It's funny how when you spend time with people you pick up their words, phrases and accent! When I speak to Sam on the phone I notice that she has picked up an Australian accent on certain words, for example when she says the word 'Party' it's pretty cool and it's so easy to do when spending time with people. I know when I go to America I start to say certain words with an American twang to it. Well here in Taltal I have picked up the three saying that are the title of this post from Hector. I am forever going to remember him and the school whenever I say 'much better!' I love it! I also really like the positivity behind the word amazing. Things are not fine or good they are amazing! This is definitely the positive outlook I am going to try to use when back at work in the UK.

This week there was such a nice vibe at the school having Marcelo and Denisa there they are so great to chat to and really have a passion to travel. They are making documentaries of where they go and have made some amazing videos online of helpful travel tips and historical information about where they have been. Check out there website at Travel Tranquilo or look them up on YouTube!

On Tuesday Nathan and I went for a walk before class and stumbled across a tiny white sand beach. It is something that stands out in Taltal as the town is surrounded by big grey mountains and desert of grey stone so seeing a pure white beach was lovely. We headed back for a hour or two on Thursday as well.

I will never be too old for a cartwheel or handstand!

Tuesday was a pretty big night as we went for some beers in Costa Traviesa (the bar I always talk about) to count down to midnight for Paulina's last drink of her 20's and to see in her birthday.

Well it went from a few beers to about 20 people turning up and 20 tequila shots ordered for Paulina to do! She did really well and had 5! She is a lawyer and had work at 8am the next morning so I have no idea how she even managed 5!

It was great fun and the bar staff were great getting involved with all the banter and even gave Nathan, Denisa and I a free bottle of red to share which was so kind. A real highlight was at midnight we sang happy birthday to Paulina in 5 different languages and then she made a speech in Spanish and then English! She is such a nice, kind person it was lovely to be here for her birthday.

Wednesday we went out for a birthday meal at Corwatt on the seafront which was nice and relaxing with amazing food and wine and excellent company. We had so much seafood that I have never tried before like Loco and an octopus type fish which was really nice!

We got to have our second try of Pisco Sours, they are really lovely!

As for school this week the youngest class were learning about fruit and vegetables. We made chefs hats, aprons and on Friday we finished the week by making a fruit salad which was so much fun.

Although it took half the lesson to get the coconut open!

Friday evening we headed back to the hostel for a fun night and everyone came with lots of food and drinks to share.

Nathan made his lovely garlic and olive focaccia bread. How it works when we bake out here is I go to the shops, buy and prepare the ingredients (which involves taking the stones out of 200g of green olives) then Nathan bakes, so all the skill is his but I am going to claim about 10% thats down to me.

Saturday we went to Lago Azul again to watch the Barcelona v Real Madrid match. I have watched more football games in Taltal that in an entire year back home. I was really only interested in 2 things. Firstly getting the boys to point out Shakira's husband and secondly my fish sandwich. Yum yum yum! White fish in a toasted roll with tomatoe and avocado served with a spicy salsa called pibra which I love and will be eating with everything I can.

Sunday we went in open kayaks on the sea which was so nice. I wore my 'Gringo' shoes which are basically those sandals that old men have in Europe and wear with socks. Well I have a pair from when I worked at Kon-o-Kwee my first summer teaching canoeing and they are awesome, I can hike, swim, climb and kayak in them although they are pretty geeky looking. I was pretty happy with my old man hiking sandals though as everyone else's flip flops were coming off all over the place. Hector gave us a safety warning at the beginning, that if we heard the tsunami warning (these loud speaker things are all over the town) then we were not to paddle inland but out to sea then the navy would pick us up! Oh wow I thought please don't let that happen!

 The sea was gorgeous and so clear in places, although on our way back to shore I did have a small panic that we were on the Pacific Ocean and that sharks could definitely be around. But luckily we had a lovely afternoon kayaking with no tsunami warning, no sharks, lots of pelicans and a sealion.

