Finally I have worked up the enthusiasm to write this blog for a second time, after spending far to long on the first attempt only to have it vanish when I went to publish it, bad times.

Life feels so normal now, I have been living in Linares over 3 months and almost forget I'm in Chile sometimes. Until I hear people shouting Spanish stupidly fast to each other or the occasionaly wisper of "gringo" and point or giggle towards me when I'm walking through the town. Apparently the white foreign look will always be interesting to them, despite looking like one I still tell the students off for calling me it as the word is used to described someone from the U.S. The orgin varies, but in general "green" is in reference to the Americans and literally meaning green go away, derived from the war between Mexico and America. However, here it is not used an offensive word but I'm still not impressed when one of them refers to me as American.

Family life has settled down with no more drama, thankfully, they are very nice and understanding with the only negative being i'm spending a nice amount of my money on extra food as for some reason the standard two bits of bread for tea doesn't quite fill me up. Work, on the other hand is always very interesting with some new event or problem always cropping up with us to deal with or just endure!

This monday there will be the third strike so far by the students, in which they refuse to work, make a stupid amount of noise and sometimes leave school, despite the face I'm sure I see some of the return at lunch for food. Getting a school meal is a relatively new system here for the children and for many of them being quite poor makes it a fairly big deal. So not suprissingly they come back for food . . . while still claiming to be on strike. Even though if you ask them why they are on strike the large majority of them will say they don't know. They are supposed to be striking for better education and in protest to the new reform that has just come in, not that they seem to care or know. Makes me happy tho as it means we will only have a half day, apart from when we are teaching the little ones as sadly they don't feel the need to strike . . so no going home early then!

In terms of what the teaching is like, hows it's different and the problems that we face I will give some sort of insight into it. The quality of the school is an obvious difference, just look at the photo. Many of the classrooms, including that one are just three years old and in worse condition than any of the classrooms back home. If its free then it's bad! Quite simply this is the students view and the results show, with punch holes and knife holes in spattered across the walls. If someone is to make one, nothing is done about it, they are not told off in the slightest leaving them no reason not to do it or keep doing it. On top of the poor state of classrooms there is no heating, I'm teaching in 5 layers including a coat, along with the rest of the teachers. The students have to sit in this all day and if they get wet on the way to the school they can't exactly get dry anywhere, although when it rains it really does rain, resulting in the classes halfing in size. Our smallest class one day being four students.

The main problem is dicipline and the distinct lack of it! The school has inspectors that are the staff responsible for diciplining the students however they just don't. We send a student out the class and they have no where to go, only to distract the students inside the class and be send back in by an inspector when they come past. We tell a student to shut up, get out and give us their phone, they refuse to leave the room, won't shut up, work or stop distracting other students . . . at this point i would love some advise on what to do? Ha. Although we are getting better and finding more way to control them the odds are certainly stacked against us. Not to mention my lack of Spanish, making it even harder to control them and their complete lack of respect in general. A teacher can only do so much and after that having nobody to inforce discipline they have no reason to behave that well or even turn up when nothing is being done about it.

Not to mention any family issued they may be having to deal with, or kids they are looking after or babies they are carrying. Their is certainly examples of all of these in most my classes, understandable if their head is somewhere else. Sadly tho in general they just don't get the concept that they are going to need education to get a job and don't have enought incentive to learn.