Fun at Colegio San Lorenzo

Alright, I know should explain what I have been doing the past three weeks and eventually I will write a long post explaining things, but some fun things happened today at school and I wanted to write about them while they were fresh in my mind.
First, I should mention that I learned to dance "cueca" yesterday. Here is some more information about it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cueca. Cueca is the national dance of Chile and the national independence day is coming up so a lot of school children are learning the dance. So yesterday afternoon Cole and I were ushered into the school cafeteria for a dance lesson with some of the other teachers. I am not a very good dancer, especially when it comes to dances with certain steps and movements. After a while I was starting to get it but I was still terrible. Cueca is supposed to mimic a rooster courting a hen. So the men typically wear spurs and shake hankerchiefs around to draw attention to themselves and the women are supposed to remain elusive and play hard to get. But in the end the man wins the woman over and the two dancers come together.
Today after Lectio (I will explain what that is in another post) some 5th grade girls cornered me and asked me to speak some English for them. They found it hilarious and then started to ask me, in Spanish, the usual questions, like why are you here which is a difficult enough question as it is to answer in English, let alone in Spanish to a bunch of grade school students. Anyway, the bell rang for class and they all insisted that I sit in on their math class. So 7 or 8 girls dragged me over to their classroom and sat me down in the front of the room where an even larger crowd gathered to ask me even more questions, such as do you like "High School Musical" and "Hannah Montana". They were somewhat disappointed to find out I did not like either of those things.
The girls had told me they had a "prueba" that day during class, but for some reason I thought the word prueba meant event and so I figured they were going to the cafeteria for a presentation or some cueca dancing or something. But it turns out the word prueba actually means test but I was still oblivious to this. So the teacher comes in and at this point almost all the girls in class are giddy and loud. I try to ask the teacher if I can sit in on the class and she tries to tell me they have a test but neither one of us understands each other. Finally, another girl that works in Tutoria (I will explain this too) with me comes in to rescue me.
Throughtout the day I kept running into the same 5th grade girls. I was on my way to midday prayer during recess when a pack of them stopped me for more questioning (I had no idea what they were asking me). They held me up for a few minutes until I finally convinced them that I had to get to church (nessicito ir a la iglesia). So I walk into the side chapel throughly embarrassed because I am late (which isnt really a big deal here) and everyone in church sees a pack of pre-teen girls running away and giggling when I open the door to the church. They caught me again a little while later on the way to lunch and insisted that I accompany them on the retreat that they were leaving for in an hour.
The rest of the afternoon was pretty low key. I found a few kids throwing rocks at each other and tried to convince them to stop. They ignored me and then a couple of them gave me the finger which they all thought was hilarious. Eventually Cole and I found some nice kids to play games with. We tried to teach how to play baseball with an old 2x4 and a ball made of paper and tape but they kept trying to play by their own rules. We decided it would just be simpler to play hide and seek so we did that until they had to leave.
If you have read this far you are probably thinking to yourself "What the hell is he doing in Chile? Playing kids games and breaking young girls hearts?" I will be honest, we dont have much work to do right now. We are just kind of hanging around the school and getting to know the kids. The dean of the school says he has a lot of work for us to do but he hasnt given us anything yet. But dont worry. We will starting working really hard, really soon. Things move kinda slow down here.
Well I gotta go, one of the cardinals here in Chile is saying mass on his birthday later on. Should be a pretty sweet Friday night.

Finally

Hey everybody. I am in Chile and I am doing fine. I dont have internet access at home but I can use the computers at the school I am working at. However, posts will probably be long and infrequent so I will do my best to keep them organized and interesting.
I should probably back up and explain what I am doing in Chile. For the next year or so I will be part of the Saint Johns Benedictine Volunteer Corps (SJBVC). The program was started several years ago to send recent SJU grads to various Benedictine Monasteries around the world to live and volunteer. Cole Woodward (SJU 08) and I were selected to be the first SJBVC members to travel to Chile and work with the Manquehue Movement in Santiago. Manquehue is not a monastic community but a lay Catholic community that lives and works in a Benedictine way. They operated three schools (San Lorenzo, San Anselmo and San Benito) as well as a womens shelter and they also have retreat house at their community of San Jose in Patagonia. Cole and I will mostly be working at San Lorenzo, which is located in the Recoleta area of Santiago and is a free, private school in a very poor part of the city.
Right now we arent exactly sure what we will be doing in the school. We will probably be working on something in either or all of the following areas: recycling program/environmental education, helping with sports teams, or tutoring students in english class. Its funny, but also sad in a way, I am a young and energetic person, with a college diploma and I have lived in an advanced society my entire life. Yet I feel like I have no skills and nothing that I have know of that could be of assistance here. It was easy for me to sit in the comfort of the United States and think of all the good that could be done in the world, but when I got here I realized that its not that easy. There are a lot of barriers to overcome; resources, cultural differences, language (I am not doing so well with the Spanish down here). Thats not to say that San Lorenzo is struggling. This school is very well run and has done so amazing things for the poor in the area. Its just been hard for me to figure how to combine what I can do with what they need.
Anyway. We will also be travelling to Patagonia, in September for 10 days and again from January until March. We are living in the guesthouse of the community (Casa de Gringos as it is sometimes called) which is located in Providencia, a nice neighborhood close to downtown Santiago. Thats all for now. Feel free to comment on anything or suggest a name for this blog. I will try to write a better post later and explain all that has happened in the past two weeks.

Paz
Charlie