Christmas in Oaxaca

Hello, hello... as usual, my thoughts on a little bit of everything, sort of in the form of an email and sort of in the form of an internal monologue.

The tree was exactly what I wanted it to be. Not exactly a Charlie Brown tree, but nonetheless a little guy, barely taller than I was, and just a little lopsided in its branches. It was drizzling when I bought it, the kind of rain that they slangily call "chippy chippy" in Mexico, just enough to be ignored on a good day, just enough to be totally irritating on a bad day or when driving. The total cost was $130 in pesos, or just under thirteen American dollars. This fact in and of itself was a thing of immense pride for me, as the plastic ones in Chedraui and Gigante were at least twice as much, and obviously they didn't come with the authentic Christmas-tree smell. Cheeka and I had been looking for several days, but I knew the moment I saw the lot and was quoted a price that this would be where I bought the tree for my classroom. Never mind the house. Kate had already decorated it to the brim with kitchy decorations found in our downstairs storage closet (which is, incidentally, never ending- I even found a cappuccino maker in there the other day). No, I wanted something that people would see and enjoy every day, something that would liven up my classroom. So I bought a tree.
I coerced a taxi driver to load the bound tree into the back of his car, and he brought me, Cheeka and it home to our apartment. The tree was none the worse for the wear, though I couldn't say the same for the taxi's trunk, which suffered from inexplicable brown dirt stains on removal of the tree. I paid the driver and escaped into the house, dragging the tree behind me and onto our patio before he could scowl himself into charging an even higher faire. I would deal with getting the tree to the school later. I went to bed early, reasoning that I could think better in the early morning anyway. And sure enough the next day at five thirty am, right on schedule, I was hit with a stroke of particular genius and decided that the best way to get the tree to school was to tie it to my wheeling luggage, which I energetically rolled out from under my bed for the occasion, using the removable strap to tie the thing down so it didn't flop off the wheels. And so it was thus that I went to school a few weeks ago on a Tuesday morning, all prim and proper in my button down shirt and uniform, wheeling a Christmas tree behind me as though it were simply another bag of books. All in all, I didn't draw too many more stares than usual. My neighbors are now somewhat used to me toting bags of things for science experiments and showing up at the local miscellanea stores at six in the morning asking if they have, per chance, toothpicks or raisins or six small blocks of ice of identical size. A Christmas tree, I suppose, simply seemed the next logical step on my slow public parade into seeming insanity.
And so we decorated the tree. My students were absolutely thrilled, and brought in everything from lights to ornaments to window decorations to a can of spray-on window snow that didn't work. I had to let go a little bit of my compulsion to do things perfectly when it came to putting on the lights, something which in my family is usually done with meticulous care and attention, and let my students simply have at it. At the end, it looked beautiful, and it was with more than just a little pride that each day I walked into my classroom early to turn on the lights, and with more than just a little regret that I switched them off again at the end of the day. I have the habit of arriving a full hour early to work, when the middle school students are just beginning the day, just to sit in the sanctuary of my classroom, grade papers, and go over the things I want to do in the course of the day.
Exams were hectic. I lost my voice on day two, and sucked down an entire jar of Honey Loquat, my new preferred throat medicine, in the course of the week so that I could simply stay alive. The work of the teacher I had replaced was characterized with horrible bouts of laziness and forgetfulness at things such as recording grades in any way shape or form, so I more or less had to make up half of the bimester´s marks in the course of a week. I was sick with a stomach flu when my students performed "All I want for Christmas is you" by Mariah Carey at the annual "Jolly Christmas" event, but I heard they did well. We had choreographed an elaborate dance routine and spent hours practicing, and I am still waiting to see the recorded performance. But eventually, in the haze of the end of the bimester, the grades were miraculously handed in, a gift exchange successfully executed, and it seemed, at least, that my students had managed to show that they had learned a thing or two in the process. I even had a chance to read The Gift of the Magi, one of my favorite Christmas stories about the importance of giving presents which are meaningful rather than material, to my students. I had time to swim before the pool was closed for winter renovations until January, and I spent some little time at a new swimming spot outside the city at the site of a (very cold) natural spring.
