Settled In By: Allison Bohn

            This week went by really fast. I have finally settled in and gotten into a routine. I can’t believe that I only have one week left. I don’t know where the time has gone.

            Last Saturday my family took me to Lenga, which is a small town on the coast. The water with the mountains in the background was absolutely beautiful. Lenga is known for its restaurants that serve fresh seafood straight from the ocean. I had a type of grilled fish that was excellent!

Beautiful Lenga where we ate delicious fresh fish!

            I am enjoying working in the school and getting the chance to talk with the kids. Some days I work with the art teacher and it is interesting to see the creative projects that the students have to do. A group of sixth graders came and showed my teacher one of their projects, which was a contraption that could pick up a ball. It was made out of wooden sticks and they used syringes connected to tubes. The way the “arm” moved was by pushing water in or out of the tubes using the syringes. It was a very cool project and I was amazed that such young students did it.

Fifth grader's contraption that can pick up a ball. 

            I have also been working in a math class with fifth and sixth grade students. I enjoy working in this class because although I don’t speak Spanish I can still help the students because math is the same everywhere. The only major difference is that when writing numbers where we use a decimal Chileans use a comma and where we use a comma Chileans use a decimal so it takes some getting use to. It is also interesting to see how they divide and multiply versus how we do it in the U.S. It appears that they do a lot more of the process in their head where as in the U.S. most teachers force students to write out every single step.

How Chileans multiply. 

On Friday, with the help of students from the school, we went and planted some trees. My group consisted of two boys and one girl. They were very eager to plant the trees so it turned out to be a lot of fun!        

My awesome tree planting team!