The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted! It's been a busy month, that's for sure. I had to catch up from missing school while I was in Argentina, then I caught a cold and had to catch up from missing school from that. Then the whole school was turned upside down. Let me take a minute to talk about that.
Instead of having a science fair every year, the school varies between science, art, language arts, and history. This year was the Language Arts Fair, so as you can imagine, I was pretty involved. There were two parts: writing and speeches. I had been working with them all semester on their essays in writing class. For the most part I was very pleased how well the kids did. I was so proud of them! The two weeks previous to the actual fair, kids were pulled out of classes to practice their speeches. When actual performance time came, my schedule was so different. I felt like I was running around like a crazy person, trying to teach, prepare for the following week, and still see (and video) as many speeches as possible. Then we had the actual awards ceremony that Friday night. It was an excellent time of awarding the winners and hearing examples of outstanding essays, stories, poems, and speeches. At the end of the night, flowers were given to all those who had a special part in making it possible: Linda Cross for organizing the whole thing, an American girl who came down just to help them practice their performances, the guest judges who came from different parts of Chile especially for this. I was not on the list, and I was ok with that because I wasn't expecting anything. It was my job to help them write well! Just after, at the end of the evening, one of my students stood up and said, "And I just wanted to thank Miss Kelly for being our writing teacher!" And everyone applauded, including some other kids sitting by him who I could tell encouraged him to do it. I've gotta say, that one comment meant more to me than any bouquets of flowers from school board presidents!! It's good to know the kids appreciate my teaching, even if I can't always tell! :o)
After the fair life calmed down for awhile. But just for awhile. The end of the school year is always crazy busy, and it was fast approaching. I was trying to get ready for it, but I felt buried already. Luckily (and thank God for this!), there's a girl here who came just to help at the end of the year. And so I've given her so much work, and she's done it so willingly, and I've been relieved of so much stress because of it!
Last week was the banquet (their version of prom). So of course the school was all up in a riot again. Schedules were changed, kids were antsy, tension was high. But the night ended up being so much fun, albeit cold!! (I brought my slippers with me to keep my toes warm under the table!) :o) About part way through the evening the MC (a very goofy Junior guy), said that the Junior class (which consists of 5 guys) had a surprise. They pulled a chair up on stage and asked me to come up there! I had NO idea what they were planning on doing! And I've gotta say, I was a little nervous! But it ended up that they had "prepared" a song to sing to me! Aw, how sweet! However, I could tell they hadn't rehearsed it much, because even with the lyrics on the music stand in front of them, I still knew the words better than they did! It was quite comical. At any rate, I was very touched as they sang "My Girl" along with the Temptations. A few of the others joined in for parts. A few times I had to help them along and sing with them! Haha. It was very cute.
Since then my life has been consumed with preparing for finals. I'm about done. Now it'll be consumed with finishing the yearbook. Then it'll be consumed with figuring my grades. Then it'll be consumed with packing up my things and moving to an apartment! Then I'll come home and my life will be consumed (but in a relaxing way) with seeing friends and family again! I can't wait!! I'll be home in 15 days, and I'm ready for the summer! It's cooooold down here!
Well, I'm tired and I've been typing typing typing today. So, until next time...

Stranded in Argentina

It's been a crazy week, but an incredibly fun one!! But before I get to all that, let me back up to where my last post left off....

After my weekend at the beach, the school was full swing into Spirit Week. Unfortunately I missed the first day due to being sick (which was sad, especially since I was one of the two in charge of Spirit Week), but it was good that I rested. I was there for the rest of the week and it was so much fun! The kids really got into it, more so than any other year, I'm told. We had "assemblies" in the mornings where they did things like pick team names, create team posters, create team cheers and team songs, and decorate office doors. We had a high school class teamed up with an elementary class to help bond the school even more. We had judges every day who looked at individual outfits, team participation, and creativity on the challenges. Then at the end of the week we treated the winning team to ice cream sundaes. It was a huge success... It was also very time consuming for me. I had to concentrate all my time on Spirit Week and on grading 33the first draft of stories for the Language Arts Fair that's coming up. All of my other grading just piled up! Luckily I was able to find a little bit of help. But I'm still behind, 2 weeks later!

