Lost in meetings

Hola! Cómo están todos? I'm doing well, but I think you sent the cold weather down here! It's been cold and cloudy all day, and all I wanted to do was curl up and watch a movie. Fall begins on March 21, but it felt like it was already here today!

Monday I started my first official day at Colegio San Marcos. The students don't begin classes until Thursday, but the teachers came back yesterday. It was an interesting first day...Stephanie (the other English teacher at my school) and I left the hostel at 8am yesterday morning, hopped on the metro and ended up going past our stop. A few of the metro lines in Santiago have 'express routes' during rush hour (and I do mean rush hour...we were packed in there like sardines!) that go to ever other stop, and unfortunately we got on the wrong set of cars. We were getting to our final destination when we realized that the metro wasn't slowing down...oops! We thought we'd be able to walk from the next stop, but ended up getting even more lost than before. By this time, we'd been commuting for about 45 minutes and finally decided to take a taxi to make it to school on time.

When we finally arrived just before 9, we found a group of teachers conversing in the courtyard...thank goodness we weren't late! We all walked upstairs for our opening meeting in which the principal introduced all of the new teachers. He explained that everyone should use Stephanie and I as resources and only speak in English with us. Ironic...not once did he speak in English with us after that, and the meetings through out the rest of the day were in Spanish as well! Haha

Fortunately, the coordinator of the English program (her name is Padua) was very welcoming and debriefed me after every meeting about the major topics discussed. I think she could tell that I was confused by the rapid Spanish-speaking and took me under her wing. (By the way, Stephanie's parents are from Ecuador and El Salvador, so she's been speaking Spanish since she could talk). Padua also said that while they were very happy to have me help with the English curriculum at the school, she understands that I really want to improve my Spanish. She already invited me to have dinner with her and her husband sometime so that I can practice more in a one-on-one setting. I'm very grateful to have her around!

Today was basically the same as yesterday, lots of meetings and workshops. It hasn't been super exciting (especially when I'm lost during most of the meetings!), so I'm really looking forward to meeting all of the students on Thursday.

Oh yeah, I don't think I've told most of you what grades I'm teaching yet, have I? Oops! During our one-on-one meeting with the principal, he indicated they would split up the school into two halves, each of us covering about six grade levels (K-6 and 7-12). He also explained that he really wanted the English teacher working with grades 7-12 to get involved with student activities outside of the normal school day. So as you can imagine, I chose to work with the older ones! I can't wait to check out some of their fútbol (soccer) games and any other extracurricular activities they might have. I just heard that this age group has more disciplinary problems, so I'm a bit nervous about that!

Well that's about it for now...I'm going to go scrounge up something for dinner! Have a great night :)

Love and grace on your week,
LG