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!