You know it's a Texas summer when ...

In honor of a full week of temperatures between 105 and 110 degrees, I thought I'd provide some clues to let you know when you're smack dab in the middle of a Texas summer.

-Your sister tells you that if you're going to run in the morning, you'd better be back before 7 a.m.
-To avoid heat stroke, you have to leave the pool by noon.
-Your little brother stands outside watching the spray from a sprinkler evaporate.
-The heat makes you shiver and gives you goose bumps.
-The best survival strategy in the afternoon is to pull the shades, turn off the lights, and sleep through the heat.
-Your sisters discuss using the car to bake cookies.
-The dollar theater is your best friend, but only if your parking spot is close to the front door.
-The bugs swimming through the humidity make an evening run both a workout and a protein shake all in one.
-You complain with everyone else but secretly feel proud each fall for surviving yet another Texas summer.

The end

My time here is done. A year ago, I was making my final decision, never dreaming how right it was.

I finished teaching on June 29th. I taught my students "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and we sang it together while they cried (SUCCESS!). I packed up my classroom and finished paperwork the following day. Since then, I've just been chilling at the school. I visited friends, read, napped, emailed, and got paid -- a pretty good setup, really. Now, though, that's all over. I've said my goodbyes, packed up my belongings, paid my last bills, and eaten my last tacos. I'm gonna miss this place.

Now I'm off to grad school, but I'll never forget the year I spent down here or the friends I made. Goodbye, Mexico.

Crossed signals

I get my stellar directional skills from my dad. We're both wonders with a map. Take the time I spent two hours trying to find my way home from the DFW airport, for example. Several days ago, my dad told me he had a great deal on a ticket and was going to visit me for a couple of days. He would be flying into Mexico City. Puebla is a couple of hours away from D.F., and since his trip was so short, I decided I'd come pick him up. That way, we'd be able to spend a few more hours together and I wouldn't have to worry about him finding his way to me.

I left on time, a bit early even. I arrived at the airport in time. I waited where I said I would wait. For three hours. Just when I was considering calling my family in Texas to find out if my dad had actually left, my phone rang. It was a taxi driver, calling for someone named Mark. I asked to speak to him. My dad was waiting outside of my apartment in Puebla. "See you in two and a half hours," I told him.

OK, so maybe our communication skills aren't great, but we still had fun. We ate tacos Sunday night (about all we had time to do after our miscommunication), attended a wedding (an exciting experience for my dad), toured Puebla, and celebrated the 4th of July with my coworkers (which ended in a conga line and salsa dancing). Plus, I got to see the Mexico City airport one more time! Who wouldn't give up eight hours of his or her Sunday for a chance like that?

Spanglish

Because of their large vocabularies in Spanish, my kids make some funny English sentences. Here are some of the ones I've collected:

-I detest rolling.
-Is this obligatory?
-Thunder is insupportable.
-The lightly illuminates the sky like fireworks.
-Fish and corn are exquisite with lemon and tajín.
-Spanglish is the fusion of English and Spanish.

And here are a few sentences without good vocabulary that I just found funny:

-The red skins live in a colony.
-I can eat healthy because I eat god.
-I slavery my backpack. (This was after I explained that slavery was when one person /owned/ another.)
-My friends are rolling all the time.
-We have too much independences.

The World Cup

Five years ago I didn't know what it was. Now I'm wearing a Mexico shirt, painting my face, and watching more soccer games in two days than I've ever watched in my life.

My students were trading player cards for weeks. "Waka Waka" and "Wavin' Flag" played from every corner. I didn't even have to switch my brain to Spanish to understand that every lunch conversation was about teams, players, and June 11 plans.

Something woke me up early on Friday morning. Perhaps it was the static excitement in the air. Perhaps it was the fireworks exploding every five minutes. Perhaps it was just indigestion. I donned a Mexico T-shirt and ate my Raisin Bran in front of the opening ceremonies before heading out into a traffic-free street.

At school mothers escorted their children in, carrying "extra" TVs nicer than any my family has ever owned. Before I had even unlocked my classroom door, students were thrusting a stick of face paint into my hands. In several minutes, a child's TV was hooked up, the snack bar was running, and the room had been transformed into a stadium. I only had nine of 27 students show, and my partner only had 11, so we combined our groups and tag-teamed the day.



