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
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
posted by ajolley | 2:07 PM
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