At the moment me and six other volunteers are headed to Antofagasta on a semi cama (which means the seats recline 45 degrees) bus from Santiago. (I'm going to post this as soon as find wi-fi access.) I'm currently watching a skit comedy show in which a mime is pretending to put up a barrier along a trail only to actually be leaving a line of string that people run into. We left Santiago at 4:30 in the Saturday afternoon and are not expected to arrive until around 10:30 the next day (note: arrival was at noon). So far the ride has been fine and the seats have been comfortable. From what I cold see of the landscape it looked a similar to some part of California with dry grassy hills. However now it is dark and the bus attendant has closed all of the curtains so I can't see anything. (Note: In the morning I woke up and everything was desert with no life anywhere).
I've found out that I'm going to be teaching High School in Antofagasta. I'm not actually sure how to modify my expectations. On one hand I'll probably able to have my coherent conversations with my students which I'll probably find more interesting. On the other hand discipline might be more of a problem. Now that I've finished my orientation, the plan is that the next week I'll be observing my partner teacher handle 40+ students. And then in two weeks I'll be having half of the class to myself in my own classroom.
Since I last posted I have managed to see more of Santiago (and take more photos). On Tuesday night, it was one of the volunteers birthday so we celebrated that first at the hostel where I learned a new game called 21 (not blackjack) and then at an American bar where we sang Karaoke (they had a limited selection but it had (barely) enough songs to last the rest of the night. On Thursday, instead of having orientation for the entire day we went on a “cultural excursion.” On this excursion, we went to this fort Santa Lucia that overlooked the city and then to a market where we stopped and got some delicious ice cream. Unfortunately, the view from the fort was not as impressive as it could have been because of the smog. Apparently, on the few days that the smog isn't blanketing the city the view is quite impressive with the snow capped mountains near the city dominating the viewscape. However, with the smog you couldn't even see the mountains except and a slightly darker shade of gray. On Friday, there was a asado (or BBQ) at the hostel we were staying at where we all received a certificate that said basically we went through orientation. The asado was a fun affair with dancing late into the evening / early morning. Especially fun was watching some of the staff who had been training us for the past week let loose.
I also found out that “English Opens Doors” the program that I am in made the evening news in Santiago on four different news stations. On Friday, we were shown the news clips which included some footage of us from a welcoming ceremony at the UN building in Santiago. There were even a couple of moments that I was on the camera. (I was lucky that the camera caught me not yawing but rather with my hand on my chin looking intently at the proceedings.) We were told that they were going to try to make these recordings available to us.
Santiago was good but I'm definitely ready to start seeing what I've gotten myself into/ unpack my stuff. Orientation was full of useful information but somewhat monotonous. One thing about Santiago that I forgot to mention about was the stray dogs that are everywhere. They for the most part don't bother people and are not dangerous. I found their presence somewhat charming except for when I stepped into dogshit. Also everywhere, in Santiago was graffiti along building walls. I tried taking a couple of pictures of some of it.
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