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St. Margaret's gates, just like Buckingham Palace's.


The last day of summer here in Concon has been foggy and cold. We went to Vina today to eat at our favorite little restaurant (soup, pork and rice for 1,200 pesos, just a bit over 2 dollars a piece) and people were dressed in their winter sweaters and hats, with bufandas wrapped snugly around their necks to keep out the chilly wind blowing on shore from the bay. I've grown to like the cooler weather and the fog. I like the mood fog puts me in, as well as wearing the beautiful sweaters here, especially my fuschia ruana (a shawl that acts a bit like a poncho) I bought in Arica. On the hill where St. Margaret's sits like a palatial English manor, it's even colder, a different micro-climate. The mist down here in the lowlands often becomes rain when I arrive to work in the morning. Teachers have said that for a British school, the climate is perfect.

Several teachers and students went to meet Prince Charles and Camilla while they were here in Chile a week or so ago. The prince was overheard saying that while Santiago is a beautiful city, Valparaiso is cool. They met him at the Prince of Wales Country Club, of all places. One of the surprising things about living here has been learning how extensive Britain's involvement has been with Chilean culture and history. Lord Cochrane, the 10th Earl of Dundonald and various other titles, fought with Chilenos in their War of Independence with Spain in the 18th century. His headquarters in Valparaiso has been perserved as a national monument. The Chilean word for plumber is "gasfitter," a left-over from the English era of manufactoring and shipping that made Valparaiso in some ways more English than Spanish in the 18th and19th centuries. It was a busy port before the Panama Canal was built, a place where ships that went around the Horn had to stop. Today, Cerro Concepcion and Alegre, the hills that were the center of British (and German) culture, are World Heritage sites and tourist areas where the corregated buildings with lots of gingerbread that were left stand in various stages of renovation or decay.

At school, the girls all stand and sing Happy Birthday to the Queen on her birthday. At one time, if girls were caught speaking Spanish at St. Margaret's they were punished. I've met several lovely women from that era who speak the Queen's English and have tea at 4 or 5 o'clock (which now is known as "onces" from the eleven letters of a brandy called Aquardiente that used to be put in tea long ago). Now, from sexto basico (6th grade) on up, all lessons are in Spanish, except for their English class. Standardized testing is requiring emphasis on Spanish literacy skills, especially the PSU, a test all quarto medeo (12th grade) students take. Performance determines what schools and professions students are allowed to go to in universities.

Saying this, there are times that I almost forget I'm in a Spanish speaking country, as I work in the English department. Margaret, the department head who shares her name with the school, helps me with my Americanisms as I make worksheets (my use of "gotten" and "jewelry" this week). I'm insisting on English only in my high school classes, which has proven very challenging. The girls thought I was afraid that they were talking about me in Spanish. I explained that that wasn't the case, I was just using a good teaching practice. My explanation seemed to be what was needed. A reward of a five minute break if they were polite and attentive during our 90 minutes together helped too.

Almost every week at St. Margaret's, the different schools have assemblies in which girls present performances. Here is a sample from last Wednesday's.

The first video is of two segundo basico classes performing the Cirque du Soliel's Alegria for the infant school. This performance has had a lot of demand. They first performed in for junior school, and then for the high school, and, finally, for the littlest girls. These girls choreographed it themselves. You'll get a glimpse of the jugglers and the chorus, the girl on roller skates and the one on stilts. Clowns threw confetti at the audience.


They're learning gymnastics at school and the corridors and play areas have been full of cartwheels and flips. There have been a lot of casts for broken bones and splints on fingers lately, but it doesn't seem to be a big deal. There is a concrete stage and a concrete play area. Girls run across the stage, land on their hands and then do a back flip landing on the play area. My heart is in my throat as I watch, but their doing this seems to be an accepted part of the school culture.

