I live in Tocopilla!

FYI: I actually wrote this last Thursday and then lost internet, so I have not been able to post it until now.

At this point I'm very comfortably situated in my new home in Tocopilla. It's a small city located on the coast. Residents will tell you it's not very pretty. I'll admit that other cities are prettier. The electricity plant that predominates a good portion of the city, especially, is not particularly nice. But the city is situated so that if you look to the west you see the mountains, and if you look to the east you see the ocean. It doesn't matter where you are in the city. You can always see the ocean and the mountains. That is pretty amazing in my opinion. Plus, the sky is always blue and it's always nice. Seriously, I never, ever need to check the weather. I know that it will be in the low 70s every day and the sun will be shining without a cloud in the sky. It's great. It is part of the driest desert in the world, though, so I can understand why residents think it is ugly compared to the lush forests of the south. Nothing grows here. It can't- there's no water. Still, I like it.

Since I've been in Tocopilla, I've pretty much seen the entire city. I've been through the street that makes up the center of town. I've gone to look at each of the beaches and the "natural pool," which is actually part of the ocean that has been walled off on three sides. I have also gone down to the docks, where there are tons of sea lions, and see the infamous rock called "The Camel" (it hardly looks like a camel).

My host family in Tocopilla is great. I really like them. The family is:

• Valeria/the mother: She's really great. She loves fruits and vegetables, which means that, unlike most chilean families, we have fruits and vegetables all of the time. She and her husband own a restaurant and the only night club in town. They don't like to eat at the restaurant much, because they like the family feeling of eating at home, but I have eaten there once and it was really good. Apparently, they also eat there every Sunday, so I should become pretty familiar with the food soon. I haven't gone to the night club yet either, but will undoubtedly be going there at some point. If for no other reason, one of the daughters will be having her birthday part there in a couple weeks. Valeria spent 20 years of her life living in Sweden. She learned English there and a bunch of other european habits. We had a swedish dish for dinner the other night.

• Roy/the father: Roy is really nice. I have not spent much time with him, though, because he has been doing a lot of traveling and works at the nightclub/restaurant a lot. Apparently he owns the third division football league around here and some other things like that, which I think is kind of cool. Apparently, he lived in Belgium for a while. He also knows a bit of English.

• Emely: The oldest daughter, Emely is 17. She will be turning 18 in a couple of weeks. She studied in England for 6 months, so she speaks English quite well. We primarily speak in English, since she is really afraid of losing it, and, honestly, her English is better than my Spanish, so it is just easier to do that. It's also really nice to feel understood sometimes. We also traveled to Arica (a city in the very far north of chile) together last weekend. We had a lot of fun, and her friend took us paragliding off cliffs (it was amazing).

• Guliana (I'm not entirely sure how to spell her name): The middle daughter, Guliana is 11. She is actually in one of the classes I am teaching, and seems like a very good student. She really seems to like telenovelas (Spanish soap operas) and loves English music, although I'm pretty sure she never understands what she is singing (this is pretty common in Chile).

• Antonela: The youngest child, Antonela (Nela for short), is only 4. She is blonde, which I find funny because the rest of the family has very dark black hair. Apparently Emely was also blonde as a child. Nela loves to watch tv and attract attention, which she has no problem doing simply because she is absolutely adorable. She is always asking me why I speak English. The other day she asked to see my teeth, because she thought that might be the source of my English. I'm working on teaching her a few English songs like Patty Cake and Ring Around the Rosy. She does hate losing in games and has definitely had some tantrums, but these really don't bother me.

• Charo/the nanny: Charo is amazing. She cooks, she cleans, she mothers Antonela while her parents are at work. She lives right down the street and is at the house almost all day, everyday, except for Sundays (hence why we eat at the restaurant on Sundays). She has a hard time talking to me. She no longer speaks really quickly, but has replaced that by speaking so extremely slowly to me that the rest of the family makes fun of her.

• Abuelita/the grandma: I'm not really sure what abuelita's real name is. I am also 90% sure she doesn't actually live here, as she was not here for the first few days I lived here. However, she has routinely been here all day every day since them. The only reason I'm quite sure she doesn't live here is because there is absolutely no place for her to sleep. She's really nice. I enjoy talking to her since she normally talks pretty slowly. She thinks I eat to little though, and constantly remarks that I eat too little and need to eat more to gain some weight. I

Clanche/the dog: Clance is a tiny, tiny dog. I'm pretty sure he is smaller than my cat, Ripley (who, admittedly, is a huge cat). At first I found him annoying, as he has a bit of a habit of chewing on socks and shoes. I soon learned that as long as you aren't with a 4 year old who gets him overly worked up, this isn't a problem. So, I've come to love him. He is frequently curled up in a ball next to me on the couch. He does attempt to be a watchdog. He rushes down the stairs barking at the top of his lungs if he hears somebody unknown outside. Unfortunately, the fact that you could kick him across the room if you wanted makes his efforts entirely fruitless. At least we know when we have visitors, as there is no doorbell and guests are sometimes left yelling at the gate to get in.

I spend the vast majority of my time with these people. The other person I spend time with is Sara. She is engaged to my host mother's nephew and was a prior volunteer. She is the only other native English speaker (in other words, the only person I can speak totally normally with) in Tocopilla. I really like her. Unfortunately she is leaving in May to go back to Massachusetts. This wouldn't be so bad if I could make some other friends, but I've been told that everybody else my age leaves the city to go to University. I really like my family though and plan to travel a lot on the weekends (my family has an apartment on the beach in Iquique, a huge tourist spot). I'm also going to start taking some classes. Apparently the school I teach at will have some gym type classes beginning next week. The teacher I was speaking to about them explained it by punching and said it was like fighting, so I'm imagining something along the lines of kickboxing.. but i'm not really sure what to expect. Apparently I can also take Salsa dancing lessons at the night club, so I'm planning to enroll in those.

So far I really haven't been teaching. I've just been observing classes. The first class I actually teach will be on Monday. I'm excited for it, the observations have been really boring (you try learning the difference between the present and past tense of the verb to be over and over... it's pretty boring). I've learned a little bit about how the different teachers teach and manage their classrooms though. Plus, it has given me a chance to introduce myself to all of the teachers.

My classroom is the English language computer lab. I was really excited about this when I first found out, and made a bunch of powerpoints for my first couple of lessons. In doing this I made a huge assumption- that the computer lab would have a projector. It doesn't, which I'm pretty disappointed about. It does have some cool equipment and software though. Each of the computers in the room have a head set. I can have students do speaking activities as a class and listen into individual students to check their pronunciation. We actually had something similar to this when I was in high school and I hated it (for some reason I could always hear other students breathing heaving through my headphones). Unfortunately, since we don't have projectors, I am going to have to write everything on the board. I found that this is what wasted the most time and lost the students' attention during the classes I observed, so I'm pretty disappointed. However, I anticipate doing as little writing as possible, so hopefully it will be ok. A lack of resources is really big here. I currently don't have any at all, as the materials the ministry of education is supposed to send me haven't arrived yet (this doesn't bother me, as I had not expected them to arrive on time). I went to the school store and bought a few of my own the other day. I wish I had brought more though. Index cards would be really useful, but are ridiculously expensive here (~10 cards for 1 US dollar). I also wish I had brought some English magazines or ads or something. I originally thought that I would be able to pull examples of these from the internet, but I think the amount of printing I will be able to do is pretty limited.

Anyway, I need to go make some posters for my class now (I've been putting these off for a really long time...)

FYI, for anybody interested in sending me anything, my new address is:

Amanda Stasinski
Gomez Carreño 1330
Tocopilla, Chile