To see pictures of Spirit Week, click on this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kellbellkw/SpiritWeek?authkey=t-bDnDsxMgk

The following week was also really fun and really busy. I was able to hang out with a girl who's down here for a few weeks, so that was fun. I caught up on some of my grading, but I also still had the second draft of those 33 stories to grade for the fair. That certainly kept me busy. Then on Thursday I had to collect the final draft. Thursday was absolutely crazy. The papers had to be in a very specific format, and very few of the kids had it correct (they're not so good at following instructions). So I had to help them fix it, and the computers at school aren't Windows. It's a completely different operating system, and I'm not very well versed in it. So I was trying to learn it myself so I could help the kids. It was a very stressful day, as I had kids calling my name every minute or two to come help them. But I finally got everything in (even from the absent kids!), organized, and ready to be mailed off to the judges. The rest of my evening was dedicated to preparing for my trip to Argentina the next day.

A group of six of us were heading off to Argentina for the weekend because one boy needed to renew his visa. A common way to do this is to leave the country and head to Mendoza, Argentina, a small city on the other side of the mountains. It's about a 7-8 hour bus ride, depending on how things go at the border. The original plan was to take an overnight bus Friday night, and come back Sunday during the day. Well, we found out the pass through the mountains was now closed at night due to snow, so we had to leave Friday afternoon. I had to scramble to get someone to cover my last class of the day, but it worked out.
So we headed out: me, Randy (the high school boy who needed the new visa), Mike (one of my friends here, the interim ABWE Chile accountant), his mom who is visiting for 2 weeks, Nikki Russell (she's on the field council too, and it's a really good thing she went with us!), and Jill, the girl who's here for a few weeks that I've gotten to know.
The trip there was pretty uneventful, except we were stuck at the border for a really long time for two reasons. Argentina was giving a diplomatic family from the Philippines a hard time about coming in to their country, which isn't supposed to happen. The family didn't speak Spanish, so the border people found Nikki and asked her to translate. This was also good because Nikki has an unbelievable skill at talking her way into or out of things, depending on which way she needs it to go. This came in very handy for us...You'll see what I mean. The other thing that held us up at the border was that one girl forgot her passport. Oops! They eventually let her through with a fine, but it did slow us down a lot.
Once in Argentina, we spent our days shopping, walking around town, taking a tour, going to Walmart, snapping goofy pictures, and generally having a good time. In one store, they called over their worker who speaks English (which was interesting since Nikki and I were talking to her in Spanish). We started chatting with this English speaker girl, and she was asking where we were from. I told her, and then explained that I was living in Chile. I went on to tell why, and she started asking what religion I was, Catholic? I told her Protestant, more specifically Baptist, and she got really excited. She was a Baptist too, and she was so happy to meet other Christians just out and about because she hardly ever does. So we talked for awhile (intermittently, since she had to keep leaving to help other customers), and she told me about her brother who lives in Tennessee, who she's worried about. She compared him to the Prodigal Son. Ironically, Jill is from Tennessee (although a different part), and was able to suggest one or two good churches that her brother could try going to. It was so incredible to meet a fellow believer, and to see that just talking to her about our common faith could be such an encouragement to her!
Well, the time sped by, and Sunday afternoon we headed to the bus terminal to catch our ride home. And that's when the real fun began. We were informed that the pass was closed due to snow, and it would probably be closed at least 48 hours. It all depended on the weather. So we were stuck in Argentina! Not a bad thing, if you ask me. The city was cute with plenty to do, and the weather there was absolutely gorgeous! So we made a few phone calls to inform people at home, called our travel agent in Santiago to get him to help us out, and I called the school to give them instructions on what to do with my classes in my absence. Luckily I had left my lesson plans at school...luckily I had them pretty much finished! :o)
We headed back into town and had to go to a different hotel since the other one had jacked up the price. Our first hotel was nice, but the rooms and beds were pretty small. Our second hotel was spacious, but it wasn't quite as nice. For instance, the toilet in the girls' room would clog all the time. So we had to keep asking for the plunger...we learned the Spanish word for plunger. And one time I had to go ask the front desk guy (who was pretty cute) for the plunger at 2am since the real Spanish speaker was already asleep. So Jill and I headed down there, tired (and therefore giggly) and a little embarrassed. We get down there and the front desk guy is talking to a group of 4 other guys! That made us giggle more. So I asked, he got us the plunger, and then I started to ask what I should do with it when I was done. But he cut me off half way through, thinking I was asking how to use the plunger, and he started to explain it to me. That made me laugh even harder. Oh, it was quite the experience.
We spent our extra days in Argentina doing more shopping, going bowling, going to the laundromat (since several of us had run out of clean clothes at this point), hanging out at the hotel and taking naps (pretty much the whole town closes down between about 2:30-5ish...this worked well for us since we stayed up late most nights. Naps were very welcome!). If we stayed another day we were going to go white water rafting, too. Amidst all the fun, we continued to call our travel agent and make trips to the bus terminal to check on the status of things. We kept checking the weather, and it didn't look like it was going to clear up at all the entire week! And Mike's mom and Jill are flying back to the States this weekend. We had to come up with Plan B since Plan A didn't seem like it would happen any time soon. We checked into flights, but the airlines take advantage of stranded people, and the prices were insane. So our other option was to take a bus through a different pass through the mountains, farther south. We had heard of one or two other people who had done this earlier in the week, but it didn't sound at all appealing, so we tried to hold off. But eventually we had to take it, being our only option. The reason this wasn't on the top of our list of things to do is because the ride through that pass and back up would end up being about 30 hours. Thirty hours on a bus!!! But we had to take it. Tuesday was the last day they were sending out these buses for the rest of the week. So we prepared ourselves for a very long trip.
It actually wasn't that bad. We had the front row of a double decker, so we had plenty of leg room. We were able to sleep a lot, although not well, and the bus made several stops...some for a few minutes, and a couple long enough for us all to eat. (At the border I had enough time to wash my hair, which was definitely a necessity!)
I will say this. We saw some of the shadiest bathrooms during our bus rides to and from Argentina (including the one on the bus!). You just never knew what you were going to get. At one place, as I was washing my hands, the lights in the entire area went out! It was pitch black in that bathroom! I heard my friends talking about me being inside, so I said "Nice." in a subtly sarcastic way, then headed toward the general direction of the door as they laughed. I found the door and clawed at it (I may have hammed up the situation a bit) in an attempt to find the handle. I got out, safe and sound, and handed my cell phone to Jill to use. For some strange reason my cell phone has a small flashlight on it.
Well, after many, many, many hours we got home, a little tired, but no worse for the wear. It was sooo nice to take a shower after that long trip! We ended up getting home around 9pm on Wednesday evening after a 31 1/2 hour bus ride. We were originally planning on being home Sunday evening! Luckily Wednesday was a holiday here, so I only missed 2 days of school.

