October 14- Donde esta Keith?

Two weeks ago yesterday, I was approached with a job proposition by a friend of mine who teaches at an international school in South America. Since my job prospects are looking like the Red Sox, I decided to at least apply, just to get another one out there. Well, 48 hours later and I had a job teaching first graders in Chile! It was literally a 48-hour time frame between diving into my 4th year of subbing and being a full-time employee in the Southern Hemisphere.

I suppose a brief re-cap of my travels from Saturday until now are in order (just know that I'm typing this while on my apartment's balcony that overlooks the Pacific, while sipping on some delicious Chilean wine. You are now free to be jealous):

Saturday I was up fairly early to make sure everything was in order and ready to go. Mom and I stopped down in Long Beach to visit Yvan and his fiance, Charlene, and their new abode. The thing I love about Yvan (well, among the many things) is that he's an immediate boost emotionally whenever I see him. I had an admittedly rough time saying farewell to home, and it felt great to get a lot of laughs and smiling in before taking off on my 24-hour+ traveling binge. That certainly helped, as the flights were long and the waits at multiple airports were even longer. I started off at JFK, checking my bags and plopping down for a solid couple of hours before taking off for Atlanta.

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful; I managed to plug in and watch Wolverine on the way there (thereby checking it off of my to-see list! Zing!)....I must say, it wasn't as bad as the reviews had said. Granted, the ending tried to be too grandiose, which kinda was too bad...I like the premise of the prequel and story behind Wolverine, and while Hugh Jackman did a good job, I just thought that the bit with the nuclear site blowing up was bullshit.

Anyway, the wait in Atlanta was over two and a half hours, and since Atlanta's such an efficient airport, I had a bit of time to kill. I finished reading a delightful Frank Sinatra life guide/biography, courtesy of Dan-O, and boarded the plane for a fun-filled 8 hour flight to Santiago, Chile. I will say that the flight was not full, and so I was able to "sprawl" across three coach-class seats to sleep....briefly....for a total of maybe 2 hours of the flight. I roused from slumber easily for once because I didn't want to get my head whacked or my ankle mangled a la Misery by the food/beverage cart. I started my journal, made a good entry, and managed to catch the sunrise from the other side of the plane as it crept up over the Andes.

Landing in Santiago went smoothly, despite a language barrier that hit me like a sack of rocas. After getting through customs and whatnot, I had an EIGHT AND A HALF HOUR wait at the airport...so naturally, I started reading (this time, The Yankee Years by Joe Torre/Tom Verducci), but dozed off for some more uncomfortable sleep...across my luggage, lest I get robbed in broad daylight. After perhaps the most boring stretch in my life (and certainly in the recent past), I finally boarded the plane for the last in-air leg of the trip, to Antofagasta. Antofagasta was pleasantly small and a quick exit, where I met up with Milena, who is the director of the lower school (and, therefore, the first graders that I am teaching). I met her and Raul, another teacher from AIS, and we drove off to find my living quarters.

Part two coming later tonight...for now, there's a Chilean World Cup qualifier (Chile qualified last week, so this is just to have a drink and pizza) to watch upstairs. Will update later.