These past couple of weeks have been filled with a big change for us and some free entertainment for Chilean students who are taking English at Duoc. We will start with the former...
Katie and I have only been able to travel to two destinations, Cajon del Maipo and Vina del Mar, both of which are within a two-hour drive of Santiago. The big barrier for us as far as traveling goes has been the fact that we both work on Saturday mornings at 10 and this prevents any weekend trips. So, we had been discussing the idea of possibly quitting our jobs to find work in the private industry. Doing private lessons allows you to basically make your own schedule and you work less; both plusses.
In talking with another married couple at Katie´s b-day party a couple of weeks ago, which incidentally she doesn´t remember too much of, they advised us of another potential plan. Evidently, they are taking Spanish classes at a private institute and the building is only in use from 8:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Our friend asked if we could use the building afterwards to teach English and the owner agreed. So, along with our friends, we are going to start our own English institution to further sharpen the Chilean minds.
First, we had to tell our English coordinator at Duoc of our plan and that we were not coming back next semester. We really didn’t know how our coordinator would take it so we decided to be overconfident and we walked into her office like we owned the place. We put our cigarettes out on her desk, which was the same place where we propped our feet up. We then issued the challenging statements, “We quit” and “What are you going to do about it?” She then responded by putting her cigarette out on her tongue, swallowing her butt, and beating me in a right-handed arm wrestling match, which was her weak arm.
All machismo aside, the meeting went surprisingly well and she was very understanding of our desires and exactly why we wanted to go to the private industry. The meeting didn’t last too long and at the end of it, we were excited that we were one step closing this chapter in our lives and starting another one.
In other news, kind of a side story, but nonetheless a pretty entertaining one. The university we teach at, DUOC, needed a native English speaker to record the present, past, and past participle forms of 501 verbs along with their Spanish translation. Por ejemplo, for "eat", I had to say "Eat", "Ate", "Eaten", and "Comer". As you can imagine, this was a rather monotonous process and it took 4 different recording sessions to record.
As is usually the case with big stars in a recording studio, I just let the recording session take me where it wanted to go. Upon finishing up a day´s work, I suddenly got this surge of creative energy and started to bust out a couple of lines of "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers, not to be confused the great Bank of America Underwriter, Kenny RoDgers. After I sang up to the point where I no longer remembered the lyrics, I quit. However, just in my short demo, my cover of this classic seemed to have the same effect a Siren would have on a sailor. The sound engineer was very impressed and told me I was officially asked me to do a cover of "The Gambler" on the final cut of the CD.
Days passed between sessions, but I had this weird feeling that the Chilean people were not looking at me as just a gringo anymore, rather as someone that has a really good voice. I started dreaming, and I´ll be honest, daydreaming about my ascension to the top ranks of the Chilean music scene and how everyone no longer referred to me as eStefffen, but as "El Voz de Chile". So, you could say that I was going into the final recording day with my chest puffed out like a blowfish.
After they removed the door frame so I could get my swelled-up, celebrity head in the door, I sat down for my final recording. Appearing humble from the outside, I was ready to take on the Chilean music scene. I quickly finished the 50 verbs that were left and then I was ready for the highly anticipated recording of “The Gambler”.
I listened to “The Gambler” once through my head phones and now it was my time to shine. I did about 4 or 5 recordings of the song to give the sound engineers hopefully enough material to piece together a complete track. After the second recording, the engineer literally told me, "I think Kenny Rogers may be able to hit some higher notes than you are able to. Just try and stay within your range". This guy obviously didn’t know how to manage stars, but nevertheless, I tried to tone it down a little bit. I listened to the final cut and good thing for the listeners, my voice played second fiddle to Kenny Roger’s voice.
This experience was quite a swing of emotions for me. First, from listening to Katie all of these years, I really didn’t feel like I had a good voice. Then, for about a week, I developed a false sense of confidence due to a sound engineer jumping the gun a little early in assessing my talents. It all came tumbling down after I heard my own voice alongside the great Kenny Rogers. I couldn’t help but think that I may have been a changed person with all of the money and the fame. I never thought I would say this, but I think it’s better for me, for Katie, for our marriage, that I returned to normalcy.
