And so, real life has begun

My initial assumption was that I wouldn't find work until March. Everyone told me that it was useless to hope for a job beforehand, since the whole country is on vacation right now (which means either getting out of Santiago, or sleeping until 4 or 5 in the afternoon), so I didn't put much stress into finding a job immediately. To my surprise, an institute contacted me last minute and asked if I could start giving classes immediately to a few bigwigs in a company called Oracle. A bit frazzled and taken aback, I of course said yes, and I went in for training. Training was simply getting a lot of paperwork shoved in my face, a brief overview of what to expect and what to do, and a lot of "good luck's"....Oh.dear.

My first day of work was yesterday and I nervously made my way to the other side of the city where the high rise buildings rest, and the dress code turns to a business-like norm. I had to keep reminding myself that although I'd never taught before, in this situation I was lucky enough to have all the information (the English language) already ingrained in my head, and my sole job was to simply speak (which my mother knows I have no problem with). This class was a one-on-one class, so it was much more like a conversation than anything. We sat in a board room and talked about ourselves, our lives, and anything else that came to the table. My student, Oscar, said he doesn't want to waste time with the books, but simply wants to speak. Ok...easy enough. I will be working with him until September (I have no idea what we'll talk about 5 hours a week until September) and I have a funny feeling that we'll either end up with nothing to talk about, or I'll turn into a foreign "therapist" for a few months... In addition to Oscar, I have added on three other private lessons as well. One is through my institute, and two are people who responded to an ad I put up on the internet who would like to pay me to talk to them. It boggles my mind a bit that someone would pay to simply have me use my own language in conversation, but I have quickly realized that they don't have access to native speakers very often and many advanced level students are just itching to get some speaking practice in.

All of a sudden, my life went from teetering on boring, to running around the city to meet with potential students and trying to set a schedule that fits around my teaching time and travel time. As of this week I have classes everyday, and I'm going to have to remember who is who and what we each talked about. Luckily, giving private lessons is fairly easy to do on a whim since they are simply paying me to open my mouth and form words in my native tongue.

Other than the job, things are going wonderfully here. I have a group of friends that I feel comfortable calling on a day-to-day basis, and I am looking forward to moving into my new apartment in March (many of you have asked for my new address, and I mentioned that I'd put it on my blog, so I'll include it at the end) so that I can be settled once and for all and not have to worry about moving. I spent my first day outside the city a few days back when some of my friends and I went to the mountains to escape the noise and eat some empanadas. It was absolutely beautiful, and I'll write about that and try to put some pictures in as soon as I can. I was beginning to forget about the nature part of Chile that I had been looking so forward to seeing, so this day trip was just what I needed to remind me of the gritty Chile that I hope to see more of.

I hope you're all doing well back home. I miss you all and think about you all the time. The longer I am here, the more it sinks in how far away I really am.

For those of you who wanted my address...

NEW ADDRESS AS OF MARCH:

Alexandra Covucci
250 Av. Manuel Montt
Providencia
Santiago de Chile

(They don't use postal codes...so no, it doesn't have a postal code)

CELL PHONE NUMBER (in case anyone needs to get in touch...I'll include my house phone number when I move there):

Dialing from the US- dial 011-56-962601413
011 = international access
56 = Chile country code
962601413 = my cell

(if anyone tries it and it doesn't work, please let me know)

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