During library (where my students also watched the game), I joined the older grades and most of the teachers in the auditorium. There, the game played on a large screen and students ran in circles when Mexico scored. A few teachers led the room in cheers.

Since that game, I've watched several others, most of them at a sports bar with coworkers. Honestly, I don't care a bit about soccer. I don't care if Italy wins the World Cup. I don't care of Slovakia wins the World Cup. Heck, if Canada had a team, I wouldn't even care if they won the World Cup. Still, I'm soaking in this experience. I may never again live in a place that cares about this tournament. May as well enjoy it while I have the chance, eh? So for now, Vamos Mexico!

Third-grade drama

Yes, I'm still here in Mexico. Yes, I'm still teaching. Well, more like glorified babysitting these days. The kids are ready to be done, our curriculum is nearly finished, the World Cup is beginning -- basically, I'm just trying to keep the kids from walking on the ceilings for the next three weeks.

I haven't grown tired of them yet, though. Sure, I'm ready to be done, but somehow, the kids keep me laughing all day. One particular table is especially providing entertainment. My students are divided into groups of five or six for each six-week unit. One group has had a tough time working together recently. They've declared war in the standard third-grade manner: boys versus girls.

Yesterday, the boys of the table were staying late to finish a project. I was tutoring when they came up to me, indignantly holding out a paper that they found "on the floor." It was from a few of the enemy girls. I read it, promised I would talk to the girls, and turned away quickly so they wouldn't see me laughing. For your enjoyment, here are the contents of the note. And look, they wrote in English!

Blue ink: You are good friend!
Pink ink: And you too.
Blue: Thankyou!
Pink: About you want to talk
Blue: About how much we don't like the boys of this table?
Pink: that they are mediocres and bad
Blue: exactly!
Pink: yes.
Blue: I don't like that I do something that he don't like me and he said that he love me!

The note goes on to discuss which boy had altered his affections and why Blue Ink felt the need to use so many exclamation marks. Such sorrow. Maybe I should warn the little culprit that if he doesn't want problems with the girls at his table, he shouldn't promise them his love and then change his mind.

The bare necessities

As an introduction to our communities unit, I spun a little tale for my students. We were on a plane heading for South Africa when the engine died and the plane started to crash. We aimed our parachutes for the one small island we saw beneath us. There, we had to set up a new life. OK, so it wasn't incredibly creative, but I don't think the kids noticed.

I asked my students what jobs and people we would need in order to have a functioning community. I prompted them with jobs like "nurse, gardener, carpenter." Their answers were a bit less practical. "Someone to pump our gas if we figure out how to build cars," one boy offered. I also got "a bartender" and "someone to put makeup on the girls." Glad to see you have a good grasp on the essentials of life, kiddos.

Testing: Texas vs. Mexico

Testing: the one and only way of rating a school's success. A lot depends on those little scantron bubbles. Back in Texas, we teachers prepared all year for the TAKS test. This year, Mexico's ENLACE test just appeared out of nowhere. For my readers' enlightenment, I thought I should do a little comparing and contrasting of these two great nations.

Preparation
Texas:
-Carry around sample test questions in order to format any question the children might here to test script.
-Administer district-wide practice tests every few months. Analyze the results for maximum success on the real test.
-In the month leading up to the test, administer practice exams every week. Have students graph their results.
Attend teacher workshops that study the test and teach test-taking strategies.

Mexico:
-The test was for Spanish; I was told not to worry about it.

Teacher Training
Texas:
-Attend several hours of certification training prior to the test in order to proctor the exam.

Mexico:
-On the morning of the exam, give students plenty of work and leave them with a sub. All teachers gather in the teacher lounge for an hour of training. "Testing scheduled to begin at 8:15," the morning notices read? Ha.

Classroom Preparation
Texas:
-Cover anything on the walls that may assist students on the exam.
-Arrange desks so that students are sitting as far away from other students as possible.
-Make a seating chart to submit to the State.

Mexico:
-Seat students in rows by list number.