This is Maria Jose, better known as Miss Cote at St. Margaret's. Getting to know her in my first few weeks was a true blessing, as on our drives to school she clued me in to things like how to get photocopies done, shared her stories about getting lost in the giant school (more than once when I've gone up one too many set of stairs and found myself in the "out of bounds" area, I've thanked her in my mind for her story of doing the same thing), spoke of her own feelings of being overwhelmed with so many new faces and names. She also drove Bill and I around so that we found our first place here in Concon. I appreciate Cote's devotion to recycling, her cheerfulness, her love of teaching English, and envy her ability with languages (she speaks French, as well as English and Spanish).



When we moved to the place Cote helped us find, I thought I was in paradise for the first six weeks. The weather was still warm, and though we were in one room, we felt it was grand because the Pacific was just outside our window. We had a bed, dining table, and small kitchen, though I hesitate to use that word for it. We've discovered that a tiny stove, refrigerator and sink is called an American Kitchen, for some reason. The sink was so low, Bill had to do dishes on his knees. He's 5'8" and says that there are times in Chile he feels tall. The bathroom technically counted for a second room, I guess, though it was matchbox size. I loved writing looking out at the waves and watching the surfers at the beach. We'd sit on the roof and drink piscolas, made from pisco,a type of brandy made from grapes and cola,on Friday afternoons. Sunsets were . . . hmm . . . sitting here trying not to think of a cliche to describe them . . . so I won't. I'll just show a picture:



I'm grateful for having lived there because teaching in a new place, being the only non-Spanish speaking person on campus, wanting to prove I was worth the risk the school took hiring me . . . what can I say? It was stressful. I'd open our gate, walk down the steps and around the corner of our dueno's vacation house, step onto their patio which led to our place, and the sea would be there. The sound of the waves and the expanse of water was just what I needed to keep myself together.

Then winter came. The roof leaked. We'd have periodic floods underneath the door, the toilet started acting up. We'd often get rained on when we were using it, too. We were buffeted by wind and it got cold, despite the propane heater we bought. We kept the shades down because it kept the place warmer, so there wasn't much light.

Thanks to Rosemary, one of the inspectors at the school (an inspector is the assistant to the head teacher and someone who acts like a vice principal and takes care of a lot of the discipline issues), we found our new casita.



We were tempted to move to Valparaiso. We found a cool tri-level condo we almost took. The trip to work for me would be long, an hour on the bus each way during rush hour, but we thought having the chance to live surrounded by great atmosphere, living in a real city for the first time ever, might be worth it. Rosemary was dead set against it and started an Internet search for houses for rent. Valpo has a reputation of being un poco peligroso. The cerro that the condo was on could be viewed two ways: seedy or having a whole lot of character.

We were told by neighbors things would be fine as long as we weren't out late at night, but while we were walking around before the real estate lady came to let us view the place, a man spotted us from a hundred feet away; he could see we were norteamericanos from that distance. He was un poco boracho and started talking to us in English. "My f . . . name is Nixon Jimmy, and if you don't f. . . believe it, here's my identity card. My mother named me after your f . . . presidents because she wanted me to be strong. I used to live in f . . . New Jersey. Welcome to f . . . Chile." We told the lady we'd take the apartment, but the bus ride back to Concon seemed even longer and we both woke up the next morning with some anxiety.

We got up early, walked here (to Calle Magdelena Paz . . . I love the name of my street), saw it, fell in love, and called Rosemary to thank her. Had it not been for the bus ride and my having to come home latish on some nights from work, we still may have taken the apartment. New Canadian friends, Norm and Charlene, have found an apartment in Valpo in an area which they describe as "interesting;" a part of me still wanted to do the more Bohemian thing when I read their email last night.

