Dinner at 11:00

Jan 9
Teaching went much better today, I had a variety of subject material that I wanted to cover with the students, and the fact that the day was broken up into multiple segments made the day easier. For my “American Cultural” elective that I taught I had 14 boys in my room, no girls. I tried to get them to tell me what they wanted to know about American Culture. What actually happened was that they listened to me tell stories with pictures that I had on postcards, many personal sound effects and lots of words, which I think they never fully understood. I felt like I was teaching a human reproduction class with the ways the entire group of boys stared at me in this strained and embarrasses silence, only to nod or grunt when I mentioned something they had a passing understanding about. About half way through I realized that this I probably exactly how a class like that would go. Whatever the subject matter was, I believe that they understood that there were 50 states, Washington State was NOT Washington D.C., there is an ocean somewhere near Washington and that we have a heck of a lot more water than they have probably ever seen in their experience in Antofagasta. By the end of the class a couple of students had actually asked me various questions, mostly by pointing out the word “towers” and pantomiming a plane crashing into it, which I took to mean that they wanted to know where the World Trade Center had been. As much as I would like to have gotten into a political conversation about it, I believe it was beyond their level of English mastery.
My technology class was a bit more of a bust, but not because I didn’t try. I was planning on having all the students get set up with a blog. What happened was that the instructor of the school came in and I believe said that they were going to shut the power down for the computer room for 4 minutes. So I spent about 10 minutes trying to explain the concept of “on” and “off”, web address, link and address bar to about 22 students using only a whiteboard and prayer. This is material I have difficulty teaching people who speak English natively, this was what I will call a “unique” experience. Once I sent someone to find out if they were done shutting the power off and received a confirmation, the real excitement started. Blogger, the site I was going to have everyone set the blog up on, was down for maintenance. I passed the rest of the time in class by taking all the kids photos for their future blogs and letting them just surf the net, like I knew they wanted to do in the first place.
After school Katie, Gina, Jake and I went down the Central, (the center of town), and relaxed with some food and drink. We were all thankful the day was over and had time to discuss what we wanted to accomplish in the future.
Returning home at 9:15 by a very round about Micro route, (the mini busses that they use for transportation here), we were greeted by a spread out tesita, (a kind of tea time meal). Our “Mama Nuevo” as Jake has come to call her, was at work, teaching at the university. In her stead she left more food for us. After eating we both came upstairs, considering falling asleep before she came home so that she couldn’t feed us any more. At 10:15 Mama Nuevo came home with her son Rickardo and his wife and Kris, their 2 year old child. Both Jake and I went down stairs to play with Kris and were trapped into the “web of diner”. We ate at 11:00pm. The dinner consisted of salad, pasta and porkchops. Just the thing you need to fill your stomach with before you head off to sleep. I can only imagine Mama Nuevo coming home, determined that her boys were going to have a full belly of pork and pasta before their heads hit the pillow tonight.
It’s currently 11:50 and it’s time to go to sleep. I have a long day tomorrow, we were informed at dinner tonight that a bunch of important professors, heads of local schools and such were going to show up for dinner tomorrow and that we are not to run off to the Central, but be home before 7:00. I also have a stomach full of pork to digest. Pray for me.