Proctoring
Texas:
-Circle around room continually, showing students that this is important to you.
-Allow breaks when needed.
-While circling, make sure you don't appear to be reading a students' test. Someone could be watching.
-When leaving the room alone, lock up the tests and lock the door.

Mexico:
-Bring grading work; you'll have plenty of time.
-Give students 15 minutes of break in between each 45-minute session.
-When leaving the room ... oh wait, no procedure for that one.

Stress Level
Texas:
-Students: Tears and vomiting
-Teachers: Heart-racing, fear, exhaustion

Mexico:
-Students: It's a day of plenty of breaks and free time.
-Teachers: It's a day without planning or teaching.

Granted, I work in a private school down here. Perhaps the test would be a bigger event in a public school. Still, I couldn't help but laugh on those two days I spent grading papers.

Mexico City ... in bed

We were all scheduled to fly out of Mexico City early in the Semana Santa week. What better way to pass the weekend than to spend a few days in D.F., we figured. We left Saturday morning, loaded down with our luggage for our two-week break.

I've been having some anemia problems lately, but frequent iron and b12 popping seemed to be helping. As we neared Mexico City, though, I felt steadily worse. We checked into a hostel and lugged our suitcases to our dorm room before heading out to get food. I was sure the food would solve my problems, but after eating, I only felt worse.

After lunch, we went straight to Bellas Artes, a large art museum. I walked through a couple of rooms before the floor started rising up around me and my vision turned to tunnels. Really not wanting the attention that would come from fainting in a crowded art museum, I murmured quickly, "I'm going to faint," rushed to a bench, and lay down. Security wasn't too pleased with me stretching out on their bench, but my roommate pleaded my cause.

We stayed at the museum for a while while I rested. Kristen and Kay offered to get a taxi, but I said I could make it the three blocks to the hostel. Once outside, though, I started sinking into black again. I leaned against a statue, and the next thing I knew, Kristen and Kay were helping me into a cab and directing a confused driver to drive three blocks down the road.

I spent the rest of the day sleeping and the rest of the weekend doing activities that required little exertion. Good Mexico City trip, eh?

Back in college for a week

We were roommates and best friends for three years in college. She said she didn't care to get married. Ever. Then she fell for a guy -- one of our mutual college friends --, and a year and a half later, I was helping her into her wedding dress.



The weekend was marvelously fun. About ten of the LETU crowd flew/drove in for the event -- the largest reunion since we graduated. We joked that we could recreate the ubiquitous medal picture that popped up on everyone's facebook account after graduation.



I'm not sure what it is about college, but somehow, those four years are frozen in time, drawing us back into them whenever we are together. For a weekend, we were 19 and 20 again, living in the same dorms, laughing over the same stories, and complaining about the same professors.



Unfortunately, my health hasn't been stellar lately, and five days of busy bridesmaiding coupled with late nights with friends was too much for me. On the morning of the wedding, my throat was scratchy and I was sneezing. That night, all the college friends piled into one hotel room to play games and talk. I curled up in bed. Really, it was kind of pleasant drifting in and out of sleep to the backdrop of all those familiar voices.

I flew back to Mexico with a fever and had to skip a day of work. Today I went into work (the first time in a week, thanks to a Monday Mexican holiday) and was greeted by 54 hugs and little voices pleading, "Don't ever leave us again! You were gone so long!"

I'm not quite in perfect health yet, but I'm on the mend. I guess I'm just not a college kid anymore.

Texas Independence Day smoke

Texas celebrated its 174th birthday this year. In honor of this auspicious occasion, I hosted a Texas Independence Day party last Friday. I planned a decent Tex-Mex menu: guacamole and chips, sweet tea, refried beans, sour cream enchiladas, mint brownies, peach cobbler, and Blue Bell ice cream. I wondered how I would cook the food without an oven, but on Tuesday, my landlord fulfilled his months-long promise to replace our stove and oven set.

On Friday morning, everything was going according to plan. A Gonzalez flag hung on one wall. The brownies were cooling on the stove. The enchiladas were ready to bake. The peaches were stewed with cinnamon and nutmeg. I got up early to cook the beans, one of my few remaining tasks.

