Y que todos se enamoren de mi vozzzzzzzz

The title of this post refers to my new favorite "party" song, "La Guitarra" by Los Autenticos Decadentes. Why do I start with this point? Because its an awesome song, and because I heard about a million times last night while celebrating my birthday. My host family and I decided to throw a Chile-Mexico culture clash extravaganza of a birthday party. The food was entirely mexican: tacos, guacamole, salsa. The drinks were a mix: pisco, tequila, beer. The music, also a mix as we had reggaeton, rock, pop, los tigres del norte (jaja) etc... And the company, it was an extremely diverse group of people, we had a bunch of Chileans, the DukeEngagers (which happens to be an very diverse group) plus, an Italian. It was truly a global affair :D



moving on...

Like I said in my previous post, I had my first visit to Lampa on Thursday. I drove there with my coordinator and a Chilean university student working as a mentor for that particular school. Lampa is a rural community, extremely beautiful and surrounded by nature. The school itself is large, with a big, two story classroom compound. It has a patio in its center, which is currently in the process of construction (they're building a roof for it I think). But, like all of the Adopta schools, it is a school that caters to a poor community. The point of our visit was to carry out the family encounter, one of the first steps of Adopta's intervention. This encounter is basically like a PTA meeting: the coordinator explains the program to the kids' parents, the kids' give a little presentation, and the families' are free to ask questions if they like.



However, the encounter almost didnt happen. The vice-principal of the school 'forgot' to tell the principal of our plan. The consequence of this was that the parents would not be allowed into the school because we had not asked for permission. Obviously, we had asked for permission, that was the reason why we told the vice-principal in the first place. The fact that she forgot we were coming, plus the indifferent attitude with which she carried herself, lent us the impression that she really didnt care if our program was carried out or not. Which begged the question: why ask for Adopta's help in the first place? The impression that I came away with (and this is an opinion, I dont mean to judge people's motives or anything of the sort) is that the problems in Chilean education is complex. The government has increased its spending on education tremendously in the last decade, but with no perceivable results. What I observed in Lampa, and in the other schools, is that there is this attitude of indifference present in some members of the administration in each school. Whether this is a countrywide phenomenon escapes me. But if indifference is an issue among school administrators, then the solution is not an increase in spending, but finding out a way to create incentives for adminstrators to take their jobs a bit more seriously. Once again, I want to stress that these are observations I've made after spending a very limited amount of time in these schools. It could just be an isolated event.

More importantly, however, I was impressed with the kids. They are extremely lively, funny, and bright. I found it inspiring that these kids, who live in conditions that I could not imagine, still had an positive outlook on things. Similarly, the parents that did show up proved to be, for the most part, attentive. It appeared that they were really invested in Adopta's work and goals. Of course, not all of the parents showed and we had some pretty sad kids who were expecting Mom or Dad to show up, but instead had a sister attend, or nobody.