It seems that every time I write a blog post I am saying that we are staying in Taltal longer and longer. We have now decided to stay until the 10th of November so that we can see the spelling bee tournament and also hear the top class read their speeches. It makes sense to us to see out a project and leave once it is over, it must be the teacher within us that has to work a half term before having a break and by the time we leave we would have been here 3 days short of 6 weeks. We also have Hector to thank for letting us stay that long!

The youngest group were learning about directions this week which was good fun as we blindfolded them one at a time and had the others giving directions like go, stop, turn right, turn left.

The rest of the classes are working on learning the words for the spelling bee. I have started to try and learn the Spanish definitions for all the English words they are learning which is proving pretty difficult!

We have a really good laugh in all our classes about how funny accents are and it is more obvious here than it has ever been that Nathan and I pronounce words differently. 

When helping Carol with her speech this week I used the word abroad. When I tried to explain it she said she had never heard of the word, then Valou the French girl working with us (who is excellent in English) said that she too had never heard of this word, so I called Hector up to the second floor of library and I asked when he was last abroad! After a confused few minutes we realised that it was my Essex accent that was causing the issue and he thought I had asked when he was last a board! Woops.

Another language incident happened the second day that Marcelo and Denisa were here. (They are the new volunteers, a married couple who live in Prague, but Marcelo is originally from Brazil and Denisa is from Slovakia, they are lovely) Anyway we said we would meet back at the cafe at 10 to 9 to walk to an office opening together for a drinks and food reception. At 8.50 Hector, Nathan and I were all sitting at the cafe, at 8.55 Hector said 'No worries they will be here soon.' At 9.05 Hector gave Marcelo a call. Marcelos reply to Hector's question of 'Are you guys coming?' Was 'I thought you said 10 tonight not 10 to 9!' This was probably another incident due to my  Essex accent!

So we have been up to lots of things outside of teaching hours this week. Martha who we are living with, her boyfriend Diego has just started a new business in Taltal, mountain bike treks! He has some fantastic new mountain bikes and wants to take people off on all different cycle treks depending on their ability. Tuesday morning the volunteers got to go off on a cycle with him. Nathan, Valou and Thomas made it to the top of the mountain.

I had a lovely leisurely cycle along the coast!

This is a great new business in Taltal and is a must do activity for anyone in this town as you can do a hard mountain trek like the others did or a beautiful coastal ride like I opted to do. You can find details about his new business on Facebook by searching Kamanchaka ecotour.

Thursday was the best night of basketball so far, I actually managed to make contact with the ball a few times which was great. Afterwards we headed to the bar for our weekly after basketball refreshments and to have our final goodbye drinks for Valou! Funny how in 10 days you can become great friends with someone I will definitely miss my gossip partner, it's the first time I've had a chance to gossip in about 3 months!

Friday night was a great and total random evening. Firstly we headed off to see a new office being opened. It is a house that has been converted into a shop and office and it is lovely. We saw Angelo one of our students cut the rope and declare his new office officially open! Then we had some sparking wine with a pineapple flavour which was lovely, followed by a ridiculously sweet drink called Ponche a la Romana which is a mixture of sweet sparking wine with pineapple ice cream. About 11pm we headed off to the brand new hostel that Marcelo and Denisa are staying in. The couple building it are friends of Hector's and invited us for opening night Pisco Sours.

Pisco sours have an interesting history as both Peru and Chile claim the drink to originally be theirs! We had the Chilean version which was amazing, Pisco, lemon juice and egg whites are all mixed up in a food processor and poured into a glass making a gorgeous foamy drink. After 2 of these and a bottle of red wine we realised it was 4am and time to go home.

Saturday we got up early (well it definitely felt early considering we went to bed around 5am) to go to a country fair type event which consisted of several stalls selling different items such a bracelets made of cotton and homemade cakes and a stage. On the stage there were several performances throughout the 5 hours ranging from a high school band to traditional Chilean dancing to Nathan performing 2 songs on the guitar. He sang Oasis, Wonderwall and Coldplay, yellow, he was really good.

He received a certificate for being a part of the event.

