Orientation

Ok!  Finally some time to report everything that's been going on.  All the volunteers in the program are staying in a hostel in central Santiago, where they serve us breakfast (usually just bread, jam, and juice or coffee) and dinner (different every day! and tasty so far) every day.  We walk to orientation, which is about 25 minutes away, in the busier part of downtown.  It's a really nice walk along the main avenue (Bernardo O'Higgins, or La Alameda) right past the presidential/government palace, La Moneda.  Orientation classes are in an institute building on a quiet little cobblestone street where the Socialist party headquarters are located. And we actually learned today that the building right next to ours was once used as a secret torture facility during Pinochet's regime.  Intrigue!  

There are about 55 volunteers total, most from the U.S. but a good handful from other places!  Most have graduated within the last few years, but a few are older.  It's a really cool group!  We have orientation every day from 9-5, with a nice break for lunch (the program gave us meal tickets that are accepted at most restaurants near the orientation building).  Yesterday we learned about what goes into planning a lesson and saw/critiqued examples of different classes, which was all very new to me. Then today we split into groups and each got a special lesson from one of the program staffers teaching us a foreign language that they speak (entirely in that language), so that we would understand what the students feel like when they are in our classes.  My group was in Afrikaans, and it was a really cool exercise but I could tell that it would be very frustrating if I really were a student.  Then we had to make our own lesson plans on assigned topics (in groups of 3) and give that lesson to the rest of the group, for feedback.  It was a verrrrry eye-opening day, in a good way.  A lot of us (myself included) hadn't realized how little English we can expect our students to understand.  Our biggest challenges are going to be keeping it simple and intelligible yet still energetic and exciting.  But my group felt really good about our lesson, I enjoyed it a lot!  Very excited to get into my classroom next week and get started : ) 

So tomorrow morning we will all be finding out about our travel arrangements, how we will be getting to our regional locations this weekend.  I already know that I will be taking a decently long bus ride (10-12 hours, depending on where they send us first), but just don't know when I'm leaving on Saturday (or Sunday, possibly).  Since I didn't get here until very late Sunday night, I haven't had a free day in Santiago yet.  I'm hoping that I won't be leaving until later Saturday at least, so that I can see more of the city that I haven't been able to get to yet!