Tio Tio Tio!

Tio! Tio! Tio! Tio means uncle in Espanol, but here in Spain when someone calls you tio, it is a gesture of respect. I feel like a king everytime I walk into class. The kids chant Tio Tio Tio! If I respond with a bow or a little jig they all go wild. They are just waiting for my reaction everytime. I find myself giving more high fives, kisses, and hand shakes in a matter of 20 seconds while I walk down the hall to my class, more than I ever have in my entire life. Teacher, Teacher, Teacher! the students yell this  while reaching out for a hand shake. Talk about a good way to start your day. Just think if you worked at Starbucks, and everyday you came in bright and early at the crack of dawn, and your customers did the wave or made a tunnel for you  while cheering and clapping? I don't think anyone would quit their jobs!

My school is called Colegio Cordillera and it is four years new. I have my own brand new room to myself. I can decorate it with whatever I please, maybe some Justin Bieber posters because it seems to be that everyone loves him here! " Tu conoces Justin Bieber?" ( Do you know Justin Bieber?) I told them I saw him one time on the street with body guards and they all screamed in excitement. Actually let me rephrase that, all but one girl screamed. There is one girl who doesn't Justin Bieber and you will never guess who she does like? Nope? Have any clue? Cris Angel! She loves magic I guess.

The students are all willing to learn and very excited I have arrived. The discipline is different here and the students are quite all over the place, but I feel like my school is pretty calm compared to a lot. They all speak pretty decent English. My co-teacher and I will work with them each teaching two subjects. I will teach listening and speaking and my co-teacher will teacher reading and writing. I am excited to start.

At the home front I have been eating great. Here they don't tend to eat much of a breakfast and for dinner they have a "once." An once consists of tea and bread. Their main meal is lunch, and they are pretty big indeed. I have had hamburgers, french fries, roast beef, mashed potatoes and some other stuff. I have not been disapointed with the food at all, nor do I found myself hungry at all. I have skyped my family a couple of times and have talked to some of my friends also, Drew, Sabrina, Will, Curt, etc. Skype is a savior, it's very nice to see people's faces instead of just hearing their voices.

Anyway, it's time to have an once in a bit so I will take off. Until next time, mucho cuidado y espero que esten bien! un beso, ciao

Home sweet home

After a 6 hour bus ride north to La Serena, we were all greeted like celebrities. All four families and co teachers were awaiting for the arrival of los gringos. One family even had a video camera videotaping my friend Elizabeth. They are all very sweet people. I was excited to move in with my family but also sad to leave some of the coolest people I have ever met...luckily we all live really close! I live with a 2 year old host daughter and a 11 year old host brother who loves videogames, I think we will get along just fine. The daughter is a spitfire, she has more energy than anyone I know. She immediately follows me everywhere and wants to play all the time. I reached my arms out to say goodnight and she came running into them and gave me a huge hug then proceeded to making swimming motions on the stairs, like I said, mucho energia. My host mother is so sweet and really likes regaeton. I also live with a nanny, she basically does everything around here, its awesome. I also have a flat screen tv in my room. I think there are a total of 5 televisions in this two story house. It is very modern and very nice, I am very fortunate and blessed.

 Today, we had another orientation, but this time with all of our co teachers. My co teachers name is Marco, he is really nice and I think we will do some good work for these kids. I was introduced to all the teachers already and they all seem really nice, I am excited to start teaching. This week however, is just an observation week. I will sit in and help a little here and there but mostly just observe. It is looking like more and more I will stay until the end of November, it´s just something too good to pass up. There is an awesome hotel slash casino very close that I think my parents will enjoy staying at if they decide to come in the end of July.

It is nice to be settled but I do really miss my family and friends at home. Until the next blog, adios!

This guy...this guy

I had to blog about this situation that my room encountered last night. I had no idea what time it was but I found myself awake peering outside our door that was supposed to be shut. There laid two people, one trying to get his friend to awake, and the other just lying there passed out, drunk. Well wait, drunk would be an understatement. This guy was out cold. John tells them to shut the door but they won't. We find out that he is supposed to be in our room. Danny helps the other guy carry the guy in and place him on the bed. He curls up into a ball and begins snoring. of course he does. anyway we all fall back asleep and find ourselves waking up to sounds of dry heaving and slobbering noises. We all watch and try and to wake him up. It starts to build up and long story short, he vomits all over the bed. This red colored vomit exits his mouth like a sequel to the Exorcist. We go downstairs and tell the front desk. They are taking care of it as we speak. Yummy, anyone want breakfast?

Family Matters

"You've got mail!" Well kind of...Although it wasn't exactly the old America Online phrase with the 56k modem, I did receive an important message. I opened up my gmail account, filing through the typical junk mail and came across the email I have been waiting for. It was a letter from my host family! In it consisted a description of my family and how excited they are to meet me. The family consists of two young brothers, a madre and a housekeeper  slash senora slash helper person lady... There is a father but he works outside of the house and is barely ever in the house. They live only one street away from the school I will be teaching in so I can just walk to class everyday, but the best news of the letter is that they have wifi in their house! I feel very fortunate and blessed and things seem to be falling my way. I am looking forward to meeting them and finally start getting immersed. With that said adios!

