Catching up: A Valparaiso Picture Post

I've fallen way behind in the blog world. So many posts, so little time...oh wait, I'm on vacation! It's a rainy day here in Lanco, Chile (and the entire XIV, IX and X Regions) so I'm taking advantage of the time to watch E! (or any TV, for that matter, since I don't have TV at home) and write some blog posts.


First up, we have Valparaiso. I've been there a few times, but since a friend and her mom were visiting last week, I decided to tag along. We did some things that I'd never done before, so I consider it a successful trip.

We walked through the Museo al Cielo Abierto, which is an open air museum of murals. A lot of them have been vandalized and some need to be re-painted because they've faded over the almost 20 years they've been displayed. Despite that, Valpo is an extremely colorful city, so it was fun nonetheless. We ended up at Pablo Neruda's house La Sebastiana for some beautiful views of the port, then went back down to "the plan" (aka the flat part of Valpo) and stumbled across a special exhibit of Guayasamin in the basement of the Art Museum. Then we ate a late lunch near the pier and headed back to Santiago.

Here are some shots from the day:

The colorful hills of Valparaiso

One of the faded murals of the Museo al Cielo Abierto

Really cool steps

Cute French tourist girl/future model who was really into posing for me

My friend saying hi to a Valpo resident

Laundry hanging out to dry

You have an infection WHERE?

I love language, so I loved Margaret's recent post about false cognates and "fake false cognates" (a term coined by her!). Although I've never gotten into trouble with the words she mentioned, I did have a hilarious moment a couple of years ago. I was talking to F. on Skype and I was really sick. I had a sinus infection. I didn't know how to say "sinus" so I looked it up on wordreference.com and got this entry:


So, I told F. "Tengo una infección de los senos" (I have a sinus infection).

He started laughing uncontrollably.

"What did I say? What did I say??" I insisted that he tell me.

As soon as he stopped laughing he told me (well, I actually already knew this, but just forgot) that seno also means breast. I had just told him I had a breast infection.

In case you're wondering, sinus infection = sinusitis. That's a word I will never forget.

Taking the road less traveled

Robert Frost has always been my favorite poet. You could say it's in my blood. My great grandmother Diantha was a friend of his and my grandfather remembers going to his house for lunch on Sundays. He remembers his crazy, wild hair and thinking he was weird. It was only later that my he was able to appreciate him for the talented poet that he was.

It also helps that he writes about things that are so familiar to me having grown up in New England, especially Vermont. I was raised firmly believing the phrase "Good fences make good neighbors" from Frost's poem "Mending Wall."

This picture that I snapped while I was at home over Christmas reminds me so much of "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," my absolute favorite Frost poem. It's hard for me to recite it or even think about it without getting teary-eyed. It reminds me so much of home, my childhood and my family that it brings up about a million emotions that literally fill me up to the point of overflowing.

We had to chose a poem to recite in fourth grade, and I of course chose Robert Frost. My second favorite poem is similar to the first in that it takes place in the woods. In fact, when I was younger I would constantly confuse these two poems, even while reciting them. It's just recently that I've revisited this poem. It has so much personal meaning for me right now that it overwhelms me. I think most people would agree that I'm on "the road less traveled," although I feel the same nostalgia that Frost does when he realizes that he probably won't be back to take the other path. Because it's true, "way leads on to way." Life takes you down so many twisted, forking paths, that it's hard to end up in the same place twice.

However, I comfort myself with the thought that life doesn't only give you one chance to choose paths. There are innumerable opportunities to chose direction. I hope I'm always brave enough to chose the road less traveled, though I will always be curious about

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	5
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	10
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	15
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.	20

The Downside to Teaching English in Santiago, Chile

This post has been harder for me to write, because I'm no Negative Nelly. However, I've had a rough few days teaching-wise, so it seems as now is a great time to write this. So, without further ado, things that are not-so-good about being an English teacher in Chile.

1. If you decide to go the Institute route, beware. Institutes are inefficient and disorganized. No, I haven't worked for ALL the institutes in Chile, but from anecdotal evidence, this is my conclusion. PLEASE e-mail me if you know of an institute that isn't like this. I'd like to apply ASAP. Ha. You can see this post to get a small example of what I'm talking about. In a nut-shell, institutes expect you to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I've gotten calls at 8:00pm on a Friday night asking me to sub the next morning. I've gotten calls at 2:00pm the day before a class starts. I'm expected to drop everything and go get my materials right then. It gets somewhat ridiculous.

