Some of my 5th graders workingEating breakfast with Mau's friends who went to the concert Friday night
My 2nd grade class
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Photos from my concert weekend
Some of my 5th graders workingEating breakfast with Mau's friends who went to the concert Friday night
My 2nd grade class
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Soccer Stress and Late Nights
Sunday
October 14, 2007
It is Sunday afternoon and as I wait for my various loads of laundry to be finished, I will write. Right now I am sitting on my sheetless bed, listening to The Cure, The Killers, Austin TV, Porter, and Molotov. Essentially, I’m cramming for my upcoming weekend of Rock en Español and international rock. You see, there is a huge festival on Friday called “Moto Rokr Fest” (http://www.motorokrfest.com/). It is being held at the “Foro Sol” which is the home of the baseball team the Diablos Rojos del Mexico and host of many Mexican League baseball games. The park is in the central east part of Mexico City. Bands such as The Killers (Las Vegas- http://www.myspace.com/thekillers), Incubus (LA- http://www.myspace.com/incubus) , Molotov (DF- http://www.myspace.com/molotovoficial), Porter (Guadalajara- http://www.myspace.com/porterbank), and The Dandy Warhols (Portland, Oregon- http://www.myspace.com/thedandywarhols) will play. Mauricio, a bunch of his friends, and I are going and I’m trying to do as much preparation as possible before the concert. On Sunday, the Cure is playing at the Palacio de Los Deportes. I’m going to that too. I better rest up this week.
Speaking of rest, I woke up at 1pm today. Last night I went to a party in a neighborhood very far away. Mauricio, Sergio (his brother), Alejandra (Sergio’s girlfriend), and I left the house around 10:30 last night and arrived around 12am. We had a tough time finding it because not only was the house far away (near Santa Fe where I work) but it was very complicated and they hardly ever go to that area of the city. The whole time we were looking for it I was secretly hoping that we would get more lost because I was really enjoying the ride there. Alejandra and Sergio are super fun and I hardly ever get to see them because medical school takes up the majority of their time. It was a beautifully clear night and the further from the city we got, the brighter the stars and the nicer the houses became… and the more lost we got. It was great. I felt like I was back in middle and high school where the ride to the houses in the foothills was often more interesting than the parties themselves. By the way… thanks, mom. I now realize how difficult that must have been for you.
The party was super fresa. The host of the party has a brother who is an architect who is finishing up a house in a fancy neighborhood in the hills of the eastern part of the city. Before they put the finishing touches on the house, they decided to throw a party. It was pretty extravagent. They bought a smoke machine and had lots of lights and really bad music. I danced a lot since that was the only thing to keep me from getting annoyed with the music. Our group was a lot of fun because Sergio and Alejandra love to dance. We joked around the entire time; it was great!
Unfortunately, the ride home didn’t take nearly as long. I was in bed by 4am. Yesterday was a pretty relaxing day. I slept in (after going to bed around 4am), had an obscure late breakfast/early lunch of fried rice, pomegranate seeds and coconut (from the del Valle tianguis), and went to Chapultepec to run. On Tuesdays I have been running with a coworker of mine named Marissa. She and I go to the 3rd section of the park which is pretty tranquil since it isn’t in the famous part of Chapultepec. This weekend I convinced Mauricio to go running where I usually do since I didn’t like Viveros (near Coyoacán) where we ran last Saturday. The area of Chapultepec where we went (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.421768,-99.184613&spn=0.019571,0.029273&t=k&hl=en) is better because there aren’t as many people, it is visually more interesting because the tracks aren’t completely flat, the area is prettier, and there is a lake you can run around if you get bored of the dirt tracks. Next week I hope to run in the part of Chapultepec with the castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_Chapultepec).
