Week 1 Randomness

Sooooo after telling people I'm going to be a Chilean English Professor for the last 4 months, I began to feel it was actually just my excuse for not having a "real" job and I wasn't actually going to South America for 6 months... but like any other life changing experience, I was intensely thrown into something originally surreal, delving my every moment into the life of a TeachingChile trainie as if this has always been my life. Suddenly I'm more than half way through my training and this time next week I'll be standing in front of my very own class of Chilean university students. Training has been fun, as we practice teaching English to each other and pretend to be funny Chilean students, and take the English tests that our students will be taking... (quite entertaining).

Santiago is everything I imagined it to be, and nothing I imagined it to be. My lack of Spanish has really hit me hard. I romanticized about sitting in the middle of Plazas and outdoor markets, reading my dual-language Neruda poems, naturally learning Spanish.... um NOT quite so! I'm living in a hotel with other soon-to-be English teachers who are predominently Americans, and so its really easy to not speak Spanish. Initially I felt badly about not bonding with locals, but the fact is I love my TeachingChile group and after training we will all be in different locations, so I've told myself its ok to enjoy getting to know them... everyone is so international and has done so so much traveling, its so inspiring hearing everyone exchanging their stories... although a few times its turned into a loud group of 15 Americans looking ridiculous, and being ridiculously loud, in a subway or walking down the street, and I'm constantly waiting to hear some local laugh and call us gringos... I suppose I've learned to embrace the gringo nature.

So, the food here is so BIZARRE.... theres just no other word for it. I don't know where this comes from, but other than Empanadas (which in reality is nothing other than friedness with Cheese) the only authentic food I have found is a hot dog called 'Completo'... and let me tell you a hot dog just can't be called a completo until its loaded up with Avocado, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard and salsa... its there pizza, found on every street corner. But there are fruit stands everywhere, so thats pretty much saved me.

Lastly for this entry, I would like to give a shout-out to my TeachingChile people, who I really love and feel so blessed to be getting to know in Santiago. Its like being at Sundance in the sense that you put a group of people with similiar interests together and wow KABOOM everyone is excited about life and each other and its quite beautiful.