You can call me a teacher!!! Or profesora!!

I am still getting used to the idea that I am someone’s professor. I have completed my first two weeks of class.

My students are between the ages of 18 and 35. Some of them come in jeans and a t-shirt while others come in suits. It is an interesting mixture. Most of my classes are filled with guys, but I have one class of all girls which is rare at my teaching location. They are all nursing majors. The students are very nice and don’t cause too many problems, especially after we went over the classroom rules.

Teaching has its good days and its more difficult days. It takes a lot more energy than I ever imagined. I feel like I am a professional educational entertainer in front of the class in order to keep everyone’s attention.

The other English professors are very nice and I am getting to know them more and more. One of them is even giving me a ride home on the nights I work late.
I never know how complicated English was until I started teaching it. I get so many questions that I have to answer with “it is just the way it is” or “you just have to memorize it.” If only there were real patterns in English.

Random story time…. The other WorldTeach Ministry volunteers arrived a week and a half ago. They aren’t under the same program though. They work in more rural areas with the younger students and their program is headed through the Chilean Ministry. Now I’m getting to the point…one of my friends from Pacific Lutheran University is here in Santiago training with the WorldTeach Ministry program. I had no idea that he was coming. We both had Spanish classes together last year and knew each other through mutual friends. It is so crazy I remember hanging out at his house with his roommates and my old roommates. Now we are in the same country together and are both doing World Teach. It is a very very small world. Out of 3,500 people at my school, one shows up in the same city across the globe as me.

I have had some exciting adventures so far. My friends and I have been hanging out at a plaza near my house. It is the cutest thing and apparently where are the young people hang out. I usually make at least one trip a week there for the gelato and then we hang out there on the weekends.

Last weekend World Teach had a human rights tour and then an asado. The tour was very enlightening and I found out that I live only a few blocks away from multiple torture centers during the Pinochet dictatorship, which are now human rights monuments. That was an eye opener. The asado after the tour was tons of fun. All the volunteers came together including the Ministry volunteers and then some of the host families came too. My host family couldn’t come but I still had a good time and ate a lot of meat.

Also, I found out that Saint Patrick’s Day is not celebrated by Chileans. The only people at the 5 Irish pubs in all of Santiago are gringos and their friends. In my classes, I taught my students about Saint Patrick’s Day. They fun it entertaining, but I don’t think I convinced any of them to celebrate it next year.

The pictures that I posted are from some of my adventures and from my day to day life. You can see my lovely room, including the Marilyn Monroe poster that hangs above my bed. I laughed when I first saw it in my room.