A short review

      Pop Pop would be disappointed in my journal-keeping abilities.  I hadn’t been in Chile 2 months before I had almost abandoned blogging altogether.  Why?  I could make excuses all day long that I had been simply too busy (not untrue) to keep a blog, too buried in lesson planning (untrue) to be able to write weekly blog posts.  Excuses aside, the fact of it is simply that I hate writing blog posts.  They take forever to write, they require a certain element of creativity which I can only tap into with great effort, and I had even convinced myself that keeping a blog was unimportant.  However, due to the petition of family members to the contrary, I realize that I do value being able to share my experiences with those close to me.  Damnit. 

     

To review the past month or so in 50 words or less:  I passed my certification course, which turned out to be one of the most physically and emotionally difficult things I have ever done.  Yes, emotionally: entering an intensive training course with the cocky attitude of “I went to college, I can handle this” and quickly having one’s pride beaten to death by a month of sleep deprivation and constant “constructive criticism” is enough to reduce a man to tears.  Ask me how I know this.

     

Now to the present:  I am a gainfully employed travelling ESL teacher with a full class schedule.   This fact is a strange one for me to think about. My goal all through college was to be a teacher…and now I actually am one.  And I had no idea how bloody tricky it is to teach ESL.  See, I teach using communicative methodology, which means that my only teaching tool is the language which I am teaching.  The students do not know English, and English is the only language permitted in the class room.  It’s like teaching music theory to someone who has never heard music before, using only individual sounds and musical notation to teach it.  Doing this, I have gained a very deep appreciation for what my own language teachers did for me in college.  They always made it look so easy (the good teachers, at least).      

The job has its ups and downs, as does any decent profession.  Being that I teach adult ESL, (most) all of my students are smart, educated, and very motivated to learn.  They ask questions that are difficult to answer, which is good in that they challenge me to become a smarter teacher.  They ask questions that are easy to answer, which are good because they make me feel smart.  There is a very profound joy in seeing the linguistic concept click in a student’s mind and the look of understanding come across their face.   

The down of this job is the “travelling” part.  I give classes to working professionals before or after work, or on their lunch break.  Thus, I have the opportunity to see many different parts of Santiago, a sometimes positive and sometimes negative aspect of the job.  Most of my classes are in Las Condes, a virtual Central Park in upper Santiago.   New, shiny skyscrapers housing international corporations, cafes and sushi restaurants on every corner, all surrounded by beautiful parks and flower gardens to take walks through:

Said flower garden.  There are several such gardens located in a big park in Las Condes.

The view from a building where one of my classes is.

And then there’s my class in Pudahuel.  If Las Condes is like the Central Park of Santiago, Pudahuel is the border town in Mexico that’s been destroyed by the drug war.  Located on the outskirts of the city, Pudahuel is an industrial desert replete with chop shops, shipping warehouses, and dust-filled winds.  This is the part of town where my institution only sends male teachers, and for good reason.  From downtown Santiago, it takes two hours to arrive to this class via the 1 of 2 city busses that go that far. 

On one side of my walk to my Pudahuel class, there is a cement wall topped with razor wire that surrounds what is, from what I can tell, a dump for paper products. 

On the other side, miles and miles of vineyards, dusty and brown from the winter season

This weekend I will be moving into my new apartment in Providencia, known fondly by Santiaguinos as “Sanhattan.”  I’m sure I will have more to post afterward.  Right now, it’s time for another drink, and for a Pino Empanada.  More to come!