When the children were doing their traditional Chilean dance one of the little boys came over and took my arm to dance with him, probably everyone there except for us volunteers would know how to dance to this music.

I had no clue what I was doing but he was a little gentleman and tried to help me.

This is how it should look.

On Saturday I had my first try of ceviche which is extremely popular in Chile and Peru. Ceviche is raw fish which is cured in citrus juices and spiced with chilli and coriander. The acid in the lemon and limes changes the proteins in the fish making it look and taste as if it has been cooked. It is delicious, so fresh and has an amazing texture!

During the day on Sunday Nathan headed to Lago Azul (the bar for football games) with Daniel. They made an agreement they would talk English to each other during the first half and Spanish in the second.

In true Taltal style Sunday evening saw us all heading down to the beach for another gorgeous sunset, possibly the best yet.

“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard. 

This week this quote has rung true as we are no longer sightseeing we at living somewhere new, we are going to work, we have a schedule and a routine and I love it. 

On Monday Valou arrived from France and she is lovely and really interesting. She is a teacher as well and she has an amazing set up where she gets to work half the year full time and half the year she has off but gets paid the whole year on part time which is the perfect plan for being able to go away and do big trips. On Monday the 3 of us went off to a school in the village and helped with the mosaics that the students were making from tiny ceramic tiles. These mosaics were of the animals and plants found here in Taltal and the students had been working on them for 11 months already with Barbara and Sonia who we met on Friday evening.

We had a 4th grade group that we worked with, we went back on Tuesday to do the same and worked with the 4th grade still but a different set of students. It was really good and we will go back next Monday and Tuesday.

The rest of the week was excellent as we got to know the students at the English school more and more as the week went on. Hector uses the public library for a lot of lessons, starting at 10am with the housewives. On Wednesday Miss ViVi (one of the housewives) baked an amazing chocolate and caramel cake for breakfast which was fab but felt so naughty eating cake for breakfast. Nathan was loving it!

The 5-6 year olds were learning about parts of the body this week so we got to sing 'Heads, shoulders, knees and toes' and do the Hokey-Cokey which they loved especially the bit where you get to put 'your whole self in!' They made real progress from the beginning of the week to the end which was great to see.

The 8-10 years old are a really big, friendly and hyper group of great students but you definitely need to have activities ready and planned with these guys. When they are engaged they are absolutely excellent and their English is really good. Especially with me having very little Spanish language skills it means they have to talk to me in English.

Most groups at the school are working towards a spelling bee on the 7th of November which is great as it gives them a real focus and a competition to work towards. The words are hard and it is helping me with my spellings as I will never in my life spell the word excruciating or ambidextrous wrong again. As well as being able to spell the words they must also classify them as a noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc, this has helped me immensely as I am sure most of you who have read this blog or work with me at JRCS will know that I am not great at literacy and this is helping a great deal. So through teaching the students I am gaining a lot myself.

Hector has a great school here where the kids want to come and learn. It has been running for a little over a year now and everyone who attends is proud of what they have achieved. The public library in Taltal allows the classes to take place there which is a great space.

Back at Jo Richardson I have a classroom full of stationary, pens, glue, scissors, paper and it has made me see just how lucky the students in England are and how they take it for granted that they have so much and so many opportunities. The UK gives students fantastic opportunities to learn another language and we waste it, I know that I definitely did. This has made me realise how important the MFL department is at JRCS. Hector is giving the students and people in Taltal a great chance to learn English. Hector buys everything for the school and carries around a box of pens, paper etc for the students to use. I am sure that this project is going to grow and grow and in a few years there are going to be so many amazing English speakers in Taltal.

After 17 hours the bus pulled up and we could hear some bags being unloaded from the underneath luggage compartment. I turned to Nathan and asked him to look on his phone at the GPS and sure enough the little blue dot was on Taltal. Had it not been for our phones we would have no clue we were in the correct place, it appeared the bus had pulled up alongside a grocery shop on a small street, nothing like the bus stations we had been used to. We got off, pulled our bags to one side and looked about. From a few metres away I could see a man that looked like Hector from the Internet photos I had seen with 5 small children holding on to him. As he got closer he was smiling and greeted us as did the children with hugs and handshakes and immediately we felt welcome.

