Deportee

Things could always be worse. Still, the situation is increasingly bleak on the domestic and teaching fronts. I’m grateful for Kim and Sarah, to whom I sent an e-mail a few days ago canceling our lunch date because my spirits are too low. They both called to check on me, and Sarah encouraged me to meet her for lunch the next day, which turned out to be a Very Good Idea.

But I love my students in two of the classes. The kids, on the other hand, remain a challenge. But I’m undeterred, working harder than ever to think of ways to engage their interest in material that’s a mile over their heads. Thus, on my return from Mexico City on Monday, it came as a shock and a serious soul-crusher when the school director suggested she take the class over from me. She has no faith in my ability to handle the situation, which doesn’t do a lot of good to my own shaky self-confidence. Nor did she stand behind me when a parent complained that a child hadn’t done exercises in the classroom workbook. (That’s because the child didn’t bring her book to class.) But I refuse to stand down. In yesterday’s class I was able to wrangle the kids into a semblance of order.

Here’s a cautionary tale from yesterday’s class with the kids: “Lupita, come show everybody the game you played last week with your hands,” I said, waving my own paws to illustrate. “NO!” Lupita shouted. She turned to the others and warned in Spanish, “She’s going to cut off our hands!”

I expect to be deported any minute now. My defense will be that I never dreamed of having their hands decommissioned, but only their mouths.

Not sure what the moral of the story is. Let me know.

Here’s a video I took yesterday of the little shkitters playing aforementioned game. I don’t know why the video quality is so funky. Maybe it’s the subject matter. It’ll take a wee bit of time to load.

[flashvideo filename=wp-content/video/hand-game.flv image=wp-content/video/hand-game.jpg /]

And here are two cool drawings of made-up creatures that the kids made for an assignment I gave them. About the first one, Lupita wrote: “It lives in France. It eats snakes.” And the second, by Luz: “He eats bad boys. He lives under my bed. He is extinct.”

Let me stop talking about the reason I’m here and get on to the stuff I’m fitting in on the side. I really do like México. I don’t know exactly why. I like the desert. Overall, the people are wonderful. It’s rich with scenic and cultural and historic beauty. I like the Spanish language, except when I hate it for eluding me. Of course there’s the food. And I even love the chivalry.

Sometimes, though, I find myself wishing I could have gone to South Africa instead. I’m such a pain.

I promised you more pictures of my trip to Puebla and Cholula, which I visited with my supervisor Elka, my jefe Magdalena and my amiga Kim. It was a tense day. I don’t know what I would’ve done without Kim and the mole enchiladas for lunch. I’m glad I had my bandanna to hide behind during the car ride.

Puebla (known as City of Angels) is huge. Various sources say it’s the third, fourth or fifth largest city in Mexico. The old area (circa 1530s and beyond) was the only part we saw as we raced around behind Elka and Magdalena, trying to keep up. A pretty place, but deficient in good coffee. Looming on the outskirts are two snow-covered volcanoes: Popocatepetl (or Popo, which is Mexico’s most active) and Iztaccihuatl: the second and third highest spots in Mexico. I couldn’t get good pictures of them, but I did capture some mole images. Yes, Puebla, too, is famous for something. Many things, actually: its chapulines (those spicy fried crickets); the moles poblano and pipian (with ground, toasted pumpkin seeds) and rojo; and talavera (a kind of blue pottery).

Oh, gross. I’m sitting on my bed with my computer on my lap, and my stomach is bulging out over my blue jeans. How can this be? I’m down to only 19.2 kilos with my boots on. I guess the only place I ever lose weight is in my face.

Okay, I’ll shut up and you can look at pictures, or not. We made our trip on Valentine’s Day (Dí­a de San Valentí­n), which is a huge deal here. Hey, that’s cool: I just looked up the old Saint and learned something. (My Internet connection knows I’m searching from Mexico, so all I get are Web pages in Spanish.) I just read that the first mention of Valentine’s Day was in a Chaucer poem:

Porque esto fue el dí­a de san Valentí­n,
Cuando cada ave vino aquí­ a elegir su pareja.

Well, whaddya think about that Chaucer — decent Spanish for a Middle-English guy.

Cholula is essentially a suburb of Puebla, and home to the ruins of Tlachihualtepetl, The Great Pyramid of Cholula. According to Wikipedia, the name comes from the Nahuatl word for “artificial mountain,” and it is the “world’s largest monument and largest Pre-Columbian pyramid by volume.” I don’t know what they mean by “volume.” Did they weigh it? Fill it with water and then pour out and measure the contents? ¿Quién sabe?

Historically, Catholics have loved to build churches atop the worshiping grounds of other religions. At the end of the sixteenth century here in Cholula, they plunked Iglesia de Nuestra Seí±ora de los Remedios (Church of Our Lady of the Remedies) smack on the crown of a pyramid begun in the third century BC. [Why do people call it BCE now? What does that stand for?] The majority of the ruins is buried under what looks like natural hillside, but is in fact earth-padded construction, still unexplored by archaeologists.

Okay, here are photos. [In the next post: last weekend’s trip to Mexico City.]