pura lluvia!

chuuuuuuta....qué lluvia tenemos aquí en chillán! it´s been raining alll weekend, and now i really regret not having brought my galoshes and raincoat with me. my dad will just have to stick them in his luggage when he comes visits me in june.

but geez, it´s amazing how much it´s been raining...there has hardly been a pause. and the streets are just flooded! this morning, ruth, my host sister/coteacher, called every taxi company in chillán to send a taxi over to take us to school. however, she only encountered busy signals, and we had no choice but to begin the wet trek to school. after about walking 6 blocks, through deep puddles and blown back by rainswept winds, we were completely drenched. even the new boots that i had purchased this weekend in concepción no sirvieron, and i was not happy having my feet wet. that´s probably one of my biggest pet peeves. because neither of us brought an extra pair of pants, ruth decided that we should return home and change, and after all, as chilean myth goes, wearing wet clothing causes sickness. of course, we didn´t want that to happen. fortunately, we ran into two of her nephews who had just called their father to pick them up from school. they were going to go straight home and miss school. i soon realized that chileans treat their downpouring days like snow days...literally half the student body at escuela méxico didn´t attend school today.

while we were waiting for my host brother to come pick us up, i was watching 2 carabineros (policemen) at the flooded street corner, literally carrying students and other folks on their backs across the street to avoid the flood. it was such a cool sight! why don´t our policemen do that? btw, did you know that firefighters here are all volunteers? i wanted to take a picture, pero que lástima que no tuviera mi cámara y when ruth took out her phone to take a picture, the carabineros began to walk away. chuta.

soon, my host brother arrived, took us home, i changed, and we finally got hold of a taxi company to send a taxi over to pick us up. we arrived at school, and immediately i sensed that a ton of students were missing. in fact, when we went to see the first class of the day, who also happen to be ruth´s homeroom class, we only met half the class along with a sprinkling of students from one of the 8th grade classes. they were just fooling around and playing cards, which is something these kids seem to be quite used to considering how often they are left alone. but that´s a whole other entry, regarding how as they say, "desordenado" they are, very much contributed by the lax disciplinarian system they uphold at schools here.

to make a long story short, i spent the day playing hangman, watching over a class while they watched high school musical in english (without subtitles, but that didn´t stop them from singing like all the songs!!), and had more time to get to know my students more outside the english only classroom. they´re so darling, and i already know i´m going to miss them so much when i leave...but that´s the future, no use dwelling on that!

my rainy day ended with a surprise meeting with the english network of english teachers in the region. all of us volunteers were notified of the meeting just this morning! it´s been frustrating with horrible communication from the ministry of education officials, but oh well, fortunately i´m extremely flexible and i´m really good at going with the flow. that´s probably the word of the entire 9 months here...flexibility. i spent most of last night planning for today´s classes only to be met with half the number of students and realizing it wasn´t worth executing my planned activities with such a small group. it´s a pain, but what can i do? i just let myself be frustrated for that moment, take a breath, and continue on, knowing that dwelling on anger and bitterness only ruins my day.

and woot, i just found out moments ago that there´s no school tomorrow on account of the rain. it may sound a little silly that they treat heavy rain days like snow days, but the thing is some students come from farther distances and these streets are really dangerous to tread through. their sewage system isn´t as great as ours and so there is very serious flooding in the streets. moreover, wednesday is a holiday, so i pretty much have a 2 day holiday!