jeanne in tequila country

Had to get out of these insane courses this weekend in order to go. On Wednesday last week, my boss tells me that there are courses all weekend that I have to attend. I say, “What?” She says, “Un curso diplomado.” I say, “What’s that?” She says, “Leading to licensure. They’re mandatory.” I say, “What? I already have plans. I was going to go to Guanajuato because my friend Julia needs help finding an apartment there, and her Spanish isn’t good.” (This isn’t true, of course. Julia already has a place to live, and her Spanish is fine.) My boss says, “Every teacher has to attend. I have a friend in Guanajuato who can help her find an apartment.”

I bite my lip and look unhappy. “It’s just that, I didn’t know we had to be here this weekend, and I don’t need this license, and am I even going to understand what’s going on?” She says, “Whether or not you understand, you have to be there.” I say, “And are they going to charge me, too?” because I knew that the other teachers were being charged a small fortune for these mandatory classes. “No,” she says. Sensing my irritation, she says, “I’ll call this afternoon and ask whether or not you have to go, and I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

The next day, Thursday, she tells me that I have to attend the courses. I am very unhappy, but by now a bit more resigned and less indignant. As a concession, however, she tells me that I don’t have to go Sunday and can have Monday off, since I didn’t know I’d have to be at school on the weekend. That would give me two days in Guanajuato. It was not what I was hoping for, but a better deal in any case.

She forgot, however, that we had an appointment on Monday morning with the publishers of the English books used at the school. This I remembered the next day and reminded her of it. She was glad I remembered and on the spot gave me Saturday off so I could be here Monday. I didn’t understand why I still had to go to the courses that afternoon if I was going to miss the other two days, but I didn’t try to get out of them completely, so as not to upset her more.

I was at school that day an hour earlier than usual, at her request, but in order to do absolutely nothing all morning long. The kids were taking an achievement test or something, and I didn’t have to give classes. I hung around doing nothing, wanting to go back to bed, wanting to just go to Guanajuato already. Finally around noon we were dismissed.

The courses began that afternoon at 4 and went until 9. They were about learning styles. I understood a bit of it, but every so often I would end up in the wrong group because I didn’t exactly understand the instructions. In one group, someone finally said to me, “Jeanne, you’re supposed to return to your original group now.” Oops. And in the first group we were supposed to come up with a definition of “learning.” In Spanish. I tried to get out of it, pleading handicap. But they still made me do it. So I wrote it in English and left them to try to translate it. And even though I wasn’t going to be in the classes the next day, I still had to do the homework, which was to write a letter to a partner telling him or her politely what they should change about him or herself. Worse, my partner ended up being the least likeable person in the entire school….

I couldn’t leave Friday night like I had wanted to, because there weren’t any buses for Leon after 7. So I sat around chatting online with Tricia, who is newly addicted to IM. That meant staying up late to finish packing and to write that stupid letter.

Saturday morning I got up early to turn in the letter and get on the bus. The classes were starting and the teachers were just arriving. My partner gave me my letter, too, standing at the file cabinet writing it quickly on hot pink paper while I waited. I stuck it in my purse and practically ran out of the school.

Getting to Guanajuato took longer than I expected, which always seems to be the case with the buses. We met and had lunch. Then we walked around, visited the market, which I had never been to, and eventually went to a “French” crepe café where we played loteria—like Mexican bingo—to practice our Spanish vocabulary. We drank bizarre beverages for a “French” café. Julia had asked for café con leche, which turned out to be hot milk with Nescafe (not that surprising), and I had asked for English breakfast tea with a little milk, which turned out to be a cup of hot milk in which I tried to steep my tea. We also had a crepe that was drowning in maple syrup, also rather strange. Well, what were we expecting? Real French coffee and crepes? There we met with one of Julia’s Spanish teachers, a woman finishing her studies at the university who was a little bit hyper. Then we went to Julia’s room, did our nails while chatting, and went out for dinner and salsa dancing.

The salsa dancing turned out to be a little disappointing, even though we should’ve known not to expect so much from salsa in Mexico. After all, salsa is from New York, and the salsa hot spots further south are Miami and Cuba. Hardly anyone knows how to salsa here, much to the surprise of foreign tourists and students who are lured by the offer of free salsa classes to go along with their TEFL or Spanish courses, leading them to believe that salsa is actually part of Mexican culture. Why don’t they give free banda or cumbia lessons? Or at least folk dances? But since there were at least two salsa places in Guanajuato, I thought that perhaps there would actually be a salsa scene there. In Arandas, for example, you only hear salsa in the Cuban bar, where nobody dances. And in Guadalajara, I only knew of one salsa place.

