Birthday and school outing

Mary, mother of Jesus statue

Santiago, quite a lot of smog

Quite a lot has happened over the last couple of days but I shall try not to ramble too much. This past week has seen an entire SIM audit with two lovely ladies visiting us from the States. On Saturday Carmen and I took them around the centre of town to show them a bit of the city before they left. We took a tram up to the top of Cerro San Cristobál which was awesome (and no walking involved). It was pretty crazy to see the big stature of Mary at the top and I couldn't help noticing that the Jesus statue is a lot smaller and further down the hill. I'm still finding the Catholic influence hard to understand. When I got home from town I decorated the cake for Pedro and Sammi's birthday. I have to admit to being rather proud of it and I think the boys loved it.

My cake! And yes, it is a guitar

So we had their joint party on Sunday afternoon with lots of food and friends around to share it. Sammi was very excited but I'm not sure how much Pedro understood. But he was happy enough to be getting new things and eat plenty of sugary goodness.

Sammi with a marshmallow ice-cream and Transformer

Family and cake time

Pedro ripping into it

Dinosaurs! Can't go wrong

Today us 5 teachers took 60 kids to the national library. Great child:teacher ratio don't you think??? Nah, it went really well and was nice to get out of school for a bit too. The library is obviously used to having this type of group in and had plenty of things for them to look at and do. I must admit to being pretty tempted to head back there myself and browse through the books. Some really good ones that have both English and Spanish and I noticed some German books too. Rather impressive really.

Lining up outside (Pre-Kinder only)

Whole school listening to a story

I'm slowly getting used to this new routine and even managed to sleep almost to my alarm today (instead waking up every hour waiting for it). The season has definitely changed and we haven't hit 30 for a week now. I'm quite enjoying our 23-27 degree range and it is finally a decent temperature at night for sleeping. This weekend I'm heading to an Easter retreat with the youth from church. Please note that "youth" here means anyone between 13 and 30 so I suspect it will be an interesting time!

Not as planned

As many of you will know, last week didn't go as planned. I woke up late on Tuesday morning and had to rush to catch the bus. (Needless to say I am now using an alarm) On the way I rolled my ankle but didn't think it was too bad. However, by the end of the day I was in quite a lot of pain and ended up fainting on the bus home. Not an experience I would like to repeat! Definitely disconcerting to have an entire busload of people craning to see what happened to make the bus stop suddenly and people yell for a U-turn back to the hospital. Thankfully that was the worst of it and x-rays showed it to be just a sprain. Thanks so much for all the supporting prayers everyone. I had my 5 days complete rest and it seems to be doing just fine now.

Started back at school yesterday and tried a new transport route. This one has been the best so far in terms of speed so I'm all for anything that lets me sleep an extra 15min. I do have to change trains and then onto a bus but it's not drastically difficult. I watched the older kids in class yesterday which was definitely a lot calmer but harder for me to see where I could be useful. So I'm back with the wee ones and am exhausted by the time I get home. I helped teach English yesterday and am pleased to report that everyone can now say "hello" and "bye" and "how are you". It's definitely a different ball game teaching kids this age - I shall have to get my creative hat on. Today is the first day of autumn so we all went outside to collect dead leaves and stuck them into their books. Created quite a mess on the floor! I'm still struggling a bit with what my role is but am currently more than happy to just cuddle kids and play with them and smile for them. Sure, some of them are willfully bad but I simply wonder what their homes are like. I think they are just looking for attention.

A man was using the horse and cart to deliver vegetables

Just one photo for you, still working on getting some at school. But this really reminded me that Renca is a poor part of town!

First Impressions

The last week or so has been pretty straight-forward with nothing much to report. I finished at language school happy with the time spent there and promptly went down with a cold. So it was a bit annoying to be at a 50th birthday on Sunday and have lost my taste completely. All that cake wasted! Thankfully it hasn't slowed me down too much, thanks for all the prayers everyone. God is good!

