Picture this: The stage is set. The crowd is on their feet. The speakers are all plugged in and the mics are in hand. It must be a local rap duo, you think to yourself as the background beat starts to thump. The duo begins their performance and they're dropping rhymes and similes like it's a poetry slam. A couple minutes go by and the crowd isn't really into it, in fact they seemed pretty pissed off by the free concert.
Ahh that's right, it's not at a concert but rather the subway. The rappers realize they've annoyed more people than they anticipated and slyly gets off at the next stop, where they are welcomed with open arms by the Metro Police. Some might call this little charade absurd, I call it my work commute on Wednesays. Since then I've had the pleasure of seeing two more free concerts on the Metro, both entertaining and oddly mesmerizing.
I've had a full week of teaching under my belt so far and it's been quite eye-opening. Each class I've had has asked the same question once I start talking: "Excuse me, teacher, but are you from America-America?" From there I always get up and show them the map of the U.S. and point out San Francisco. They're usually all really excited to be learning from an actual American, but for me, that means I'm expected to know everything about the English language. I've now realized that through this past week I know a lot less about English than I thought. I've had the unfortunate disposition to simply answer "I don't really know," more times than I'd like to admit. So while this week has proved to be quite a challenge, it's also been awesome hearing their thoughts about Chile and what I should do and know.
What I should know according to my students, is Spanish. What I should do, is be a tourist for a month. So I'm currently 0 for 2, considering I can't speak Spanish as of yet and don't have enough free time to be a tourist. All in due time I suppose (hope). As of yesterday I also finally got to move out of the hostel. While it was a great hostel and enjoyable to meet many new people from all over the world, there were certain times it was overwhelming. Take this for example: It's a Sunday night and you have to wake up at 7:30am to go teach the next day. You wake up because of a sudden noise. As you aimlessly toss about your arms to find your phone, you find it and notice the illuminated numbers read 3:50. As you're half asleep the noises get louder above you. It's almost as if there's a 15 person moving crew picking up the bunk beds and throwing them around the room in some sort of demolition fashion. This goes on for a solid 3 hours at least and all of a sudden you have 1 hour until you have to get up. I think that was probably the final straw, as I proceeded to bring all my belongings to an apartment showing and told the realtor I was ready to move in ASAP. Thankfully, the place is awesome and has a great location. I'll be sure to let you guys know the experience of living alone for the first time ever.