So Elisa lost her top front tooth yesterday at school and El Raton de Dientes came through with a whopping 500 Chilean Pesos. What was incredible was that Elisa insisted on writing to El Raton in Spanish so she wrote a note that said "Elisa diente para raton." In only days she is already speaking a lot - it all come so naturally to a 6 year old - so unfair!!!
I am working on my Spanish as well but am being distracted by using my Hebrew! I officially asked if I could volunteer at the school in the Centro de Padres (sort of a bookstore run by the PTO that is open from 7:30-9:30 every morning). I am going to do it every Monday and Friday and see how it goes. I got "trained" this morning which meant I sat around with three woman, drank coffee and learned chilean slang - they also showed me around the shop and how to use the cash register but the focus was on the coffee. Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, there is not much of a cafe culture nor really a coffee culture here - more of a Nescafe culture - it will take some getting used to but the hanging out will be fun. I "conversed" for a whole hour in Spanish with some sign language thrown in.
Afterwards I had a meeting with J.'s teacher to figure out how to get his books that are no longer sold in stores because it is the middle of the year. We concluded that the authors will just have to forgo their proceeds this time around and we gave the book to the copy center to be copied. As I was waiting for the meeting (they have a special place with little conference room for meeting with parents) there was another woman sitting there. She said "hola" and then proceeded to introduce herself in broken English with an Israeli accent because she knew who I was. It turns out that she moved here last week from Panama. Her husband is working for the Israeli government and was in Panama for three years and will be in Chile for three years. Her kids are in kindergarten, 2nd and 4th grades. We spoke mostly in Hebrew with a bit of Spanish thrown in. I think that she will be my first friend - yeah!!! Of course, my Hebrew will get better but my Spanish may not....
The other think that we are adapting to is all of the security around anything Jewish. In most countries outside of North America there is a lot of security at anything Jewish but I guess that I haven't had to deal with it on a daily basis. At the school there are guards surrounding all of the entrances that I am told just have radios and not guns. They are there all the time. During school hours you have to go through a series of doors to enter the school and if they don't know you they really drill you. Luckily, both at the Estadio (club) and the school they recognize us now. At the Estadio they make the cars open their trunks, go around the car with a mirror to make sure nothing is under the car, have you put in a code, scan your hand and THEN you are allowed in to sweat (I worked out this morning for the first time and it was the first time I sweat since we arrived).
As part of our membership I have access to the personal trainers in the gym. Today there were four guys there and four of us working out so they felt a need to show me how to use the elliptical machine. After we established that I had used one before and that I had no idea what they were saying (in an extremely mubbly Chilean Spanish) they left me alone. Maybe I'll make use of them when I understand them better!
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