Norm, Bill, me and Charlene


But, here I'm close to work, we still have a view of the sea, a beautiful garden area, nice neighbors. The main drawback is the cacophony of dogs that bark for hours from across the little canyon below us, but I think in time it'll just be background noise as I get used to it. Here's the garden:



Getting back to St. Margarets, it also took me some time to learn the British system, mixed with the requirements of the Chilean Department of Education. Grades are called "notes," they fall from 1 through 7, 7 being the highest grade, except no one is ever given a 1. The Infant School has playgroups for three-year olds, pre-kinder and kindergarten classes. Today the kindergarten girls did a tribute to Hollywood for an assembly for Teachers' Day. Six or seven of them were dressed as Charlie Chaplin, complete with canes and mustaches. They handed out caramel corn to the teachers before they did their dance. Some of the other girls did dances to Pretty Woman (which I thought was an interesting choice), Flashdance, and Footloose. The junior school is made up of grades 1-4, the middle school grades 5-8, and the senior school contains grades 9-12. Seniors are all the girls in senior school. First senior is equivalent to ninth grade, second senior is tenth, etc. Grades 1-8 are also called basicos, and the senior grades are also called medeos. The girls have 15 subjects with music, p.e., and religion teachers. Every day the schedule is different. I had to look at my time table (which is what they call the "schedule") every day for two months to figure out where I was going. There are playing fields for hockey below the school. Other British schools have their playing fields about ten miles north of Concon. And there are houses the students and teachers belong to, just like in Harry Potter. Ours are York, Lancaster, Stuart and Windsor. I haven't been officially told what house I'm in yet. During school week when there were competitions, I hung out with the Windsors.

Our hockey fields looking out to the ocean:

When I started to write Hungry and Alicia let me know she wanted to be in the novel, I didn’t want to give her that name as it’s so close to mine. She insisted that was her name, though, so I thought, “Okay.” As I wrote, I pronounced the name the English way, A-lee-sha. I have a new identity now at St. Margaret’s. You guessed it. I am now A- lee-see-a because the “th” sound is difficult for many native Spanish speakers to say. Actually, I’m “Miss Alicia.” Or I’m “Miss Ali,” because that seems to be the other nickname that I’ve been given.

There are about a hundred teachers at the school. I’ve put about a dozen or so names with faces so far. There are three teachers from England (I think, I’ve got a solid grounding on who two of them are), and the rest are from Chile. Though the school is a “British school,” all meetings are conducted in Spanish except for the ones conducted in the English department. I’m sometimes getting the “gist” of things, but it is only a rough approximation. We had an in-service about bullying today, and because the main ideas were projected with an LCD player I was at least able to follow along with my electronic dictionary. What I’m excited about is that at times I’m finally catching whole phrases (not often, but at least it’s a beginning) and I’m getting the object pronouns in the right places. Sort of.

I’m also learning a lot of new jargon for the British structure. Forms are used instead of grades, or the word is used interchangeably. Once the girls pass eighth grade, they have IB levels. I’m teaching 3rd level A2, the highest group of what would be juniors in high school for us. Infant school is kindergarten. The juniors are grades one through four. The middles are grades five through eight.

Some things seem to be universal. As I mentioned, the talk today was about bullying, which the teachers perceive as a problem. The girls seem to have the same issues as the kids did at the two schools I’ve taught at in California: neglect, emotional issues, tardiness, not being respectful. Avril, the wonderful headmistress of the school, says she insists the girls stand up when a teacher enters the classroom—something I might get used to J.

I’ll teach the English IB curriculum. The idea is to connect social and cultural issues to a text that is explored slowly and in depth. The girls will do most of the research. There will be a lot of writing, creative work, debates, etc. I will only grade a few papers per report card period! I’m sure I’ll look most of them over though and ask for revisions when it’s appropriate. I’ve decided to start with The Crucible. I want them to begin by researching how women in Europe were persecuted as witches. If I remember my history correctly at this point, there were a few men who were executed in Salem as well, but I want to discuss how the values and beliefs influenced what happened. I hope another group will be interested in exploring what happened during the McCarthy era. I wish I could show Good Night and Good Luck, but finding a copy seems a bit overwhelming at this point. Then we’ll launch into the play. I read the introduction to Act 1 last night and wondered when I read the play. I assume college. The vocabulary is intensive, but these girls supposedly like to be challenged.