After everything was said and done, and Cheeka and Kate had taken off for vacations, I surveyed the house, then a disaster zone, and decided to clean. The apartment I live in, aside from being paid for by the school, is quite nice, even though I had to fix the toilet flusher with a paper clip and we recently had a disaster with our ailing, ancient refrigerator when I tried to de-ice it with the hilt of a kitchen knife and accidentally removed the critical chunk which happened to be holding the coolant into the side of the refrigerator and Freon gas sprayed all over the kitchen. It had taken several weeks and a lot of spoilt food, but the school had eventually shelled out the money for a new fridge, which sat halfway wrapped in its cardboard box in the middle of the living room. Neither Kate nor Cheeka had dared touch it, but I was determined to deal with the situation before leaving for Christmas. Exhausted, and knowing all along that moving refrigerators by oneself is not generally a good idea, I broke a window moving our old refrigerator out into our own private enclosed alleyway, something which I have guiltily still not reported to the school. Somehow, dealing with a broken window (which, really, was quite a nonessential window, even for security purposes, and the current situation only adds to the house's ventilation) was something I could put off in my head until later, whereas the mess was not. However, the eventual result was that the house got clean and the kitchen looks much brighter, and I left on Saturday to come to Oaxaca knowing that when my roommates return they will be in for a pleasant surprise and a totally reorganized kitchen complete with new glassware and additional storage space.
I didn't pack much for vacation, my plan being to spend Christmas in Oaxaca and then as much time as possible at the beach swimming and playing in the water, but I did remember to bring the grocery bag brimming full of chocolates and other presents that my students excitedly unloaded on my desk on the last day of school. CEICO is certainly host to some of the wealthier people in Orizaba, and even as a new teacher I was showered with presents, including but not limited to a fancy black skirt, two purses, a wallet, a Christmas candle and mug, and an entire bag of chocolate, which I was sick off of for perhaps two days before I realized that even in my sugar-crazed delirium I was never going to get to the bottom of by myself.
And so on Friday I climbed aboard an ADO bus to Oaxaca with some clothes, a copy of Atlas Shrugged bookmarked by a drawing of the tattoo I (may) eventually get this break, and a bag of chocolate. It was an uneventful ride, which I spent mainly sleeping after such a frenzy of work, play, and chocolate-binging, and I arrived in Oaxaca without event. I knew that I was getting close when I saw a sign reading "Etla," a nearby town of whose existence I had known only from newspapers reporting troops stationed there during the political conflict, and a small piece of isolated graffiti on the back of a street sign which read, defiant in its smallness, "APPO."
Arriving at the ADO bus station, I felt inexplicably at home at the same instant that I inexplicably realized that I didn't have anywhere of my own to go and deposit my bag of chocolate, which was undoubtedly melting in the 80-degree, perfect-for-a-trip-to-the-beach weather. And so I sat down, a guest in my own city, made a few phonecalls before and set off to my former apartment to simply sit and await Brittany, who is now living in my room.
My landlords and their family welcomed me with open arms, ushering me, despite my keylessness, into their backyard, a show of typical Mexican hospitality in spite of what must surely have seemed to them an abrupt departure exactly five weeks before, and renewed an old offer for me to join them for Christmas dinner the next night, which I gratefully accepted.
From there I eventually met Brittany's parents, down in Mexico to visit for the holidays, and accompanied them to their hotel, not two doors down from my original Oaxaca homestay. From there, I met Emily, and we chatted for an hour while walking round in a large circle the size of the zocalo looking at radishes.
Wait… radishes?
December 23rd, aside from being my mom's birthday, is also Noche de los Rabanos, or Night of the Radishes, in Oaxaca, a celebrated event for which artisans bring in incredibly detailed sculptures of traditional Oaxacan people and events, as well as nativity scenes, made entirely out of radishes. Grated radishes, peeled radishes, carved radishes… figurines averaging a foot high, though some scenes were far more complex, guarded off. Beautiful artwork… made of radishes. Brittany and her family even apparently saw Ulysses, Oaxaca's bastard governor, ushered quickly through with a necessarily large entourage of police and reporters, an all-too-obvious attempt to show that the city is now "safe." And then, at maybe ten at night, the work is all taken down and families are let to roam around the zocalo, a big orchestra playing Christmas music in the background, a dream come true, happy families and tourists united in smiles and laughter in front of a backdrop of fresh colonial architecture.
If you know me at all, you know that last sentence was more than a little facetious. Let´s go back and talk about the city of Oaxaca for just a minute. It makes me feel vaguely uncomfortable. I would even go so far as to say that, in the context of the way I knew it earlier, I don't like it. It is quite artfully repainted, something rumored to have been funded not by the state but by the feds, all traces of earlier graffiti and suffering and pain buried under layer upon layer of new, brilliant colors and seemingly industrious storefronts. Ice cream vendors at every corner, new cobblestones where cars were once burned, new faces to old stores recently reopened, new everything. A giant Christmas tree lights the zocalo from above, and a nativity scene made from tin is on display amidst thousands of recently planted red poinsettia flowers. People frolic and bask in the sun with their children. Restaurants are occupied. `The economy is fine´, the city seems to be screaming with all its might. `We have recovered.´ A façade, I say.
