I recently spent a week with some friends on the beach in Mexico. As with most beach visitors, one of our favorite pastimes was body surfing on the waves. Waiting for just the right moment, we'd catch the wave as it crested and let it push us to shore. Sometimes, though, the waves were too strong or we caught them at they wrong time. Then, they would catch us underneath them, and we'd tumble along the bottom of the ocean, the foaming mass above beating us against the sand.
This past year has treated me like one of those latter waves. Instead of riding on top of it, I found myself spinning and whirling as the year slammed me repeatedly into the ground. Now that I have been washed up on shore, I find that I am slightly scraped up and disoriented.
I seem to have landed in Mexico. I will be taking a job at the American School of Puebla, an international baccalaureate school in a town in which I have long hoped to live. I will be teaching third grade for another year down there.
We'll see what this next year holds.
