skipping school for...what?

In my couple months of teaching here, I've learned that there are a few unconventional-to-our-standards reasons for students not to go to school.  Sometimes because they just want to sleep.  Sometimes, other activities just sound more fun.  For example, on Monday, my host sister, Ayun, and host mom Charo both didn't go to school or work.  I came home from school and found them just hanging out in the house.  Obviously my first question was if they were sick though they both seemed perfectly healthy.  Turns out they were in perfect health and they had skipped out on daily obligations because they were going shopping at the mall in Viña del Mar.  Right.
But the most interesting reason had to do with weather.  And no, not snow or storms.  My host brother, Amaury, had told me awhile back that when it rains in Quilpué, all the kids stay home from school.  Coming from a place where parents only let their kids stay home if deathly ill or there is a 5-foot layer of snow on the ground, this of course, blew my mind.  He said that they just don't know how to deal with being wet.  To their credit, there are no heaters in the schools and so if they are soaking wet in the winter, there's a pretty good chance of a cold epidemic.  Still, I was curious to see if he was exaggerating or if this was actually true.
Seeing rain when I wake up in the morning usually puts an immediate damper on my mood if I know I have to go out in it.  However, I was interested in seeing how many kids would show up to school with it.  It has hardly rained in Quilpué thus far and never while I was teaching so imagine my excitement when I woke up last Friday and saw that there was a good steady drizzle going with heavier rain to come in the afternoon.  It was probably the first and only time I was excited to go to work in the rain.
When I arrived, I could already tell that the courtyard where all the kids are usually running and screaming before the bell was quieter than normal.  During the first block, one of my 2nd grade classes, I taught 8 kids out of a normal 30.  Only half of my 5th grade class showed up to school and about 13 of my normal 25 1st graders.  Also, my co-teacher changed her lesson plan for the day so that it now focused on rainy days, but we spent most of the time running to the window every time there was a sudden downpour anyway.
So it's true.  When it rains in Quilpué, the kids stay home from school.  I would love to see what would happen if it ever snowed.

Half of a usually full 5th grade class

Muy pocos chiquititos

the million dollar answer: región V - quilpué!

When I was packing for this trip (and by packing I mean throw a bunch of stuff in a suitcase the night before my flight), I couldn't figure out exactly what kind of clothing to bring because I had no idea where my placement would be yet.  Chile, being the long country that it is, is home to incredible climate variations so the decision was to bring not much, but a little bit of everything.

Well, that decision worked out and I can finally answer all of you who have been asking me where I'm going to live and teach for the next 8 months.  My host town will be Quilpué in Region V (Valparaiso).  All 51 of our placements were unveiled today at training via a very neatly put-together powerpoint so that everyone knew where everyone else was going as well.  All of the WT crew is going to region V as well as one other Ingles Abres Puertas (IAP) volunteer, AnnaMarie from South Africa.  The rest are going to regions as far up as Antofagasta (II), as far south as Magallenes (XII) in Patagonia, and everywhere in between.  I'm hoping to get to visit a lot of them!

As for Quilpué, I don't know too much about it yet and Google hasn't really given too much to work with besides its population of about 120,000.  GoogleMaps also shows that it's a little inland, surrounded by hills and close to the coastal mountain range.  I do know that Valparaiso Region is just north of Santiago metropolitan and has the port city of Valparaiso and beach resort city of Viña del Mar.  I think my town is close to Viña and I'll be able to visit there easily by metro.  It's still in the central valley so the weather won't be too extreme in either direction--colder in the winter and warmer in the summer.

I'll report about it more when I get there!