The Running Woman

Thursday 12^th October

Day Forty-Three

Last working day of the week! Who-hoo!

Jumping out of bed (well it was the nearest I’d get to it in my life) I dashed straight for the shower again ahead of Jose. Perfect. Showered, dressed, dried hair, packed bag ate breakfast and was ready to leave at 7.30am. How good is that!

My rucksack was somewhat heavier today since I was taking my computer to school to copy Bernie’s CD’s and a change of clothes for when I got there.

My journey to Monte Grande is now becoming somewhat of a local curiosity with the workers at the Pisco factory watching me speed walk by in my tiny little shirts and top and today was no exception, I just got a few more waves today. The morning sun was nice and bright and Britney was spurring me along the way, 15mins down the road I passed Claudia’s house and 5minutes later was walking through La Jarilla where I nodded my head several times and said “Good-Morning” to the people as I passed. The other side of the village I decided I was able to jog the second half all the way into school and was rewarded with several claps, cheers, waves and flashing of lights as I jogged downhill, my rucksack thumping me on each side as I went and slowly lopsiding itself till I had to re-tighten the straps. Jogging to the bottom of the hill I continued on, skipped up the steps of the school and arrived puffed and elated at the office where I received several stares from bemused teachers and students. Now to find that shower…..or not.

Olga, the person in charge today decided that O would be an excellent candidate to replace Jorge in his absence from school with a sprained ankle. Could I possibly take his class of 5^th formers for their lesson today?

That is their DOUBLE lesson (1hour 30 mins) of physical education.

Still on adrenalin high I agreed to the challenge and at 8.30 set off to find my class. Then a thought occurred to me; what do they do in Phys Ed over here? And more importantly, what am I going to do for 90minutes with no plan of action?

Standing in front of the class practically wetting myself in fear, I asked them what they would like to do and hoped for some reasonably sensible answers. As it happened they all wanted to play football including the girls so that wasn’t too bad. I should have left it at that, but since my body as seizing up after the run I decided to show them some stretches. Now this was probably not the easiest thing to do with my knowledge of Spanish but I gave it a go and Bless Em, so did they although the puzzled looks on their faces told me they weren’t quite getting the idea.

Out on the court I got them all lined up with space to move and started to explain to them about stretching to warm-up the muscles.

“Before exercise you should do these exercises to help your muscles” if you exercise without doing these you could hurt yourselves” was the only way I could explain in my limited Spanish why we were doing what we were doing.

Going through the stretches the best I could do is explain where it should be hurting but I’m not sure that many got it, and some of the girls when stretching their hamstrings were halfway into doing a headstand, as you can tell I wasn’t very good at explaining this in Spanish. After watching them try their best for 5 minutes I decided to call it quits, or move swiftly on, and gave them the ball to start off with.

It was here they changed the game to what I thought was going to be a version of dodge ball, but looked slightly like a disorganised game of rounders where you hit people with the football to knock them out. The football being old and hard this was going to be very likely that is if they could actually aim at a moving target!

Finding a smaller, less dense ball the game carried on until, in my infinite wisdom and ignoring my earlier attempts at explaining things in Spanish, I thought about teaching them rounders. This was slightly more successful than before but still in the end the game was abandoned in favour of football – a game of girls against boys, me being on the girl’s team (like I can play).

As expected the boys were every so slightly better at the game than the girls and instead of piling on top of the ball kept their positions and thereby were able to pass the ball to one of their unmarked players and score goals. I pointed out this strategy to the girls and tried to suggest they each marked one boy, all to no avail and so slowly (actually a lot slower than I imagined) the score rose to 5: nil. An hour in and I was knackered and retired to the goalie position hoping I wouldn’t be needed, but since the only team scoring goals were the boys this wasn’t a particularly smart move on my part. Diving on the ball as it came past, or rather accidentally kicking one of my male students and obtaining the ball, I proceeded to kick it to the other end of the pitch to get it away from me. Surprise, surprise, it went straight into the other goal!!!!

We’d scored!!!

I’d scored!!!

Oh my goodness! This definitely merited a group hug from the girls’ team. The score did eventually finish 6 nil but I did call time 10 minutes early since by now I really was feeling like I’d done a full day’s workout. If only that had been it for the day….

Brea over the fifth year still had time on their hands and I got to play again for another 20 minutes before I had to teach the Seventh graders with Bernie and for once I was actually looking forward to seeing this rabble. Even better was the fact that they were involved in the school’s anniversary celebrations so they didn’t even have the full 45 minute lesson, only 20 minutes during which they sat quietly throughout although there were 4 of us in the room, Bernie’s boss and another worker observing the lesson and Bernie’s work. It was at this point Bernie asked me for a favour – Could I take the year 7’s for their Phys Ed class as she hadn’t got anything for them to do and didn’t want to risk them going haywire again in front of her boss.

