The Taller This Week

I walked into the library today at Hermanos Matte school where I teach the after-school English conversation class...and there were 15 kids! It had been a long day because the day before I stayed at Starbucks all day writing a paper and ended up going to bed at 3 am. Megan had spent the night and I had needed to finish some work before the next day...hence the late bedtime. Well, after 4 hours of sleep, I left the house around 8 am and headed to Puente Alto. I hung out with my gastronomy students, watched them cook a delicious meal, talked with the students one-on-one, and then got to enjoy a plate of mashed potatoes seasoned to perfection, flaky reineta, and a mustard sauce that was to die for. After leaving the school, I made my way to Hermanos Matte but got lost on a bench in the metro station for a while writing down all the thoughts I had that day. When I finally got to the school's library, that's when I saw that there were 15 kids there that day! It was quite overwhelming but I had planned the days activities so I was calm. It is my goal to work on finding games for the following classes that are easier for the kids to understand because I believe in giving them a challenge but I think I might be expecting too much too soon. There are a ton of different levels but the majority of the students (8th grade) can form maybe one sentence or two and that's it for now. I'm so excited to see the progress that will have been made by December. Karen (the grad student working on her masters research here in Chile who I met serendipitously on the street outside my university campus) has so many connections it is ridiculous. Plus she is a teacher of Spanish so I asked her to give me some teaching methods I could use in the taller and she is not only going to tell me what she uses to teach her students in the classroom but also is going to ask her friend who is here teaching English. Did I also mention that Karen's UNCLE is the physical therapist for the USC FOOTBALL TEAM?? Yes...you read that right. And she wants us to all have dinner in LA when I get back from Chile so that he can tell me about the PT who taught him all he needed to know during his first PT internship...who happens to still work in...Santa Barbara. I love fate. Anyways, that was the taller this week and I can't wait to see what next week's taller has in store for me.