Allie is finally doing stuff.... (aka an epically long and random post)

A few days ago I was walking to work at 7:45am on one of our first cold mornings and I found myself wondering where my mittens were. I decided that they must either be in my room, in Nelly's parent's basement outside of Seattle, or in my car that was shipped back to Mom and Dad in NY. Then, I started laughing. My belongings are scattered over so many thousands of miles and so am I. Somehow, it all works out. I have a job, friends, and a really great place to live. I'm working in a city which I have decided must be one of the most fabulous places in the world. My Spanish is slowly improving. I'm no longer a hopeless mess.

Still, I don't know why I came here... a large reason is because its been something that I said I would do and therefore have been meaning to do. Maybe I'm searching for enlightenment in my own little way. I just want to know more about everything. I want to learn through observing things quietly and unnoticed. This is proving to be easy because my language ability doesn't allow me to say much of interest...

My life feels a lot more full than it actually is. This is because the reality of teaching English in a foreign country is that you are teaching an extracurricular activity, which means that you have to fit classes nicely into everyone's schedule but yours. This results in having days that on average look like this:

class 8-9am (plastics salesman before he goes to work)
Spanish class 12:30-2:30
class 3-4pm (7 and 10 year old girls)
class that i have to take the bus to Valparaiso for 6-7:30pm (head of grant writing for one of the best universities in Chile, in his office after work)

So, this means that I leave for work at 7:30am and am finished and back in my home sometime after 8:00pm. All that time spent running around and planning classes for three very different types of students and I only get paid for 3 1/2 hours of work. Such is my life. Although, I knew teaching English here would be this way and I do like to be busy, so I'll stop complaining now.

I go back and forth between loving my job and thinking that it is not close to worth what I am being paid. Overall, its fun and I think I'm pretty good at it, but I wish that out of the 11 classes I now have per week, more than 2 of them consisted of more than one student. Group classes are so much more fun and are so much less work to plan. I also wish that 11 classes totaled more than 18 hours or occurred in less than 6 days per week. And I alllllssssoooooo wish that my class of teenagers would just fall off the planet.... or at least just 3 or 4 of the students (please god please). Right... I was going to stop complaining....

Job=good.

Allie=doing stuff in Chile=completed a goal=happy.

In other news, I went to the feria last week, which is basically a big farmer's market in a strange dusty chunk of land that runs through the city where there used to be a river. I must research the history of this more.. Anyway, it was just like Seattle's farmer's market in the U-District, but with shabbier tents, much lower prices, and avocados, bananas, tuna, kiwi, etc. People also yell more and there are no quirky street musicians. After the market I cooked up some freshly shelled beans for the first time and it was a huge success.... I want more.... right now..... Is this becoming a food blog?!?

Ok, now a photo story:

This is new friend Lauren. She also went to UVM and she also teaches English here in Chile. Wow!

One day we went to Valparaiso...
on a search for good coffee....
and we found a creepy old earthquake damaged cemetery!





Wow!

Besos,
Allie