Jardín Infantil

So all around both cities there are these places that say Jardín Infantil. Being the resourceful person that I am, I of course thought that this was a popular restaurant chain, after all, it had the word garden in it. I wasn't sure about the Infantil part, but it sounded like it could be sushi or something similar. I always pass one on my walk to the metro. Yesterday I thought, hmm, there is a mural with animals and kids on swings, and there are always little kids here, maybe it's not a restaurant. Dani informed me that it is in fact a kindergarten. That's right, a future teacher took almost 3 weeks to realize that this 'restaurant' was in fact a kindergarten. I am going to be a great teacher.

In my Chilean language and culture class today our professor turned us loose on the streets/Casa Central to ask Chileans about the meanings of some distinctly Chilean words. There is probably no faster way to make a class more uncomfortable than to do exactly that. However, it was a fantastic way to learn. In fact, the best way. Talking Chileans about the way they cut words, the double meanings, the idioms, is not only useful but really interesting. I wonder what the students in Casa Central thought all day when the intercambio classes flooded the place asking the meaning of some some pretty outlandish phrases in broken Spanish. They might be used to it and think it's funny. Or they might know to hide. We also were instructed on the 8 levels/steps of a Chilean romance. 8!