I thought I turned the beans off before I went to work. Honest. Perhaps I turned them on high instead; the stove was new, after all. In any case, the beans burned, and my friends’ first smell of Texas Independence Day was the smoke billowing down three flights of stairs to the street below. We opened windows, turned on fans, and bought canned beans at the corner store. My friends were gracious and didn’t complain. When we went to a movie later that night, though, we smelled like chain smokers.

Saturday was spent fighting a losing battle with the smoke. The maid came and scrubbed for three hours. The laundry lady picked up almost every piece of clothing my roommate and I own. We opened every window wide and let in the beautiful Puebla air. The house smelled of bleach and sunshine. And smoke.

For the next three days, my roommate and I tried everything possible. We cooked food. We boiled juice. We tried keeping bedroom doors open. We tried keeping them closed. The smell improved, but not much. Finding clothes for work was a challenge, since our clothes were still at the laundry. I dug into the depths of my closet to find the clothes least affected by the disaster. Still, I had to keep my classroom windows open to keep my nose from wrinkling whenever I got around myself (pretty often).

I lived for Tuesday afternoon, when the laundry lady would return bags of sweet-smelling clothes to my apartment. When I called her after work, though, she said it wouldn’t be done until Wednesday. I was leaving Wednesday morning for my friend's wedding, though. New laundry plan. I went over to her shop and dug through my bags of smoky clothes until I found enough for my trip.


Now I’m on the plane to Phoenix. My suitcase is loaded with smoke-saturated laundry, and whenever I open my purse, a puff of smoky air blows into my face. I really hope this is over soon; I can’t take much more smoke.

The Early Adventures of [the many] Theodore Puffles

On Valentine's Day, my class had lunch with a 5th grade class. This class had a hamster. My class wanted one. I didn't mind. Enter Teddy Puffles. I told my students I would go to the pet store and get a hamster and materials if they paid for it and cared for it.

For weeks, the children brought in their change. When they had finally saved enough, I brought them a brand new furry friend, complete with a fancy cage and a few toys. The students fell in love instantly, naming their pet Theodore Puffles.

Unfortunately, Teddy Puffles was destined to go through several reincarnations before he finally settled in the classroom. On Friday, one eager boy was chosen to take Teddy Puffles home. He was the envy of the class as he strut out of school at 2:15 with the hamster. On Monday morning, however, his father met me in front of school. Teddy had died during the weekend. Before I had a chance to respond, he told me that they had bought a new hamster who looked like Teddy. I went to my classroom, and the frightened little boy was waiting with the cage. I brought him in first, gave him a besito, and told him not to worry.

Third graders' reasoning skills are far from developed; I used their limitations to my advantage on Monday morning. "Teddy looks different," one boy said. I told him, "It's because he's sleeping." He walked away satisfied; apparently sleep can alter color patterns on animals. A bigger challenge was that this Teddy was very young and couldn't open his eyes yet. The students were worried until they checked out a book from the library and read that babies sometimes take a long time to open their eyes. The fact that Teddy was able to open his eyes three days earlier didn't register.

I hoped that my hamster troubles were on the way out, but on Tuesday, Teddy Puffles didn't look so good. Clearly, something was wrong. I told the students I would take him to the vet in the afternoon. (Lies! I'm not taking a 41 peso animal to the vet!) That afternoon, Teddy was dead again.

I made a third trip to the pet store (Perhaps I should have considered finding a different one, considering the hamster death rate our class was having.), but their selection was limited this time. Teddy had to change colors, which meant the students would have to know that he had died at least once.

Wednesday was a sad day in my classroom. Students sobbed as they mourned the death of their first pet. Slowly, they began playing with Teddy 2 (unaware that he was really Teddy 3). I think they've warmed up to their new Teddy Puffles. I just hope that this one lasts.

Oh, and the other class (I teach two) of course wanted an animal, so they brought their change and bought one too. So far, we've had no drama with their Harvey Cookie.

Budding Hemingways

One of my goals for my students is to send them to fourth grade able to construct an organized, solid paragraph. We practice paragraph writing two to three days a week for our bell work (work that should be done while the bell is ringing and I am grading homework). I keep my requirements simple: The students should indent; use complete sentences; and include a topic sentence, three specific detail sentences, and an ending sentence. My students can recite the requirements backwards and forwards. We even have hand motions.

