In pursuit of stories (and clean clothes)

Several years ago, I decided my life would be lived in pursuit of stories. Living in Mexico has certainly added to my repository. Almost any event, no matter how small, can be turned into a story.

Laundry is one of the most mundane duties in the US. Here in Mexico, though, nothing is mundane. Unless you are one of the privileged few in possession of a washer, you are stuck taking your laundry to the tintoreria, a full-service laundry mat. Self-service laundry mats do not exist here. While I have enjoyed picking up laundry that is magically ironed and folded, the erratic hours of the tintorerias make their full service much more exhausting than a self-service laundry mat.

I have the habit of waiting until the last possible minute to do laundry. While this worked fine when I could run downstairs to the dorm laundry machines any time of the day or night, it has proven inconvenient when the tintorerias are open only three days a week, from 4:30 to 6:30, and only then if nothing else is going on in the owners' lives. Last week my roommate and I, in need of clean clothes, arrived at the tintoreria only a few minutes after it had closed. The doors had been pulled down, blocking the "Tintoreria" sign, but we pounded as hard as we could anyway. When an old man finally opened the door, we held our our bags of dirty clothes and begged him to take them for us. He shook his head, but we continued to beg. We didn't see any possible reason he had for refusing our clothes. Until, that is, we peered through the doorway and found that we were at the wrong place. Instead of being at the laundry mat, we were next door to it, at an ordinary family's house, begging an ordinary old man to wash our dirty laundry.

Now I just pay careful attention to the laundry mat's constantly changing hours and try to plan my life around my laundry schedule.

First room done!

I finished decorating my bedroom! I'm so much more relaxed when I feel like I'm living in my home and not in a bare apartment. With the bedroom down, all I need to work on is the office, the living room, and the dining room. That's not too much, right?

Here's my bedroom from all four corners.


(Will's scene from "Night at the Museum" made it on the wall.)


(My closet is visible in this picture. No door means that I fight a continually losing battle to keep the closet neat.)


(Makeshift vanity table created from old school desk and metal rods sticking dangerously out of the wall.)


(Those things are common in Mexico; they are made from tree bark. They smell like incense.)

And here's a little bonus: This is my desk in the office, where I study and write. Note the Don Quixote spheres.

Forgetting my L1?

While walking home yesterday, I said to myself, "This week starts all of the TV shows." Yikes.

School

Considering that I moved down here to teach school, my job is probably deserving of at least one post.

So far, I have no complaints. The kids were a bit rowdy at first, but they are coming in line. Planning is so much easier than it was last year. The students are English Language Learners, but they are very sharp. I have been enjoying having students who understand grammar lessons. Even though they are learning English, their vocabulary continues to impress me. One little boy came up to me today to tattle. He pointed to another girl and said, "She was saying some things, and they...offended me."

Here is a sample day in pictures:

I begin by catching the bus. It drops me off across the street from my school. The bridge I walk across affords me a thrilling view of the volcano:


At school, I wait in an empty classroom:


White board waiting for students:


I tried to set a purpose for the year by asking the children why they come to school:


This was my favorite answer. It reads "I come to school to learn how to be paleologist or arquelogist or antropologist or dancer or egiptologist." I especially like the illustrations.


Quick story: To print the "Why are We Here?" center, I had to use the office computer after school when most of the teachers were already leaving. I clicked "print," and nothing happened. So I clicked it again. This time, I heard laughter from the next room where my principal and other administrators had gathered. I realized that I had sent the page to their printer.

At the end of the day, my school looks something like this:

Day 32

Today marks the longest I have been out of Texas. In honor of my great state, here are a few things I miss:

-Hot weather: I have Puebla and Garland weather displayed on my iGoogle page. Right now, Garland reads "103" and Puebla "68". I'm cold.
-My cowboy boots: I will definitely be bringing them back next time I make a trip home.
-Dresses: I tried wearing one yesterday and nearly froze.
-Honky Tonks: No one has heard of them!
-Country music: I bought some of my favorite songs during my first week here. Now I listen to them when I'm on the bus and pretend I'm listening to the radio.
-Smoked meat dripping with sweet BBQ sauce

I met my first Texan here on Saturday. She held up the Longhorn sign, and I felt at home. And when I once mentioned bluebonnets, everyone thought I was talking about butter!

