Altitude can make the dreams wild...

So much has happened in my life since my last post. For starters I found a much better job teaching at the Los Pelambres copper mine some 400 Km north of Santiago. I'm working with a different language institute as well. The contract is through McLean Consulting, a much smaller company then Linguatec or Tronwell. It is nice to once again work at a business where I work directly with the owner. I still don´t know who owns Tronwell, the legend is that Willie Tronwell owns it, but I don´t believe it.

For this gig I ride a bus around five hours to Salamanca, where I spend the night. The next morning I get up around five am, catch a bus to the base of the mountain that houses the mine. The ride takes around an hour or so. We go through security, I eat there at the base, then head up the hotel mina where I write this entry. All the facilities are very nice, remind me slightly of the army, but are all much nicer. There is a very tight sense of community among the miners here. Most are away from their families for most of the week and often feel like visitors in their own homes.

I teacTuesdayay, sleep at the hotel, where I havsatellitete TV, and good food. In the morning I get up and teach all of my five one and a half hour classes once again, catch a ride down the mountain and then catch a bus to Santiago. Finally at around 3:00 am I make it home and can sleep in the next day (que rico!) It is nice to be on a bit of adventure during to week, not to mention the fact that it pays much better then Tronwell.

Anyways, it is about time for lunch,

hasta luego....

Gotta work in the mornin....every mornin

Yes that´s right, I now work every morning, at 8:30 am. I figure that at some point I will finally be used to getting up at this hour but until this day, I continue to down the Nescafè. It would be much nicer if I didn´t have to work until around 9:15 pm. I mean sure, I have some free time during the day but if it is less then a couple hours then I end up spending that time sitting on a park bench reading the newspaper.

In other news, Pinochet was stripped of his immunity by a Chilean court today, I heard this before, so I don´t know exactly what the difference between the two deceisions are. His name is a no-no, expecially in my spanish classes, it is one of the things that they warn you not to talk about. Pinochet was supposed to go in front of a court a week or two ago, but "fainted" the day before. I don´t know if I buy that one.

Chilean courts are also going through a dramatic change at this point as well. For the first time in recent history all trials will involve oral proceedings, instead of only written ones which was the system until now. This system had a test run in Conception, but now as of July 1st has came to Santiago. It already is having effects on soceity. A Chilean Senator, and accused pedofile, ended up confessing to his crimes because he didn´t want to face the oral proceedings. He then quickly denied that it happened the next day, but really, is pedofilia something you just admit to because you don´t want to go to court?

and the week begins again

Monday morning, it always creeps up on me. Luckily I didn´t have any classes this morning. Tomorrow I have a morning class at 8:30, if the student actually shows up. Getting people to come to class can be a difficult matter. Most people who need the classes are also quite busy. It means that I can never be certain how many classes will actually happen. If they cancel ahead of time, I don´t get paid, if the don´t I still get it on my check. It can make teaching a frustrating business as you never know exactly how much your going to make for a given month.

I have also deceided to start back up with Spanish classes. I really need to understand some of the grammar, and it just isn´t happening through conversation or reading the newspaper. It is money that I would like to save for traveling, but I think that it is going to a good cause, my ability to communicate here in Chile.