Contrary to the idea that it is supposed to look better this way, that this is what Oaxaca really is and that it is happy, I don't much like it. It is as though one is in the presence of someone who is wearing far, far too much makeup, trying to be naturally cheerful but somehow just managing to look posed and premeditated. Tim asked me as I explained my discomfort today, "Is it that you like a city in conflict better than a city in peace?" No, I resolutely answer. After all, Orizaba is peaceful to the point of being boring, on many levels. There isn't much to do in the name of touristy attractions. And yet I love it. And, too, from this end I can see that this holiday season is one very large hope for the revitalization of Oaxaca, a very important time that I gladly contribute to on my vacation by posing as the average tourist in expensive restaurants sipping my overpriced coffee. It is simply that I enjoyed living in a city where there were no tourists, where I was not simply one in a crowd of ignorant sheep speaking every language but Spanish putzing around the zocalo for a photo op and awkwardly bargaining for shawls and pottery and t-shirts they do not know the value of. It all seems so fake, so horrendously fake. And yet, while I know that I will probably not ever be able to return to the Oaxaca I know to live the way I used to, I suppose I begrudgingly appreciate the changes which have occurred at lightning speed over the past five weeks because they mean happiness, of a sort, to a previously tortured city.
I only hope that this happiness is a permanent one. The teacher strikes are an annual event; or at least, they have been for the past six years. Who knows what will happen in May of 2007, whether the teachers will be allowed to return in their traditional way of protesting the ills of public education and the countrywide problem with under representation of traditional cultures and impoverished communities, or whether the reign of Ulyses, in all of his ridiculousness, will be allowed to continue unchecked until 2008, the next year for state elections. Calderon, thus far, seems to have proved himself an able president, in fact taking up some of the quite reasonable improvements suggested by his more liberal competitor Obrador, calling for recognition and support of communities such as those who spilled their souls in the form of sweat and tears into the streets of Oaxaca for six months while waiting for their voices to be acknowledged. Perhaps things will change. I cannot claim to know.
I spent Christmas eve day journaling by myself and later with Emily in the zocalo, talking and thinking about everything and nothing at once before retiring to our families for Christmas eve. I ate dinner with my already large family and perhaps fifteen guests, a truly multicultural mix as Javier and Enrique both seem to prefer girlfriends of the European persuasion and had them and their families over for the occasion as well. I sat next to a mildly boring electrical engineer (or something, I can't remember) named Adam (or something, I can't remember) from New Zealand (that much, at least, I remember), periodically exchanging jokes with Javier's girlfriend who was quite pleasant. After dinner, as if Christmas could be placed any more out of context than it already was in 80 degree weather with such a comical group, we hoised up two piñatas, and busted them open. I, the only American in the group, had the honor of being the one to break open the piñata that the women hit, after jokingly saluting in a general northward direction towards home and saying in Spanish, "United States, I apologize in advance if I represent you poorly." An old man from the Danish crowd broke open the second, which they had reserved, for some reason, for the men.
Today, Christmas, has passed without much event. I went down to the zocalo and enjoyed another leisurely breakfast, reading, taking it easy, and sitting in the sun listening to Christmas music. I called home. I didn't do anything. It was nice. Not exactly what I pictured a year ago when I first decided to move to Mexico and made the vow not to return for a year, coaxing myself into the idea of Christmas in Oaxaca. But nonetheless, things have been very nice. I have realized in the past two days that I haven't been on vacation in a full year, what with school, a nonexistent (by choice) graduation, working frantically to pay come down here, TESOL certification, and then work work work with my kiddies, even when it was only part time a draining job… summer simply did not exist for me this year. And yet here I am, seeing Mexico as perhaps it should be seen, with two weeks and a bundle full of cash marked "paid vacation" burning a hole into my pocket, while the sun shines and the wind whispers invitingly into my ear, "time to get a tan."
Thinking of you all on this Christmas day in sunny Mexico. I hope that everyone received at least one Magi Christmas gift, and had the opportunity to give one in return. Mine has been that I have all of you at home to think of, even three thousand miles away.