Friday was an excellent day. I got an average amount of sleep (5hours) because I was out until midnight eating dinner the night before. I found an Arab restaurant in my neighborhood so Mauricio came by after work so we could check it out. The restaurant was strangely decorated. At first, all I noticed was as mural on the wall across from me with a desert scene with typical images of camels and people looking thirsty. But, near the end of dinner, I looked behind me and saw that there was another series of paintings. One part was of a rain forest and the other was of the ocean. They had 3D decorations in the corner of a jaguar coming out of a tree and further down the wall there was as an aquarium. The food was pretty good and the service was good for the first half of our meal. The reason for this is because right after we received our appetizers, a group of about 12 came in and sat down in the back. I was shocked because one of the guys who came in was someone I actually recognized from a novela I had seen literally two times. I remember him vividly because in the scene I saw him in his character was a disgusting man who was hanging around his swimming pool with a dozen women with huge breasts and tiny bikinis. In the scene, he had on tight white pants and a shirt buttoned only half way up. Which, by the way, is how a third of the people at the party Saturday night were dressed… fresas. Anyway, shocked that I actually recognized a famous actor here, I had to keep myself from looking back and therefore didn’t get a great view of the beautiful artwork on the walls. Later, Mauricio explained that he was probably the least famous of the people we saw at the restaurant that night. Anyway, after that group came in, we pretty much said “good-bye” to our waiter. The food was pretty good but I am excited to try some other Arab places before going back to Adonis.
School on Friday was fine. I usually play with the kids on Fridays and the day is usually much easier because of that. This week we I did Mad Libs with the 3rd graders. At first I told them we were going to play and they got really excited. Upon receiving a piece of paper full of text, their expressions of happiness suddenly turned to disappointment. I knew it would only take them a few minutes to come around and sure enough, they were coming up to my desk half way through their story just to show me what they had so far. They had a blast reading them out loud to the class. Some even got up and pretended to film their classmates while they read. This made me realize that a video project would be great for my 3rd graders. Early this week I am going to send the kids home with a letter asking for their parents’ authorization to work on a movie.
Classes went well on Friday but soccer was STRESSFUL. The big troublemaker, who goes by “Pollo,” actually came and I was happy that she did because if I can figure out how to work with her, she will be an important asset to the team. To explain who Pollo is in one sentence, I guess I would say that she is the rebel of the school. She tries to act macho, never comes to school, and likes to flaunt that she has money. Apparently she boxes and rides horses on her free time. I really like Pollo and would like to get along with her (I think she feels antagonized by the other faculty members) but I get extremely frustrated during practice when I have to spend half the time giving her special attention. For example, the day she came last week, she came late and I had to leave the team alone to scrimmage because I needed to run the steps of the amphitheatre again to make sure that she did it. I have no problem spending time after practice to talk about how she is doing and why she didn’t participate or what she enjoyed about practice, but during practice, I simply don’t have time. This has caused a lot of problems because if I don’t have time to talk 1 on 1 with her, she gets upset and says that I am not being reasonable with her. On Friday she arrived on time and ran the 7 summits (subidas sounds much better in Spanish) of the amphitheatre but after the two minute water break, she came back to the field talking on her cell phone. I asked her to hang up and come to the center of the field to divide up the teams for a scrimmage and she said, while still on the phone, “just a minute.” I said, “no, you come now or you won’t play,” and that was that. She got all upset and tried to make it sound like I’m the one being unreasonable. This wasn’t the only source of stress. Two other girls, Marisa and Fernanda, also miraculously arrived on time to practice. But, when I gathered everyone to go to the amphitheatre, they were nowhere to be seen. When we returned to the field to scrimmage, they were back fully expecting to play with us. I asked them where they were and they said, “es que no nos gusta correr” (“it’s that we don’t like to run”). I said, “Then you won’t play today” and had them leave the field. At first the simply muttered some things under their breath and refused to leave the field. I was caught in a tricky situation because normally this behavior is unacceptable but both the headmaster and the assistant principal (remember the principal was fired during the first week for sexual harassment and bringing alcohol in a water bottle to campus) are away and I didn’t know who to go to about behavioral problems. Also, I didn’t want to have to leave my girls alone to scrimmage for a second Friday in a row. So, I let Fernanda and Marisa off the hook. It didn’t take them much time to leave the field because they remembered they could chat with the boys from volleyball who were doing nothing because their coach, also the athletic director, quit a few weeks ago.
