The first week of teaching is over and it has all gone surprisingly smoothly! The little rural schools ahve been lovely to teach at as there are very few pupils therefore classroom control is much easier! Monday began with an early start and an earth tremor which was quite exciting however I then spent about three hours sitting in the Plaza in Pisco Elqui as no one had thought to let me know that the english teacher did not come into school until 11:00 on mondays. My first class was with 1st Basico (aged about 5). The class was total chaos cheifly becaues the english teacher only spoke in English which I guess is a good policy but the kids have absolutely know idea what is going on or what they have to do! this resulted in two of the little boys fighting eachother and jumping up and down on eachothers stuff, whilst I was wrestling them apart the teacher seemed unperturbed at the front of the class as she was still ploughing on in her own fairly bad English!!

I then went to a little school for the afternoon which was much better as I sucessfully managed to teach a little girl and a little boy three colours and three shapes in english.

On Wednesday I taught for the first time in another rural school, I took a class of six children ranging from age eight to ten. The class went surprisingly smoothly however after two hours of english lessons they kids were starting to loose inerest. They were therefore doing some colouring in and sticking stuff in their books and generally just wondering around the classroom. After about ten minutes of this fairly organised haos there was a knock at the door and two policemen and the head teacher walked in. After a moment of complete panic from both me and the children the head teacher started to explain in rapid spanish that the policemen were there to look round the school and see how the children were taught. Luckily I had taught them a song earlier that morning so we sang that for the policemen and then the kids all said goodbye in english which was nothing short of a miricle!

On Tuesday and Thursday I taught in the bigger school in Paihuano which is a big change from the little schools: The children there are very sweet but their english lessons seem to consist of nothing but colouring in which gets a little bit tedious for both me and them! Further up the school however the classes do get a bit more interesting and the kids seem more interested in having and actual english person in their classes. On thursday afternoon we did not have any lessons as there was a whole school activity which involved getting the entire school into the gym and sitting them down so they could watch a dance competition. Needless to say complete chaos prevailed as know one seemed to have a clue about what was going on. However after about half an hour a few of the children started to dance and the rest settled down to watch. After this the teachers proceeded to blindfold some of the little ones and then gave them cardboard clubs which they had to hit eachother with. I looked on astounded!

Other than teaching there isnt really a lot to do in Paihuano so Sophie and I swam in the river and visited the couple down the road on several occasions. Tonight we hope to go on a walk and see the sun set over the mountains which should be stunning!

Lots of love to all xxxx