Keep me where the light is.

We only had three days at school this week thanks to the previous long weekend and Teacher's Day on friday. Thursday is by far our busiet day. We have classes non-stop throughout with a variety of age groups branching from the loud but cute 1st Graders to the moody, 17 year old 12th Graders who think they're "too cool" for English. Its quite embarassing to think that I was one of them. The younger ones are always more enthusiatic aswell. This thursday we played a game called "Pet Salad". "Pet Salad" is a variation of the childhood favourite "Fruit Salad" in which all the children sit on chairs in a circle. They are all named a fruit so for example if there are 15 children, there will be 5 apples, 5 pears and 5 oranges. One fruit is called out and the respective children stand up and switch places. The last person to reach a different chair has to call out the next fruit. Now, if someone calls out the phrase "Fruit Salad", everyone switches. It's madness. "Pet Salad" is the same, but with pets, not fruit. These active games really help the children to memorise specific vocabulary. We have discovered that you can use the same game for all sorts of topics which is handy to know when you're short a lesson plan or two.

This friday, as I mentioned before, was Teacher's Day. Teacher's Day is a national holiday in Chile in which schools close and the teachers go on a day trip. We set off from school at 10.00 and headed south for the day. Charlotte and I weren't sure what to expect. We arrived an hour later at a holiday resort complete with pool and football pitch and were served complementary drinks and empanadas. We ate, drank and got to know all the teachers we hadn't met before. After the meal, the Director made a speach showing apreciation to all the hard work the school staff and rewarding us all individually with posh pens and bags of sweets. It made me realise that Colegio San Luis Beltran is a strong unit of people all working together.

We planned to go to Fantasilandia with all the Santiago volunteers on Saturday. Fantasilandia is a theme park in the center of Santiago. It's cheap to get in aswell at only 6900 pesos. We arrived in time for it's opening at 12.00 enjoyed the rides and attractions untill closing time. The theme park itself surpassed all my expectations. From the outside it's a little disapointing. But when we realised that the rides we're pretty impressive. There were a couple of decent rollercoasters and the usual topsy-turvy rides. There was even a free-fall attraction of about 50metres. One ride in particular caught our attention. "Evolution" is a hoop-shaped ride with seats around the outside. The hoops rises and spins around both around and upside down and the separate seat compartments do the same. when it reaches the top it holds you upside-down so your body is no longer in the seat and your full weight is forced against the harness. You hang there for about 20 seconds and then starts moving and spining again. This happens around 6 or 7 times before the ride finally ends. It was awful. We were all actually screaming with fright rather than enjoyment. Never ever again.
On Sunday we arranged to meet for a volunteer picnic. Money is short and it seemed like a good, cheap day out. Charlotte, Christine, Aaron and I arrived at destination Puente Alto at around 11.00ishh. The idea was that we were going to meet Kirsten and Sinead at the station and then catch the bus to San José de Maipu where their project was. We met successfully and caught the rickety bus to the countryside. It’s about a 45 minute journey out of Santiago centre on questionable road. We felt like we were back at Fantasilandia! Buildings and cars quickly transformed into something that looked like all the pictures I’ve seen in books of the Chilean countryside. This is what I had come to see. The whole area gave us a taste of the wonders this country has to offer and made me even more excited about travelling (if that’s possible). When we reached San José we made our way out of the village. Camp was a hill over looking the Maipu River and the foothills of the Andes. It was probably one of my favourite experiences so far. We really got to know each other and laughed and chatted about anything and everything. As a group, I think we mesh really well. We’re all quite different from different backgrounds and that means that we all have stories to tell and the conversation never runs dry.
On way back home Charlotte, Christine and I stopped off at Naomi’s house to catch up with the latest X-factor with a glass of wine and “onces”. I don’t usually watch X-factor but since I’ve been away it’s been quite relaxing to watch some mindless TV on an evening, and you can’t get much more mindless than X-factor. Haha. It was the perfect end to yet another busy but lovely weekend.

Title.. Gravity - John Mayer