To see pictures of my time in Argentina, click here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/kellbellkw/Mendoza?authkey=OY_a1moXWY0

Apparently the two days away were enough to make many of the kids appreciate me more. I received many hugs and cheers upon my return, and was told the "horrors" that were the substitutes. It feels good to be loved! I spent the day rearranging things, catching up from being gone, and getting back into the swing of school. It had been raining all week in Santiago, and we were joking that they may have to close school due to flooding. Well, around 6:30 this morning we got the call that school was canceled! I've had a one school day week!! Unfortunately I don't have all of my school work here at home (just some of it), so I'll probably have to make a trip in at some point this weekend. Like I said at the beginning, it's been a crazy week! But I had sooo much fun, and I'm so blessed that God has allowed me to meet some really awesome people and do things like this.

Grading, grading, and more grading

It's been crazy the last couple of weeks...again! The end of the quarter rolled around, which means I'm 3/4 done my first year here in Chile. Wow! It's flown by, and I've loved it!
But with the end of the quarter comes a lot of work, and that seemed to consume my life for the better part of 2 weeks. I had a LOT of grading to do, making sure everything was turned in on time, and then doing math (Yikes!) to figure out the quarter grades for report cards. It was hectic, but it was finally done last week!
I had an interesting conundrum, because several people bombed my writing class. Now, I wasn't quite sure how to take this news when I figured the grades. I mean, I know it's a new class for me, and it's a new format for the kids, but I didn't think it would be this rough! I've been struggling with them for about a month now, because so many of them aren't following instructions. And with this writing class, if you follow the instructions and include all the requirements, you can get a good grade. So even those who are less adept at writing and communicating can do well. And, when followed correctly, it really does improve their writing. Well, several of them haven't bothered to follow the instructions. One or two because they genuinely don't get it, but most of them because they're too lazy or too indifferent to try. I wasn't quite sure what to do with this, so I called one of the administrators, who is infinitely more experienced than I am. She suggested that I curve the grades (just a teensy bit) since it's their first time with this course, but other than that, just let it go. The kids need to learn to follow instructions. They've had the luxury of being in a small school with lenient teachers who often are concerned with seeing that they understand the content rather than on how they present the content. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it needs to be in balance. So by letting some kids fail, hopefully I'll be teaching them some other life lessons that they haven't been pushed to learn yet. I don't know. I don't like failing anyone, but at the same time they earned it themselves.
Oh the joys of teaching! :o)
After the end of the quarter, we luckily had a long, holiday weekend. So several of my friends from church and I got together and headed out to the beach. (Granted, it's getting cold, so we weren't going to the beach for your typical "going to the beach" reasons.) I woke up Thursday morning to get ready to go, and realized I was coming down with a cold. Lovely. I was able to enjoy myself anyway, but it did get progressively worse throughout the weekend...to the point where Sunday and today I was at home in bed. However, it was so much fun with my friends, and it gave me 3 days to work on my Spanish. I learned a lot, of course, and made many mistakes, of course. I almost wish it had lasted a few more days, because by Saturday I really was feeling comfortable in Spanish. We had so much fun, going out to eat, going to the beach, taking crazy pictures, hanging out at the house we rented, laughing, talking, and just goofing off together. I'm so happy that there's such a great group at the church, and I can't wait until the day I can understand them! :o)
There are only two more months of school left, and then I'll be home for a few weeks before the next year starts. I'm hoping to be able to fit some more fun, new experiences into the next two months....including a possible weekend trip to Argentina, a day at an amusement park, and a weekend at another missionary's house for some more Chilean culture experience (they have several kids that I teach and I get along really well with all of them). Hopefully these things will come to pass!!