2. If you decide to go the Private/Freelance route, beware. Students (with very few exceptions) are flakey. REALLY flakey. English is not their priority. They will cancel you if a better option comes up, be it lunch with a friend, a business meeting, or simply because they don't feel like having class that day. A way to combat this is to make students pay up front, or be very strict about your cancellation policy. That way, even if you had to schlep all the way up to Vitacura, you at least know you're getting paid for it.


3. I talked in my last post about how I liked getting to know new parts of Santiago. That still holds true. The downside of this, however, is having to use public transportation. Don't get me wrong, I think Santiago has a pretty good system if you're traveling at non-rush hour times. However, metro station Los Heroes at rush hour is what I like to call Hell on Earth. One could argue that a lot of people, not just English teachers, have to brave the metro or micros at rush hour. True. But English teachers have the potential to have to ride public transport 4-5 times a day, a surefire way to burn your salary recharging your Bip! card and to contract some mysterious disease from the stranger squashed up next to you and breathing down your neck. Yummy.

4. I also talked about my schedule in the last post. I love having an hour or two free during the day. However, that comes with a price. Basically, as an English teacher, you work when normal people don't work. This means early in the morning, at lunch time, and at night. LATE into the night. There was a time that I worked five nights a week until 10:00pm. I arrived home at 10:30, ate something, fell asleep, and was out of my house by 7:20 am the next day to get to a class at 8:00am. Sounds terrible? It was. Luckily I was able to quit my early morning class because it just got to be way too much and I ended up with some health issues. Working at night means no meeting friends for happy hour, no leisurely dinner making, no time to wind down before it's time for bed. Working at night has definitely turned me into a night owl, simply because I like having a few hours at home before I hit the sack. Also, my Institute has Saturday classes, which means you could get stuck with a one day weekend.


5. Summer. What? SUMMER? Yes, Summer. Summer is an English teacher's nightmare. Especially the month of February. If you're considering coming to Chile to teach, let me tell you: expect to make little to no money during the month of February. It's when everyone and their mom (literally) pack their bags and get the heck out of dodge. Consequently, it's also the month when nobody wants to think about learning English. So I say, when you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Take a vacation! January can also be quite slow. Other slow-ish months include: March (everyone's just getting back from vacation and can't think about English), July and/or August (kiddies get a two-week winter vacation), September (National Holidays means a week when everyone's drunk and not thinking of English), December (Christmas and New Years). That being said, I made good money this year in July and September, so it's not always bad. But if you're hoping to make a regular salary all year long and are a person who likes to budget, English teaching is not for you my friend.

These reasons are probably why I won't be an English teacher forever. It can be stressful, but it gets easier the more you do it.

The Upside of Teaching English in Chile

A lot of people find my blog searching "teach English in Chile", but I realized the other day that I've never written a comprehensive post about what I do.

First of all, let me say that no two people can come to Chile and have the same experience teaching English. Some people opt to only teach at Institutes, while at the other extreme some go completely freelance. I'm somewhere in the middle. I like the security and structure of working at the Institute, but I also enjoy the freedom (and financial benefits) of having private students. I work for one of the larger institutes in Santiago, so therefore your experience will probably be different if you work for a smaller institute.

I can confidently say that the things I enjoy about teaching outnumber the negative aspects. That being said, in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll post about the negative things next.


1. The best part, by far, is the students. I've been lucky that most of my students have been really interesting people. I have a student who is a doctor going to Australia to study information technology in hopes of bringing innovations to Chile. Another student is a professor of Literature at one of the best universities here. I had a student who designed and implemented the recent Pension Reform. I had a student who is currently working for the IMF in D.C. So as you might be able to tell, it makes for interesting conversations. However, even with beginner students it's interesting for me to find out about their families, their jobs, as much (or as little) as they can say about their lives.2. Getting to know new parts of Santiago is also an upside for me. I've taught in Las Condes, Providencia, El Centro, Huechuraba, San Joaquin, Ñuñoa, Recoleta, Vitacura and La Florida. Just yesterday I discovered a little neighborhood I never even knew existed, tucked between the Alameda and Merced in the Centro.

3. Watching as normally uptight businessmen and women compete against each other in a rousing game of Taboo is quite entertaining. It's the simplist game ever and doesn't require any materials except a whiteboard and a marker. You break the class into two teams and have one team member from each team face away from the board. Then you write a vocabulary word or phrase on the board and the rest of the team has to describe the word to their teammate without using the word itself. I don't know why, but the vast majority of my students, young and old, LOVE this game. And it's fun to watch and listen to the creative ways students try to describe a word.

