21st September 2007

Hello from Chile,

I found an internet café close to where I live.  I live with the R.S. teacher´s mother (Mercedes), so it´s just the 2 of us, but right next door, well I say next door, it´s actually classed as just one house, but they are completely separate.  Anyway next door lives her daughter and 2 children, a 22 year old girl (Nataly), and a 13 year old boy (Freddy).  The girl works in the same school as me, so I go with her to the school in the morning.  The RS teacher (Roberto) lives about 10 minutes away and he has a 4 year old boy (Matteo), a 3 year old girl (Teresita) and a 0 year old girl (Martina).  It was the 3 year old´s birthday on Saturday, so we went to a party, which was fun, and I met the whole family, as well as a clown, who also happened to be the science teacher at the school.

The house I live in is very small, but my bedroom is big, because it´s meant for 2 people.  Although the house is basic it does have everything you need, although you have to light a heater to get hot water in the bathroom, and I´ve still not actually managed to light that without help.  It´s very cold here at the moment, it was hot the first 2 days, hotter than it was in England when I left, but now it´s freezing.  It´s not too cold at night though, because the bed has like 7 sheets, so when you´re under all that, you are hot, although it does also feel like it´s suffocating you a bit, because they´re so heavy.

I started school on Monday, it´s really nice, it´s very big, and the classes are like 40 people per class, although the older ones, like 14 years old the classes are smaller.  I´ve been in classes between prekinder which is like 4 years old, up to te 14 year olds classes... My favorite at the moment are the 10-12 years olds, and I don´t really like prekinder, coz they don´t know anything, and the lessons are more boring.  There are 4 english teachers besides me, Felipe who lived in Canada for 3 years, so can speak English really well, then Ana María, Ingrid and Paula. 

The food here isn´t that good... Breakfast is bread with a bit of cheese, lunch is like a soup normally, and then dinner is either a soup or more bread.  Basically it´s just tonnes of bread.

There´ll be some pictures on the way soon, but I stupidly managed to leave the camera cable at home, but it should be sorted out soon.

Bye

Simon as a Huaso "Cowboy"

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