You Can't Teach This

Day drinking
Our Thanksgiving Feast
Thanksgiving in the summer!
Jackie and Carly on the bus to Creamfields
Fro and I in the entrance to my favorite restaurant in Santiago

Part of being a good English teacher is developing good relationships with your students. Not only does it make learning English a lot easier…but it also makes class a lot more fun. For the most part, I pride myself on being professional, responsible, and making sure that my students know the material. As an English teacher, I want nothing more than for my students to leave class a little more confident than when they came. Psych! Don’t get me wrong… I genuinely love seeing my students improve. But you know what I love more? Being the cool English teacher. What can I say? I love being loved. Teaching English to adults is different than teaching elementary school. 5 years from now these adults won’t look back on their time with me and think “Wow, Stephanie was strict but it was in our best interest”, as could possibly happen with an “uncool” elementary school teacher. Realistically, these adults go through several English teachers a year and if I want to be remembered at all I need to strike a balance between fun and "wow she knows so much about the English language." Considering my very limited knowledge of English grammar terms and my excessive use of words that I have made up, I see nothing wrong with teetering on the line of appropriateness every once in a while to up my fun factor. Is it appropriate to spend an hour of class time teaching “bitch work”, “streaking”, and “threesome” to a group of middle age male professionals? No its not. Will I do it if it means they like me more? Yes I will. Is it appropriate to spend an entire private class discussing fooseball moves? No its not. Does it make me cooler than their last teacher? Yes it does. See how this works? I have recently realized that I will stop at nothing to be liked by my students. What’s that? You want some of the test answers? Well that seems like a victimless crime to me…Done! Coffee instead of class has become a ritual and exchanging inappropriate slang words has become a daily warm-up exercise. The funny thing is…I might just be on to something. I think there is a lot to be said for having a plan when teaching. I love structure, and it’s nice to be able to follow a book. But lets face it, some of the topics in the books are big time lame. Spending 2 hours talking about piggy banks and ways to save money? I'll pass. I will stick to discussing things that people actually talk about, thankyouverymuch. Next week’s topic is still undecided…but I am strongly considering following in Jackie and Carly’s footsteps and teaching “that’s what she said.”

The Hangover

Eating seafood soup -- Chilean hangover cure

Creamfields!!!!!!!!!
Our "Conversation Exchange" group!

Conversing
My dance partner

Most of my friends and I are members of a conversation exchange website here in Chile. The website is great because you can really make of it what you want. The website pairs strangers who speak different languages together, so that both people can practice a language they are learning with a native speaker. A standard conversation exchange takes place at a park or a café, lasts for about 2 hours, and is organized so that the first hour is completely in one language and the second hour is completely in the other. As you can imagine, people veer from these unspoken regulations quite frequently. Take for example Miguel, who clearly thought this was a dating website. We spoke absolutely no English, he repeatedly asked me about my dating life here, and then proceeded to pay for my meal and escort me to the metro despite my best efforts to explain to him that he REALLY didn’t have to do that. Needless to say we won’t be meeting up again. But for every weirdo out there, there are an equal amount of conversation exchange mavericks. People who just throw the unspoken rules aside and say, “Who cares that we are complete strangers? Lets just get drunk, learn a little something about languages, get crazy and dance?!”

Carly happened to come across one of these so-called mavericks about a week ago. He boldly suggested that she get some of her friends together, he get some of his friends together and we do this conversation exchange the fun way. Our group conversation exchange took place Thursday night. Fro, Carly, and I dragged ourselves down to El Centro to meet our potential new friends at a dive bar. As soon as we walked in, we were warmly greeted by our “new friends”. We knew it was them because they were pointing at us and motioning for us to come sit down. They even saved us seats. Hugs and kisses were exchanged and we were about to sit down when we were awkwardly informed that the group we had friendlied up to was actually not at all who we were supposed to meet up with, but instead, a group of strangers who had simply never seen someone with blond hair before and didn’t know how to react. Not to worry. Our actual new group of conversation friends turned out to be awesome. After having a couple of beers, we went to see a traditional Chilean dance band a couple blocks away. Another friend of the group, Adrian, met us there. Let me tell you a little about Adrian. If I could invent the perfect friend …he wouldn’t hold a candle to Adrian. He is a speech pathologist by day, traditional Chilean dancer by night. Speaks very minimal English. And to top it all off he has a very serious mustache. Friend of my dreams. Anyways, when we got to the concert, we put our Spanish and English aside and started communicating in the one language we all spoke fluently…ridiculous dance moves. Unfortunately for me, this bar happened to serve terremotos. As I’ve mentioned before these drinks are a deadly combination of fermented wine, hard alcohol, and sugar. My limit is 2, but I am all about pushing myself these days. I had a record breaking 3 ½… which would explain the video of me dancing with a toothless homeless man. I woke up the following morning with the worst hangover I’ve had here, although it was definitely one of the most worth it. If loving terremotos is wrong…then I don’t want to be right.

Friends with Benefits

Rafa, Kike, Jackie, Carly, and Christian
Leo and I after the race. I have hung out with this exact dog both times I have been to Viña.
No clue
Kooch sporting a serious mustache
Carly and I after the race!

