Beautiful views, amazing people, unique moments - Ryan M

Week two has been a wonderful experience. I feel more at ease than I did the first week for certain. I know my way around the school pretty well. I´m more comfortable with my host family. While this week has been more relaxed and I feel like I have my footing under me it´s also been more tiring. I was ok the first week. This week I feel like I´ve been walking around in a fog. The thing is though that once I start working I´m fine.

The week started with teaching multiple lessons in classes about human and civil rights in the United States. My colleague and I broke it down into various major events in the history of human rights in the US like The Revolution, the Civil Rights movement and in the light of the weekend´s events in Orlando I really wanted to discuss LGBT and gun rights. The students had wonderful questions especially about how we handle gun rights. What sort of guns do we outlaw and why? Is the fear that the government is really going to take away our guns legitimate? I thoroughly enjoyed getting to discuss the topics and hear their perceptions of our rights(which is basically that everyone in the US is a gun toting cowboy).

Monday night I bought my host dad a bottle of wine for his birthday. I also bought the kids some skittles and gum. I totally won them over. So, the moral of the story is if you want to make points with kids always go for the candy. Anabella made him a chocolate dulce de leche cake that was sinful and a great roast. He definitely was spoiled and loved it!

The picture I got as a reward for my candy purchase:

Tuesday night I went to the Costanera Center in Sanhattan(the high rise area of Santiago). The Costanera Center is the tallest building south of Mexico. When you enter it it´s underwhelming because all you see is a mall. However, when you go to the top on the 62nd floor the views are amazing! We were there as the sun was setting and the views were breathtaking. The clouds were pink and purple and stretched forever across the Andes. We waited for the sun to go down and Santiago at night is a jewel. The lights are everywhere and they sparkle like sequins off set by the car lights which look like Christmas lights. Well worth going!

Have a look:

On Wednesday we went on a wine tour. We went to a boutique winery run by a man named Andres. His family and friends run the whole thing. It´´s on a small plot of land and they produce about 10,000 bottles a year. It was beautiful even in the winter when nothing is being produced. I loved seeing the winery and being told about it by someone who so obviously cares about what he´s doing. It´´s all organic and all the harvesting is done by hand. We had a tasting and he explained all the wines. As I said it was very obvious that he loves his craft.

Yesterday was English Day at Southern Cross. Each of the two sections in each grade competed against each other in a quiz bowl, a wheel of fortune game, skits, and a song that they made up. It was all in English. They did a very impressive job. Their judges were very strict. Their judges were also their American visitors. We had a blast. I was especially impressed by the skits and the songs. They all did a wonderful job and I´m amazed by the vocabulary that they know and how they put it to use.

Here´s a glimpse of a skit 

To talk shop for a bit a colleague asked me what teaching differences I had noticed between myself and my Chilean counterparts, if they had caused tension and how we worked it out. As I mentioned in the `previous entry the major one is the far more relaxed classroom management that I´ve seen here in Chile. Once I overcame my original confusion and frustration and began to see that the students were not only responding but actively and willing participating I was fine. The students not only asked and answered questions, but did so with great specificity and higher level thinking. These were not "see spot run questions". They were the"what does your country plan to do in order to stop another Orlando?" or "Do you think banning assault weapons will stop mass shootings?" Of course, everyone has their opinions on these topics. However, I was simply impressed that the questions were being asked. Even when they looked like they weren´t paying attention by playing on their phone or what have you they obviously were. This hasn´t created tension for me because I see it as simply a cultural difference. It´s something for me to learn from and I have. I think if I loosen up in my own classroom maybe I´ll see similar results. It´s worth noting that the internet here at school is slowed down significantly so technology wise they can only be so distracted because the internet is purposely slow.

Finally, to recap (thanks for sticking with me). My second week has been full of amazing experiences with wonderful people and for that I am so blessed- I can see the end and I know it´s not going to be easy. I don´t do goodbye or so long very well. Thus, I´m trying to live in the moment and enjoy what´s happening right now. Because right now is incredible.

Ciao

Ryan