Thursday, August 30th, 2007 Alright Kayla, Its time to get off your butt and do something good for someone else!!

Thursday, August 30th, 2007

I woke up early (at 9:30) to go meet with the Directora of a High School (Colegio San Lawarence) about my volunteer job with the English Opens Doors program. This is an iniative of the chilena Governtment to help teach students English. They coordinate native English speakers with Chilean English teachers in high schools and some elementary schools. The idea is to motivate the students and help them hear a native accent. I’m not supposed to be doing a volunteer job outside of Nuestra Casa, but its only 4 hours a week and I think it should be interesting. So I met with the Direcotra and decided I would work every Thursday from 7:30 am to 11:30 am. Ouch. That’s going to hurt. Then she called the teacher down to meet me. The teacher I’m going to work with is probably only 25 years old and her English is about as good as my Spanish. So that is telling you something about the quality of the education system in Chile.
At first the teacher wasn’t too excited about me working with her on Thursday mornings. She told me that one of her classes is out of control (“Tey aur monstars”) and claim that they never learn anything. I immediately had flashbacks to my high school Spanish classes and I totally understood. Nevertheless, the Directora decided to go have a word with the class to put them in line before they introduced me. So after a good talking too, they called me in and introduced me. They want me to pretend that I don’t speak Spanish so the students are forced to speak in English to me. So I went in and she had me tell them about my life. Then they repeat back what they understood. Highlight: I told them I had a 17 year old sister. They asked me if she lived in Chile.

After assuring the teacher that I would love to help her make lessons plans (she really needs the help), I headed home. I got back and went for a quick run before showering and almuerzo. I “studied” all afternoon until I went to meet Calli, Sam, and Niki at the Bus Station to buy our tickets for our trip. After a funny adventure trying to find the best deals, we ended buying 4 tickets, 2 round trips, to Puerto Montt before Fiestas Patrias and to La Serena after. We are traveling with TurBus, the biggest and most well known bus company, so don’t worry. It should be a crazy, exhausting, amazing, and very safe (that’s for you mom) week. I can’t wait.

I had to be at the Nuestra Casa residnecia at 7:30 for Jueves Solidario (I’ll explain in a minute). But we got done early so I bought a Diet Coke, found a park in front of a church, and sat for about 45 minutes. I thought and prayed while watched the sun go down (I couldn’t see it set because I was in the middle of the city), the children play on the playground, and the people walk home from work. It was really relaxing and a great way to prepare myself for the next few hours.

Around 7:15 I walked to the residencía of Nuestra Casa. Remember Nuestra Casa is the group I’ll be volunteering with for my Poverty class that works with homeless people. Every Thursday night they take sandwhichs and coffee to people living in the streets (its called Jueves Solidario which means Solidarity Thursdays). I didn’t know what to expect, but I was excited. I helped them finish making the sandwhichs while meeting many of the men who live in the residencia and talking to other volunteers. A group of about 15 high schools students came and all together there was a group of about 25 people.

We drove to a huge market where during the day they sell vegetables and fruits. Apparently its one of the most important markets in all of Chile and produce from all over the country (and probably South America) goes through this market. There a ton of people who work there during the day and sleep there at night. When we got there, they automatically lined up and a high school girl and I passed out the sandwiches while the others gave them hot chocolate and coffee. Once we had passed out all the sandwiches, we started walking around and talking to the people. Eduardo, a volunteer of 3 years, took me under his wing and showed me around. We ended up talking to many different people, but mostly to an incredibly drunk, dirty, and smelly but incredibly interesting man, probably in his early 30s. He had a palta (avocado) and was telling us that this avocado was love. And that it wasn’t quite ripe yet, but come back in a week and it will be perfect. Then he told us a joke about David and Goliath (it’s a pun, so it wouldn’t work in English) and then he started talking about God and Jesus and all kinds of things. I definitely didn’t understand most of it and Eduardo had to clarify things for me, especially when the man told him to tell the German girl (he was quite insistent that I wasn’t North American, but German). The thing that struck me most was when he said, “Jesus had suffered and died for us. And he looks out for us. But who looks out for these people [the people living in the street]. I do. I do”

The other thing that struck me was seeing the children and babies. There were two young girls, one probably 7 and the other probably almost 4. they were absolutely adorable, especially the 4 year old. They talked and played with me and the high school kids the whole time and absolutely broke my heart. We were there for over 2 hours and I never saw their parents. I asked Eduardo where the parents were and he told me that they are probably around somewhere. I asked why the state doesn’t take them and place them in foster homes. He said that there is technically a program to help do that, but it’s very inefficient and complicated. Then he said he doesn’t think its right because you can’t just take children from their mothers. When he said that, I realized how different the culture, government, and social support systems are here. For them, no matter how desperate the situation, they couldn’t imagine taking a child from their mother. As opposed to the US where children are taken by Child Protective Services.

Around 10:15 we headed out and all met up in a parking lot to have a closing. Since there were so many new people, they made all of us speak. Of course, I was next to the speaker, so I had to go first! Before starting, I told them to forgive the language, then told them that I really enjoyed the experience but was very surprised by the amount of people and the fact that there were so many children. And I said that I loved taking to the men because despite the fact that most of them were drunk and said some crazy things, they were very kind and just wanted someone to talk to.

I went home and Olga was waiting for me. I started telling her how it went and as I spoke, it started sinking in. I slowly processed everything I had seen and became very somber. A bunch of my friends were going out Salsa dancing, but I was so drained I didn’t want to go. I went to bed around 1, the earliest in a long time.