This week was about breaking boundaries and imagining possibilities. The week flew by! Over the weekend, my host family had a group of family friends over for an asado (barbecue, Chilean style). The best food by far was choripan, which is basically delicious sausage (chorizo) cooked on a grill, served on bread (pan). We ate it with this awesome green sauce (salsa verde) made from mayo, cilantro, lime, and a couple of other secret ingredients (it someone's secret family recipe). Sorry for the lack of pictures - we ate everything...
On Monday, I taught one of my first English language (as a second language) lessons from scratch in 8th grade. Tuesday, I sang for a group of 10th graders at their request. That same day my co-teacher and I brought the students to the library to practice speaking conversational English. We were supposed to switch tables, but all of us wanted to stay with our original group.
Wednesday, we traveled to a coastal town called Lota, where we took a tour into a real mine under the ocean! They packed us into an elevator (the term elevator is used loosely here - it was more of a small cage), and they released us down into the depths of the mine. The tour guide had previously been a miner, as were his father and grandfather. His family lived in the housing adjacent to the entryway of the mine, and he told us stories of his youth, and of the miners who worked and perished in the mine known as El Chiflon del Diablo! Despite some silly photo ops, it was an incredible experience of being able to see the tough conditions of the miners, as this was an adventure but at the same time a tour where over 3,000 workers had lost their lives. The best part was venturing into what seemed like a crawlspace, but was actually a passageway the miners had to travel. The only option was to do a sort of crouch walk or crawl to the other side. 
Today continued to push my thinking about what is possible in education and in schools. was a day of music and arts. Everything basically came to a stop, half of the students went on field trips (some went to a park and painted), and the rest of the students saw a number of bands from the school perform, with most students playing as many as three instruments apiece. They even performed out in the hallway, and everyone, deans, the principal, the students, went and watched, and after, went back to business as usual. Broadly, we don't do our students justice in the US.Tonight I get to see my host sister perform with her dance team at the school! I've gotten to see some rehearsals, and they're ready! I'm sad that it's almost the final week. My host family has been nothing short of incredible. We've had a lot of quality time, especially during once, good talks, and there's always someone playing or listening to good music in the house. Time to go eat a chacarero (typical Chilean sandwich).
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