Life, death, and everything in between...

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I received sad news from home last Friday, August 14th. My Aunt Diane, who had been struggling with pancreatic cancer for about 2 months, passed away in her home surrounded by family and friends. Needless to say there has been a lot of mourning, phone calls, and late night chat sessions with family in Minnesota.

While this news has left me in a bit of shock it has also given me the chance to think about life, family, and future with a new perspective. I think my friend, Heather, was right on when she noticed "that death makes think about life a lot more than birth does." It's unfortunate that often times it takes the loss of a loved one to bring families closer together--I have said "I love you" to many more family members in the last week than I probably have in the last few years. However, it would be even more unfortunate if we let times like these pass without reconnecting with our loved ones. I wish I could be closer to family but I do know that I love them and they love me which is a great feeling. I encourage everyone that reads this to contact someone who you love that you haven't seen in awhile. Don't wait, do it now. Keep doing it occasionally until you can't think of anyone else to call, email, IM, text, write, or drop by and see. Then start over from the top of the list.

As for Caldera, it's been treating me quite well. I started teaching básica (middle school) this term. The students are full of energy, excited about learning, and tinier than I imagined. Some of them barely make it past my waist. There seems to be at least one character in every class. One fifth grader falls to his knees and acts like he's worshiping me every time I walk in the classroom. He will also stand up in front of the class as I'm teaching and mimic what I'm doing. The students are definitely more talkative than the older ones and I'm definitely getting practice with discipline. There's been more than one day that I've left school in a bit of a huff. But the positive definitely outweighs the negative.

I had my students all create "passports". I had a ton of materials that the government had supplied me with and needed to use them so I had all of my students (about 350) make their own little passport books. I expected this project to take maybe 30 minutes. I was wrong. It ended up taking more than 2 weeks for some classes. Granted we only meet once a week for 45 minutes, but still. It turned out really well and did exactly what I wanted it to--it engaged the students to want to learn more. Now the problem is coming up with activities involving the passport. My idea is to have them "visit" a different English-speaking country every week. We did the USA this week and next week I was thinking Australia. It's just a matter of getting the topic to connect with the country.

I spent some time with the new volunteer at an asado at his place. It was exciting because everyone was saying how great my Spanish was. I've been getting a lot of compliments about it lately and while I definitely know that I have LOTS of work to do I feel comfortable speaking to almost anybody. Plus he's a really cool guy that's really excited for this opportunity. He's spent a lot of time working with differently-abled student populations as well as working with extra-curricular sports activities. It'll be fun getting to know him better.

Last weekend I had Jason and Anna over and we had a cultural exchange. It's "English Day" every Sunday at my house and we decided to have them over to help my family practice their English. Anna decided that she would show my host mom how to make an apple pie completely from scratch in exchange for being shown how to make cocimiento (which basically means "boiled"), a chilean seafood stew made from as many kinds of seafood as you can get, fish, and sometimes chicken or beef boiled in white wine with garlic and optional tomato or red pepper mostly for color, and onions. We had an delicious meal, needless to say. Those of you in Red Wing can plan on tasting it this December when I return.

I posted some pictures in past blogs if anyone is interested. There are pictures from Buenos Aires and Puerto Natales.

I hope all are well.

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Photos

Students, Students, Everywhere!
This is basically what an average classroom of mine looks like...

The sunset that night
16/08/09

Comments

[marta]

Zach -- I miss you! After you make cocimiento in Red Wing, promise you'll come to Portland and make it in my kitchen as well. xoxo

[tom]

¡que te diviertas mucho!
Zach!! Qué gusto recibir noticias tuyas :) Lo siento mucho la muerte de tu tía--me siento muy triste por ti que estés tan lejos de tu familia en estos momentos. Que descanse en paz. Pasando a otro tema... Parece que todo te va bien... me alegro de que estés teniendo éxito con tus alumnos. No me puedo imaginar de cuán increíble debe ser estar allí--que lo pases muy pero muy bien :) ¿Me cocinas una cena cuando regreses? También podríamos pasar la noche hablando español para que no te lo olvides :)