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.