A week of unfortunate events

This past week has brought me one mishap after the other. Just to delineate:

Monday:
At 2 p.m. I received a text: "Today at 3 pm ernesto will be at ur apt to move furniture to new apt". My roommate and I had just settled on an apartment the day before. My guest had just left at four that morning. I hadn't even thought of packing. Kay and I rushed back from work and found our landlords waiting at our door, ready to oversee the move. We packed, directed, loaded, moved, unloaded, and unpacked in about four hours. I love beginning my weeks with activities that entirely incapacitate me for the rest of the week.

Tuesday:
I was hoping to get settled, but the school wanted me to take a Spanish test at another campus to see if I was capable of holding parent-teacher conferences without an interpreter. I rushed through the test, like I do with all tests, and was stuck waiting at the high school for two hours until I could get a ride. I saw a fellow teacher I hadn't seen since week one, and upon seeing me, he said, "You look stressed." "I feel stressed," I replied.

My attempts for a long, hot shower were thwarted when our gas ran out. That meant no hot dinner. I wasn't feeling great, so I went out to email my family and grab a warm torta. I came back to the flood described in my last post.

Wednesday:
My 23rd birthday. I missed home. While out getting a beer with some coworkers, I discovered that my wallet was missing -- the wallet that held my only debit card, my driver's license, and a lot of my cash. I'd last had it while skyping with my sister at Starbucks. I went home and tried again to take a warm shower (we'd filled the gas tank that day), only to find that our water cistern was empty.

Thursday:
I got up early to look for my wallet at Starbucks before school. It wasn't there. I spent my first planning period talking to my mom in the US, and she was able to cancel my debit card after verifying that someone had been using it. (Without my own internet service, I wasn't able to get on a secure enough line to access my account myself). I spent my next planning period developing a budget that would allow me to stretch my money until my next paycheck.

Based on the past few days of apartment disasters, I should have known to stay away. But I was tired and hungry, and I couldn't afford to eat out, so I went home. This time, I found that the afternoon rain had refilled our cistern, giving my toilet enough water to flood my bedroom a second time. I groaned and decided to walk out and cook a hot lunch before returning to sweep up the water.

Friday:
Our campus received its second and third confirmations of Swine Flu (both of them in the grade I teach), and my imagination tried its best to convince me that my throat was swelling up and my head feeling hot. The letter I received saying that I had passed Tuesday's Spanish exam and would be receiving a slight pay increase failed to improve my mood. I went to bed at eight and slept for 14 hours.

Saturday:
Nothing bad! I slept late, wrote, read, studied for the GRE, went to a school potluck, and then went to a coworker's birthday party where I had birthday cake and pretended that it was really mine.

Sunday:
I looked forward to going to church after my awful week. I spent the morning writing before I got ready to go. At 11, I realized that I had the wrong time. I was supposed to meet my ride across town ten minutes before 11. I tried calling her, but I had spent all of my cell phone minutes calling the States to fix my wallet problem. I had not yet found an Oxxo near my new apartment, so I set out in an attempt to find one. After a bit of walking, I spotted an Oxxo, recharged my phone, and called my ride to explain and apologize. Then I found an Italian Coffee Company and treated myself to a mocha overflowing with whipped cream. I deserved it, I thought.

Here's to a new week!

The great flood

I came home late tonight, exhausted and feeling depressed and homesick. I wanted nothing more than to get to bed quickly and forget everything in deep sleep. I threw my purse on the kitchen table, jammed my keys into my pocket, and went straight to my bedroom. As I stepped into my room, I felt a cold wetness seeping up my socks. My floor had become a pool.

Apparently, the toilet in my bathroom has not yet learned when it should stop refilling. And apparently, my bedroom and bathroom floors slant inward toward my bed. About an inch of water had collected there. I didn't have a clue how to mop it up. All of my towels were at the laundry mat, I had no desire to soil my few remaining articles of clean clothing, and unlike Curious George, I knew of no neighbor with a pump. I grabbed a broom and tried pushing the water toward the drain in the bathroom, but that meant sweeping it uphill around three right angles. It wasn't too cooperative.

Finally, I resorted to sweeping the water into a dustpan and then dumping it into a bucket. Although the floor looked no different, I felt rather triumphant after the first bucketful:



After sweeping up as much as I possibly could, I tried to mop up the rest by skating around on T-shirts. T-shirts, I discovered, are not too absorbent, despite their 100%-cotton labels.

Now I am sitting on my bed, and I feel almost like I am on an island. I hope the rest of the water will air dry while I am away tomorrow. Strangely, enough, my spirits are greatly improved. Nothing like sweeping five gallons of water into a bucket to lighten the mood, I suppose.