We got to the first salsa place and had lovely micheladas. We danced a little, but our partners were either jerking us around a lot or dancing cumbia or some terrible dance they invented. Julia and I tried to dance together, but neither of us knows how to lead, so we just ended up looking a bit silly. A couple of our partners wanted to sit down and talk to us. No, Julia said, we are talking girl stuff. (We came out to dance, not to talk to some boring guys who don’t know how to dance!)

The DJ started playing cha-cha. I had learned the basic cha-cha step in ballroom, so we tried it. As soon as we were on the dancefloor a couple of other jokers asked us to dance, but they didn’t know how to dance either. So we just kind of swayed back and forth while having boring conversations. We sat down first chance we could. The DJ kept playing cha-cha, and there were only two couples dancing, clearly from some advanced ballroom class, doing some fancy-assed routine that made me want to puke. So we chugged the last of our micheladas and went to the other salsa place.

There, the atmosphere was better. An older couple was dancing, and it is always nice to watch an older couple dancing salsa. Their movements are small and subtle, and they are usually cute and often very good dancers. But at this place a drunk guy sat himself down at our table and started talking to us. If there is a guy sitting at your table, good luck trying to get a dance partner. Julia was polite and talked to him. I ignored him rudely. At least the other guys asked if it would be OK to sit with us. I refuse to speak with someone who imposes himself so rudely upon us. And then his friend, more sober, came over and started talking to me. He wasn’t as annoying because he wasn’t drunk, but I was still irritated. It is good to practice Spanish, but it’s usually the same exact conversation over and over again. Where are you from? Oh, Arizona? I have a cousin in Phoenix! What are you doing here? How long have you been here? How long will you be here? It gets old after a while.

In order to get away, Julia and I danced together to some salsa, leaving these two guys at our table with our stuff, hoping they’d get the picture that we wanted to dance, not talk. We felt silly dancing together, but we hoped people who could actually dance would ask us to dance. We went to the bathroom together complaining about these guys who took over our table. When we came back, we didn’t want to return to our table, so we just sat down somewhere else. Another guy came over to talk to us. The DJ was playing son, which hardly any young person knows how to dance, and I am no exception. The new guy asked if we wanted to dance. I said, I don’t know how to dance son. He said, you can learn! I declined, but I assumed he knew how to dance it. The guys at our table finally left. Then a great cumbia song I love came on, and I decided to dance with this new guy. It turned out he didn’t know how to dance, either. It was awful. In the meantime, Julia got the only real dancer of our entire night, an older guy who knew what he was doing. After that we decided to give up and go home.

On the way home, a pack of three, then four, stray dogs walked ahead of us. They were oblivious to my talking to them, except that they kind of followed us (if you can be followed by someone or something ahead of you, that is). They seemed quite nice, actually, not mean at all. Hoping politely for something to eat, I’m sure. They kept walking ahead and looking back at us to make sure we were still behind them.

This reminds me of a dog I saw these past couple of days in my neighborhood, sitting on the street. It had a coat like chocolate-vanilla marble cake, and very piercing, sad eyes that were a little bit creepy. She looked like she may just have had puppies, because she may have been lactating. After school yesterday I gave her some food. I had some rice porridge leftover, and I mixed in some ham. When I watched her finish and walk away, I saw that she was limping, not using one of her rear legs. I thought to myself, if she is around my building a lot, I won’t be able to stand it. I’ll take her to the vet and keep her, even though I haven’t really got much space or money to do so. I imagined myself with a dog here, rather happy about it despite the inconvenience it would cause. But I haven’t seen her since. I still think about her occasionally.

Anyway, on Sunday, Julia’s homestay mother made us breakfast, even though Julia expressly told her not to. It was lovely, though, and she is such a nice little old lady. We had a great conversation with her. Then we left to go to Leon. I had to travel out of there anyway, so we decided to go there to go shoe-shopping, as Leon is purportedly the cheapest place for shoes and leather goods, and for the fair. We ended up in the shoe mall looking at a million shoes and getting hungry and tired. Finally we got the same pair of boots. We headed to the fair, which was packed with stalls selling all sorts of things, and LOTS of food. It was fun to see, but I felt like all we did most of the time was navigate around a lot of slow-moving people eating huge popsicles with chili sauce or something. The best was seeing the animals, but there aren’t as many animals on display in the fairs here as there are in the county and state fairs in the States. We walked back to the bus station, eating lovely gorditas de nata on the street.

