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Swimming
Anne, Rhoda and me in the swimming pool Well another, whole week and a half has passed in school since I mast updated you all. And this has been our first full 5-day week so please forgive my slightly dodgey writing which I could only associate with tiredness.
Last week didn´t start well. At the teacher´s day celebrations (the day when no one works becuase the students have to dance for the teachers - the day after we have all had a day off to symbolise the rest teacher's need and the day before we have a day off so the teachers can have a lunch party) Anne and I lost all our teaching material, and it still hasn´t reappeared. It´s not just that we paid for the materials and it took ages to do, it´s that all the kids knew it was ours and no one thought to give it back, apparently some of them were throwing it around in the playground, and that really hurt. At times like that it´s really easy to wonder why we are bothering, but you have to remember that not all the students are like that, most are really sweet and want to help us and speak to us even if
View from the ruins
View over the laguna from the ruins at Teuchitlan they don´t work very hard. It´s so easy to take things like respect for teachers for granted when you´ve never known anything else, but some children have just never been taught.
Luckily the week looked up when I found a belgian chocolate shop in the nearby Plaza del Sol shopping centre (so there went another $15) and Anne and I found a German speciality isle in the nearby WalMart (World Cup specials) and they had yummy German choccy biscuits (so there went another $5).
Thursday evening saw the weekly trip to the salsa club, and experience much more enjoyable than last time due to the prospect of not getting up 2 hours after we´d gone to bed for school (Friday was day off number 7 in 4 weeks). It did however involve delivering 2 drunk 18-year olds to thier home after waiting for an hour for them to buy some dodge looking hotdogs (luckily the vomitting came after we´d left them).
On Friday afternoon we went to the teacher´s lunch with all the other teachers who work in our school. We had nibbles to start with (chilli-crisps, chilli-peanuts & chilli-pork scratchings) and tequila with lime and chatted
Teacher´s Day Lunch
Elizabeth, Anne, me and Alma at the teacher´s day lunch to Elizabeth one of the full-time English teachers who takes the 1st and 3rd grade lessons. Then we had a full Mexicano feast with consuelas (big ceramic cooking pots) of all sorts of different dishes, avoiding the cow´s tounge and pig´s skin, Anne and I filled up Mexican stylie on tortillas, meats, veg, radishes, mole negro (savory chocolate saucey chicken stuff) and of course chilli. After lunch there was .... drum roll .... how did you guess? .... dancing!! And Anne and I were dragged onto the dance floor with most of the other teachers (who are almost all women), it never fails to amaze me how quick people are to put on their dancing shoes here, this event in the UK would have required much more tequila!
Saturday was the monthly volunteer´s trip where we went to a hotel on lake Chapala to go to the outdoor swimming pools. It was a really nice day we spent the whole time topping up our tans, chatting and cooling off in the pool, which had lovely warm water. Anne and I also got to know Rhoda who has just arrived and who knows several people that I know from uni,
Children working
One of the rare moments the children actually do some work. which always make the world feel so small.
On Sunday, after our visit to Tonolá (see the Guadalajara city entry), Beto and Gina took us to the town of Teuchitlan in which ´our´ family has their country home. It´s a lovely little house in a lovely little town which is nice and quiet and has a gorgeous river. We went up to visit the ruins in the nearby hills from which there were amazing views over the nearby lagoon and the agave fields (cactus from which tequila is made). We were also treated to a yummy lunch in a fish restaurant by the lagoon, which is shallow and full of a special local plant and has cows walking throug it - quite a stange site but really beautiful. It was a really nice day, and I got a bit of a suntan top-up too!
Then it was Monday, and there are only two words to sum up this week really. YOU´RE BEAUTIFUL. Unfortunately this doesn´t apply to the words uttered by a hansome prince. Instead we have spent this week teaching the lyrics (minus obsenities) of Jame´s Blunts most irritating number to all 1000 of our students -
Mexican Food
Tostadas and Burritos by request from one of the other English teachers, not out of choice! That means we sing it 5 classes a day, 3 or 4 times a class. And it gets sung back to us at breaktimes in the playground. Luckily, some of our translations are getting around the school a bit now so the classes are getting easier to teach as they copy the previous class´s work. We only have 4 more classes to do it with now and I will be pleased when I can stop shouting the word FLYING over the top of James´s unnecessary F word and worrying that one of the kids will notice (none of them have yet though - testimony to the quality of English listening skills I feel).
This week, Anne and I have also discovered Rummy - a slightly different take on the card game we orginally knew, using plastic tiles. This means that this entire week has involved: sleep, breakfast, James Blunt, sleep, lunch, sleep, rummy, sleep and repeat. In fact I have been so tired that one afternoon when I was napping in our room, I had a peculiar dream about Guinea-pig day at school - when the
At the ruins
Beto, Gina, me and Anne at the ruins whole school got the day off and then the next day we danced to celebrate the existance of guinea-pigs, and ate guinea-pig tacos. Ok, wired I know, but not actually completely beyond Mexico. The wierdest bit was, when I woke up it took me ages to realise it was a dream and that in fact it wasn´t guinea-pig day afterall! I think I´m going loca!!
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