We dropped our bags at Martha's house which is where Hector had rented a room for us. Martha has a son of 13 and a daughter of 6 and a really cool house. The whole house is around a patio, you open your bedroom door and go outside to another room for the kitchen and another room for the bathroom it is very cool and really sociable. This type of house would be amazing to own but not in England as going outside to the bathroom and to take a shower would not be ideal in our rainy weather. We literally spent 5 minutes dropping our bags off and headed back to the school to find out how everything worked.

We joined in with the 8-10 year olds and then with the teenage class, whose English was really good. Hector works really hard for them and all the students enjoy the lessons and have a lot of fun. As soon as class was over some older students turned up for basketball, these students were aged between 25-45. The adult and teenage students at the school play basketball every Thursday evening, then followed by beers in the bar! (Well beers for those old enough). By the time we got into bed at midnight I had realised that this was a pretty special place where the adult students are all friends and socialise together, I already loved the vibe of the school and the village of Taltal.

Friday morning we headed out for breakfast with Hector and heard more about the school. Hector's English is excellent and he wants the people of Taltal to be able to speak English and learn like he did and give them more opportunities in the future. He does not get paid to run the school and everything he gets is by people donating to this very special project. After class on Friday we headed to a BBQ at Daniel and Pablo's place. The weather was not good and was raining which was a shame but the boys did an amazing job of making a little shelter over the BBQ so they could still cook the food!

On a side note - I got told it only rains 6 days a year in Taltal but of course that was going to happen when I was here as I seem to bring the rain everywhere I go, I even managed to bring it to Africa in summer 2011 on the school trip to Kenya!

Anyway back to Friday evening - The food was amazing and so much of it, the BBQ was lots of fun and lots of laughs were had especially at a few things that got mixed up or lost in translation. An example was when Hector asked me 'How do you call the police?' to which I responded '9,9.9!' Then he began laughing as what he had meant was 'What do you call the police?' As in nicknames for them...woops...was very funny and had us all laughing.

Saturday and Sunday were so relaxing I managed to phone home and talk to Mum, Dad, Peter and Adam for about 2 hours which was lovely to hear what they were all up to and how their weeks had been especially now Peter has moved out it was good to phone and catch them all together for once as they are all so busy. It was pretty awesome hearing how Adam was learning about moral absolutism in AS Religious Studies, made the RS geek in me smile!

Saturday evening we went out for drinks in the local bar and whatsapp'ed our adult students to see who fancied it. By about 2am there was about 10 people round a table having a great time, it was amazing! On Sunday evening a few of us headed to the beach for cups of tea and sandwiches which was lovely and something that we do not get to do at home.

Nathan and I love it here and have already extended our stay, we currently do not have an exact date we will be leaving!

We exit the lift at floor 10 and walk towards room 1004 which is the number of the apartment we will be staying in for 3 nights in Santiago de Chile. As we approach the door we can hear men's voices laughing to one another and we wonder if we have the right place, we put the key into the lock that we had been given by the concierge downstairs and open the door on 3 men having a few beers on a Sunday evening. Luis I recognised from his photo jumped up to greet us in Spanish and then a man called Johan from Germany spoke in excellent English and told us to put our bags down and come in. After a long bus journey this was a wonderful surprise to spend our evening chatting in Spanish and English and sharing red wine.

Around 10pm Luis popped out to get some meat to make dinner, back home in the UK I can't imagine anyone I know just deciding to cook at 10pm on a Sunday using fresh ingredients so going out to buy it. When he returned he started cooking a feast which turned into roast potatoes topped with strips of steak and onions then topped with eggs. While he was cooking Johan's female flat mate turned up and we all shared the food together and played dominos over more red wine.

