Día Veintidós y Veintitres

Bring on the weekend!

This weekend we had decided to make no official plans and see where the weekend would take us (other than watching the England football game on Saturday morning). On Friday we decided to go to this party with some University students. Was a very strange evening, our flat ended up getting locked out so had to share the sofa bed in the other flat (albeit, not a very long sleep). Woke up bright and early on Saturday to ensure we could make it to the football on time, we were still locked out so off we went in last nights attire. At the pub we had booked a table for all of us plus some extras from the school, this made for an amazing atmosphere. The pub filled up with rather excited England fans very quickly. After a rather exciting and positive game we decided to stay at the pub for a long time after, and chat with other teachers from the school.

We all ended up trekking home at different times, and with all the excitement of the day we had planned to go back out and meet everyone again. However, we all got rather tired after a late night followed by a day of day drinking so crashed out after a takeaway.

The next day consisted of a day in the sunshine shopping in our new found favourite market, Santa Lucia. After spending far too much (on things we don't particularly need) we decided we were all far too tired to be wondering around in the heat so headed home for some rest. Concluding our fun filled weekend with chilling in the flats playing stupid car games.

Time to get back into the mind set for back to school. 

Día Dieciocho a Veintiuno

Week two at Craighouse

Beginning to feel a lot more settled and at home both at Craighouse school and in Santiago. After a very eventful weekend we were keen and ready to get back to work. As we had just come back from a long weekend the children were all bonkers! This made getting any work done a real challenge. However as this was the day of the England football match I was excused from my afternoon lessons to go to the dining hall to watch the game on the projector. 5 Brits surrounded by students that just so happened to be Columbia supporters made for a real atmosphere!

The next two days that followed were like any regular school day with no surprises. However these next few days were when I began to teach to my new class. I started with Maths on the Thursday, simple word problems and learning mental maths tricks to help the pupils. Later on Thursday the rain started to pour...Now at home we are used to this on the regular, however, in Chile it only rains 10 days out of the year! So when it rains the Chileans deal with it much how us Brits deal with snow...with mad panic. We went home not knowing whether we would be able to make it to school in the morning!

Friday comes and we make it to school without having to swim through any puddles. This weather also brought the students crazy and mad sides back out, so made for a very interesting day! Today was one of my students last day at Craighouse. So she arrived in non school uniform and all the other children had brought some sort of food or drink for us to have a party! But after all the fun and games came the teaching and learning (not quite as fun). I got to teach a readers workshop today which went soo well, all the children were engaged and then continued to use their new found skills throughout the day! RESULT! 

Another enjoyable, and successful week at Craighouse. Lets see what this weekend has in store for us!

Día Diecisiete

Dogs, dinner and a bumpy bus

Today did not go as planned to say the least... As we didn't have any school we had aimed to have a lovely day outside, hiking in a National park about an hour out of Santiago. We got an Uber to what we thought was the entrance to the hiking trail...it was closed. (Turns out Chileans don't do bank holidays like the brits). We decided to walk further up the road to see if there was another entrance. Having made some new friends of the dog variety we made quite the impact to this tiny village we walked through. These dogs set off every single dog along this what seemed to be a never ending road. I have never heard such noise in my life, about 30 dogs all shouting at each other across the road and some even jumping over the fences to attack our new 'friends'. With all this we could not find another way into the park so decided to turn around and walk back to the restaurant we had previously passed. 

This restaurant was in the strangest building (looked like something out of a pixie or elf themed movie). We explored the grounds a learnt a lot about this building and found some very interesting sculptures and models sitting around. 

After sitting around for what seemed like forever the restaurant finally opened and we piled on in not knowing what kind of food we would be delving into. After exploring the grounds for quite some time we sat down ready to order. This food was amazing! After what had been a very interesting morning we definitely deserved some good grub. 

To get home we decided to try and catch a bus. Not knowing where the bus was going we hopped on and hoped for the best. We ended up in a bus station somewhere in Santiago, so we could easily find a metro station and make our way home for a chilled evening before starting school tomorrow.