Frutillar, Birthdays, and more!

 Well! Once again I feel like a ton has happened since the last time I posted. I've been keeping pretty busy with getting settled into my school and trying to aprovechar (take advantage of) my free time. Two weekends ago a couple volunteers and I took a trip to a little village on Lago Llanquihue called Frutillar to visit another volunteer who is working there. Frutillar is a charming, tidy, neat little town on the shore of Lago Llanquihue that really flaunts its German heritage. Most of the houses (hauses?) and shops feature traditional German architecture, and many of the city’s inhabitants have fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Frutillar is a gem of a town not only because of its unique history, culture, and architecture but also because of its setting. Frutillar is nestled on the coast of Lago Llanquihue directly opposite of Volcan Osorno. And even though the lake is immense (in many of my pictures it looks like an ocean) Volcan Osorno still seemed to tower over everything. We spent our first afternoon there swimming in the lake. Even though the water was freezing, it was about 70 outside and it was totally worth it just to swim in the lake. The water was so incredibly clear. After an hour or two of swimming we went to a local shop to get some kuchen (a German-style cake) and we ate it on the shore of the lake, watching the sunset. After we finished our cake we went grocery shopping so we could prepare dinner for ourselves and the teacher who was hosting us. We ate a good steak and salmon dinner and then spent the rest of the night washing it down with a few beers and piscos. It was a great day! After breakfast the next morning, two of the volunteers (including the one with the car) had to go back Puerto Montt. I decided to stay a little longer and take the bus back later that evening so I could enjoy Frutillar a little longer. Carolyn (the volunteer working in Frutillar) and I decided to take a walk down the gravel road that surrounds Lago Llanquihue and connects Frutillar to other small towns such as Ensenada and Puerto Octay. We had no destination in mind and as the road continued and the scenery got more and more spectacular, we had a hard time stopping. Carolyn's host father would tell us later that we walked about 12 kilometers in all, but it was absolutely worth it to see some of the Chilean campo and to get some good pictures. When we returned to Frutillar Carolyn's host family invited me to have once with them and I couldn't resist. We had kuchen, pork, and of course lots of bread, palta, and Nescafe*. After once I took the bus back to Puerto Montt and went straight to sleep, exhausted from a great weekend. Here are some pictures from Frutillar:

The German Heritage Museum and Gardens

A bed and breakfast

We stayed in the house on the right-a cozy cabin with a view of the lake!

Once

 After resting up some it was back to work on Monday, and in all the excitement I had nearly forgotten my birthday was on Tuesday! The secret got out, thanks to my host mom who also works at the school, and on Tuesday morning I was greeted with a ¡feliz cumpleaños! from just about every teacher and student I crossed. Not only that, but my students sang to me in just about all my classes (I think my co-teacher tipped them off) and I got a surprise slice of cake at lunch! And to make sure I really enjoyed it, the teachers did me a huge favor and shoved my face into it! I guess they were just hazing the rookie. Later that night my host family prepared a special once for me with a particularly delicious berry cake called merengue. All in all it was a great birthday, and even though I wish I could have spent it with my friends and family, the people in Chile made me feel right at home.
And I wasn't the only one with a birthday last week! On Friday night the other volunteers and I got invited to the birthday party of one of our regional coordinators. The party was at his apartment, and basically involved eating choripan (kind of like a Chilean bratwurst), drinking beer, and dancing. We had a great time but after an eventful week and a long Friday night, I decided to rest up the rest of the weekend. 
On Monday I started a new teaching schedule. Some of my classes are 45 minutes long, and the others are an hour and a half long. I work with four different English teachers in 12 different classes which include everything from 6th to 12th grade. It's nice to have such a broad range of ages, and to be able to learn from the teaching styles of four different teachers, but it can also be hard remembering the names of all those kids. Generally, half of my classes are a manageable size of about 20 students or so, but the other half of my classes have more than 40 kids each. That's a lot of potential discipline problems. But right now I'm still in the shadowing phase in the classroom. My co-teachers and I have been planning lessons together and working with each other in the classroom. But now my teachers are giving me more responsibility, playing more of a supportive role as I lead the classes. In most of my classes we'll soon start using the "flexible model". This means that in a class that lasts an hour and a half we will split the students into two groups, teaching one group for 45 minutes and then switching. I'm looking forward to teaching by myself in my own classroom! And as for my classes that only last 45 minutes, I'll still be working with my co-teachers in the same room, so I'll be able to learn from them all year, even as I'm teaching independently. More on that to come later!