It's hard to believe the next school year is only 3 months away, but it's true. What does this mean? I need to have 100% of my support in by then! I've sent out letters and spoken with several of my monthly supporters, so I've definitely gotten the ball rolling. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see how God provides! Please pray for me in this, because I'm not allowed to come back until I'm 100% supported. If you're interested in helping out, please check with me (or read the letter I sent) on how to do it. My monthly support level is now just over $1700, due to the drop of the dollar over the last year. I have a portion of that already committed, but I'm still lacking.
Thank you all for your encouragement, support, and prayers! I really do appreciate them all! It's good to know that my family back in the States is supporting me as I follow God's leading half way around the world!

It's been awhile...

And I apologize for that. It's been a busy few weeks. Let me give you the highlights.
The week after Easter I spent "babysitting" for a friend. She and her husband spent the week in Peru, and I was stand-in mom for the week (the four kids range from first grade to eighth). She made it as easy as possible for me (the housecleaner came and cooked every day, even the days she isn't usually there), so all I really had to do was make sure they did their homework, got to bed on time, and drove them around--to school, to soccer practice, to gymnastics. All that kind of stuff. Luckily my school work load was relatively light that week, because I couldn't do much work until after the kids went to bed, and I then I had to get up in the morning before them so I'd be ready first so I could help them. Needless to say, I was pretty tired. I got the smallest taste of what it's like to be a single parent, and I've gotta say, my hat's off to those people. It's not easy. In fact, I was seriously considering renting a husband for the week. :o)
There was one funny anecdote that happened (besides me running around the house like a crazy lady trying to keep their dog out of trashcans or from chewing things up) on Thursday, my last day there. Apparently Thursday is chocolate chip cookie night, so I went ahead and made chocolate chip cookies. Once the batter was all mixed, I turned to the oven. Immediately I realized I had a problem. Their beast of an oven is gas powered and old. So there's no such thing as a pilot light or a lighting button. I had to turn on the gas and then hold a match up to a menacing-looking hole. And, as I came to find out, the oven is very temperamental. After several attempts and several phone calls to more experienced gas oven turner-oners, I was at my wits end. Well, then once as I stuck the match in, the gas lit! Finally! Except it lit in a wave of fire that spewed out of the oven and past me, blowing my hair in the process. This was quite shocking. I sat there, assessing to see if I was ablaze anywhere. Upon determining that I was NOT, I shut the oven, put the cookie dough in the fridge, and gave up. Somewhere in this process I felt something odd on my arm and brushed it off, thinking it was some cookie dough stuck there. In fact, it was burnt hair. Nice, huh? I had successfully singed the hair from three separate places of my arm. I have vowed since to never live in a house with such an oven if at all possible.
The next week, back at my house with fewer responsibilities, I was buried in work and got little rest. Towards the end of the week I started to feel a cold coming on. But being so busy, my body fought it off relatively successfully. Friday was Melissa's 16th birthday, and we had planned a surprise birthday party for her with her school friends. It was a complete success, and a very interesting time for me. I was caught between being the kids' friend and wanting them to have fun, and still being a responsible adult and wanting to stop them from doing stupid things that teenagers tend to do at parties. They didn't try much, and I was able to lightheartedly prevent things so I didn't look like an ogre trying to ruin their party. All in all, I think it went well. :o) Melissa and I didn't get home until 1:30, and being girls, we had to stay up a little to talk over the events of the evening.
I got to sleep around 2, then had to get up at 7 for an ABWE meeting. It was an enjoyable meeting, but a long one. After we all went out to lunch, I finally got home around 4pm. I tried to get as much work done as my fatigued brain could handle, then had to leave again at 5:30. It was the first Saturday of the young adults meetings after the summer break. I was very excited to see how much more I would understand, and was very encouraged for the first 2o minutes. Then my comprehension of the discussion plummeted as did my self esteem, and I had to fight tears at some point. This, of course, was made worse by the fact that I was exhausted. Afterwards, my friends tried their best to comfort me, saying I had learned a lot in the 9 months I had been there, giving me tips on how to learn more, and doing silly things to make me laugh. It helped, but what I really needed was sleep. I didn't get that until around midnight because Joel and Melissa were discussing her party in our room. After falling asleep on my bed with my glasses askew, I woke up enough to kick Joel out and went to bed.
Church was the next morning, of course, and I was still pretty tired. Right after church was a party at our house for all her church friends. So I went home and helped get ready. Most of the youth group was there, as was a few of my friends that Melissa hangs out with at times. It was fun, but it was difficult to have a whole day of Spanish when I was so tired. People finally left around 7:30, we trudged around the house cleaning up, and then I crashed on my bed. I was worthless as far as school work goes (I hardly got anything done over the weekend), but it was a little to early for sleep. So I watched Mr. Bean's newest movie, which was funny enough to make me laugh and give me enough energy to get ready for bed. :o)
Melissa stayed home on Monday, and I was HIGHLY jealous. So I planned a day off for Wednesday to relax, sleep, and catch up on grading. I even booked a hotel for Tuesday night so it would be like a mini vacation. However, at school yesterday morning I got sick. Much more than a cold. I caught a stomach bug that has been going around. After torturing myself by teaching two classes that I couldn't cover (and the kids making all sorts of comments about me looking dead...nice), I crashed in one of the apartments for awhile, set things up for the rest of the day, and came home.
Pretty much all I've done since then is sit (or rather lay) on my bed, sleeping, reading, and watching movies. Interspersed among all that I've eaten a little, taken a bath, and done some laundry (only because I'm really low on clothes). It's been relaxing, although not how I anticipated. I DID leave all my work at school, so I couldn't even tempt myself with work. So I still have a lot to catch up on, and hopefully I'll be well enough to do it!
I'm feeling better, and hopefully tomorrow will be well enough to go back to school. I think I should.
SO. That's been my life for the past several weeks. Hectic? Yes, definitely. But that's ok. I love my job and where God has me, so I don't mind being a headless chicken for awhile. :o)

