All the time of being here in Xela, most of the new teachers, including myself, have tried to be extra careful not to eat dirty food or drink dirty water. All for the sake of avoiding sickness, right? Well, I seem to have caught something despite all the precautions. Not a stomach bug, but a sinus infection, cold type thing. Here they call everything the "gripe" literally translated though, you learn that it means the "flu" in spanish class. Hispanics call every cold the "gripe" though. It's pretty funny.
Anyhow, the week after the fun independence festivities has proven to be not quite so fun. I had a fever most of the week, and am only now (Saturday) feeling remotely normal and well. Still congested, but not shivering or hot or achy any longer.
To recap the week, we had school pictures on Tuesday. I got my individual picture taken, a picture with my homeroom, the senior class, and a whole school picture. Unfortunately neither the homeroom nor the whole school picture will be featured in the yearbook because my homeroom students, bless their dirty little souls, decided to all flick the camera off in every single one of their pictures. Naive me didn't even notice...neither did the principal who was watching the pictures being taken. They all received detention for punishment. Perhaps more punishment is coming, I'm not quite sure.
Our house got a pet today also...a little puppy that is on the verge of death. She has not been named yet; we're not quite sure she's going to live so we don't want to get attached if she's going to die soon. She came from the farm of one of my roommate's boyfriend. Two of her littermates died already, and one is doing just fine, very healthy. She was needin some tender lovin care, so she came to live with us.
I'm looking forward to teaching without fever next week!
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Independencia de la Escuela
Gracias a Dios that we only had four days of school this week. So while the rest of the country had the whole week off for Independence Day (September 15), we only got one day...lousy that we didn't get more, and yet so good to have a break from school.
In celebration of Independence, there have been parades, bands, concerts, marching in the streets, fireworks ALL DAY long (as opposed to just fireworks in the morning or at dusk when they usually fire them pretty much everyday around here to celebrate someone's birthday), and the best thing of all...the world's greatest nightmare fair, complete with a farris wheel that goes at least 3 times the speed of any farris wheel in the states. We had a fun time eating fair food, riding rides (but in opposite order so we wouldn't get sick), and just walking around enjoying the fair atmosphere.
All of our students claimed they would see us out at all the independence things this weekend, and sure enough, I think we've seen them every night so far. Thursday, at the fair, we came across two freshmen girls who were walking around the fair together. So, they joined our group of teachers and rode 4 rides with us, the last of which was a bit of an embarrassing experience for one of the girls and one of the teachers. A ride called the Zipper, rumored to be the best ride at the fair, was the last one we rode. One of the girls said, "I want to ride with Miss McCormack." So she rode with my friend Carrie (McCormack), I rode with the other freshman, Gaby. They were right, it was a GREAT ride. When we got off, however, Carrie was white from head to toe. She walked up to the rest of the teachers after getting off the ride with her arms out in front of her, saying "I can't move my hands." Well, she literally could not move her hands, they were cold and stiff. We tried to massage the stiffness out and put some warmth into them, but she felt terrible. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch and it was now at least 10pm. So, we got her a sprite and went to begin our eating-fest of fair food, where each person took turns picking what course of fair food we all had to eat next. Carrie could not even look at the food, much less smell it. After the first course, I looked over and tears were streaming down her face as she sat staring straight ahead, completely out of it. Well, another girl took her home, and she didn't feel any better until the next day after sleeping and eating some. I think she went into some kind of shock at the fair because of the ride coupled with not having any food or energy in her body. The poor student she rode with felt terrible about it though.
Last night was the "grito" or "yell" that they have the night before independence day; it's kind of like ringing in the new year only they ring in the independence day with a midnight concert series in the street. It was great fun, however there were tons of people. Like body to body, packed in almost everywhere you go. Our group of teachers and Guatemalan friends went straight to the back to hang out and be a little less crowded. However, Carrie and I decided we wanted to get to the front of the concert, working our way as best as possible through the crowd. It was CRAZY! We got a ton of dirty looks, and a lot of touches, but eventually we made it right in front of the stage. We felt as if we got the "real" experience of the grito, as opposed to everyone else who did not brave the crowd. The people at the front are very hard core about the music, and they jump and move and shove. The whole crowd basically moves as one because you are so crowded together that when one person moves even a little bit to the right, all the people to their right also sway right, sending the whole crowd to the right. Same with going forward, backward, or left. So, when someone pushes, the crowd moves a LOT in that direction. You have to be careful not to fall because if you fall, you'll get trampled. We basically relied on our neighbors to keep us upright. Carrie almost fell once, but the guy next to her pulled her back on her feet. It was EXTREME being at the front of the crowd!