The other books we’ll read are The Handmaid’s Tale, To Kill a Mockingbird and I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings. With the last of these, I hope to have the girls explore issues about the Mapuche, the indigenous people of Chile who mainly live in the southern part of the country. There are other groups, but the Mapuche fought back against the Incas (their empire stopped at the Mapuche borders), the Spanish, and are still fighting against assimilation and to take back control of land they believe still belongs to them.

The rest of my time I’ll spend doing “literacy” with the juniors. I wish, wish, wish that I brought more teaching material with me. I decided to go for survival stuff like a few more clothes, and thought I’d bring the extra things back with me next time I go to the U.S., as I wasn’t sure what my school day was going to consist of. Tomorrow I’ll meet with the head teacher of junior school and know more specifically what they would like from me. Their reading program in English seem to consist of copies of books a la the Wright Group and Rigby back in the whole language days. I’m told all most all of the girls don’t have problems decoding. I think doing Lindamood LIPS (without mouth pictures?) to help pronunciation will happen. I keep thinking of the Houghton Mifflin frontloading materials I copied over that have sentence frames for different levels of English language learners . . . they’ll be here in time.

I need to find out if there are more books. I’d love to do some novel reading and exploration with the third and fourth graders. I don’t think they’re there. The school is very beautiful and new and not paid for all the way, and from what I’m picking up, there isn’t money to buy this sort of thing.

One of the biggest challenges for me is that I’m used to coming into work at least a half hour early. More often, though, I work until four, four thirty, and sometimes later, getting things prepped. I’ll be taking the bus with the students and other teachers, which is fabulous, but the bus will arrive just in time for school to begin. There are few computers, so if I want to do research I’m not sure how this will work, as I don’t have Internet at home right now. The Internet place around the block has its challenges, as there’s the Spanish keyboard. I don’t know how to do the @ sign for writing in email addresses. Often there is fairly slow download time, and then the web pages disappear and I have to get back on. The teachers have left this week right at two o’clock, the end of the workday until students arrive next Tuesday.

Another change: the school provides a lunch! Salad bar, main course, dessert . . . but 2:00 is considered lunch hour. I probably will be able to eat with the juniors (at noon . . . closer to our 11:10 lunch at Minnie Cannon) or the middles (1:00 ish) four days a week. BUT Thursdays, I don’t get it until two! There has been a snack period this week about 10:15 where the NesCafe, tea, and some cookies come out. I’ve brought cereal bars and fruit to keep me going, but I’m starving when I get home.

I think I may have made a faux pas on my first day. There were some supplies being passed out to the junior teachers, and I asked if I could have some. I was told yes, so I picked up a box of pencils. It turned out I could only have one. I have one dry erase pen, and a red, blue, and green marker, and some tape, correcting fluid. I really need to find chart paper somewhere as I use a lot of it. At Minnie Cannon, I taught so many different levels, I didn’t have board space, so I often prepared what I needed the day before (or a few days before if I was lucky) and didn’t have to spend time writing stuff on my board or the ones in the classrooms I worked in.

Now for the wonderful part! Chileans (woman to woman, often woman to man and visa versa) greet and say goodbye with a cheek-to-cheek “kiss.” You touch cheeks and make a kissing sound. It’s lovely. I hope when my Puritan work ethic kicks in and I’m feeling stressed for not having the space I usually need to think about my day and look over my lessons, I’ll remember that starting one’s day like this is probably much healthier. My teaching will get done anyway.

On the second day of work, we got on these great cushy buses and toured Valparaiso, a town that Chileanos think of as their San Francisco (I had compared Concon to Santa Barbara before I knew better. It’s more like Sausalito. The weather has been cool, foggy and misty like summer around the SF bay.) Valpo is hilly like San Francisco and has a historical, yet Bohemian air. If you read Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende, the book started here. We went to an “ascensor,” first walking through a very long tunnel and then riding up an elevator to an observatory platform where we could see the whole city and far out into the ocean. The set up also allows for the local people who live on the hill a way to get up and down with more ease.