My bus back to Arandas was packed full of fair-goers returning to their small towns, so much so that the aisle was smushed full and the bus driver couldn’t take on any more people. It only takes two and a half hours to get from Leon to Arandas by car, but it takes a lot longer on the bus because it stops at every freakin’ bus stop on the way. It stopped about five times through Leon and then at practically every corner through the smaller cities on the way—San Pancho, Purisima, Manuel Doblado—and at the highway stops outside the small towns as well.

Bus travel makes me not want to take so many weekend trips anymore, but Julia and I are planning to go to Guadalajara this coming weekend, so she can check it out….

Back at school yesterday, it was awkward seeing my letter-writing partner from the course. She is the director of the kindergarten classes, and she is disliked by most of the people who have worked with her closely. We hugged and kissed on the cheek, as is the usual greeting in Mexico, but then she said, “I got your letter, and I thought, what’s going on? I think we need to have a talk.” I had read her letter, which consisted of about three sentences saying how sweet I am.

For a while I thought I had misunderstood the instructions again. I had written to her, in as diplomatic a way as possible, that I thought she needed to consider other people’s feelings more in times of stress. What I meant was that she shouldn’t order people around like I’ve seen her do when she’s in a hurry. Of course she doesn’t order me around much, but she does order around the kindergarten teachers and the cook and cleaners and Rocio the secretary, and rather impatiently, too. But I was always on her good side. I taught her some yoga one time. I hardly ever have to deal with her. But now I am a little worried, perhaps I’ve gotten myself on her bad side. Oh well.

We had the meeting with the publishers, one of them their academic consultant. Finally an expert who could corroborate my opinion that the books are much too difficult! So she helped me with the materials, suggesting a plan of action for getting the kids caught up and promising to send the missing levels of books, and she helped the principal with a plan for future years. My boss said, “Now you have to stay for next year!” And I just smiled.

The academic consultant told me I should keep the kids in their grades, rather than giving classes by level, because I will always have new kids coming in who don’t know anything, and it causes a lot more trouble for the teachers. Now that we are going to get some different books, however, that is more of an option than before.

To tell the truth, I have been feeling so lazy that I hardly care as much as I used to what happens at the school. It isn’t that I don’t care anymore—I still do—but I realize that all my previous fervor just exhausts and frustrates me, and teaching at less than 100% passion can still get the job done. Also, I guess I am a little more peeved at the administration for doing silly things like requiring us to attend weekend classes, and I am beginning to feel like the school is not really worth all the trouble that I was putting myself through before.

But this is a bit of a rationalization. I still feel bad for not being as passionate as I was before. For example, instead of doing my lesson plans for today, last night I was sitting here composing most of this long and rambling blog entry, leaving the planning for the morning, before classes. And I feel guilty for that.

Plus I have been shouting at the students a lot. I don’t know if I have always shouted at them this much, but I get so tired of them not following basic instructions like “sit down.” If they want to ask me something they just get out of their seats and come right up to me to ask, instead of raising their hands in their seats like I always remind them to do. If they want to talk to someone they just get up and go over there to talk to them. If they are bored, which is mostly my fault, they play with things in or on their desks. I can’t seem to get them to all be seated at the same time, even less possible to have them all paying attention. I tell them over and over again, in both languages, to stay seated. And they don’t, so I get angry and shout. This seems to result in the desired effect, so I begin to feel less and less upset at myself for doing it. I think this must be very bad.

And maybe it’s because I haven’t been following through on my meditation and yoga practice much. Part of it is traveling, and I don’t have as much time to do it, or, more accurately, I don’t make the time to do it. Idleness seems to breed idleness, and I do less and less as time goes on. I find myself watching TV more, playing solitaire and minesweeper on my computer rather obsessively, chatting online all evening (although I don’t really see anything wrong with that last pastime). I did my laundry this afternoon despite being tired from school, so I allowed myself to do nothing constructive the rest of the day. I think it’s time I got back into a tighter routine; maybe I even have to make a schedule for myself and force myself to follow it, whether I want to or not. I think I am faltering a little, and I should catch myself before it gets any worse.