The Week with 13 Absences

Hi friends

Well, let’s not sugarcoat it, this week was pretty tough. For starters, half of my class was taken down with a nasty flu-like virus. On Monday and Tuesday, we had 12 kids absent, all with the same symptoms –fever, stomach ache, headache and body aches. By Monday afternoon, Dani had caught it and went to the doctor. He gave her a 4-day licencia to rest (a licencia is basically a doctor’s note giving you time off of work). This meant that I was flying solo for the week.

Tuesday was pretty stressful for me since the ones that did come to school were a little crazy. For the rest of the week, I thankfully had a substitute teacher to help me out. We have some tough kiddos in our class so we need one teacher to manage the kids and the other to teach, with just one teacher, the routine is thrown off and things get out of hand.

With many kids absent, I wasn’t able to teach any new material as I’d just have to reteach it the following week. We spent a lot of time working on our Father’s Day gifts. We asked the kids to bring something that their father loved such as a book, a hat or a soccer ball. We took a picture of them and then made a cute popsicle stick frame for it. We also made a coupon book and a card.

By Tuesday night, I was so stressed out that my greatest fear finally came true. I locked my keys inside my apartment while I was switching my laundry. The conserje was not much help, he gave me a Sprite bottle and cut two plastic strips for me. He wanted me to break in. I tried really hard, but I couldn’t do it so I asked my neighbor. It took two grown men 45 minutes to get it open. For any robbers out there who conveniently know English and read my blog… I got a second lock installed this weekend. So don’t even think about it.

The week ended much better than it began. The absent kids started to trickle back in, so by Friday we had 8 out. Dani is feeling much better so I will be relieved to see her tomorrow morning. I am proud of myself for not catching this nasty virus (knock on wood)! I usually always get sick here, so this is quite an accomplishment.

This week, León wasn’t feeling so well. I started to get concerned so I had the vet come out. She thinks he had an upset stomach and put him on antibiotics.

We also had an air emergency this week again so license plates that ended in 1 and 2 were not permitted to drive. I just got news that there will be another one tomorrow, this time for numbers 8 and 9.

On the weekend I went to a gringo birthday party my friend from work invited me to. I really enjoyed myself, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a room with so many gringos in Chile before! The party was in an event room at the top of an apartment building so the view was great! Afterwards, we headed out to a club. Believe it or not, it was my first time at a club in Chile. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but we had a fun time.

Laughable Moments:

I was amused (and disgusted) that a person sits in the bathroom at the club with a roll of toilet paper and you have to give her like 50 cents for it.
I told the kids this week that we are survivors!! We have to stay strong and wash our hands a lot.
We went to McDonald’s afterwards and apparently many of the stray dogs hang around outside. I proceeded to give an entire medium French fry order to the pups.
My students excitedly came up to me after finding a small white rock. “ Miss! We found a dinosaur teeth!”
When taking the Father’s Day picture, I made a red X on the floor for the kids to stand on. When I instructed them to stand on the red X, many of them put their dad’s favorite item on the red x instead.
One of my students brought in a picture of himself and his sister as his father’s favorite thing
My co-worker who is recovering from a cold told me that all last week she “had her nose in her hand”. I looked at her really weird and said “what?!” apparently that’s a Spanish saying for when your nose is constantly running.

^^ I met this friend on my walk -People put jackets on the stray dogs :)

^^ I got an envelope from the headmistress at SC which made me REALLY nervous. Only the gringos are invited to this grand breakfast. PS, Casino is the cafeteria not the actual casino.