Greetings from... Orizaba?

Well... it certainly has been a while, and I have promised time and time again to send an update email home, but somehow haven´t gotten around to it. Three weeks ago, I got fed up with the ongoing low level stress of never knowing whether I would actually have work on a given day in Oaxaca and, of my own volition, decided to leave. I had been browsing job listings online for quite some time with my roommates, more for fun than anything else, daydreaming about making big bucks in Asian countries or the Middle East where the salaries are higher. It was a bit of a game to us, but deep down we all privately knew that we could, potentially, have to leave if the school shut down. Emily (who would eventually take my place teaching at Cambridge) was out of work because the school I got my TESOL certification at was closed, and Cambridge director James kept closing John´s classes one by one without notice. Infuriated at how little control we had over the situation and the sheer ridiculousness of our daily existance, we rebelled by banding together and thinking out other options.

I was the first to really go crazy. I submitted my resume everywhere, and had incredibly good success- everyone, it seemed, wanted a teacher who had had the patience of living in Oaxaca so long and with such patience. I had mad dreams of teaching to Cairo, where I found a job listing which had excellent pay and a free airplane ticket both to and from Egypt. John talked more and more of China. Brittany decided after much ado to return home after Christmas to get an internship and then apply to grad school in the fall. Emily bought a ticket to go to Puebla and then stayed at the last minute in the hopes of staying for just a little longer and finding a new job.

When things happened, thought, they happened fast. I found a job and decided to leave on a Wednesday, told my director and my students on Thursday, packed Friday, and left on Saturday. Where I landed was CEICO elementary school, in a city called Orizaba in Veracruz state, and where they urgently needed an English teacher. The old teacher, it seems, was a former Peace Corps volunteer whose heart had been left behind in Kirgistan and who wanted desperately to leave Mexico and return to her students there. Few questions were asked; they needed a teacher, I needed a job. The political situation excused my abrupt departure from Oaxaca and I was able to obtain the job without the recommendation of my director (who certainly, given my position as one of the key leaders of the mini-revolution occuring at Cambridge Academy, would have been loathe to actually say anything positive about anything at all).

Orizaba is situated conveniently half way between Puebla and Veracruz City along a major highway, two and a half hours from each. It is also about a four and a half hour bus ride from Mexico City. Pico de Orizaba, the city´s main geographic feature, is one of many mountains (it is, indeed, already quite cold here) in the area. It is the third highest in North America after, of course, McKinley in Alaska and another mountain (Logan) in Canada of slightly lesser fame. I can see Pico de Orizaba from my schoolyard while I play basketball with my kids, shrouded in fog and covered with, yes, you named it: snow. Thrill-seeking backpackers have a total of perhaps five months out of the year to camp out and scale the peak while it is thusly covered, while the rest of the year it fades into the backdrop of the other, greener mountains.

I quite literally didn´t speak more than one or two syllables for perhaps my first two hours in Orizaba, so overwhelmed was I by the abruptness of my arrival and the sustained speech of my coworker and temporary roommate Kelly, who told me pretty much everything there was to know about everyone and everything in Orizaba and at CEICO at such a pace that I, exhausted from the bus ride, could simply not keep pace. During this deluge of introductions and information I was, however, introduced to one of my favorite aspects of Orizaba thus far: the pambazo. Pambazos, a local staple, are sandwiches on soft rolls, filled with beans and cheese and mayonnaise and either chorizo sausage, beef, or chicken. They are, in a word, delicious, and so, so, simple to make. And so, on my first day in Orizaba, I buried myself in a pambazo and my michelada (light beer with pepper flakes, not for the faint of heart) and listened as best as I could to my coworker rattle on about herself and the other teachers at school.

Eventually, of course, I began teaching, and learned things for myself. I am, as it happens, at the reins of both the docile, 12-student sixth grade and the hellish, 22-student (4 with documented ADD) fifth grade at CEICO, where I teach ESL, phonics, science, and periodically handwriting. My instruction is all in English, and after nearly three weeks teaching I have managed to keep most of my students in the dark about whether or not I actually speak Spanish, although it is difficult at times to pretend when they see or overhear me talking to some of my Mexican coworkers who do not, in fact, speak any English. I get along well with all of the other teachers, and have struck up an unlikely friendship with the Religion y Valores teacher, who, much to my chagrin and embarrassment and just a little to my amusement, has a crush on me. Because CEICO, as I neglected to mention earlier, is a private, wealthy, Caltholic school, and yes, Anna Jolley not only has to enforce morning and noon prayer, she also has to wear a uniform of blue slacks and orange, white or blue polo shirts, depending on the day of the week.