Until recently, I'd kept the topics pretty simple. "Write about your favorite sport." "Tell me what you did last weekend." Last week, though, I decided to test their abilities a bit more. We had finished reading a short biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., so I asked them to write a paragraph describing how he fought racism. The results were as I expected: The high students wrote beautiful paragraphs, the low ones copied the back cover, and the medium ones handled the subject succinctly and humorously. Here are a few samples from that last group, spelling errors intact.

MLK they like to fight with the racism. They haves books for people that fight with the racism. MLK talk with 25,000 peoples of the drim for the 4 sons of MLK Jr. live in a ward that not have rasism.

Who knew that MLK was a "they"?

Martin Lauther King was a good minister. He saw the "whites only sign and he was sad. He deases the blacks can go in every where. Some people don't like what Martin said. I like what Martin said at all.

My favorite part of that one is the Englishized version of the Spanish word "say."

MLK fought the racism. He spoke to 250,000 people. He told them that he have a dream, fought racism. He said that all the people is equal. He won the racism.

We really have come a long way; I promise.

Trash pick-up hour

I'd always heard that living in Mexico required a great deal of flexibility. Until I moved here, though, I didn't realize that it would also require punctuality. Yes, be flexible. Don't get upset when the plumber's "I'll fix your toilet tomorrow" is left unfulfilled for three months. But on that glorious day when he calls and says he'll be at the house at 3 p.m., you'd better be home by 2:30. If, for some chance, he happens to show, you don't want to risk a broken toilet for another three months because you weren't home.

The flexibility/punctuality dichotomy is never as apparent as it is on trash pick-up days. Trash is picked up three days each week down here: Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The garbage man comes at eight p.m., and the trash cannot be taken out before seven. If we have trash that simply must go (and without an outdoor dumpster, that does happen), my roommate and I have to rearrange our schedules to make sure that at least one of us is home at the exact right hour for taking out the garbage. Taking it out any earlier results in a nasty mess in front of our apartment, courtesy of the neighborhood dogs.

Of course, flexibility is also important in the garbage situation. Sometimes, the pick-up guys just don't come. Last night was one of those nights. The dogs got the the trash today, and I had to step over the scattered remains of a bag of dirty diapers to get to my apartment. Ah, the joys of living in Mexico.

Ovens and Christmas parties

I hosted a pancake party at my house for Christmas last night. Yes, pancakes. With homemade strawberry sauce and peach sauce, frosting, nutella, whipped cream, milk, and mulled wine. I've got a good reason, too. Allow me to explain.

Ovens are not a high priority in Mexico. I've seen a few decent American-style ovens, but not too many. My oven certainly isn't one. I stuck to borrowing a friends' oven for my first three months in Mexico, but for Thanksgiving, I decided I needed to try my own.

Gas combined with flame should result in ignition. That's what I thought until I tried to light my oven. I could hear the gas flowing into the oven, I could smell it entering the rest of the house. Still, the oven refused to light. Eventually, I figured out how to do it. I had to turn the gas on and close the oven door. Once the whole oven had filled with gas, I could stick a flame in there and it would explode. The explosion left my eyes burning, but at least I had a hot oven.

With the oven lit, I had new troubles. The first one was the temperature. My oven nobs do not have numbers on them. Plus, if I turned the gas down, the flame would die and I'd have to light the oven again. I discovered that my oven really only had two temperatures -- all the way on, and off. After several times of lowering the temperature, killing the flame, and having to explode light the oven again, I figured this out.

The final problem was that my oven door wouldn't close. The slightest movement would send it slamming open. Even when I managed to close it, a two-inch crack let the heat out and the cold air in.

Somehow, I managed to bake sweet potato casserole and a pie for Thanksgiving. Both of them were soft in the middle and black on the outside. I yelled at the oven a lot. I had to keep the apartment door open all night to keep the apartment from filling with gas. I almost died. That is why I hosted a pancake party for Christmas. No Christmas cookies at this apartment. I'll save the baking for the U.S.