Student/teacher friendships are dangerous territory here at BridgeLinguatec given our strict policies regarding handing out personal information to students. I, however, like to live dangerously. My student, Carlos, and I realized that his friend, Pablo, has been taking English lessons from Carly. From there, we discovered that the 4 of us so happen to all love eating and drinking, And even better…Carlos and Pablo love to pay for things, while Carly and I love to get things for free. Friendships made in heaven. Thursday night, the 4 of us went to a vegetarian restaurant for pizza, Mexican food, and all the tequila sunrises we could handle. 3 ½ hours, quite a few drinks, and several requests from Carlos that I “not judge him” later, a friendship had been born. As a first order of business in our new friendship, Carlos and I came to an agreement on how our classes would be run from now on. In exchange for me “being less responsible” (direct quote from Carlos) and doing less work from the company mandated books, we will speak a little Spanish in each class. In other words, in return for doing less work, I get to learn Spanish. Sure Carlos. Whatever you say. We have since had our first class, and I can assure you it went as promised. I even took the liberty of ending class significantly early so that we could grab coffee. Second order of business in our newfound friendship? Translate as many inappropriate things as possible from Spanish into English and vice versa. Listening to Carlos describe his boss in language far too crude for this blog in perfect English…I’ve never been a prouder ESL teacher. After dinner, completely disregarding the fact that I had an 8 am class the next morning, Carly and I decided to meet up with Jackie and the Bicentenario crew. As usual, this was a terrible decision that resulted in dancing until way too late and getting roughly 3 hours of sleep. Thankfully, all I had to do after class the next morning was pack for my weekend trip to the beach. As an interesting sidenote to our evening/testament to the quality of men in this country: someone we were out with attempted to hit on Jackie by telling her that he was amazed at how bad her Spanish was (for the record Jackie speaks great Spanish). In an attempt to recover from what was obviously very offensive to Jackie he followed her out of the bar and said “No…really. I’m confused. How is it so bad?” Immediately following this comment he asked for her number so they "could see eachother again". Wow Chilean men. You’ve done it again.

Friday afternoon, Carly, Fro, Nico & some friends from work, and I headed to Viña del Mar for the weekend. We rented a condo that had 2 pools and was 2 steps away from the beach. Not exactly roughing it. Elias and Zach were in Viña for the weekend too. The entire weekend was spent relaxing beachside and eating empanadas and avocado. This was well needed given that I worked a record breaking 14 hours the week before. It’s a rough life but someone has got to do it. Just incase you were thinking that I have gotten lazy, I will have you all know that Carly and I ran a 10K Sunday. Fro was unable to run due to the near 3^rd degree burns has on her lower legs from trekking without suntan lotion last weekend. Apparently there is a hole in the ozone layer over Chile right now? Anyone who knows Fro’s pigmentation knows that this is not good news. Last, but definitely not least…I locked myself out of my room this morning only to find out that I do not own the key for my door. The silver lining? I can now efficiently break into any locked door using nothing but a credit card. Na ha.

The 3 Mouseketeers

Blind Mouse
3 Blind Mice
Yerba Loca Hike
Hiking along the river
Eating some lunch

The only thing scary about this Halloween weekend was how few people appreciated how awesome my costume was. Chile doesn’t really “do” Halloween. They do, however, get Monday off. Mainly because Chile will use literally any excuse to have a Monday off. They started celebrating Halloween just a very short while ago, so it has yet to reach its full potential. There are no haunted houses, and dressing up is just for kids and North Americans who still think they are in a sorority or fraternity. Even though we all knew this to be true, my friends and I celebrated Halloween the only way we know how: with beer and without inhibitions. Thank god for “California Cantina”, Santiago’s gringo bar, and therefore designated Halloween mecca. Jackie, Carly, and I decided to sport group costumes this year. The best part about our costumes? They cost us under a dollar. Friday morning, we ventured to Estacion Central (home of the worlds largest collection of junk you don’t need). After roaming the street designated to party stores, we finally found what we had been searching for….plastic mouse ears. Throw on some shades, black spandex, and eyeliner and whala! 3 Blind Mice! Too bad that Chileans have absolutely never heard this nursery rhyme. The closest thing I got to someone “getting” my costume was “from Shrek?!” Yes. We decided to dress up as characters from Shrek that are in the movie for under 10 seconds…This reaction was far better than the “OMG 3 Minnie Mouses!!!!” that we got on more than one occasion (this was at the American bar by the way). I even remember being photographed with 2 actual Minnie Mouses because “OMG we are all Minnie Mouse!!!!!” Lets just do a quick review of famous mice. Minnie Mouse wears a dress. She is not blind. She also wears a bow. And she’s lame. Not to mention that there is only one of her. Either way, I thought our costumes were pretty clever and Halloween was an overall success.

During the actual day of Halloween, before la fiesta, Carly, Fro, Nico (aka Nico Suave and/or Mogly) and his friend Marsal, went hiking through Yerba Loca (a park 40 minutes outside Santiago.) Before going on the hike all I knew was that it was about 10 miles and for the most part it was flat. Unlucky for Carly, both of these statements were 100% false. It was actually 20 miles in total, and Nico played it pretty fast and loose with the word “flat.” Carly was working with about 4 hours of sleep and gets motion sickness like nothing I’ve ever seen. About ½ way up the mountain, Carly looks at me with the saddest eyes I ever seen and says “I just want to throw up but I can’t.” Good thing for her, making people puke is a specialty of mine (Mom, if you are reading this out loud to Dad you can go ahead and insert something about my face making you throw up here.) I find that if I just pretend to vomit really loudly around people that already feel sick, I can immediately induce a throw-up response. So there we were on the side of the mountain both pretending to throw up until Carly actually did. Not 1 but 3 times. I’m telling you …I’m a pro. Too bad that once someone actually throws up it makes me sick. There was one point where Nico Suave, Carly, and I were all going back and forth dry heaving. Good stuff. I couldn’t think of a better way to start a 20-mile hike…except maybe getting your shoes soaking wet 2 minutes in. Check. Oh well. Its not like we lost the boys, got off track and hiked through a swamp full of cow crap instead of taking the dry, practically paved (or at the very least, cow crap free) path or anything…. It was well worth the pain though. The hike was incredible.