After practice I had a 15 minute discussion with Pollo. I explained my point of view and she explained why she got upset. One thing I have been trying to express to her is that I don’t know her history and I don’t know what people say about her in the high school. First of all, because I don’t care and don’t discriminate, and second of all because I don’t teach in the high school. She seems to automatically assume that teachers expect nothing from her and this is a problem because I treat her like the rest of my students. I explained to her that it isn’t fair to the other girls if I have to take time to run with her because she arrives late etc. I can tell that she wants to play soccer and the fact that she ran the entire time with us (considering the fact that she smokes, is out of shape, and was wearing Crocs) shows that she is willing to give a significant effort. I was really happy to be able to talk 1 on 1 with her and hope that every practice she cooperates like the rest of the team.
The scrimmage was exhausting. They finally fixed the synthetic field and since we scrimmage on Fridays, it was a perfect opportunity to inaugurate the field. Normally, for a scrimmage of 3 on 3, I would use half the field. But, a few of the players on the boys team, who do assume a level of superiority and privileged when it comes to equipment etc. were hassling me to let them use the field since they had a game that afternoon. Having experienced the machismo of the University of Costa Rica soccer program, I know that if I let them use even half of the field on Friday this will slowly convert to the entire field on Monday, more than half of the cones and pennies on Wednesday, and the better soccer balls on Friday. So, since I was already bitchy (my actions would be resemblant of strong and respectable character if I were a guy) enough to refuse them use of the field, I knew that we couldn’t just use half of the field for our scrimmage. So, the 6 of us busted our asses (well, I did at least) during the scrimmage just to take advantage of the entire space.
During the entire scrimmage, the boys who weren’t playing shouted things on the sideline. They were “positive” soccer-related remarks but all were thickly coated with sarcasm. I would have taken measures to stop them as the comments were enraging, but again, I didn’t know who to go to and I didn’t want to leave my team alone when time to scrimmage was quickly running out.
I was so stressed by the end of practice, and saddened after my conversation with Pollo, that I knew my only way to relax would be to stick around for high school lunch to play basketball with the boys. Usually on Fridays, since I’m already dressed in sports clothes from soccer, I stick around to play basketball with the few high schoolers who are actually nice, mature, and respectful. On Friday I played 3 on 3 with D. a super cool guy from Queens, two tall Brazilians from São Paulo, a humongous Korean we call Yao (for his size, not his nationality) and a small Mexican who was the perfect opponent for me. I had an absolute blast not only because these guys are cool, but because they aren’t too good and I actually contributed to the scrimmage significantly. Needless to say, I was exhausted afterwards and felt great.
When I got home that afternoon, I took a big nap so I could enjoy the night. First I meet up with some of the high school teachers at Aaron’s (from Oregon) apartment. Around midnight, we went to a bar in the Centro where there were a few rock bands playing. Two of the bands were really young and it was obvious that their parents and grandparents were there. The bar was a total dive. It was a big room named something like “El Torero” and had gigantic (10ft x 10ft) paintings of bullring scenes and framed statues of old kings and bull fighters. If I hadn’t been drinking, I probably would have been more freaked out by the scene. I loved ever second of our time at that bar. Don, I can’t wait to take you there.
I’m going to conclude my entry as I have to hang up my last load of laundry and get dressed to go and see a movie called Stellet Licht (Silent Light). It’s a film by Carlos Reygadas and it takes place in Northern Mexico. The main characters are Mennonites and the movie is in their native Dutch. It won the Jury award at Cannes and I think it’ll be up for more awards throughout the year. Luego les cuento qué tal.