But all in all, the poor, non-Catholic, public-school educated, California hippie in me has not had difficulty acclimating to this new, more austere style of education. My students are appropriately questioning and curious, and the English department director loves that I take them outside for science labs rather than having them sit in the stuffy classroom all day. We have done labs to measure temperature changes, explore the physical properties of metals, and explore the structure of water and the other materials in photosynthesis and respiration. My students run laps if they misbehave, but I am appropriately reconciliatory during recess, when I flagrantly flout the yard duty schedule by leaving my post and actually playing basketball and soccer with my students. I don´t think there is much of a precedent for foresaking yard duty in order to actually play with students, and there is certainly no history of punishment for such an obvious violation of the rules. I don´t think anyone really knows what to do; as a result, thus far no one has complained. No one seems to care that I wear sneakers under my slacks, either. I think, really, that they are sufficiently pleased that my kids spend most of their time with me smiling.

I live, now, in an apartment with two of the other (mellower) English teachers at CEICO, and while our refrigerator is currently nonoperational and I had to fix the toilet with a paperclip the other day, the apartment is all in all quite comfortable, far nicer than that I lived in in Oaxaca. It has a small kitchen and livingroom/dining room space with enough space for our circle of friends of CEICO teachers and a few others to eat dinner or have a beer together after work if we so desire, and the best part is that the only part I have to pay for is cable for the TV and the phone bill because the school owns the actual house.

Thus far I have spent my time in Orizaba peacefully. I have, during my free time now not absorbed by the horrendously long Saturday classes I used to have in Oaxaca, also taken the opportunity to travel throughout Mexico a little more, and spent one weekend in D.F (Mexico City) to bid John adieu with a few other friends before his inevitable return to the states, and spent this past weekend (three days this time) exploring Olmec and Mayan ruins in Tabasco and Chiapas states respectively. Mexico City was phenomenal, and in the center of all the dangerous, evil slums and pollution that everyone has heard so much about, was a beautiful, green, friendly, safe city, with an amazing anthropology museum I could have spent a week at. I could easily see myself living there in the future. Considering its bad reputation, it was beautiful, and while the metro was terrifying, it was easy to get around and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Tabasco and Chiapas (Palenque, specifically, in the latter) were a more rural adventure, hours upon hours of scenic green that I alternately slept through and wondered at through the steamy glass windows of ADO bus after ADO bus with my Canadian roommate Cheeka. All in all, traveling is not very expensive, and I have certainly realized that Mexican history is far more extensive and diverse than I ever could have imagined. Even just seeing the Palenque ruins was life changing- old stepped pyramids shrouded in romantic mist amidst an enchanting jungle backdrop. I was quite pleased to be able to take the time to see the waterfall where Predator was filmed on that same excursion, too. I could write pages about it all. One can easily see where the inspiration for so many playscripts comes from.

I periodically get phonecalls from my friends still working in Oaxaca, about riots or looting or small clashes between the PFP and the APPO. It seems so far away now, a tidbit in the newspapers I read while I sit at Cuahemaloya or Italian Coffee drinking cappuchinos with my friends, bundled up in long sleeves against the rain outside. December 1st, when Calderon was inaugurated and a key date politically, passed more or less without mishapand cities there, but after my abrupt departure, schools in other parts Mexico are on the minds of all of my friends. I think that after January the numbers of our old crew will have been reduced to one, while everyone else moves on to greener pastures and better jobs. In the meantime, I plan on spending Christmas in Oaxaca, partially because I feel that I owe it to that city to see it through its time of crisis, and partially because the friends I made in that situation have been absolutely irreplaceable in my experiences here in Mexico thus far.

So, to those of you at home who knew that I had moved on and were awaiting an update, or to those who didn´t and can finally breathe a sigh of relief, know that I am well. I love my students, and look forward to every day teaching- it is certainly nice to be able to have just two classes of students all week rather than six different classes for an hour at a time as I did in Oaxaca, and the support system that comes along with being a real teacher at a real colegio (elementary, middle, and ninth grade) is excellent. I feel like this, what I am doing every day here in Orizaba, is what I came here to do. My Spanish is finally fluid, and though I still maintain that I am something short of fluent, I am on my way. I have to say, I haven´t done justice to the incredible experiences I have had here in Orizaba thus far, haven´t even begun to explain how amazing and brilliant and frustrating all at once my students are, or how much I love the challenge of working with them. I haven´t even begun to get into the politics of my school, or the plans for the chapel they are building on school premises, and I haven´t even attempted to scratch the surface of the people who make my daily existance: my coworkers, my friends, my boss, even, and the puppy named Lulu who lives at my house and who we think is a French poodle but aren´t sure because we haven´t cut her hair for the first time yet. All that, I am sure, will come later. But for now, I guess I needed to at least give it a try.

Take care,
Anna