Hi readers... Long time unwritten! Lately I've been working very hard at school doing random stuff as part of my duties as a head teacher and coordinator in my school, but it makes no sense if I am not listed on competitions with some of my wonder girls. The first invitation we received this year was extended to our department in order to compete in a new version of the IDH/Rotary's English Competition held in Coquimbo in early August, an invitation that we undoubtedly answered with a "Yes, we are in".

People might think I actually have a lot of time to prepare my girls for events like this, but the truth is that it was quite the opposite this time, in fact it was a whirlwind of training sessions in less than a month, full short training sessions and hundreds of questions. Although the time wasn't enough, we ended participating actively in Public Speaking, where Irene (better known as Attomic Blonde) and Emili (The Frenchie Wannabe) took the determination of dealing with my lovely character once again. 

As weeks passed by, we had no clue if the preparation process would be enough, but we managed to succeed anyway... In fact, we got the 2nd place after a very hard and demanding competition (We all actually didn't expect it, but the students competing were very good!) We are used to compete in 2 or 3 tournaments across the region, but this time the challenge was different. The reason? Probably because we had no idea of what to expect, the type of students to find and the number of schools competing; But things headed towards our way although some particular things happened, such as: the time my girls had so little room to move, that my face was literally turning purple as I was worried about judges not seeing what we had prepared for body language expression or when we just got an I.D. card saying we actuallly belonged to an "Escuelita" instead of just "Colegio" (Probably organizers thought we were part of a rural area, but we weren't) or the stressing quiet-periods of time in which the host of the event said no words while waiting for other students to come to the stage! (Tha was very funny indeed). Anyway, we claimed a spot again!

I have always thought that when it comes to participate in this kind of events, people get easily stressed, especially teachers (which is quite funny considering we are just training our kids, so they should be the ones stressed as a whole, not us), but the feeling I personally got this time was totally different, I was pleasingly unworried and unstressed but totally happy as a whole! I suppose this was exactly what allowed us to get the results obtained. My girls and I were very happy, not only because of the work done, but also because we brought the name our school back into the spotlight for a 5th consecutive year, which is quite amazing though.

This new experience has given us the energy we need to continue accomplishing our upcoming challenges, the CET, the ITN and many others that may come across the way... We have never felt like this before and the best thing? Is that we are willing to work hand by hand to reach new goals... That's what teaching is all about.