2.1

Shortly after the last school year ended, I filled in at a camp for a week. During the first day, I was surprised to find that I couldn't shape my mouth into a convincing smile. Apparently, those muscles had atrophied slightly during my year as a teacher. I didn't like Miss Craggett much last year. I determined that I would create a teacher persona that I liked or I would get out of the classroom before I became the epitomized mean old teacher.

This year, my risk is even greater. Students in Mexico do not address their teachers by their first names. Hence, I am "Miss Courtney." This terrifies me a bit. I no longer have the safety of dichotomy. Last year, Miss Craggett was one person, and Courtney was another. This year, though, I'd better make myself happy with Miss Courtney, because there's no getting away from her.

For these first few weeks, though, I'll be the mean old teacher. I need to develop a healthy fear in those 54 little rascals before we start having fun.

Although I am teaching the same grade and race as my students back in Texas, the differences are drastic. Last year I was teaching poverty-stricken immigrant children. This year, my students are members of Mexico's elite. They arrive to school with body guards and nannies. They have personal tutors. They know they are important. Many of them have fair skin, and the boys' hair is long and wavy and looks professionally cut. When asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, my students last year produced answers like "soccer player," "teacher," and "construction worker." Although this years' group had its fair share of hopeful soccer players and teachers, I also had answers like "doctor," "architect," "marine biologist," "zoologist," and "pathologist." I was impressed that they knew those terms.

If my first inklings are correct, this is going to shape up to be an interesting year.

Speaking my mind

Starting my second year of teaching, I have many things I hope to do differently. One of my resolutions is to be more assertive. I came into the teaching world a year ago as a 21-year-old kid fresh out of college. My coworkers were my parents' ages and had been teaching for 20 or 30 years. What they told me to do, I tried to do. When I didn't like it, I smiled and demurely complied. Not this year. This year, I am determined to have a bit more of a backbone. My first chance came today.

This past week was dedicated to setting up classrooms. Setting up a classroom is no small feat. Desks must be arranged, bulletin boards decorated, rules posted, centers established, and supplies organized.

Rumors were floating around school today of class sizes changing, a few fourth grade teachers moving to third grade, and a few teachers trading classrooms. Around noon, my principal came into my room and mentioned that I may be one of the ones moving rooms. Several classrooms upstairs were opening up due to the grade-level changes, and the principal wanted to put all of the third graders in that hall. I thanked her for letting me know and began planning how I would set up a new room in the mere hour and a half I would have after lunch.

During lunch, though, I changed my mind. Swapping rooms on the Friday afternoon before classes began was ridiculous. The only benefit was that all six third-grade classrooms would be on the same floor. The disadvantages seemed to outweigh that one benefit -- parents seeing unorganized classrooms on Monday, teachers stressed from having to move so quickly, insufficient time for academic preparation. The other teachers encouraged me at least to talk to the principal about my concerns. So I did.

After lunch, another teacher and I met with administration to discuss the problems. We were as forceful as we could respectfully be, and in the end, we gained permission to stay where we were. I feel slightly older this afternoon than I did this morning.

Lunch break

I am sitting in my classroom during my lunch break. The noises of the city are streaming through my open windows. The sky is clear today. Yesterday, smoke from the volcano obscured nearly all of the mountains, but today, the lines of Popocatépetl are crisp against the blue sky. In the classroom above mine, I can hear furniture scraping against the floor. My furniture is mostly set up. I am glad of that; those desks are heavy.

I just got my ID photos made. I wasn't prepared for mug shots. Hair shoved behind ears, bangs brushed back, chin tilted up severely -- I'm sure these will be attractive photos.

Back to work now.

Living in Puebla

I have been in Puebla for a week now and each day am more satisfied in my decision to move here. I doubt I will be here for more than a year, but I am confident that this one year will be a good one.

Founded in 1531, Puebla was created as a Utopian city exclusively for Spaniards. Although that dream died as soon as the Spaniards decided to enlist the services of the surrounding native Americans, Puebla still holds more of a European feel than many other places in Mexico.

In the evenings, I enjoy going to the center of town, where many Poblanos gather after work. Crowding into the main square, the people of Puebla relax and play. Children chase pigeons, clowns juggle, vendors sell everything from bubbles to chips drenched in chile and lime, and the elderly sit on benches and watch the spectacles. Bands often perform in the square, and the towers of balloons floating above them seem to dance with the music. The Puebla Cathedral, built in the 1600s, borders the square, its towers casting their shadows over the city.