Chi-chi-chi! Le-le-le! Colo Colo de Chile!

The previous post actually came from an email that I wrote about a week ago, right when those events were happening. It's been interesting to see the highs and lows that can occur within the span of just a week. I was so elated and proud of my students at the end of last week. And then this week, on Tuesday, I was faced with the hardest day I've had at the school since I've been here. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, because really it was a combination of many small problems that normally would hold little significance. What made it so difficult was that they all came at once. It's as if Satan didn't want me to be too encouraged about my ministry here and wanted to bring me down a peg or two. Or maybe God wanted to be sure I remained humble and relying on Him, so He sent me an awful day to remind me. Either way, it was a very difficult day coming right on the heels of an excellent week. The next day everything was back to normal though, and I was not upset about that! :o)

Last night I was able to do something that I've wanted to do since I arrived in Chile 8 months ago. I was very close to doing it last spring (spring for Chile, fall for the States), but it never happened. Have you guessed it yet? I went to a professional soccer game!! It was incredible!! One of the two main Chilean teams was playing against one of the main Argentine teams, so it promised to be very exciting. And we were not disappointed. I went with a large group, since the fans of the Chilean teams can be a bit....enthusiastic, shall I say? At some points walking down the streets we made sure to only speak in Spanish, or at least keep the English very quiet (Mom, I didn't tell you any of this beforehand....for a reason!). :o) But really, it wasn't as bad or as dangerous as people warned us of or as it could have been. God protected us, as He always does! We were a group of ten: 2 Chilenos, 2 gringas, and 6 gringos (ranging in age from 16 to.....uh, I'll just say adult.....some who have been in Chile for only a few weeks, and some who have been here for a couple of decades). So we had quite the span of experience in our midst. With the combination of all these factors, I knew we'd be safe. And praise God, we were!

