Crazy Kids/Adorable Kiddies!

What's happened to me since I last wrote?

Well, I worked some more at school. Tia Ingrid was ill for the rest of last week, which led to us on Thursday having to teach on our own. And we weren't aware of this until we arrived at our first lesson so it's fair to say we had no prep time! It was alright. Tia Silvanna was with us for the day to explain what we wanted the kids to do, to the kids (adults understand our Spanish much better than kids do) and the kids were quite well behaved. We taught the 8th graders about the UK, no surprise they knew the most about England - although this consisted quite a lot of football teams. Had a little collection of teachers at one point. At the end of one class there were five of us just standing around chatting, which was nice.

On Friday we went into Temuco to try and pick up our ID cards. After walking around for an hour and calling several people for directions we finally found the registration office - and it was shut. But we met up with the girls from Chol Chol for Hannah's birthday celebrations. The initial idea of going to the cinema before eating had to be changed when we had a "Chile Moment". This is basically whenever we try to do anything here and, due to our lack of Spanish, it fails. Actually we have them quite a lot. In this case the film we going to see, wasn't actually playing although it seemed to say that it was on the internet... Ahh well. Pizza Hut was nice. The pizza's are in English on the menu and it turned out to be about £4 each for two huge pizza's and puddings, once we split the bill.

On Saturday we tried once again to pick up our ID cards but once again it was shut! So annoying seeing as that was the only reason I went into Temuco. But we decided to make the best of it, so we went to a cafe and had hot chocolate and cake :)

Yesterday in the countryside we worked with the Pre Kinder/Kinder class. Fifteen 4-5 year olds. So cute! They're much calmer in the countryside. We decided to teach them animals and an hour and a half later, after lots of animal noises and drawings, we felt like they'd actually learnt something! Their drawings were great! Proper little kids drawings. One little boy drew a great chicken (pollo) then drew four chicks (pollitos!). Adorable. One little boy asked me why I didn't have brown eyes. I realised that I was the first person he'd ever seen that doesn't have brown eyes. Kids in the countryside see foreigners even less often than people in the towns. I had to explain that I was from Scotland where people have different eye colours. I don't know if his wide-eyed look was from amazement or complete incomprehension but I seemed to make some impact on him. I tried to teach the school dog to sit but I don't think you'll be seeing us at Crufts any time soon. Also the problem of learning Spanish is that you forget your English. It took Amina three tries to spell 'cinema' correctly, much to everyone's amusement.

Today the kids were a bit manic but Ingrid was back. We bought her some flowers for her birthday and as a 'Get Well Soon'. Finally got everything together to finish our street map for Project Trust! Only took 6 weeks...

So yeh that's what I've been up to. Oh!

First mail! With Scottish stamps. Thanks mum! :D xxxx