Bollocks

Back into the breach this time supposedly in control of the seventh graders. I was persuaded by the seventh graders to go to the next door pitch to play another game of football as it was supposedly netter, it was also locked and by the time we returned I seemed to be down in numbers, either that or the girls had been whisked away. In fact the girls had gone to join some of the celebratory preparations leaving just me and five lads to play football. This time there was no fluky goal to save my embarrassment and no one to hide behind; unfortunately they needed me for the numbers so I got to play….again!

“Pass, pass to me!” yelled Matthias. Pass? I’m bloody lucky if my foot even gets contact with the ball, but I passed to my right and the ball went straight to the other team. After that I got stuck in goal, 15 minutes later I was substituted for another girl and got to sit in the shade quite happily.

Lunchtime – and I got to sit with some of my students and enjoy the delights of the school canteen. I still can’t believe that every day ALL the schools in Chile serve exactly the same thing, no school is different. Today’s delight was rice with carrots, peas and something that I think was some kind of minced meat, but could have been anything. I didn’t taste at all bad and I did eat it, well except for the peas which I hooked out, much to my students’ amusement. They were even more amused when I quietly showed them how to catapult peas across the dining room when the other teachers weren’t watching. I guess some people never grow up, but my pupils like me more now.

I skipped the pudding since I really couldn’t identify it and then got asked by another student to take their tray back as they also didn’t want the pudding and were too embarrassed to take it to the lady collecting the trays.

Why me?

Taking a break finally I went to use the internet in the office to check emails and book hotels. Feeling like I was about to collapse the world around me suddenly started to move and I thought I might now be hallucinating. I wasn’t, the ground around me was moving…. And so was the building!

The ground trembled beneath me and suddenly I realised this was an earthquake; finally I get to experience one whoopee! The tremors continued and I thought about standing in the doorway where I was told it was safest, then I thought Bollocks to that! I couldn’t be bothered to move I was far too tired. Even when the school bell was rung, presumably as the earthquake was still going strong I was very content to stay slouched in the chair and only hoped that the internet would still be working afterwards.

Within a minute the earthquake had subsided and everything returned to normal and I got on with booking hotel reservations (I hoped!)

The excitement of lunch over and it was my final lesson for the day – finally English lesson no more football!

Fourth years were on the agenda and I was looking forward to resting my feet before trudging back up the hill to Pisco Elqui, I was even considering hitching a lift again only having the sum total of 0 pesos with me (and I was in debt for 40 pesos due to the ice lolly I had at break time). The lesson started well with the clapping “Hello, Good-Morning How are you?” song then nightmare, the happy body song and dance followed by another jumping up and down song. I just couldn’t hack it any longer and once finished continued to yawn for the rest of the lesson, finally calling time early and asking Bernie if I could leave at 3.15pm to make my way home before I collapsed (there was only 30 minutes left!!)

My physical exercise was not finished for the day and I ended up having to walk the whole way home, stopping only to talk to this little women in La Jarilla who has watched me go back and forth for several days and who today asked me how I was and wasn’t I hot? Yes I bloody was the answer (though I didn’t phrase it like that). I arrived back at 4pm, hot, sticky, red-faced, hair stuck to my forehead, desperate for a shower and a change of clothes as long as it wasn’t exercise gear.

Now I could rest. No I couldn’t! I’d told Mum and Dad I’d be on the net at 4.30pm so down I dashed and got to the Café at 4.25pm.

“No can do! We have to switch all the computers and lights off as CONAFE are doing work- it should only be 10 mins”

4.45pm – “It’ll only be another 15 minutes as by law they should only take 10 minutes”

5.00pm – “Maybe another 15?”

At this point I went to the supermarket to get some more cigarettes as I’d smoked all of mine waiting here for the past 40 minutes. In the supermarket the owners radioed the Café and checked if they were back on-line yet. Apparently they would be by the time I walked back.

6.00pm – Gave Up for the day and finally committed myself to having to walk back up the steep hill to my bed taking with me yesterday’s paper that I had been given by the owner.

Back at Carmen Gloria’s I was pleased to find that dinner would be served fairly soon and so managed to wait till dinner. By this time I was starving and although normally rice and two chorizo sausages would be enough it wasn’t going to do for today and I ended up eating half of the one litre carton of lettuce that was prepared, two slices of toast, down one glass of coke-cola and two cups of tea to fill myself up.

After the meal I got a look at the newspaper I’d got and we read the horoscopes-

Believe it or not under the heading HEALTH was the following;

“Caminar una Buena distancia es un buen ejercicio. Le ayudara a quemar calorias y a fortalecer las piernas”

Roughly translated this means;

“Walk a good distance it is very good exercise. It will help you burn calories and strengthen your legs”!

Having walked more than a fair distance today I was now totally knackered I so bade goodnight to everyone at 8.15pm.

8.15!!!! Again!!!!!!