October 14, 2007
It is Sunday afternoon and as I wait for my various loads of laundry to be finished, I will write. Right now I am sitting on my sheetless bed, listening to The Cure, The Killers, Austin TV, Porter, and Molotov. Essentially, I’m cramming for my upcoming weekend of Rock en Español and international rock. You see, there is a huge festival on Friday called “Moto Rokr Fest” (http://www.motorokrfest.com/). It is being held at the “Foro Sol” which is the home of the baseball team the Diablos Rojos del Mexico and host of many Mexican League baseball games. The park is in the central east part of Mexico City. Bands such as The Killers (Las Vegas- http://www.myspace.com/thekillers), Incubus (LA- http://www.myspace.com/incubus) , Molotov (DF- http://www.myspace.com/molotovoficial), Porter (Guadalajara- http://www.myspace.com/porterbank), and The Dandy Warhols (Portland, Oregon- http://www.myspace.com/thedandywarhols) will play. Mauricio, a bunch of his friends, and I are going and I’m trying to do as much preparation as possible before the concert. On Sunday, the Cure is playing at the Palacio de Los Deportes. I’m going to that too. I better rest up this week.
Speaking of rest, I woke up at 1pm today. Last night I went to a party in a neighborhood very far away. Mauricio, Sergio (his brother), Alejandra (Sergio’s girlfriend), and I left the house around 10:30 last night and arrived around 12am. We had a tough time finding it because not only was the house far away (near Santa Fe where I work) but it was very complicated and they hardly ever go to that area of the city. The whole time we were looking for it I was secretly hoping that we would get more lost because I was really enjoying the ride there. Alejandra and Sergio are super fun and I hardly ever get to see them because medical school takes up the majority of their time. It was a beautifully clear night and the further from the city we got, the brighter the stars and the nicer the houses became… and the more lost we got. It was great. I felt like I was back in middle and high school where the ride to the houses in the foothills was often more interesting than the parties themselves. By the way… thanks, mom. I now realize how difficult that must have been for you.
The party was super fresa. The host of the party has a brother who is an architect who is finishing up a house in a fancy neighborhood in the hills of the eastern part of the city. Before they put the finishing touches on the house, they decided to throw a party. It was pretty extravagent. They bought a smoke machine and had lots of lights and really bad music. I danced a lot since that was the only thing to keep me from getting annoyed with the music. Our group was a lot of fun because Sergio and Alejandra love to dance. We joked around the entire time; it was great!
Unfortunately, the ride home didn’t take nearly as long. I was in bed by 4am. Yesterday was a pretty relaxing day. I slept in (after going to bed around 4am), had an obscure late breakfast/early lunch of fried rice, pomegranate seeds and coconut (from the del Valle tianguis), and went to Chapultepec to run. On Tuesdays I have been running with a coworker of mine named Marissa. She and I go to the 3rd section of the park which is pretty tranquil since it isn’t in the famous part of Chapultepec. This weekend I convinced Mauricio to go running where I usually do since I didn’t like Viveros (near Coyoacán) where we ran last Saturday. The area of Chapultepec where we went (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=19.421768,-99.184613&spn=0.019571,0.029273&t=k&hl=en) is better because there aren’t as many people, it is visually more interesting because the tracks aren’t completely flat, the area is prettier, and there is a lake you can run around if you get bored of the dirt tracks. Next week I hope to run in the part of Chapultepec with the castle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castillo_de_Chapultepec).
Friday was an excellent day. I got an average amount of sleep (5hours) because I was out until midnight eating dinner the night before. I found an Arab restaurant in my neighborhood so Mauricio came by after work so we could check it out. The restaurant was strangely decorated. At first, all I noticed was as mural on the wall across from me with a desert scene with typical images of camels and people looking thirsty. But, near the end of dinner, I looked behind me and saw that there was another series of paintings. One part was of a rain forest and the other was of the ocean. They had 3D decorations in the corner of a jaguar coming out of a tree and further down the wall there was as an aquarium. The food was pretty good and the service was good for the first half of our meal. The reason for this is because right after we received our appetizers, a group of about 12 came in and sat down in the back. I was shocked because one of the guys who came in was someone I actually recognized from a novela I had seen literally two times. I remember him vividly because in the scene I saw him in his character was a disgusting man who was hanging around his swimming pool with a dozen women with huge breasts and tiny bikinis. In the scene, he had on tight white pants and a shirt buttoned only half way up. Which, by the way, is how a third of the people at the party Saturday night were dressed… fresas. Anyway, shocked that I actually recognized a famous actor here, I had to keep myself from looking back and therefore didn’t get a great view of the beautiful artwork on the walls. Later, Mauricio explained that he was probably the least famous of the people we saw at the restaurant that night. Anyway, after that group came in, we pretty much said “good-bye” to our waiter. The food was pretty good but I am excited to try some other Arab places before going back to Adonis.