After much trepidation I started at Un Rincón de Alegría today. I can't say I'm happy about the 6am start but I need about an hour and half to cross this great big city. This first week I think will be an experiment in the best way to get there. Today's bus, train, taxi, walk was all a bit much and we think it can be done simpler and cheaper. My first impressions of Renca (the suburb) are that it's not as bad as I was expecting. There definitely aren't heaps of homeless people and the houses aren't what I'd call slums. Yes, it's dirtier and there's more rubbish and the standard of housing is lower but it isn't the crazy poor, dangerous looking place I was expecting - which was a good start. However, it's always a little disconcerting to arrive at a place and discover that it's surrounded by high walls with barbed wire coils along the top and barred windows. But I guess that's the reality of protecting your buildings and the kids.

I arrived in time for breakfast and I can't say I objected to a second breakfast of porridge! Always good to stay topped up, I never know when the next eating time is. I was first of all blown away by the noise and this was probably the most overwhelming factor during the day. The kids just never shut-up! There's always someone talking, or giggling, or shouting, or crying. Even when they have been asked for silencio! I spent the morning observing the class of 3 and 4 year olds. There are 25 of them and two teachers which seems to work quite well but it is a constant battle for their attention. I probably derailed things too because all the kids want to stare at me and have the opportunity to come and talk to me. All the girls want to climb into my lap and everyone wants to stroke my skin. Most common questions: "Why are your eyes blue?" "What are the brown spots on your face?" "Why do you live so far away?" "Why don't you speak good Spanish?"

I tried to help where I could when they were doing activities and in keeping kids focused. My imperatives are going to be super good by the time I finish here! I've got "Sit down!" "Stop that!" and "Don't do that!" down really good in just one day. It is a little tricky learning their rules and earning the kids' respect but I think that will come with time. I also helped in the kitchen getting ready for lunch and then cleaning up afterwards before returning to the classroom for the afternoon. We finished at 4 and I was home about 6 and ready to fall into bed.

The kids are a really interesting bunch. Incredibly cute (most of them) with some really strong personalities in the class. I'd say about 5 real trouble-makers (1 girl) and the rest are just normal small children with limited attention spans being expected to sit at desks for extended periods of time. We also had one poor wee girl who cried for her mother basically the entire day without stopping. I thought she'd be exhausted and stop  but no, she just kept going!

No photos sorry guys but I think it's best if I get to know the place I bit before I walk in with a camera like a tourist.

Adventures

I looked out my window the other night and saw this moon-rise over the Andes

I know this is super soon after the last blog but it's been a fun couple of days. On Wednesday I skipped school and we had a family outing to the river Clarillo. It's part of a national park about an hour's drive out of Santiago and it was awesome to get into the foothills. Filipe's family joined us too so, his mum, his brother Jaime and his sister Natalia and her husband Antonio with their 2 boys. Whew! Very hot day which was good because the river was pretty cold but a beautiful place. The river has been dammed a little in places to create swimming holes and there are lots of places to picnic and bbq. It was a lovely relaxed day and I managed to not get sun-burnt!

Yes that is me IN the river

Filipe and his brother Jaime

Up on Santa Lucia

Yesterday I ventured into the city by myself after classes finished and visited some local markets and discovered Santa Lucia. This is the other little hill in Santiago and had heaps of gardens and fountains and a small fort at the top of the hill. I had a great time exploring and was surprised to find out that it's actually supposed to be a dangerous place to go by yourself. Emy was pretty shocked that I'd gone there! But I didn't feel unsafe at all so I definitely felt like God was looking out for me.

I then went to a salsa dancing class back at language school. Nobody else turned up so I had a private lesson for an hour and half. Nearly died! Very hard work but a lot of fun. The bum-wiggle was especially confusing and I'm sure you have to be Latin-American to really get the hang of it! A kind German doing their homework found my camera and dutifully took a video which I guess I should probably share with you...it looks better than I felt it did!