What do sixth graders, four letter English words, and Pablo Neruda have in common?

I have been thinking a lot about this newfangled "blogging" and I am in a bind. I am always torn between writing a ton of detail about my life down here or short and sweet reviews. Its just a bit hard because I don't like writing summaries of my weekends/weeks/days/etc.

With that in mind:

Last weekend I went with my family to Quizco, a small beach town about and hour and a half south of Valpo. We rented a Cabana about two blocks from the beach and spent the weekend eating delicious food and playing cards and dice. The weather was cold and overcast for most of the weekend but the sun did come out for a few hours on Saturday and I got to go to the beach for a few hours.

On Sunday we went to Pablo Neruda's house in Isla Negra for a tour. Pablo Neruda is Chile's most famous poet who traveled the world as a diplomat for the country. He filled his house with ecclectic collections of everything to pipes, rare insects and butterflies, masks, to a large collection of figureheads from the bows of ships. The house is build on a cliff overlooking the giant Pacific waves that crash in front of the house. This house is officially baller-steaz.

On Monday I started my internship at El Colegio de La Republica del Paraguay, a public school down the street from my house. I am assisting a teacher with English classes and I will work about fifteen hours a week there. The first two days were eventful and crazy. The classes completely vary in the behavior of the students. In sixth grade class the only English sentence they knew was "eh, fuck you meng," which they yelled constantly when they weren't drawing pictures of pot leaves, pretending to snort coke of their desks, or punching each other. Seriously, I have no idea how these kids know so much about drugs. One of the kids even walked up to me in class and tried to give me a rolling paper as a gift.

The other sixth grade class however was completely different. They sat at their desks and drew their family tree complete with pretty colors and translations of grandmother, father, brother, etc.

Needless to say the public schools are underfunded and thus, on a whole, the kids lack any sort of discipline which puts them at a serious disadvantage for their future education. My host mom told me that out of the forty or fifty kids who graduate from public school, three or four will go on to a university. Hopefully, at least some of them will learn some English.