Ok, enough of that. Let me tell you about the actual game experience. We parked about 7 blocks away from the stadium, mostly because at that point traffic was already gridlocked and it was faster to just walk. We were all dressed in the team's colors (white and black) to try to blend in, and to appease the two or three actual fans in our group. :o) Even while we were waiting in line to get in, people were yelling the many chants, getting pumped up. I could already smell beer and smoke. We were at the wrong entrance, so we had to go around the block. As we did, we encountered many police on horses, prepared to keep the crowd under control. We arrived at the correct entrance, had one end of our ticket ripped off, and then were squeezed into rows between metal fences. It reminded me of the tight lanes cattle are walked through at the rodeo or on a dairy farm. I think I even mooed once or twice to make my point. At the end of these lanes were police stationed to pat down everyone, looking for contraband. Being a gringa, I was not frisked. What a nice privilege! We walked a little more, then had to go through another checkpoint, get the other end of out ticket ripped off, and be frisked one more time. Once again, I wasn't subjected to that.
We found some seats all together, and then just had to wait and watch the craziness around us until the game started at 9:45. People were still cheering, chanting, singing, and just being boisterous. It was so exciting! When the game finally started, it was amazing. The players came onto the field, and the fans went CRAZY! Everyone was on their feet, jumping, twirling shirts in the air, chanting, swearing, insulting the other team and fans, and watching the contraband flares and fireworks exploding all around. I guess it's basically expected that some will get through security. Then HUGE flags were passed over us that covered our entire section practically. Then the game started. And we scored in the first 3 minutes! We scored again the first half, and that was the end of scoring for the rest of the game. We won, 2-0!! We got out of the stadium and back to our car around 12:15. I was too wound up afterwards and didn't go to bed until 2. Good thing there's no school today!
There are several things that are very interesting about a Chilean soccer game. For instance, some fans seem more concerned with insulting the other fans than on watching the game. Throwing toilet paper or tickertape onto the field is highly normal, and there is someone on staff simply to remove it. When you buy a drink, they give you a bottle of soda, and then you have to pour it into a cup, because if people took bottles into the stadium they would throw them at the players. The sections behind the goals are for the extreme fans and don't even have seats, because apparently they would always rip them up and throw them. In the places where there are seats, people remain seated almost the whole time unless the ball gets close to the goal, or if there's a penalty kick or something. And as soon as that's over, people start shouting "Asiento!" which basically means "sit down." There are cops decked out in full protective gear all over the stadium, especially near the extreme fan sections. And there are some cops whose main job only happens when there's a corner kick. They'll turn towards the crowd holding up their plexiglass shields so the player isn't hit by the things thrown at him.
Like I said, it's a very different experience! We took lots of pictures and a few videos, so I'm going to include the links to those now.

Here's a selection of the pictures we took. It was an AWESOME experience!
http://picasaweb.google.com/kellbellkw/ColoColoVsBocaGame?authkey=FjFhyV91028

Here's a video from before the game started...the flares in the crowd, the general excitement...and a quick shot of those of us who went.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1av3yeBvpY

Here's the video when the Chilean team, Colo Colo, entered the field at the beginning and general craziness ensued...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9QeMuHDWFE

Here's a video from when the huge flag was passed over us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwLKGaVF-vg

Teachable moments

I know it's been awhile since I've posted, and that's probably because I've been readjusting to the school schedule. However, I wanted to tell you all about some interesting things that happened to me "professionally" last week. They were very encouraging to me.

Ok, to the task at hand. First is about grammar. You may remember that I've mentioned that my hardest subject to teach has been upper level grammar, because it's VERY detailed and difficult, and of course, very boring. So this semester I decided to switch it up, because they weren't learning or enjoying the class (and honestly, I wasn't enjoying it either). So, instead of having double periods of grammar, I'm having a period of grammar and a period of literature. Split it up so it's much easier to handle. Also, I pretty much chucked the book (well, I used it but they didn't). I taught them what I thought was important to know, what I thought they could handle, and ignored all the nitty-gritty stuff. And I taught it to them in 3 stages--lecture which involved me teaching and getting them to make up examples....a game that they played individually to see that they each had to think of it on their own and I could see how each of them was progressing....and lastly a group game that was either a race or funny to hammer in the information even more. They had so much fun with the games that one day they asked if they could skip the literature and keep playing the game the whole time (I had inadvertently made literature boring in comparison)!! One day several of them left the room at the end saying, "Good class, Miss Kelly." Highly novel! One guy, a smart kid, said "I finally get it after all these years!" They all seemed pretty confident during the review. Then came the test. I have to preface this by saying I almost always had one or two people fail grammar tests last semester, and had several D's and C's along with the usual A's and B's. I almost always curved a little. Well, this test, the lowest score was a C+!!! 10 of the 14 scored in the 90s!! I was so proud of them!

