Well, I certainly have a lot to talk about now due to a very eventful past month. Arriving back in Santiago in Late Feburary to find that we still neither had a project or family was extremely fustrating and worrying to deal with. After speaking to the country representative Clair she said she had spoken to fundacion (the charity most volunteers work for in Santiago) before the holidays and they told her they would have a project for us for the new term. You can infact learn something about Chile from this, doing things last minute is pretty standard practice. I didn't really sympathise with this view and couldn't understand how they had left it until now to speak to schools, only to relay the informaton to us that all the schools were currently shut and they couldn't get hold of them. At this point i was starting to feel a bit lost and that maybe I should have gone to Namibia, all my friends doing an 8 month placement had done more work that me already and I didn't even have a project. My faith in Project Trust wasn't quite as positive at this point either, espically as it was now March, most the other Volunteers had started school again and myself and Tim . . . well, we were stuck in a hostel again. Having a lot of time on my hands at this point i started to go on the odd run, after having done no exercise in the past few months, interestingly I still decided it was a good idea to sign up to Santiago half Marathon in a months time, a decision I may turn out to regret. After speaking to Clair she said fundacion still had no project, however, she was looking for some alternatives and had 3 in line but it would depend on which one came through first and would most likely still be another 2 weeks or so. In the mean time she suggested trying to find some work ourselves, this didn't particularly lift my spirits but never the less I emailed a few other volunteer that evening asking about the possibility of working in their schools, even if we wouldn't be particularly needed. Sucess! The following day we recieved an email confirming the project in Linares was going ahead, but may still be a week or so until they confirm a school and longer before we find a family. This was great news and only to be made better by recieving another emailing telling us we were leaving on tuesday (4 days time). Tuesday came and we set off in the knowledge we were going in blind, "if there is nobody there to collect you, ask for a taxi to the mayors office and speak to him".

Upon arrival in Linares thankfully there were 3 men awaiting us, one of them looking like he could be the Mayor, making me just a little nervous. Turns out he was just one of the school inspectors, although, to be fair, the moustache, round belly and suit definitely gave him a Mayor like quaility. Anyway, they led us straight to the school, into the directors office for a welcome/meeting and introduction to the school. This was great, considering we wern't aware if we even had a school before we left, again topped off by them introducing us to our host Paulina, who we would be staying with. That, turning out not to be quite the initial positive we percieved. They took us to the house were we would be living and we were welcomed by Paulina's parents, they showed us to our room, only to be greeted with a double bed, awkard. However, it turns out the family hadn't been told we were comming until 12 the night before, but they were lovely none the less and got me a matress for the night. This then begged the question if this was even our permanant home, or if we had just been thrown in with them for the time being? The next day they introduced two single beds instead and over a few days slowely became clear that we would be living here for the remainder of our time. So effectively, our hosts had been told at 12 the evening before that the following day they would be having two volunteers staying with them . . . for the next 6 months, hows that for short notice? After working this out me and Tim felt very awkard about this and questioned if the couple had even been asked if they minded us staying or for that matter even thanked for it, thankfully it all seemed fine, they were very positive and welcoming towards us. In the evening of our first day there was a start of year reception with all the teachers so it was a good chance to meet them all. This was then followed by a speech from the director of the school, 2 pieces of cake and a conversation with him, only to find he had some fairly racist views towards black people in France.

We started teaching on our second day, (8th, March) finding that the teachers wern't really sure what to do with us at first, nor even why we were there. This was hardely supprising we thought due to how short notice this project had been. The first week we varied in usefullness between our classes, some teaching, some were more of a meet and greet and talk about our culture and others were just a long chat with the teachers if I'm honest. Although, these i found quite amusing as i got to listen to their perceptions of our countries and play my game of guessing what movie they had seen that these opinions probably came from. During our first week we were sent home at lunch time most days, this was annoying but at the same time understandable, they were still sorting out our time table, they thought we needed time to settle in, ect. Although i soon realised that the teachers seemed to disappear a lot around lunch time during the first couple weeks, it really shocked me how little work 3 English teachers in a school of around 600 could actually do.

In my first week I found out a lot about the school we were working in and our new town Linares. Our school Diago Portales has around 600 students aging from about 4-20, all of which i have been teaching. It's students aren't very well off, may of them come from poorer families and a lot of them are from the country. I was a bit supprised with my first impressions of Linares, we had been told that it had around 42 schools, but after a day I wrote that piece of information off as complete rubbish as the town is around about Newton Abbot size. However, It turns out, after speaking to more pepople that the town is some how home to around 47 or so school. This is because many of the students come from the country side and board in houses during the week, or, for some of the poorer families the students face extremely long journeys into school everyday. We have 3 girls from the country who board in our house during the week, this made us feel slightly better about our situation and it turned out they had 2 volunteers in the past, although, only for 3 months. The previous year Talca university had done a survey to find that the majority childrens vocabulary consisted of 300 words when speaking, making the task of teaching English that much harder. Of course, I do question how accurate this information is. Another comment i have been told more than once is that many of the students are already better educated than their parents, this I am more inclinded to believe.

After the computer delete my first attempt this was a second attempt and no where near as good, but you can blame the Chilean computers for that. Hopefully i will have another blog up soon, as I have plently to tell you about the teaching and family drama we have expirenced already.