almost back to work

Yikes. I may or may not have to be at school tomorrow for the start-of-semester teacher meetings. I can't imagine why I would, and neither can anyone else, but the forces of habit and duty are strong in Chile. (There's a meeting for all the teachers, which will be in Spanish I can't understand, about responsibilities I don't have. I feel like I could stay home and sleep in and I'd be fine.)

I trucked in to Santiago yesterday morning to be on the Volunteer Panel for the WorldTeach Semester volunteers. They were a little quiet about asking questions, but that's okay, because it was me, Bennett, and Jeremy, and I've started to realize the depth of chemistry in my volunteer group, because we can just go on for 20 minutes at a time telling stories or laughing amongst ourselves. Talking for 2 hours about our experiences was pretty easy.

(FYI, I write this blog in part so I don't spend days trying to tell everybody all my stories when I get back.)

I got to meet Ryan, the fabled old friend of my housemate Steve, and he's pretty great, both with and without Steve.

I got to meet Katie, finally! She also seems to be pretty awesome, and I'm glad we got along in person. I'm looking forward to taling to her more.

It's fascinating what a different group dynamic they have: it's hard to get this group to talk, whereas it's hard to get my group to shut up. I'm really interested to hear about their placements and their experiences of settling in and adjusting.

In the evening after the panel, we had dinner at Las Vacas Gordas, which, after the Mendoza trip, I now know is an Argentine restaurant, though nowhere do they tell you that. The filete parrillero was some amazing variety of grilled tenderloin.

Afterward, I figured I'd go home and sleep in my own bed; this was the weekend I learned that the last bus for Valparaiso/Vina del mar leaves at 10:30pm. I actually took a taxi home, of all things, for CH$10,000--the bus is CH$3200, so it wasn't so bad--and it was cramped, but only an hour or so.

It was, again, good to be home.