Acid Rain

Today it rained for the second time since I've been in Chile!  It started this afternoon and now at 7:30 it's still raining...almost feels like home...minus all the pollution.  Santiago is extremely polluted, to the point that sometimes walking home I can't see the giant Andes Mountains that surround the city.  It's pretty hard to miss mountains like these.  It gets so bad that some days the government sends out warnings against exercising outside, and school sports are suspended.  It's great when I try to go running...

I've started to get into a bit of a routine here...which is kind of nice.  Teaching is starting to go really well.  I feel like I have connected more with my students and it might just be me, but I feel like they are a little more excited to learn.  I've tried different things in the classroom in terms of activities and the students seem to be responding better.  In my intermediate class, for example, our last unit was about food and cooking.  We went over vocabulary and did the exercises in the book, and for an added activity we watched part of an episode of Iron Chef America.  They thought it was hilarious, and it was really cool to hear them shout out "She is boiling!" or "carrots and onions."  The last unit for my basic class was about likes and dislikes, with vocabulary about music and movies, so during their review worksheet I let them each pick a song off my iTunes to play, as long as it was in English.  I'm not sure how much then concentrated, but it kept me from getting bored too!

My living situation is going great!  I really love my roommates, and my roommate Jaime brings his friends over all the time so I get to meet a lot of Chileans and practice my Spanish.  Allegra's birthday was this last weekend so we had a big party at the house and all of our friends came...at least 20 people shoved in our tiny apartment...it was awesome!  I'm thoroughly enjoying pretty much everything about life here!

I have a new adventure coming up...Argentina!  I'm leaving on the 22nd and staying for 5 days.  I will be sure to have new and more exciting posts then!