ingles abre puertas

today was our first real taste of helping teach english in a chilean school. the trip only takes about and hour, and we (jennifer and i) end up at liceo victor jara in la pintana. the english teacher is young, and she speaks to us in spanish. jennifer's parents are colombian so she understands everything, i understand most of it, and everything goes along pretty smoothly. she asked us how the school compares to american schools (igual, mejor o peor?), and jennifer told her that it's hard to compare them. this school is the largest in the neighborhood and it's an art school, so theatre, dance and music are an important part of the curriculum. the classes are packed with 35+ kids and they all talk at once, climbing over desks to get to their seats and shouting across the room. the teacher, aracelly, never loses her patience and rarely raises her voice, and the activities get done. she teaches 3rd through 8th grade, and today we got to see a 3rd grade class and a 6th grade class.

the third graders were ecstatic to see us. i tried to pretend that i didn't speak spanish, but that only lasted for about 3 minutes. they wanted to know everything--where i am from, how i know spanish, how to say all of their names in english, how to say things like perro and gato in ingles. they were working on learning clothing, and had a lot of trouble differentiating between shirt and skirt. hey asked for our autographs and one boy (9 years old!) whipped out a camera phone and took my picture.

the 6th graders were a lot different, sitting gender segregated and asking us more questions about boyfriends and guns and roses and if i had ever played zelda. when i told them i had an N64 they almost lost it, and when i said that my sister had a wii they asked how old she was. i told them 23, and they replied, don't you have any younger sisters? the girls made us paper flowers on which they had sprayed cheap perfume, and again they asked us how to say their names in english. we had so much more fun than we anticipated.

and my favorite part was that we realized the bus takes us straight back to my metro station, making the return journey closer to 40 minutes.

hurrah!