Training, grading and playing

Not much to report this week as life has very much settled into a routine here! For those of who you care, still no ID cards or WiFi but everything else is ticking along.

I’ve been incredibly busy at school with the inspector training, writing INSET presentations and grading my class’ work for their first official ‘nota.’ The government here has a centralised grading system where every child in the country has at least one piece of work per half semester graded and entered into a national database. Anything below a 4 is a fail and my first attempt resulted in most of my class failing! Luckily, I spoke to a colleague and she convinced me that it’s not my teaching, but more that I had graded them with my British teacher hat on. She reminded me that these children have had almost two years of lockdown, which has had a huge impact on their learning, and also that they are all second-language English speakers and not technically classified as bilingual. So I redid them with those in mind and am pleased to report that all have passed! Nothing like a bit of grade inflation.

Inspector training has been really interesting, albeit a lot of work. I’m waiting to hear if I passed the level one exam so that I can continue with level two next week. I’m pretty sure I have, but I haven’t done a formal hand-written exam since 2005 so that was a fairly traumatic experience. I never want to put a child through another exam ever!

On Thursday, Ben went to a writing and planning meeting for a comedy night that Bethany and Lenny run and he had a great time!

Saturday was Family Day at school, which is basically a big fair with lots of sport and music. Yours truly was part of the ‘batucada de profesores’ which is a drumming group. I was given a shaker and happily marched around giving it my all, but it turns out I really can’t walk and shake in time. We marched to the stage (hitting things vaguely in sync) where we then played a slower samba, where I just about played in time and in tune on my violin. It was great fun and pushed me out of my comfort zone for sure!

Rehearsals on Friday and Saturday

Getting ready to march and hit things loudly. So. Loudly.

Mostly me looking confused

After being confused about samba rhythms and how a Family Day at a school can have SO much corporate advertising (‘come and bounce on the Banco di Chile bouncy castle, followed by a burger from a stall sponsored by Santander…’) we went for lunch with our friend Daniel at my favourite local cafe near our flat called Patagonia Schokoland. Then we met him later on in Ñuñoa for drinks, which ended up with us being in a very raucous karaoke bar at 1am, surrounded by plastic willies (hen do).

Sunday was very chilled, and slightly hungover, but I had a lot of pre-course work to do for Monday, so I did that via much procrastinating (the flat is very clean now…)

On a less boring note, we have been invited to our first wedding here! Bethany and Mau very kindly have invited us to their wedding in July, and we can’t wait. It will be full-blown winter here and very rainy, so I need to find something to wear that I won’t freeze in. Might invest in some thermals. And maybe a poncho for authenticity.

On a more boring note, I have just done my first successful online shop! I think. We’ll see if it a) turns up and b) is actually what I ordered. I had two calls from them but studiously ignored them, as that is well beyond my level of Spanish…

Until next time amigos!