Part of our teacher training on Monday included emergency procedures. The list of emergencies alerted me to how far from Texas I am. Tornadoes were not mentioned; but gas leaks, bomb threats, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions were. The active volcano Popocatépetl is a mere 25 miles west of Puebla, and smoke streaming from its crater is not an uncommon sight. Although the volcano is a constant feature of the landscape, it looks different each time I see it. Sometimes, clouds linger around the top of the mountain, creating an illusion of calm. Other times, however, enough smokes pours out to darken the sky around the mountain. Watching the volcano has become one of my favorite parts of my walk to school each morning. I do not have a camera yet, but this picture, taken from Puebla, provides a decent idea of what I see as I walk.

I could go on and on. I could describe the taco stands and how the warmth and smells from the roasting meat beckon me in from the chilly Poblano nights when I go walking. I could describe the Capilla del Rosario, a baroque-style chapel inlaid entirely with gold. I could describe some of the tradition foods created in Puebla, like mole or chiles en nogada (rich peppers stuffed with meat and fruit, fried, and then drenched in a nutty cream sauce). I think I will wait on all that, though. I need to give you all some incentive to come visit me.

Emerging from the waves

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.

A year finished

I had lofty visions of my last minutes with my students. After a joyous end-of-the-year party with parents thanking me and students eating cake and playing Bingo, I would give a short speech and then announce that the bell would soon be ringing and we must bid goodbye. Tears would stream down the students' cheeks as they hugged me and walked to their buses.

Unfortunately, I didn't calculate in clock failure. The party started at noon, with early release scheduled for 1:25. Ending the party at 1:15 would give me enough time to send the kids out the door calmly.

I started the games at around 12:45. I figured that would give us enough time to play, eat cake, and clean up without people beginning to get bored. Strangely, though, the minutes just dragged past. Each time I looked at the clock, it read 12:45. The kids were losing interests in the games, and the parents looked ready to leave. Still, time refused to pass.

The bus announcements on the intercom and the increased frequency in which the students asked to pack up should have alerted me, but my mind was still zoned in on how I would fill up those never-ending thirty minutes.

When my sister finally whispered across the room that it was really 1:15, I managed to sigh with relief and gasp with panic in one breath. I pushed the kids out the door in one last frantic scramble, and my first year of teaching was finished.

Vegetarians

After school today, a student and I were discussing reptiles. He said, "My dog sometimes ate frogs."

"Nasty," I replied. "Did he get sick?"

"Yeah. We took him to the vegetarian, but the vegetarian couldn't help him, so he died."

Man, those vegetarians need to work on their dog-saving skills.

Critters

After an eternally long day on Monday, I collapsed into my desk chair and found myself staring into a Tupperware container full of wriggling crawfish and snails.

What on earth is our district thinking? I can't keep animals alive! Animals and my family just don't mix too well. There were those two cats who gave up on us and lived at neighbors' houses, or the turtle who escaped, or the four fish who died mysteriously within five minutes of each other, or the hamster even the vet couldn't save, or the dog we had to sell, or the neighbor's fish we killed, or the other neighbor's rabbit we killed, and a whole host of other pet calamities.

If they're gonna give us animals, they should at least give us low-maintenance pets, like bettas or something. I once managed to keep a betta alive for two years. Granted, he was a sickly little guy due to infrequent feedings, but he lived. These crawfish, though, command gentle and observant care. The creatures require aged water. Aged! What animal is too delicate to withstand fresh water? And we shouldn't dream of putting a protein-based food into the aged water. It could kill the darlings. Instead, we transfer the hostile animals to individual bowls filled with aged water and wait patiently for them to individually eat their one piece of cat food. Transferring them is no small feat, either. Any animal that strains itself bending over backward trying to pinch its benefactor is not a good pet, in my opinion.

The snails aren't so difficult, but they are nasty, and they're liable to escape. Last year, a teacher arrived one morning to find them all over her walls. My coworker this year found that hers had pushed the lid off of their cage and had scattered themselves across her table.

Our time with these pets may be short-lived, though. My bad pet karma seems to have followed me into the classroom. Three crawdaddies have died in the four days we've had them, and my students keep asking to take the other ones home for supper. I haven't allowed them to eat their pets yet, but who knows what I'll say when these crayfish become too difficult ...