English Winter Camp Arica 2011, Q101.1

 I will start off by saying I have never been to a ‘summer/winter camp’, ok that is a lie. I went to my high school’s summer football camps from 4^th grade until I graduated from there.  But, to me that isn’t really considered a ‘summer camp’ in my eyes.  Basically you just do football drills, these drills help you in excel in football and the second part of the day you play 7 on 7.  This is more of a recruiting process and a chance to get the little ones excited to play for the school and to learn about the history of the school.  Our history was lengthy and since it was a catholic school, you have to pay to go there, unlike the public schools where your taxes are taken out to pay for the school. So yea in reality it is a week of heavy propaganda and recruiting, besides just learning fundamentals and techniques.

Our English winter camp is a different story.  Since the students don’t have sports as a huge importance on their lives, another outlet is English.  I believe this is a great way for the Chilean government to get students involved/excited in English.   Obviously English has a great importance in an all Spanish speaking country, not only for jobs, but to open the minds of the students/people.  However, our winter camp isn’t about training/learning the fundamentals of English, but more so in the fact that we all speak English the entire time at the camp, so the students MUST listen and understand to get by.  It is also a great opportunity for the students to meet other students from different schools, I will remind you that in my school that the students have the same 30-40 classmates from 1^st grade to 8^th.  Therefore it is IMO harder to be social butterflies, so to meet other people from different schools is a great way to meet people.  Also, the students do not have to pay a dime for this, because it is paid for by the Ministry of Education.  We had a small get together of all the volunteers last Sunday to prepare for the week/Monday and to get to know one another.  Two new volunteers from different cities came to our camp, I knew one from our orientation and Nicole knew the other one from her VS1 or volunteer service orientation.  We met three other volunteers, I think in most cases these volunteers are Chileans, however we have a past volunteer here that stayed as he is teaching at a private school here.  The other two are Chileans with a very good English level. Our camp monitor, the one who runs the camp is our representative from Santiago, but there are many camps here in Chile, so I believe these monitors would be head-teachers(Chileans) from the volunteers at each city.

Ok, off that tangent, we play games for ice breaker activities and for a majority of the day.  Games like dodgeball, blindfolding people and telling them to make a square without any more instructions, scategories, karaoke(English) dodgeball(Chilean style),  a few other Chilean games called earthquake,  giant rock paper scissors…. You get the idea.  The theme this year was ‘No Bullying’.  So we had a video for them to watch, and a couple activities that included that theme and for them to think/discss about it.  Most of the Chilean students told me, yes in English,( I had 4 students here, one of them is one of my best students in English) that bullying isn’t a big thing here in Arica as it is a smaller town and that other students(witnesses) will step in and stop it.  It was awesome this week to finally talk in English the entire week and be understood and to understand most of what everyone is talking about.  The students are actually really bright and very intelligent.  However, still some are very shy.  I think this has to do with most of the high school aged students that know English pretty well aren’t the ‘cool’ kids with large social circles/lives… eh that’s not the correct way to say that, but in reality many are not social butterflies.  However, we had about 9 students from Putre a capital a little east of here at the camp.  There English level is very low, they are extremely shy, with the exception of one.  It is easy to pick these students out; they are much shorter and obviously have indigenous blood.   You may ask yourself why that would matter?   But here in Chile they don’t have a huge/large population of immigrants, so yes, most of the students look the same, a mix of Spanish/indigenous blood, mostly on the Spanish side.  So looking different and being shy doesn’t help their cause and we have about 6 girls remaining.  I have spoken to them a number of times, but only in Spanish, because either their English is at a low level or they are too shy to use it.  They have finally began melding into the camp the last two days, yet still take awhile to join the big group activities, which is easy to understand, they won’t understand what we are yelling…

The camp has about 100 students ranging from freshman in high school or primer medios to freshman in college, so the older/veteran students are awesome and they are the natural leaders in the camp.  The camp starts at 10 and ends at 5:30.  We have to get there about a half hour earlier, because some students get rides and or just come earlier.  I am the loudest one in the camp and I am surprised my voice has not been lost earlier, I am constantly rounding them up for the next activity in between the breakfast at 10:30, either meat/chicken and palta(avocado sauce). And cereal and yogurt, yes they drink yogurt like milk here and also use it for cereal… So that’s like two breakfasts.  They also receive a lunch, a traditional Chilean lunch, but obviously cafeteria style, and a snack: muffin(queque- cake cake) with a box of milk(like a box of juice) later in the day. So yea they eat a lot, a running joke that us volunteers have is we’re are trying to make them like the ‘overweight’ Americans, yea purely ‘English’…

We also had a Chilean come in and speak about his experiences in the US, he studied abroad there and has been to a lot of US cities.  He said he loved Boston the best, and Chicago came in a close second….

Tomorrow is the last day of the camp we are doing a kind of ‘amazing race’ or like stations for a race, all dealing with English.  A few games mixed in there and all the food.  After the day part of the camp we are having a talent show where the student’s parents are coming.  It is all going to be in English, so it should be pretty cool with a cocktail with sodas after.  The talent show was pretty cool, but only about 20 parents showed up.

