Fun times socialising!

Hola!
Ahora, life is fabulous! My new friends from the viña are so lovely. On Thursday night I went to a birthday party of one of them with Shawn, and had a wonderful time, trying to speak in Spanish, understanding about half of what was going on, having some drinks and then going dancing. I got home about 3.30am and had class the next day - which was no problem. It has just been quite a while since I have had to deal with working when I am that tired! People were so patient with me though, and I managed to have some very good conversations with a couple of people (I think - who actually knows if we were talking about the same things!)

Then I laid low on Friday, but on Saturday we went for a BBQ tea up Cerro San Cristbal (the big hill in the middle of Santiago). There were about 10 people, and Pachi had her daughter, Sophia, with her. Sophia is three, and after overcoming her initial shyness was seemingly fascinated with me. Probably helped I can't really answer her back or tell her off..... So we spent a lot of time playing and generally being silly. After dark the views out over the city were amazing and spectacular. Santiago is a big place and is really lovely by night.

After delivering Pachi and Sophie home we went and hung out at a couple of different people's houses. I was understanding more all the time, and they were forcing me to speak in Spanish, and everytime I slipped up was told about it! I think that I have arranged an 'inter-cambio' with another girl, me teaching her English and her teaching me Spanish, and I am getting Salsa lessons from another guy. English is quite the tradeable commodity - who knew?!

The salsa lessons started last night. Apparently everyone here can salsa except for me, which is fine. I am going to learn. It is so much fun!!! And quite addictive I suspect. And at least dance is a medium where the language is going to be less of a problem. So we danced salsa until the small hours and then came home. What a wonderful couple of weeks! I feel so lucky to have met such a lovely group who are willing to be so patient and nice to me!

Work has also been going really well this week. I have a new class which started on Friday. Was quite tricky as I knew nothing about it - just had to show up with my boss Joanne and teach some random people of an unknown level for 1.5hrs. Not exactly what they teach you to do in your training! Luckily they are two very chatty men of a good level who just want conversation mostly anyway - and talking is something that I can do! This week I have two classes starting at Lufthansa - yep teaching English to Spanish speaking employees of a German company. They are 3hr classes and are at the airport which is about 3/4 of an hour out of town. It should be interesting. And I have no idea how I am going to fill 3hrs - I suspect it isn't as easy as just planning two back to back classes. Anyway, will see how it goes and learn as we go along I guess. That approach has been working well for me so far.

Next week it is Labour day on Friday, which means a long weekend. My tourist visa is about to expire, and with the problems getting stamps and notarisation etc because of protests, general red tape and my lack of Spanish, I haven't yet got my work visa submitted. So I am going to go to Argentina for the weekend. Mendoza is apparently about 8hrs on the bus through the Andes, so should be an interesting trip. Mendoza is the area that produces most of the wine in Argentina so I don't think I will be short on things to do. I haven't (yet) managed to convince anyone that they want to come with me, but I am feeling a bit more confident that I can manage on my own. I managed when I got here (with help admittedly), and I speak and understand much more now, how hard can it be? (I know, famous last words).

Anyway, that is the plan. Right now I have a whole bunch of lessons to plan for next week.
Nos vemos,
KiwiKaz