All this in only the past two days, and there are still two days left of celebrating independence, I'm sure something else interesting is bound to happen!
In celebration of Independence, there have been parades, bands, concerts, marching in the streets, fireworks ALL DAY long (as opposed to just fireworks in the morning or at dusk when they usually fire them pretty much everyday around here to celebrate someone's birthday), and the best thing of all...the world's greatest nightmare fair, complete with a farris wheel that goes at least 3 times the speed of any farris wheel in the states. We had a fun time eating fair food, riding rides (but in opposite order so we wouldn't get sick), and just walking around enjoying the fair atmosphere.
All of our students claimed they would see us out at all the independence things this weekend, and sure enough, I think we've seen them every night so far. Thursday, at the fair, we came across two freshmen girls who were walking around the fair together. So, they joined our group of teachers and rode 4 rides with us, the last of which was a bit of an embarrassing experience for one of the girls and one of the teachers. A ride called the Zipper, rumored to be the best ride at the fair, was the last one we rode. One of the girls said, "I want to ride with Miss McCormack." So she rode with my friend Carrie (McCormack), I rode with the other freshman, Gaby. They were right, it was a GREAT ride. When we got off, however, Carrie was white from head to toe. She walked up to the rest of the teachers after getting off the ride with her arms out in front of her, saying "I can't move my hands." Well, she literally could not move her hands, they were cold and stiff. We tried to massage the stiffness out and put some warmth into them, but she felt terrible. She hadn't eaten anything since lunch and it was now at least 10pm. So, we got her a sprite and went to begin our eating-fest of fair food, where each person took turns picking what course of fair food we all had to eat next. Carrie could not even look at the food, much less smell it. After the first course, I looked over and tears were streaming down her face as she sat staring straight ahead, completely out of it. Well, another girl took her home, and she didn't feel any better until the next day after sleeping and eating some. I think she went into some kind of shock at the fair because of the ride coupled with not having any food or energy in her body. The poor student she rode with felt terrible about it though.
Last night was the "grito" or "yell" that they have the night before independence day; it's kind of like ringing in the new year only they ring in the independence day with a midnight concert series in the street. It was great fun, however there were tons of people. Like body to body, packed in almost everywhere you go. Our group of teachers and Guatemalan friends went straight to the back to hang out and be a little less crowded. However, Carrie and I decided we wanted to get to the front of the concert, working our way as best as possible through the crowd. It was CRAZY! We got a ton of dirty looks, and a lot of touches, but eventually we made it right in front of the stage. We felt as if we got the "real" experience of the grito, as opposed to everyone else who did not brave the crowd. The people at the front are very hard core about the music, and they jump and move and shove. The whole crowd basically moves as one because you are so crowded together that when one person moves even a little bit to the right, all the people to their right also sway right, sending the whole crowd to the right. Same with going forward, backward, or left. So, when someone pushes, the crowd moves a LOT in that direction. You have to be careful not to fall because if you fall, you'll get trampled. We basically relied on our neighbors to keep us upright. Carrie almost fell once, but the guy next to her pulled her back on her feet. It was EXTREME being at the front of the crowd!
All this in only the past two days, and there are still two days left of celebrating independence, I'm sure something else interesting is bound to happen!
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Finally, a routine of some kind has developed in my life. I get up, go to school, teach, work, leave school, and then spend my limited income on food in the afternoons and evenings. The weekends are generally spent exploring Xela or other places in Guatemala.
However, this weekend is a little different than most. Guatemala is having elections tomorrow, Sunday. I'm not exactly sure how many years they have in between elections, but most of the teachers have never been around for elections before. Ever since we came here, there have been candidates campaigning in the streets, the parks, signs are up everywhere, they hold rallies...all the usual political things. But they had to quit campaigning right before the election. So traffic on Thursday was terrible because everyone was having one last parade to spread their name. And when I say parade I mean a 100+ car parade that stretches many, many city blocks and moves very very very slowly, if it moves at all. For this reason, it has taken a LOT longer to get anywhere by car/taxi/bus this past week. All the streets are blocked by standstill parades. This weekend is also a dry weekend. There is a mandatory dry period the few days prior to elections that prohibit any establishment from selling or serving alcohol. The Military are the ones who police this, so we were warned to stay mostly inside, doing nothing this weekend, and to be sure to FLEE from any place where alcohol is present because the military would come around and take EVERYONE into custody...even if you weren't drinking alcohol. It's actually very exciting to be able to be here during elections. Part of the culture and country that we get to experience...from a distance of course.