School on Friday was fine. I usually play with the kids on Fridays and the day is usually much easier because of that. This week we I did Mad Libs with the 3rd graders. At first I told them we were going to play and they got really excited. Upon receiving a piece of paper full of text, their expressions of happiness suddenly turned to disappointment. I knew it would only take them a few minutes to come around and sure enough, they were coming up to my desk half way through their story just to show me what they had so far. They had a blast reading them out loud to the class. Some even got up and pretended to film their classmates while they read. This made me realize that a video project would be great for my 3rd graders. Early this week I am going to send the kids home with a letter asking for their parents’ authorization to work on a movie.
Classes went well on Friday but soccer was STRESSFUL. The big troublemaker, who goes by “Pollo,” actually came and I was happy that she did because if I can figure out how to work with her, she will be an important asset to the team. To explain who Pollo is in one sentence, I guess I would say that she is the rebel of the school. She tries to act macho, never comes to school, and likes to flaunt that she has money. Apparently she boxes and rides horses on her free time. I really like Pollo and would like to get along with her (I think she feels antagonized by the other faculty members) but I get extremely frustrated during practice when I have to spend half the time giving her special attention. For example, the day she came last week, she came late and I had to leave the team alone to scrimmage because I needed to run the steps of the amphitheatre again to make sure that she did it. I have no problem spending time after practice to talk about how she is doing and why she didn’t participate or what she enjoyed about practice, but during practice, I simply don’t have time. This has caused a lot of problems because if I don’t have time to talk 1 on 1 with her, she gets upset and says that I am not being reasonable with her. On Friday she arrived on time and ran the 7 summits (subidas sounds much better in Spanish) of the amphitheatre but after the two minute water break, she came back to the field talking on her cell phone. I asked her to hang up and come to the center of the field to divide up the teams for a scrimmage and she said, while still on the phone, “just a minute.” I said, “no, you come now or you won’t play,” and that was that. She got all upset and tried to make it sound like I’m the one being unreasonable. This wasn’t the only source of stress. Two other girls, Marisa and Fernanda, also miraculously arrived on time to practice. But, when I gathered everyone to go to the amphitheatre, they were nowhere to be seen. When we returned to the field to scrimmage, they were back fully expecting to play with us. I asked them where they were and they said, “es que no nos gusta correr” (“it’s that we don’t like to run”). I said, “Then you won’t play today” and had them leave the field. At first the simply muttered some things under their breath and refused to leave the field. I was caught in a tricky situation because normally this behavior is unacceptable but both the headmaster and the assistant principal (remember the principal was fired during the first week for sexual harassment and bringing alcohol in a water bottle to campus) are away and I didn’t know who to go to about behavioral problems. Also, I didn’t want to have to leave my girls alone to scrimmage for a second Friday in a row. So, I let Fernanda and Marisa off the hook. It didn’t take them much time to leave the field because they remembered they could chat with the boys from volleyball who were doing nothing because their coach, also the athletic director, quit a few weeks ago.
After practice I had a 15 minute discussion with Pollo. I explained my point of view and she explained why she got upset. One thing I have been trying to express to her is that I don’t know her history and I don’t know what people say about her in the high school. First of all, because I don’t care and don’t discriminate, and second of all because I don’t teach in the high school. She seems to automatically assume that teachers expect nothing from her and this is a problem because I treat her like the rest of my students. I explained to her that it isn’t fair to the other girls if I have to take time to run with her because she arrives late etc. I can tell that she wants to play soccer and the fact that she ran the entire time with us (considering the fact that she smokes, is out of shape, and was wearing Crocs) shows that she is willing to give a significant effort. I was really happy to be able to talk 1 on 1 with her and hope that every practice she cooperates like the rest of the team.