This was on the front page of the paper here in Arica.  Basically an article about how there are foreigners here to teach English as a 'universal language'.

A sad day today… Q101 my favorite radio station is being taken off the air for a news-talk show on FM. FOME-LAME, the radio station has been my favorite since I was a child and has been a staple in Chicago for 17 years. Oh how I hate corporate dealings... There will not be an alternative/hard/new rock station in Chicago.  Talking to a few friends, I feel like an old man, things are changing and I don’t like it… I listened to my favorite show this morning ‘The Sherman and Tingle Show’ and woke up an hour early to listen to them, as they stream the station for free on the internet.  In fact I am listening to it now as they close it down…  I listened to Q101 every summer I worked for the ice company. So basically everyday in the summer for 7 years… a sad day indeed…

July 4th

Unlike most of my family in the states, I did not have July 4th off, because July 4th is not a holiday here, obviously.  I did, however watch the 'Copa de America' which is like the world cup(occurs every 4 years), but is of teams of 'America'(US didn't get invited-Japan did last time).  This year it is hosted in Argentina, and the tournament consists of Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and Uruguay. It is pretty big here, and I wanted to go out for the game, as it was the 4th of July...

Chile won 2-1 and scored both goals in the second half.  I went out with a few other teachers from school.  We went to the plaza after the game and everyone was going nuts. Well I should say 15-22 year olds were going nuts, almost like a mosh pit.  But there were loads of people not in the 'young moshpit' tons of kids and their parents.  Many of the kids had painted faces of red while and blue, haha yea the chilean flag with one star somewhere.  There were Chilean flags everywhere, everyone and their mother was beeping their horn. The mob moved to the street in front of the plaza, where I thought they were going to tip a car(honking while trying to drive past), and a pickup truck got about 20 people in the bed in about 10 seconds and they got a free ride for 50 yards, it looked like it was going to flip.  Besides the craziness , it was all in good fun and I don't think anyone got hurt.  I did hear a few fireworks go off after the game, so at least that tradition with me is still going.  Also bought a 6 pack of budweiser to celebrate America's birthday...  yea 9 dollars for a 6 pack.... But at least it was ...merican!

Learned a new chant, a soccer chant that is, chi chi chi, le le le, VIVA CHILE! is how it goes.  Yes I do like it, I love the passion the people had for their team, even after winning just one game.  I wish we had songs like this in the US, we don't, we have goofy ancient fight songs, some that are just terrible.  Soccer does have one thing on every sport, the songs the crowd sings while they are playing.  Mostly because it is boring and they can sing while they play(pass the ball back and forth).

It's not too weird that it is winter here, I thought it would be, but the climate is pretty good.  It does get cold at night, like down to 55-60.  Without the sun and the cool ocean breeze, yea it gets chilly in Chile. 

It is July 5th, and I have been away from home for almost 4 months now, it seems like it has been a few weeks.  Spanish is improving greatly, especially understanding, but I still have some problems.  Finally had an interesting conversation last night about whether God exsisted or what happens to us after we die, or why there are bad people in the world...etc  Something I have been missing from home, even better when everything is in Spanish. 

Watched a basketball game today, with two clases of 30-40 students so lets say 35(boys) students, my school here in Arica could not field a basketball team on their own.  They needed to add 3 or 4(I think) students from the public school.  So to put it in numbers for ya.  7 students more or less make up a basketball team, but I'll put 9.  9(basketball team)/35(of available students) = 25%.  My high school had more or less around 350 students in my 'class' my freshman year, so 175 boys available and we fielded a team of 100 students every year. 57%.  Just goes to show that sports are not that popular here, well basketball for that matter....  Most of the students were actually athletic, in fact my school was far surperior and won like 35-19, these students were 7th/8th graders....

This past week.

Chilean students DID have finals at one point, but do not anymore.  I guess when the students have a little bit more power, they can dismiss them, or perhaps it looks bad on the school/funding is the students do poorly on finals.  Anyway they don't have finals anymore and this past week has been like group work and grading for us teachers.  Really boring, kind of stupid, they NEED finals, not because I think you learn better with finals, but more so, because if I had to take them and study for a final that was over the entire year, they need to take one too.  But in reality, yes of course studying for a final gives you a higher chance of retaining the past infomation... I don't know just something odd.

My Academica

Academcias here are like after school activities, at first I wanted to teach them ballroom dancing, and american football, and after a month I wanted to do an english club so the students who wanted to learn more could... However, my co/head teacher never put in the paper work(the chilean way), and I never taught an english club or ballroom dancing(kind of glad, because it would be hard to teach).  However, I did start playing football with a handful of students, the first couple of weeks were just teaching the majority of them to throw an american football. After that, a couple of routes, and finally yesterday I got to play a 3v4 game of two-hand touch football with my students.  I really think they liked it, as they are all asking me when they can play ofensiva y defensiva.  However, since this is the last week, they have to wait 2 weeks of vacation and even other two weeks after that, when I return from traveling around South America/snowboard.