4. This next one is going to sound corny, but it's also what makes me believe that I really do like teaching. There is no better feeling when students start to use the language you have taught them. It's especially rewarding when you start off from scratch with zero beginner students.

5. Okay, maybe you'll call me a bad teacher for saying this, but some words the students come up with are just hilarious. Sometimes it happens because they think that the word in Spanish should be similar, and pronounce it with an English accent. Luckily, since I speak Spanish I know what they're trying to say 99% of the time. For example, today my beginner teens thought that "gate" (portón in Spanish) could maybe be "porton." Cute. I have a student who constantly tells me how "preocupated" he is about his English (preocupar=to worry). Other times it's because they've only seen the word written and don't know how to pronounce it, because let's face it, English spelling rules make next to no sense. Anyway, usually my students and I have a good laugh about things like this, because honestly, if you're not willing to laugh at yourself, it's going to be quite hard to learn a foreign language.
6. This item will appear on both the upside and downside list: the schedule.The above picture is an actual page from my date book. It's an unusually busy week because I had to work both Saturday and Sunday for a special program, but the rest is pretty typical. Class in the morning, class around lunch time, class in the early evening, class at night. This leaves a few awkward hours in the middle of the day, usually mid-morning. However, I love those few hours. I love being able to come home and take a quick nap. I love being able to meet friends for coffee or an early lunch. I love the flexibility of it. The downside, well, we'll get to that in the next post.

Overall, I really do like teaching. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to teach English in Chile forever, but for now it's a good fit for me.

If you have any further questions about my experience, please feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment. My e-mail is akhall2 at gmail dot com. If you want to know what Institute I work at, send an e-mail because I won't say here.

Piñera wins, Abby get's a headache

Usually, I love where I live. It's right by the metro, in the heart of Providencia and has a great view.

Yes, it gets a little loud on the weekends, but I've learned to block out the noise.

Noise that I can not block out, however, is the sound of hundreds of cars' horns honking. For going on five hour straight.

You see, the second round of Chile's elections was today and Piñera, the candidate from the right, has won. The Left coalition has been in power for the last twenty years, so the right hasn't really had the chance to celebrate. Well, until now.

And boy, the best way to celebrate is certainly getting all of your friends together, getting in your car and parading down the main streets of Santiago, horn blaring and flags flying.

I'm not so thrilled that Piñera won. There are things that bother me A LOT about him. But I'm not really interesting in getting into a political debate here, so I'll leave that part out.

It's a historic time. Some has said this marks the end of the "transition" period from dictatorship to democracy. For the first time since the end of the dictatorship, the parties that supported it are back in power. That's not to say that Chile is going to return to the days of Pinochet. In fact, these parties have tried to distance themselves from that image to garner more widespread support.

For more information about the election results, you can check out the New York Times, the BBC and the Wall Street Journal.

Oh, and now they've started honking with what sounds like a fire engine horn. Joy. I don't think I'll get much sleep tonight.

Does this ever happen to you?

The other morning, I was making a cup of Nescafé (yum!). All of a sudden I had this song in my head:

A robin feathering his nest has very little time to rest
While gathering his bits of twine and twig
Though quite intent in his pursuit
He has a merry tune to toot
He knows a song will move the job along.

Why, I thought, am I singing Mary Poppins? I haven't seen that movie probably since the last time I babysat seven years ago.

Then, I kept singing the song.

For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down...

Ahhh! That's why. I had just put a spoonful of sugar into my Nescafé.

This happens to me all the time. I'll see a word, then start singing some song that goes along. For example, if someone starts talking about rain in Spanish (lluvia) I will inevitably (haha)* start singing Shakira:

El cielo está cansado ya de ver la lluvia caer
Y cada dia que pasa es uno más parecido ayer
No encuentro forma alguna de olvidarte porque
Seguir amandote es inevitable*

If someone starts talking about breakfast food, of if I'm making breakfast myself, I'll start singing Jewel:

I got my eggs I got my pancakes too
I got maple syrup, everything but you
I break the yolk and make a smiley face
I kinda like it in my brand new place

Luckily, when I say "start to sing" it's usually in my head or at most humming a bit. But if it were socially acceptable, I'd belt it out wherever I was.




*Did you get the joke? I hope so, because it's too dumb to explain.