The scrimmage was exhausting. They finally fixed the synthetic field and since we scrimmage on Fridays, it was a perfect opportunity to inaugurate the field. Normally, for a scrimmage of 3 on 3, I would use half the field. But, a few of the players on the boys team, who do assume a level of superiority and privileged when it comes to equipment etc. were hassling me to let them use the field since they had a game that afternoon. Having experienced the machismo of the University of Costa Rica soccer program, I know that if I let them use even half of the field on Friday this will slowly convert to the entire field on Monday, more than half of the cones and pennies on Wednesday, and the better soccer balls on Friday. So, since I was already bitchy (my actions would be resemblant of strong and respectable character if I were a guy) enough to refuse them use of the field, I knew that we couldn’t just use half of the field for our scrimmage. So, the 6 of us busted our asses (well, I did at least) during the scrimmage just to take advantage of the entire space.
During the entire scrimmage, the boys who weren’t playing shouted things on the sideline. They were “positive” soccer-related remarks but all were thickly coated with sarcasm. I would have taken measures to stop them as the comments were enraging, but again, I didn’t know who to go to and I didn’t want to leave my team alone when time to scrimmage was quickly running out.
I was so stressed by the end of practice, and saddened after my conversation with Pollo, that I knew my only way to relax would be to stick around for high school lunch to play basketball with the boys. Usually on Fridays, since I’m already dressed in sports clothes from soccer, I stick around to play basketball with the few high schoolers who are actually nice, mature, and respectful. On Friday I played 3 on 3 with D. a super cool guy from Queens, two tall Brazilians from São Paulo, a humongous Korean we call Yao (for his size, not his nationality) and a small Mexican who was the perfect opponent for me. I had an absolute blast not only because these guys are cool, but because they aren’t too good and I actually contributed to the scrimmage significantly. Needless to say, I was exhausted afterwards and felt great.
When I got home that afternoon, I took a big nap so I could enjoy the night. First I meet up with some of the high school teachers at Aaron’s (from Oregon) apartment. Around midnight, we went to a bar in the Centro where there were a few rock bands playing. Two of the bands were really young and it was obvious that their parents and grandparents were there. The bar was a total dive. It was a big room named something like “El Torero” and had gigantic (10ft x 10ft) paintings of bullring scenes and framed statues of old kings and bull fighters. If I hadn’t been drinking, I probably would have been more freaked out by the scene. I loved ever second of our time at that bar. Don, I can’t wait to take you there.
I’m going to conclude my entry as I have to hang up my last load of laundry and get dressed to go and see a movie called Stellet Licht (Silent Light). It’s a film by Carlos Reygadas and it takes place in Northern Mexico. The main characters are Mennonites and the movie is in their native Dutch. It won the Jury award at Cannes and I think it’ll be up for more awards throughout the year. Luego les cuento qué tal.
Monday, October 1, 2007
El juego de las llantas
Monday
October 1, 2007
I realize it’s been over a month but I’ve been busy. I’ve been adjusting. I know it’s no proper excuse but that’s the one I’m going to give. The hardest adjustment I have had to go though, beating out a change of country, a change of home, language, and climate, is that for the first time in my entire life I actually have a 9 to 5. It really sucks. I actually get up at the same time every single day. I haven’t even mastered the alarm function on my clock since there is no need to change it. When I go to the supermarket, it’s packed. I rush home in time to get to the bank. When I think about planning a trip to Six Flags, my head aches at the thought of the lines because I can only go on the weekend. I’m extremely grateful for something very important, though. I’m thankful that I am a teacher and that my days go by relatively quickly. Who am I kidding? The days and weeks have been going by extremely quickly. Now that I am in a rhythm of making sure every minute of class is productive, classes go by fast and I never get bored. Things get the most tricky when I find myself in a lull and can’t figure out what to do next. 75% of the material in my classes is predictable but the other 25% is due to changes based on the class size and the behavior and level of productivity of the class on a particular day. Today, for example, I had a killer time with my 3rd graders. They are the worse behaved class and what adds to the stress is that there is a strong gap in English proficiency among the students.
