My First Day of School

After an afternoon yesterday at school with Amy, the director of the Save the Wild Chinchillas program, and then an evening judging a fairly bizarre English competition in which junior high girls talked about U2 and the ways in which William Wallace of Scotland was tortured and then killed, today was my first day on my own. I stepped outside and was greeted by my favorite buddies, Simba and el gato. (I do not know the cat’s name, if it has one, but it is even friendlier than the dog and I adore it.) However, I was most certainly not greeted by the woman who’d agreed to pick me up at 7:30am and take me to the bus stop. Fortunately, Cristian offered me a ride to school.

I was worried I might insult someone by standing in front of the class, coat buttoned and scarf wrapped around my neck, but then I noticed that the teacher was wearing her coat too, as were the students. Some even had on gloves (mostly just on their non-dominant hands). After all, it is quite cold. So manners adjust themselves according to available technologies, I’ve learned.

And so, though a week ago I couldn’t form a full sentence in Spanish while speaking to Marco on the plane, I am now indeed leading nearly full hour lessons in Spanish on environmental education. I’m not quite sure how this is working, especially since I only had to begin speaking Spanish more or less full-time on Monday evening and then I spent half of this school week bed-ridden. I assure you there is a lot of hand waving and activities to keep the students occupied and help me avoid speaking [Note: I only learned on Tuesday that I would be teaching in Spanish] but somehow or other, things seem to be working out. The kids actually like me! Okay, well, especially the boys. I am teaching in a high school and their favorite question after class is how old I am. A few even asked to take my photo with them (I laughingly obliged) and, after the final class, two boys even gave me the card they’d been making for their English class’s lesson on friendship.

Now I’ve done some pretty adventurous things, but arriving in Chile and within a week having to teach classes in a language I haven’t studied for the past four years definitely earns a spot on that list.