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Gainfully Employed!!!

Friday, April 13th, 2007

At last we have a job….. and its in the Galapagos Islands!! After getting very frustrated by not being able to get a straight answer in Mendoza after three weeks, we went to an internet café and applied pretty much for every job in South America, as well as a few random speculative e-mails to a few schools in the Galapagos and Ecuador on the off chance.

Well, in an embarrassment of riches the following day we were both offered some work at the Institute in Mendoza, two interviews in Buenos Aires, not to mention a 46 hour a week job in a Smelter outside of Santiago!! But the most exciting was some information from a small school on the island of Isabela in the Galapagos Islands. The next few days involves a long and rather dull story with many frantic e-mails and phone calls to make sure we had the job in Isabela before we turned down the others – I mean, jobs in Smelters don’t come along every day!!

Anyway, long story short, we both have jobs in Isabela for three months from July to September. The island only has about 1500 residents, no bank and frequently no electricity so it should be a challenge but very exciting.

So, we’ve changed out plans yet again. We’re now going to risk the weather (it is getting into winter down there now and most places and I think transport start to close down) and head straight down to Ushuaia at the end of the world and work our way back up through Patagonia and onwards overland to Ecuador.

So… one more weekend in Mendoza.

Posted in Argentina, Teaching, Travel | 1 Comment »

¿No hablo Espanol?

Friday, April 13th, 2007

We have spent the last two weeks then in Mendoza learning Spanish with Intercultural. It has been good and I think I have learned a lot, at least we definitely did in the first week. The second week was a bit dodgy and we learnt a lot of useless stuff about clothes and jewelry, but it was ok.

We also had a tango lesson one day which was hilarious, Paul and I are terrible dancers together although it is really hard for the man as he has to know what to do, and all I had to do was follow! Anyway, I don’t think it is something Paul is in a hurry to repeat.

We loved staying with our host family. Malena (our Mum) was lovely and a fabulous cook and the rest of her family were really welcoming. It was lovely to sit down at the table with a huge family and share a birthday meal with them, even if we weren’t sure exactly what was being said all of the time. Although there was definite bonding over cartoon theme tunes – ah the international language of “Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats!! Although we must confess that our family did speak great English so we were able to cheat and have some chats in English. This did of course give us a chance to really get to know them better too and to learn more about Argentina.

Whilst studying at the school Paul and I also taught a few lessons as substitute teachers which was great and allowed us to get more practice before we forgot how to teach! Unfortunately, until the last few days at the school we were being passed from person to person with vague promises of jobs but nothing very concrete.

Posted in Argentina, Learning Spanish, Mendoza, Teaching, Travel | 1 Comment »