teaching & fútbol

The teaching and the fútbol are not related, necessarily, I just have some updates! 

The teacher I work with at school hurt her back the weekend before last, and had to rest for a full week, so I filled in for her in all her classes last week.  I was happy to do it, but it was a challenge! It helps knowing all the students well, but regardless it's going to be difficult to keep a room of 35-40 kids under control by yourself.  I had to go in with guns blazing in order to get them to realize that we were still having a real class, but for the most part it went well!  I did have a few freshman complain that I was being mañosa--a word that doesn't translate well, but would be some combination of "vicious" and "obstinate"--but frankly, that just made me proud.  My regional program respresentative swung by in the middle of the week, for one of his routine classroom observations, and was not happy to find me handling classes on my own. He very adamantly insisted that I was going beyond my responsibilities, and that the school should be sending someone to help me with the classes.  Not long after that, a window was broken on my watch (it was an accident!), so that really reinforced his point... but my teacher is back now, so all is well!

And wouldn't you know, in the course of that riveting class week, I was inadvertently part of a teacher's strike!  On Friday there was a national strike, and though the teachers at my school are not allowed to strike (part of their contract with the semi-private school administration), they held a mini-strike to show solidarity. I arrived to school during the first passing period to find crowds of students cheering in the patio instead of getting to class, and finally saw the sign up on the teachers' door: "PROFES ADHERIDOS AL PARO NAC" ("teachers following national strike").  I had to squeeze my way inside, past the little trashcan-barricade they had set up at the door.  It was a pretty festive atmosphere in there; they seemed very pleased with themselves! Sadly, it only lasted about 20 minutes, and then everybody grudgingly drifted off to start class.  The students were devastated.

Later that day there was a big soccer game- our national team was playing Colombia to determine who qualifies for the World Cup in Brazil next year.  I only knew the name of one of our players, but I'm trying to learn more! Chile scored 3 goals within the first half an hour, so everybody was just going nuts, 'cuz that's crazy.  But we didn't score again the rest of the game, and Colombia managed to catch up and tie us.  Colombia qualified but then we had to play again this week, against Ecuador.  And we won!  So Chile is going to the World Cup, and all the soccer fans have been yelling about it all week.  That night after we won, I could hear car horns honking in the town center all night. Festive festive festive. In the course of all this recent hype, I have learned some new slang: "vamos Chile mierda!"  I knew that it was just a Go Team! kind of thing, but had never seen "mierda" brought into the mix, so I put it into my translator.  In its defense, I should have known better than to try slang in Google translate.  My result was a straightfaced "we shit Chile." Since then I have been giggling to myself every time I think about that, so finally today a student explained to me that it's just a more emphatic way to say "Come on Chileeeeeee!" But I'm still going to laugh picturing crowds of pumped-up soccer fanatics screaming "we shit Chile!" whenever there's a game.

And to bring us back full circle, tomorrow is Teachers' Day!  There is a special dinner for all the staff at a venue in town tonight, and then tomorrow there is no school! What a great way to celebrate teaching, by not teaching 
: )