We went to a monument to Bernardo O’Higgens, who is roughly equivalent to George Washington, and is a father, if not THE father, of Chile. He led the revolution against Spain. We then went to what might have been the home of the British Lord Cochran who helped in the fight. We walked through the oldest part of the town where many of the buildings are being torn down for infrastructure and lack of resources to preserve them. Natural gas is coming to Chile.

The next stop was at a monument for los heroes, the men who went down in a ship in a fight against Peru (1850ish? Can’t remember exactly.) Vente-uno de Mayo is a national holiday (and my birthday!) that honors their loss of life. Chile lost the battle, but won the war, by the way, thanks to the British.

Finally, we were treated to a lovely lunch at the restaurante Bernardo O’Higgens, starting with our choice of soft drinks or alcohol, either a pisco sour, the national drink, or a vai’in— which I probably am spelling wrong. I went with the vai’in, a vanilla flavored liquor. I had to. I never had a drink on teacher time before! All I can say is, “Yum.”
So, to sum things up, estoy nerviosa. But I always am at the beginning of a school year, and somehow I survive. At home, by the mid of October I felt I had my life back. April is the new October for me, and I hope I feel more settled and secure by then.

I love the murals in Santiago. The city is covered with the same kind of tagging as any urban place in America, but the level of creativity seems to be higher here. Amid what looks like gang graffiti there are message like this. Respect is to love. The magic is in your soul. I like the vampirish like creatures looking on, as though the forces of darkness were taking heed of the message. There are occasional messages on walls proclaiming: Capitalismo es muerte. Other pictures that are intricate and fanciful lace the streets. In the Bellas Artes area, near San Cristobal, the highest part of the city, and where one of Neruda's three homes is located, the mural art is taken to the highest levels, street after street, in a neighborhood full of houses where color and whimsy cry out.

Bill and I went to the immigration office today. The nicest people work there. I was told that St. Margaret's is the "most prestigious school in Chile." Yikes! Definitely not like the Title One schools I've always taught at. We panicked when the forms and procedures were explained to even get a work permit under a tourist visa. Send my teaching credentials to the consulate in San Francisco just to get a stamp and from where they have to be mailed back to Chile?) But then I finally connected with the Sra. Avril Cooper, the director of the school, who said,"Relax, relax. Our people are working on it." Okay, sounded like good advice to us. So I'm sitting in a courytard writing now at La Casa Roja instead of dealing with bureaucracy. Que beuno! (I need to find how to transform my keyboard in a Spanish one but that's a learning curve I just can't take on right now.)

We went to lunch yesterday and today at two sidewalk cafes. A cute little dog, kind of a cocker spaniel/dachshund cross showed up at our feet yesterday. Small and sad. We thought she was a puppy until we noticed she'd recently had babies. We named her "Cute Little F . . ." Amazingly, there she was again today, at least two miles away. She had to have crossed the freeway, going up the steps and across the bridge along with people traffic. She came immediately to our table, lay down, and fell asleep again. We chose not to think of it as a sign, as we're weak where in the cute little doggy area of life. And we need to get Wiley down here. He'd probably be p.o.ed to see a strange dog in what he'd rightfully think of as his place. After today, I'm not sure how much blogging I'll do. after today My job starts Monday (trying not to panic-- I left a lot of my standby teaching material at home because of weight limitations on the airplane). Our house in Vina is cute, but not the place we want to stay forever. We don't want to connect Internet up, only for the two months we'll be there. I may spend a lot of time on the weekend at the Internet place around the corner, but I could also be correcting papers. Oh yeah, i've got another novel to finish.

One last thing! Great news. Nicole, the publicity person at HarperCollins told me that a review posted by Emily Robbins, a thirteen year old reviewers from Readers Views, was picked up by Reuters and usatoday.com. I can't stop smiling!