that we had been going over earlier in the week. All in all, it was a success. At the end, our difficult administrator thanked us and said that the doors are always open if we ever want to come back and that he had gotten great feedback from the students about us. So that was very nice of him. We enjoyed our time here and we wish that we could have spent more time here.

So, since our classes were only from 6:15-7 every day, we had ridiculous amounts of free time to kill. To begin with, this city is gorgeous. The houses in our neighborhood are all painted different colors (pink, blue, yellow, green, red, everything) and it smells like flowers walking around. In our neighborhood, it was kind of sleepy, but super relaxed and really beautiful. Also, this is the neighborhood that Sarah's dad grew up in and it was really exciting for her to see their old house and obviously, to work in his old high school. We spent a lot of time walking around and exploring the areas between our neighborhood, the center of the city and out to the east by the bus and train stations and the markets. This is also one of the wine producing regions of Chile and we were hoping to do something like what we did in Mendoza. After e-mailing 3 wineries, only one replied to me. So we headed out to Viña Calina, a holding in the Kendall-Jackson wine corporation, for our own private tour and tasting. They normally hold English tours at 4, but we figured that would be too close to class, so I was able to arrange to go at noon. This place is gigantic, some 140 acres and a brand new building for the offices and the winery. The tour guide was really nice and walked us around the winery showing us their different processes. The process of making wine is pretty much exactly the same from place to place, and the difference in wines is in the details which are hardly covered in these tours. She was a little surprised by us since she said that she had never had visitors as young as us. Regardless, it was a nice tour of a beautiful facility. And then we finished with a tasting of their Carménére (a grape almost exclusive to Chile) and their Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a good introduction to Carménére since neither of us had tried that grape before and we bought a bottle of it for further research...

Tomorrow we might be going to another town about 15 minutes away from Talca that has a fair/market every Saturday with a lot of the local producers for some more tastings. And then after that, we will be hopping on the overnight bus for Puerto Montt in the south to fly even further south to Patagonia. I am really excited even if it means that we have to pull out that sweatshirt that has been in the bottom of the bag since we left Bolivia more than a month ago.