Hi Everyone! I have started up ths new blog as the otherone was a bt of a pain to use and ths has a good photo application which I wll use as soon as i locate my computer lead that should connect my Camera up to the computer!

Havng spent a couple of days in Viña del Mar when Sophie and I first arrved in Chile we are now in the Elqui Valley and are staying in a little town called Paihuano wth a lady called Señra Nena and her husband, Gilberto. Their house is quite nice and is on the main street of Paihuano. the house and garden is full of little things like gnomes, butterflies, wind chimes and lots of spanish sayings writen on wood and hung up around the place. She also has chickens and geese much to Sophie´s delght!

The food hasnt been too bad so far as it mainly consists of bread ham and cheese...I´m really hoping she feeds us something else soon! Paihuano itself is quite small but it does have a main school in it which is good for me as i just have to walk accross the street to get to work! there are nine schools in the comuna and they are all in little villages up from Paihuano. The villages I will be teaching in are: Paihuano (two days a week), Paihuano Quebrado( 1 day), Pisco Elqui (one morning a week), Cochiguaz(1 Day), and Tres Cruces (1 Day) which is the only one below Paihuano geographically. All the schools except Paihuano and Pisco Elqui are tiny ones with one teacher who just travells round them all. Soph does the other schools as we just divded a region into one and two and then picked a number out a hat! At the moment I am in Pisco Elqui which is quite popular with tourists and has much more character than Paihuano, we didnt realise that there was internet here so this blog entry is an added bonus!

On our fist couple of days here we were taken round the schools by David Bamford who is the Mondo Challenge correspondant in Chile, He is very nice but it is almost good that he is gone as we now have to be a bit more independant. Yesterday we went to a meeting with all the princpals of the schools and the english teachers plus a few more teachers whch was really scary, they all seemed pleased to see us though which was good...or maybe I just didnt catch the finer points of their spanish!!

A couple of doors down from us is a couple who own a bed and Breakfast, Juanita is English and Alvaro is Chilean (they met in paris). They have specal evenings where people can come and listen to them play the guitar, clarinet and sing. Luckily they had one of these evenngs the day after we arrived so we were invited to that. THEY ARE SOOOO NICE!!! I was invited to go to their house and learn some of the songs (which I might do on Fridays as I have the afternoon off). Yesterday Juanita invited us to her birthday party which was brilliant although I am now feeling a little jaded as we left at 3 am although we could have stayed longer. The great excitment for the evening was the fact that there was a barbeque which meant we could eat something other than bread ham and cheese! I also sang two Dido songs after much persuasion from Juanita and Alvaro...I dont think they were too bad but I was definately a little rusty after not singing properly for a few months!

The scenery here is amazing, there are huge mountains either side of us, they are brown and bare but all the same very impressive! There are also loads and loads of vinyards here so I have been eatng lots of grapes.

I start work tomorrow which involves catching the Truck at seven O´Clock in the morning, I cant decide if I´m dreading the early start more than the actual teaching!

Hope all is well back at home, I´ll hopefully write more soon! (It will be more interesting than this entry I promise, I just thought it would be useful to put up some background info!)

Lots of love xxx