07-31-08

Today we visited la Escuela Alberto Hurtado in the morning for a brief observation. I have just a couple pictures of the school, which is set around a courtyard, I hope I can post them soon. Hallways and stairwells are in the open air. All of the students were so cute, and so happy to see us! It helped allay some of my fears about freezing up in front of a classroom. I sat in an English class with a room full of 15 and 16 year olds. One student said her name, and then announced:

“My interests are tattoo and my favorite animal is the seal.”

It was adorable. She asked me if I watched the TV show Miami Ink.

One boy stood up to ask me a question. What is your name, the one in the middle? He said to me. When I told him Elizabeth, he replied, “Elizabeth, you have beautiful eyes.” I could feel my face turn red, but could do nothing but smile in that class because the kids were just so cute. Their teachers were young and kind, and they spoke good English and liked English-language music, which is on the radio often in Chile. I could have stayed at the school all day.

After we returned back to Barrio Brasil and wrapped up our afternoon classes, we went to a large and glitzy mall in Los Condes, likely where the wealthy of Santiago go to shop. Katie and James bought boots and hats to prepare for their placement in Porvenir, on Tierra del Fuego!

On the way back into the center, our nice little group, which included my other roommate Clare, from Durban, South Africa, and Drew, from Austin, stopped for sushi at a quiet Japanese restaurant in Provedicenia, near la Universidad Católica. I had a lovely rainbow roll, miso, and a nigiri made of Chilean whitefish—I will have to look up the name. This lovely meal was accompanied by the cerveza Austral (“southern”) from Punta Arenas, where we’ll be heading Monday! I can’t wait to go, but I feel like I’m getting to like Santiago better and better.

We took a cab home, after negotiating the price ahead of time, as we’d been advised. The cabbie was so friendly and outgoing, he pointed us out sights and important buildings as we drove by them, but he also took us quite out of our way and took a number of wrong turns. Our American instincts (maybe not Clare’s) kicked in, and we started to think that perhaps, we were being “taken for a ride,” so to speak. But as it turned out, this was not the case at all. We just happened to have a very kind, older man as our driver who genuinely wanted to show us around in his taxi. At the end of the ride, he got out of his cab to say goodbye to the five of us (who had managed to pile in to his tiny car). “Disfrutalo, disfrutalo,” he kept repeating—enjoy it, enjoy it.