My other story is a little different. One day, in my writing class (which is new for me and the kids) I was showing a video. We're doing a new program and there's a set of videos where the guy teaches it much better than I could at this point. So I've been using the videos a lot. Well, for the 11/12th class, the guy moves at a perfect pace for the slower to average kids, and the smarter kids are a little bored. Well that's fine, because usually I have the problem of losing the slower kids. Well, one or two of the faster ones (good kids, in general) were making very subtle comments throughout about it being too boring or too easy or him harping on things way too much. "We get it already!" That type of thing. I knew several others felt that way as well, but these two were a bit negative about it. So as the class was dismissing, I asked them to stay for a minute (these aren't kids used to being in trouble...not that they were, technically). God worked with me here, and the slowest kid in the class took longer to pack up than usual, and while he was doing so he told me that the kids in the video (who range from grades 8-12 I think) were very intimidating because they seemed so smart...I think he used the word genius at one point. So this was about to perfectly illustrate my point. Once he left, I spoke to the other two and said something like this: "I know you guys are smart and I could teach this to you in 5 minutes and you'd be fine, but I can't go that fast because I'd completely lose part of the class. They'd be lost. So I know it's frustrating for you, but I have to move this slowly for them. So please try to understand." And they looked at me like I had two heads and said things that gave the impression that they had no idea what I was talking about. So I explained that I hear comments and sometimes the attitude comes through. They apologized saying they "didn't mean it that way," and I explained whether they do or not, with that tone, that's how I take it. They sheepishly apologized again and left the room. I was gentle in this reprimand, as I'm sure you can imagine. Well, the next morning when I walked into my room, sitting on my desk was a tiny gift bag with a beanie baby type thing sticking out of it. In it was a small note on scrap paper from my desk, I think, that said, "Miss Kelly, I'm sorry for being such a pain in the butt. You're a really good teacher. I hope we're cool." And then he signed it. (The words "good" and "cool" were actually stickers that he put in the appropriate places....haha). I was incredibly touched by that.

Anyway, I know this may not have been as dramatic or action packed as some of my posts are, but I was very excited by it and wanted to share with you. It's very encouraging to see my teaching abilities growing. I know I still have a lot to learn, but I've started with a good foundation that God has blessed me with. Just further confirmation that I'm exactly where He wants me to be!

So long summer!