This week each student will be reading a story. Today I started with an introduction to the new vocabulary. Well, I had to break up my 3rd graders into groups because some are reading a more advanced story than others. It was a disaster because the minute I leave one group to work alone, they go crazy. We got nothing done. It was so annoying. This was obviously poor planning on my part and I suffered as a result. But, when I plan successfully, class is a breeze. It’s really quite amazing how one class can fly by while another can be a nightmare that never ends. At least now I know something important about my 3rd graders.
In my last entry, I wrote about how I was just about to move into my apartment. well, I am indeed in Polanco – home of “fresas,” “ricos,” and most importantly, Jews. Lots and lots of Jews. People call my area of Polanco “little Jerusalem.” It’s awesome. I feel so much closer to home. Today I went down the street to eat at an Israeli restaurant I had seen. It turns out it was just a poster for take-out, but my search will continue. I am excited though because today I found a market specializing in Arab products and the Catalan owner told me of a good restaurant about 15 minutes from my house. Later on in the week I’ll check it out. I’m dying for Middle Eastern food.
My apartment is great. It’s 200 square meters and as I mentioned before, I have my own full bathroom. The kitchen is awesomely big and I have all the knives I could possibly desire. That, my friends, is the huge plus of living with a married couple. They have the house-ware hook-up. It’s great. They even have a juicer. I’m still not thrilled about my neighborhood in general but I’ve been spending a lot of Saturdays in the neighborhood where Mauricio lives so I do get to buy groceries at the tianguis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianguis).
Until mid November my roommate, Flora, will be taking me to Santa Fe in the morning. She teaches at 7am in a school near Westhill so I get a ride every morning. In the afternoons I have been doing a few different things. On Mondays and Fridays I get a ride from the 3rd grade Spanish teacher. She lives in Polanco and drops me off near where I live. I enjoy these days because she is good at making conversation and we always find something interesting to talk about.
On Tuesdays I go home with Marisa, the art teacher. She is closer to my age and is a huge mountain bike rider and all around athlete. So, on Tuesdays she takes me to Chapultepec to go running. On Wednesdays and Thursdays I tutor a 4th grader from Colombia. Her family pays for my taxi home so I go home alone on these days. I’m hoping to change my tutoring days to Monday and Wednesday so I can run with Marisa on Thursdays too. Marisa is definitely one of my favorite Westhill employees. She is half American and half Mexican and we are very similar. Every Thursday during 4th – 6th grade lunch, we have recess duty. Last week some 6th graders found three tires and started playing a jumping challenge game with them. Everyone formed a line across the playground from the tires. Two boys were in charge of setting up the tires for the “runner” to try to jump over. Any other teacher would have prohibited this but Marisa and I have similar tomboy backgrounds and both understand that risking getting hurt is the only way some can really have fun. Plus, we understand the fact that the playground for the elementary school is really quite pathetic and the fact these boys were able to have fun with a resource they found is quite commendable. Fortunately nobody got hurt and I was left with quite the lasting impression. Initially I designated myself as official tire alignment checker. I wanted to make sure that these boys didn’t attempt something so hard that it would only result in broken bones. So, upon seeing an absolutely impossible arrangement of tires I told the boys to make it easier. They assured me that it was a proper challenge for the boy next in line and so I braced myself to run to the nurse to call an ambulance. Well, what in my mind was surely an impossible figure to jump over was absolutely feasible for some of these boys. From then on I let them set up the tires however they wanted. I just make sure they didn’t jump them with lollipops in their mouths.
October 1, 2007
I realize it’s been over a month but I’ve been busy. I’ve been adjusting. I know it’s no proper excuse but that’s the one I’m going to give. The hardest adjustment I have had to go though, beating out a change of country, a change of home, language, and climate, is that for the first time in my entire life I actually have a 9 to 5. It really sucks. I actually get up at the same time every single day. I haven’t even mastered the alarm function on my clock since there is no need to change it. When I go to the supermarket, it’s packed. I rush home in time to get to the bank. When I think about planning a trip to Six Flags, my head aches at the thought of the lines because I can only go on the weekend. I’m extremely grateful for something very important, though. I’m thankful that I am a teacher and that my days go by relatively quickly. Who am I kidding? The days and weeks have been going by extremely quickly. Now that I am in a rhythm of making sure every minute of class is productive, classes go by fast and I never get bored. Things get the most tricky when I find myself in a lull and can’t figure out what to do next. 75% of the material in my classes is predictable but the other 25% is due to changes based on the class size and the behavior and level of productivity of the class on a particular day. Today, for example, I had a killer time with my 3rd graders. They are the worse behaved class and what adds to the stress is that there is a strong gap in English proficiency among the students.