Felix missed us, thankfully. He was all the talk for the entire past week, not because of the rain (which we're used to getting at least once every day) but because the mudslides and damaged roads the rains from hurricanes almost always bring. And once the roads are damaged, they FOREVER to repair, and travel is extremely limited within the country. One day he was predicted to go north of us. The next day he was predicted to hit us directly on. Then two hours later he dissipated just to the south/east of us. All of the teachers at my school have decided to pursue careers in meteorology after leaving IAS, where you get paid to say "I don't know" and where being right 30% of the time is worthy of promotion and more money. Kind of like baseball.
September 15, next Saturday, is independence day for all of Central America. So we only have a four day week coming up, gracias a Dios. It should be another awesome cultural experience because apparently Xela is home to the biggest independence day party/festival. Everyone from Central America will be traveling here next weekend.
Until then...
However, this weekend is a little different than most. Guatemala is having elections tomorrow, Sunday. I'm not exactly sure how many years they have in between elections, but most of the teachers have never been around for elections before. Ever since we came here, there have been candidates campaigning in the streets, the parks, signs are up everywhere, they hold rallies...all the usual political things. But they had to quit campaigning right before the election. So traffic on Thursday was terrible because everyone was having one last parade to spread their name. And when I say parade I mean a 100+ car parade that stretches many, many city blocks and moves very very very slowly, if it moves at all. For this reason, it has taken a LOT longer to get anywhere by car/taxi/bus this past week. All the streets are blocked by standstill parades. This weekend is also a dry weekend. There is a mandatory dry period the few days prior to elections that prohibit any establishment from selling or serving alcohol. The Military are the ones who police this, so we were warned to stay mostly inside, doing nothing this weekend, and to be sure to FLEE from any place where alcohol is present because the military would come around and take EVERYONE into custody...even if you weren't drinking alcohol. It's actually very exciting to be able to be here during elections. Part of the culture and country that we get to experience...from a distance of course.
Felix missed us, thankfully. He was all the talk for the entire past week, not because of the rain (which we're used to getting at least once every day) but because the mudslides and damaged roads the rains from hurricanes almost always bring. And once the roads are damaged, they FOREVER to repair, and travel is extremely limited within the country. One day he was predicted to go north of us. The next day he was predicted to hit us directly on. Then two hours later he dissipated just to the south/east of us. All of the teachers at my school have decided to pursue careers in meteorology after leaving IAS, where you get paid to say "I don't know" and where being right 30% of the time is worthy of promotion and more money. Kind of like baseball.
September 15, next Saturday, is independence day for all of Central America. So we only have a four day week coming up, gracias a Dios. It should be another awesome cultural experience because apparently Xela is home to the biggest independence day party/festival. Everyone from Central America will be traveling here next weekend.
Until then...
Monday, September 3, 2007
The Longest Yet
My goodness, I haven´t posted on here since school started. There is lots to tell.
First off, school is going fairly well. I am getting better at being a teacher: being able to prepare in a timely manner, write lesson plans, learning what works for each class and what doesn´t, etc. I became the bad guy the first full week of classes...I gave a detention out and took up a cell phone in my homeroom the first two days of last week. I think they got over it. But then they all failed a quiz from Friday. Perhaps they hate me right now. But I can hacky sack and they did invite me to a concert with them last Thursday, so I guess their memories are short. It is funny to me that the high schoolers always try to invite the teachers to party with them...being a high schooler here is very different from the States. They begin drinking when they´re old enough to hold a bottle (Yes, I´ve seen a picture of one of my students drinking her first beer at 1.5 years old). So partying is a very openly discussed topic. We sometimes have to avoid our students on the weekends when we go dancing. I don´t think it´s exactly appropriate to dance with your students...HA.