Ok, so summer isn't really over quite yet. It's still roasting hot in the afternoons, although the mornings and late evenings have certainly cooled down some. But summer vacation is over, school has begun, and life has entered into a routine again. It's kinda nice!
Since my last post, I had several weeks of lazing around, trying to stay cool, and practicing my Spanish by hanging out with friends. Basically a typical summer. Then I went on vacation with Melissa Rogers, the 15 yr old daughter of the family I'm living with. It was an awesome week. We went to a town about 10 hours south of the city called Pucon. It's this cute little town right on the edge of a lake, nestled in between mountains, with a breathtaking view of a nearby volcano. Basically, it's a tourist town to the tee, but I didn't care. It was great! I'll just give you a quick rundown of our week.
After an all night bus ride (much more comfy than a plane!) we arrived and had several hours to walk around before we could check in to our hostel. We walked all morning, got some coffee, and pretty much knew our way around the touristy parts by lunch time. I told you it was a small town! In the afternoon we decided to hire a taxi to take us up the volcano. You can only go up so far by car, then you have to hike, but we just wanted to take it easy. After fishtailing all the way up a gravel road, we got out at a ski lodge (very empty since it's the middle of summer), and enjoyed the view. After awhile we got back in the taxi and headed to town. On the way, once we had reached the paved road again, our taxi driver suddenly ran right off the road! The road curved left and he didn't! We jumped over a little curb and almost ran into a tree. He stopped just in time. Somewhere during this time (we don't know when. I didn't even realize it had happened at first) the passenger mirror hit a woman who was walking down the street in the elbow! Some other pedestrians gathered around, and a van full of hikers stopped to check on us and the woman. They ended up taking her to the hospital. Eventually we got back into our taxi, without a word from the driver, and went home. I still paid him full price since I couldn't barter in Spanish yet. Oh well. I still have no idea what he was doing or how or why it happened!
Our evenings all week were pretty calm. Sometimes we ate out, sometimes we stayed in and watched a movie on TV, and most nights we walked around town, watching street artists, performers, and going to the little artisan kiosks. There was a stage in a small park, and there was something going on almost every night there--musical performances, traditional Chilean music and dance, karaoke, etc. It was all so entertaining!
The next day we went horseback riding to a beautiful waterfall. This was one of my favorite things we did. We galloped the horses for awhile, which was such a rush. Then a short hike to a waterfall where we got drenched enjoying the view. :o) Then when I hopped back on my horse to head home the knee of my jeans ripped! Oops! Then we rode back. The whole thing took about 3 hours. Our tour guide was an Israeli who had just finished her time in the army. She was touring South America for 10 months when she decided to stop in Chile for 3 months to work with the horses. Melissa and I, not being as experienced with horses, spent the next several days very sore! And of course, the room in our hostel was on the third floor! (Although we had a beautiful view of the volcano from our room, so we didn't complain!)
The next day we took an all around tour, visiting a river with raging rapids, a gorgeous blue lagoon with two small waterfalls, a Mapuche settlement, and then finished off with 2 hours at one of the many thermal hot springs in the area. Somewhere along the way Melissa's cell phone was stolen. Oops! The first thing we did at the thermal was to go to the mud bath. You stand in dirty water, scoop mud off the bottom, and smear it all over yourself. It did NOT smell nice! Then you let it dry (which is an odd sensation), then go to a man made waterfall to wash off. Or should I say a FREEZING man made waterfall. All the ladies were making quite a racket as they stood under the water, and Melissa and I were no exception. We just got a little more attention being gringas (we get a little more attention where ever we go). Once we were clean and cold and our skin was incredibly soft (I loved it), we headed over to the hot springs to warm up. We spent the rest of the time there, enjoying the relaxing water, and avoiding the yellow jackets. Melissa failed in this and ended up being stung right under her eye!
The next day we TRIED to go to another thermal, but the shuttle transfer left without us, so we had to switch our Thursday and Friday plans. So we took a nap, went to the beach, and went mini golfing. Mini golf is not very popular in Chile, and this place was a little outside the town, so we were the only ones there. I will admit right now--I won. :o) Interestingly enough, the woman running it was a Chilean who had lived in New Jersey since she was a kid! She had just moved back to Chile 2 years ago! Small world! It was n ice to be able to chat in English, and she ended up giving us a ride back to our hostel so we didn't have to pay for a cab.
The next day we went to another thermal (which was much warmer and we couldn't sit in for more than 10 minutes at a time) where we divided our time between the pool and the hot spring. I got a little sun burnt that day, but not too bad. I was being very careful all week and I ended up pretty tan! Well, tan for me, anyway. :o) We also got facials there--a mixture of sediment and honey. Very interesting!
Then we went home! It was a great week, and just what I needed to cap off the summer. We got home early Saturday morning, and teacher inservice began on Monday, so I jumped right into things again!
The first week of school went very well. It's so nice to be back. I really do love it.

Here's some things you can pray for.
1. The school is instituting a new writing program for 1-12th grade. It's really great, but I still don't know it all yet. I'm in charge of introducing it to the high school (obviously, being the English teacher) and I have a whole other class dedicated to it, two days a week for each grade level. So that's 6 more periods a week. Here's the request. I'm very frustrated and overwhelmed at how to structure the semester and how to teach it. There are no books or manuals, and the teacher's help that I have is in conjunction with some DVDs, so it's very difficult to understand and organize without watching 20 hours of video first. I just don't have time for that yet! I've watched some, but there's a lot more. Please pray that I'll be able to figure things out pretty quickly!

2. There's a girl in the 7 th grade who has come to learn English. She doesn't speak much, so it's a little overwhelming for her. I've taken it upon myself to help her at least one period a week because I don't think anyone else can. One on one work is the best thing for her. I'm looking forward to it, but it's more prep work and time taken away from preparing for other classes. Please pray that I will have to time and energy to do both things well!

3. My Spanish has improved this summer, but I'm still lacking, and I'm still very hard on myself. I'm my own worst critic! So there's two requests in one!

4. I need to start preparing for my second year here. There are several phases to this: 1- being voted on and approved on several levels of ABWE, here in Chile and at the home office. Really this is a formality, but it will still take time. 2- raising funds. 3- deciding where to live. I think I have several options (although none of them are official offers yet), and they're all very different. I'm praying about which one to follow up on to see if it's even a possibility.

Ok, that's it for now. It's been another long post, as they tend to be. Boy, I sure do like to write! We've been reading Robinson Crusoe in one of my classes, and I mentioned how he wrote down his thoughts during his time on a deserted isle to process and express his own thoughts. One student asked if that's what I would do if I was stranded on an island. I said yes, and then in my head added that I already kind of do....sometimes I feel like that and writing is my way to express myself and keep a tie to home!
I hope you get an idea of what my ministry and life is like here through reading this. That's certainly my goal. And along the way, I get to be creative and work through my own thoughts as well! Thanks for putting up with it. :o)