This week each student will be reading a story. Today I started with an introduction to the new vocabulary. Well, I had to break up my 3rd graders into groups because some are reading a more advanced story than others. It was a disaster because the minute I leave one group to work alone, they go crazy. We got nothing done. It was so annoying. This was obviously poor planning on my part and I suffered as a result. But, when I plan successfully, class is a breeze. It’s really quite amazing how one class can fly by while another can be a nightmare that never ends. At least now I know something important about my 3rd graders.
In my last entry, I wrote about how I was just about to move into my apartment. well, I am indeed in Polanco – home of “fresas,” “ricos,” and most importantly, Jews. Lots and lots of Jews. People call my area of Polanco “little Jerusalem.” It’s awesome. I feel so much closer to home. Today I went down the street to eat at an Israeli restaurant I had seen. It turns out it was just a poster for take-out, but my search will continue. I am excited though because today I found a market specializing in Arab products and the Catalan owner told me of a good restaurant about 15 minutes from my house. Later on in the week I’ll check it out. I’m dying for Middle Eastern food.
My apartment is great. It’s 200 square meters and as I mentioned before, I have my own full bathroom. The kitchen is awesomely big and I have all the knives I could possibly desire. That, my friends, is the huge plus of living with a married couple. They have the house-ware hook-up. It’s great. They even have a juicer. I’m still not thrilled about my neighborhood in general but I’ve been spending a lot of Saturdays in the neighborhood where Mauricio lives so I do get to buy groceries at the tianguis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianguis).
Until mid November my roommate, Flora, will be taking me to Santa Fe in the morning. She teaches at 7am in a school near Westhill so I get a ride every morning. In the afternoons I have been doing a few different things. On Mondays and Fridays I get a ride from the 3rd grade Spanish teacher. She lives in Polanco and drops me off near where I live. I enjoy these days because she is good at making conversation and we always find something interesting to talk about.
On Tuesdays I go home with Marisa, the art teacher. She is closer to my age and is a huge mountain bike rider and all around athlete. So, on Tuesdays she takes me to Chapultepec to go running. On Wednesdays and Thursdays I tutor a 4th grader from Colombia. Her family pays for my taxi home so I go home alone on these days. I’m hoping to change my tutoring days to Monday and Wednesday so I can run with Marisa on Thursdays too. Marisa is definitely one of my favorite Westhill employees. She is half American and half Mexican and we are very similar. Every Thursday during 4th – 6th grade lunch, we have recess duty. Last week some 6th graders found three tires and started playing a jumping challenge game with them. Everyone formed a line across the playground from the tires. Two boys were in charge of setting up the tires for the “runner” to try to jump over. Any other teacher would have prohibited this but Marisa and I have similar tomboy backgrounds and both understand that risking getting hurt is the only way some can really have fun. Plus, we understand the fact that the playground for the elementary school is really quite pathetic and the fact these boys were able to have fun with a resource they found is quite commendable. Fortunately nobody got hurt and I was left with quite the lasting impression. Initially I designated myself as official tire alignment checker. I wanted to make sure that these boys didn’t attempt something so hard that it would only result in broken bones. So, upon seeing an absolutely impossible arrangement of tires I told the boys to make it easier. They assured me that it was a proper challenge for the boy next in line and so I braced myself to run to the nurse to call an ambulance. Well, what in my mind was surely an impossible figure to jump over was absolutely feasible for some of these boys. From then on I let them set up the tires however they wanted. I just make sure they didn’t jump them with lollipops in their mouths.
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