After only four weeks here, I moved to a new apartment last weekend. It was just fine and dandy living with a family, however I lived on a side of town all by myself. Anytime I wanted hang out after dark, someone had to walk me home for safety sake--which gets a little burdensome for my friends. Plus, I had little privacy and very little space at my house, and I didn´t speak Spanish to them very often (which is the only reason I wanted to live there in the first place). Some other teachers had a room they needed to fill at their apartment, so I decided to move last weekend. And it was a WONDERFUL decision! Already I´ve had more privacy and more friendship all at the same time. Plus the girls in the apartment have lots of Guatemalan friends/boyfriends, so the opportunity to practice spanish is still there.
The funny story of the weekend is how we started a bar fight last weekend at a dance place. There was a whole group of us who went dancing together...one girl was going for her first time. She, of course, has very long, long blonde hair, which attracts a lot of attention down here. So, of course, she is aked to dance, and, of course, we tell the guy she doesn´t want to. (Not only is she new to the whole dancing thing, but she is married.) Well, the guy gets mad because we box him out of our circle and tell him we don´t want to dance with his drunk, old, 65 year old father. Well, he´s not happy about that so he starts telling us how we´re ¨bad for business¨in very broken english. At this point, some Guatemalan we don´t even know reaches over and shoves the old man out of our face...props to him because we don´t even know him. And, to make a long story short, a fight ensues. The 2 men who wanted us to dance are very drunk and therefore easily irritated. They begin to fight people, other men try to calm them down, they yell at the ¨Yankees¨some more, and we grab our coats and leave. No one at the school has ever been around for something like that. So needless to say, that´s been all the talk for the past couple of days amogn teachers at our school. OH, and the girl got a grand total of about 20 minutes of dancing. She still wants to try and go again. Yay!
There is more, but I´ll wait till later because this is long already. I´ve decided I need to post more often so all of them are not this long!
First off, school is going fairly well. I am getting better at being a teacher: being able to prepare in a timely manner, write lesson plans, learning what works for each class and what doesn´t, etc. I became the bad guy the first full week of classes...I gave a detention out and took up a cell phone in my homeroom the first two days of last week. I think they got over it. But then they all failed a quiz from Friday. Perhaps they hate me right now. But I can hacky sack and they did invite me to a concert with them last Thursday, so I guess their memories are short. It is funny to me that the high schoolers always try to invite the teachers to party with them...being a high schooler here is very different from the States. They begin drinking when they´re old enough to hold a bottle (Yes, I´ve seen a picture of one of my students drinking her first beer at 1.5 years old). So partying is a very openly discussed topic. We sometimes have to avoid our students on the weekends when we go dancing. I don´t think it´s exactly appropriate to dance with your students...HA.
After only four weeks here, I moved to a new apartment last weekend. It was just fine and dandy living with a family, however I lived on a side of town all by myself. Anytime I wanted hang out after dark, someone had to walk me home for safety sake--which gets a little burdensome for my friends. Plus, I had little privacy and very little space at my house, and I didn´t speak Spanish to them very often (which is the only reason I wanted to live there in the first place). Some other teachers had a room they needed to fill at their apartment, so I decided to move last weekend. And it was a WONDERFUL decision! Already I´ve had more privacy and more friendship all at the same time. Plus the girls in the apartment have lots of Guatemalan friends/boyfriends, so the opportunity to practice spanish is still there.
The funny story of the weekend is how we started a bar fight last weekend at a dance place. There was a whole group of us who went dancing together...one girl was going for her first time. She, of course, has very long, long blonde hair, which attracts a lot of attention down here. So, of course, she is aked to dance, and, of course, we tell the guy she doesn´t want to. (Not only is she new to the whole dancing thing, but she is married.) Well, the guy gets mad because we box him out of our circle and tell him we don´t want to dance with his drunk, old, 65 year old father. Well, he´s not happy about that so he starts telling us how we´re ¨bad for business¨in very broken english. At this point, some Guatemalan we don´t even know reaches over and shoves the old man out of our face...props to him because we don´t even know him. And, to make a long story short, a fight ensues. The 2 men who wanted us to dance are very drunk and therefore easily irritated. They begin to fight people, other men try to calm them down, they yell at the ¨Yankees¨some more, and we grab our coats and leave. No one at the school has ever been around for something like that. So needless to say, that´s been all the talk for the past couple of days amogn teachers at our school. OH, and the girl got a grand total of about 20 minutes of dancing. She still wants to try and go again. Yay!
There is more, but I´ll wait till later because this is long already. I´ve decided I need to post more often so all of them are not this long!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