The next day we met Johan in town and he have us a tour of Santiago, which we very much appreciated. While we were sitting eating an ice-cream Luis walked past us on his lunch break and plans for the evening were made, which we were kindly invited to. The four of us went up to the roof terrace of Luis' apartment block and drank Pisco (the traditional Chilean alcoholic drink) and watched the sunset.

We then returned to Luis apartment where another lady Katia and 2 Columbian women joined us for dinner and more red wine. I had only one glass of wine, Nathan however had about 2 bottles to himself so I went to bed at 2am and he rolled in around 4am and was not in a good way the next morning. Another excellent night in Santiago and we were so grateful for how Luis and Johan included us in their plans.

We made Luis breakfast on Wednesday morning then went off to complete our final day of sightseeing before catching the 11.45pm bus to our next destination, Taltal to volunteer at a school for 2 weeks.

Santiago will always be the place where we had one of the best, most sociable airbnb host and his friend!

Sunday morning saw me lying in bed whatsapping (texting) Alison telling her I had about 20mins before I had to be ready to leave, with 7 mins to go we were still chatting until I suddenly realised I was in bed and my bus was leaving in 57 mins so I had better get a move on! Thank god our host Fede was so sweet and had offered us a lift so I literally pulled my clothes on and threw my backpack into his KA! (All the best people have driven KA's at some point in their life, I know Samantha will agree with me).

At 9am when our bus pulled away I was grateful as the crossing between Argentina and Chile had been shut for the past few months due to snow so at least we were on our way. The drive to the crossing through the Andes was lovely.

When we arrived at the border there was snow everywhere and my choice of footwear was seeming like a mistake....my usual flipflops! So I pulled on my hoodie and braced myself to be told to exit the bus....10 minutes went by and it appeared that nothing was happening, we were not moving neither were we being instructed to get off the bus!

30 minutes went by and the heating must have been cranked up as I needed to now take off my hoddie and the older lady behind me was coughing her guts up even more so than on the 3 hour drive to the border. At this moment I thought of my brother Peter and if he had been here right now he would not be impressed with how many germs this lady was spreading around the hot bus.

1 hour passed and still no movement but I have been served a 5 day out of date piece of think, dry bread with ham and something that is meant to be cheese but is tasteless in it, which I proceed to eat as travellers cannot be picky when given free food.

90 minutes and I am still sitting there on a bus full of people speaking Spanish until now when 3 America students on their semester abroad stand up and have a really loud conversation in the aisle, which is excellent as it allows me to eavesdrop and be entertained for the next 30 minutes!

Around the 2 hour mark we are instructed to get off the bus and line up next to it, by this point although I was standing in the snow in flip flops I was just happy to be off the bus and it surprisingly wasn't cold.

After several lines and more waiting I finally got my passport stamped! Or so I thought....when I looked down yes it had been stamped but only for my exit out of Argentina, I was now being instructed to get into another line to get my stamp into Chile! More waiting!

We were instructed to get back on the bus, which then proceeded to drive 25m (honestly no more than the length of a swimming pool) where we were again waiting before being told to get off with our hand luggage. We all lined up inside a room with our bags open on a table. Then our suitcase and big bags were all being taken off the bus and put through the scanners in front of us!

Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse....yes you've guessed it....my bag goes through he scanner and the woman starts signalling for it to be taken to one side! I have to then wait for the whole bus' bags to be scanned and reloaded onto the bus while mine and about 5 others are on a separate table. We are called over and told to open our bags! What a nightmare I have 10 months of clothes for 3 different continents I am expected to unpack! Luckily it wasn't too bad!Finally back on the coach after 4 hours at the border, in what only can be described as the most inefficient and badly organised crossing of any border i have ever encountered, and we are on our way into Chile.

We start with an absolutely insane drive down the mountain with several hairpin turns and I was extremely grateful I had taken my travel sickness pills.

Once at the bottom we continue to drive through the Andes and I was blown away by the difference from the rocky side in Argentina to the lush, green mountains on the Chilean side. There were cactus, wild chickens, llamas and the greenest grass I have ever seen! I felt pretty excited to be spending the next 6 weeks exploring this country.