Now you see them now you don't

It has almost been a week now since the original group of ten met up with other fellow volunteer teachers to create a mosh of 50 some odd persons...and just like that, poof, they were gone. A few of us still wait for our departure though and you can sit downstairs in the cafeteria watching stragglers come and go, skyping to their boyfriends and girlfriends, checking their emails, or even grabbing a quick bite. You can tell everyone is getting anxious, or maybe they are just still a little "under the weather" from the previous night of the EOD cocktail celebration, two words: Pisco Sours (a popular chilean drink). I believe Ice Cube quoted it best "Today was a good day."

La Serena

Where I'm going to be teaching...need I say more?

ZZZ

Have you ever caught yourself falling asleep during a class or in a movie? Your head slowly lowers and lowers and lowers until your chin hits your chest and you suddenly wake for a slight moment only to fall back asleep. This tends to happen to the best of us. We had our first day of workshops for the EOD ( English Open Doors). Around 50 fellow college graduates found seats in a hotel's conference room. Outside are cops and bomb squads waiting for the arrival of Obama, making it only that much more hard to concentrate. The class was basically a repeat of what I have already learned from either TEFL class or from our orientation with CIEE. We have three more days and we found out on wednesday where we will be staying within our region. Looking forward to it. Until then, I will be hanging out in the sun, eating some horrible replicas of Pringles called, Kryzpo. Better yet I can quote Paul, a guy from Chicago who I met today, "this food tastes of bad childhood memories." 

Obama in Chile

It's sunday evening and I'm sitting at a cafeteria table listening to the sounds of Chilean protests rumble througout the hostel. The music is loud and the chants even more heart pounding. It felt like the macy's day parade, in sound and in length. These were not your typical musical songs from your favorite artist, these were chants of anger, togetherness and stength. Word has it, some of the Chilean people are angry about the policies Obama has with nuclear power. In fact Obama is making his latin american tour as we speak. He will arrive in Santiago Chile tomorrow morning at 10. With so many things going on in this world ex. Japan, Lybia, etc, many people thought this might not be the best timing to come to latin america. I do not have enough credible information to come to any concensus or voice any kidn of opinion, so for the next couple of hours I will be reading more into this. For that I am signing out.

Speaking da Spanish

Today, we woke up went to an orientation at the universidad de chile office. We had a native speaker give a presentation on all the slang chilean words and a whole bunch of phrases. It is amazing to see how different it is compared to Spain. I have to switch up a lot of my spanish now. Its frustrating but I am learning more and more everyday. He then took us on a tour of Santiago and we had another great dinner, which served tons of tapas, which are like appetizers. We had fish cheeks, fried mushrooms, calamari(spell check too lazy), chicken picante, oysters. There was a lot of food! We had extra food so some of the girls took the rest of the food and fed the stray dogs as we walked back to our hotel. There are many stray dogs that run a muck around the streets. We are now just hanging out deciding whether or not to go out for a bit or just go to sleep and rest, because tomorrow we start our EOD orientation, which is the ministry of education, this is where it could start getting tough. We are going to stay in a hostel and perhaps meet other people from other programs, which will be cool, but the work is about to start. We officially start classes April 4th. Anyway, check in later, hasta luego

Joel

Chillin in Chile

Hola a todos!

I have finally arrived here in Chile. I am currently in Santiago and loving it. I have met some really cool people so far. I am in a hotel right now with two guys. One is from Santa Cruz who is 26 and makes wine. The other is a colorado Univeristy history graduate who is 21. They are both cool guys who know a lot of spanish so it helps a lot with my learning. We have only had a small orientation so far but have a grasp on what to expect. We will spend the next 5 days here in Santiago then split off into 2 groups. One group will go to the region of Coquimbo and the other will venture off to O'higgins region. I will be going to coquimbo with The guy from Santa cruz, danny and three others who are really nice too. Our coordinator tells us that we will all be at different schools in our region but most likely only a bike ride away from each other so that means we will get to spend a lot of time together outside of the classroom. I asked about free time though and she said there is a lot of out of classroom work but she said we will still get tons of freetime and time to spend with our host families. We went out to dinner tonight as a group. It was really good, we had steak and this spicy mashed potatoes. You will all have to forgive me with the names. I am going to start remembering the names so I can list them here, but I always forget. Anyway I love it so far we have met a lot of cool people and we are all enjoying it a lot right now. Keep in touch for more. I will try and update this more often, but often times when we get wireless it is either slow or needs a password. ciao, y un beso

Departure

I am currently sitting in Sea Tac waiting for my flight to Dallas. From there I will have a 7 hour lay over and then 9 hour flight to Santiago! It's going to be a long day but I love traveling and doing the whole airport thing.

The hardest part of leaving is saying goodbye to the parentals. My mom dropped me off and you can all imagine how that was :( and I said goodbye to my dad monday morning because he had to work and couldn't come to seattle :( oh and my sister called me monday morning and that was really hard too.

I learned one thing while traveling, pictures make it so much easier to travel. If you are ever plan on moving away from friends and family, bring photos they help make the day go by. There is a lot to be excited about. I am about to partake in an expierence that I really have no idea how it will be. I am truly excited and can't wait to find out though!

One more note: I have truly the best friends and family ever. It was amazing to see how much support I have from all of them. I have received emails and messages on facebook, and letters from everyone. I have been taken out and bought for during lunches and dinners. I would just like to say thanks for everyone. You guys mean the world to me. Keep me in your prayers and thoughts!

Adios y un beso