so today we did our first actual teaching. we were all 3 of us petrified. i had to teach a recap of yesterday´s lesson that we had observed, and then introduce conjunctions. skye had to teach modal verbs, which are the hardest things ever, and jayne had to do a recap lesson on ´used to´. we all survived, via quite a lot of cigarettes beforehand. despite our fear, i think we all quite enjoyed it. once the first 5 minutes of hello i´m lucy i´m from england blah blah are over, it´s not too scary, the kids are really nice, they were well behaved, and may have even learnt something. we have celebrated with some beer but are quite exhausted after our ordeal. no more teaching practice until next week now. tomorrow is halloween, we can go to the school in the evening dressed as pumpkins. unfortunately i didn´t think in july to bring my pumpkin outfit round south america with me, so may give it a miss.
in other news
joseph conrad, the polish author, learnt how to write his books in english by reading the oxford english dictionary while sailing around (he was a sailor). he wrote one book for each of the seas (5), and posted them to his english publisher. when he finally arrived in england he couldn´t speak a word of english, but had learnt to write it via just the dictionary. goes against all our theories of learning so far, but juan told us it, so it must be a valid point.
this morning in our coffee break with juan, we were talking about how we will go to the gym tomorrow in our free halloween afternoon. juan : oh but you 2 ladies are fine, your bodies are great, i saw you swimming [me and jayne]. us : oh, um, thanks. juan to skye (as she was tucking into a bag of sweets): and you skye, you shouldn´t worry, you will lose your weight as you get a bit older, you shouldn´t worry you know.
skye is not even fat, the whole conversation was hilarious, i think in mexico it isn´t considered rude at all to refer to people like this, it´s not meant as a compliment or an insult, just a sort of statement. must be a cultural difference, maybe i will highlight it in my next lesson. (i checked with skye i could publish this and she was fine about it).
re the grammar comment from alex (hello and welcome to my blog, you are my first unknown reader, this is very exciting) - yes, he said we as teachers should know grammar inside out, but never (or at least rarely) use the terminology and bombard them with it. and having observed 3 very different lessons yesterday, i would say he is absolutely correct - the grammar centric one was boring and not effective. juan is very sensitive to the fact that each teacher is totally different and if you feel comfortable and happy teaching that way then that is fine, as long as the students are learning, then that is the main thing. it boils down to different approaches etc. i would go on, but have frazzled brain cells.
all for now, very tired. sorry for phone number ineptitude, will investigate further. xx
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
and now for my correct phone number
so it seems i got my phone number wrong. not quite as stupid as forgetting where i live but still.
i think it is 01152-341-114-7987
but could still be wrong. nobody seems to know how it works with phones out here.
tomorrow we have to do our first teaching, a 45 minute class... um, don`t know how they think we can do that, but we shall see. just been back to rosa`s for lunch, we covered such topics as cactuses, haggis and princess diana. does anyone know if princess diana was originally american, i`ve never taken much interest in these things, rosa was convinced she was american and now i`m just not sure.
send me a text so i can see if that number works.
i think it is 01152-341-114-7987
but could still be wrong. nobody seems to know how it works with phones out here.
tomorrow we have to do our first teaching, a 45 minute class... um, don`t know how they think we can do that, but we shall see. just been back to rosa`s for lunch, we covered such topics as cactuses, haggis and princess diana. does anyone know if princess diana was originally american, i`ve never taken much interest in these things, rosa was convinced she was american and now i`m just not sure.
send me a text so i can see if that number works.
Monday, 27 October 2008
donde esta mi casa?
day one of TEFL course. my mexican "mother" rosa elia walked me to school, talking at me in spanish all the way, which is actually proving very useful, i`m definitely becoming slightly better at understanding her and other mexicans. they don`t even bother trying to speak slowly, which is good for your brain to get used to that speed of trying to understand things.
did some general admin at the school and paid for the course - no going back now... met my fellow students, there`s me, skye and jayne (and a mysterious 4th one who will appear tomorrow, rumour has it). skye is 20, from beaconsfield, jayne is 50, from canada. they are both really nice and we get on very well and are all slightly scared at what we have let ourselves in for. jayne only booked her ticket on friday and left on saturday from canada, and skye has been living in mexico for a while and speaks really good spanish. i will use her as my translator. our teacher is called juan, he is i don`t know how old, but older than us, he wears glasses and i noticed they got more wonky as the day went on. he is the main tefl trainer at the school and has tons of experience, he is both american and mexican, and his father lived or was from kingston upon hull, east yorkshire. juan studied in leeds and london when younger, he preferred london, but liked the fish and chips from yorkshire. his approach to teaching is very humanistic and learner-centred, very relaxed and authoritative at the same time. a good role model. we had a faux french lesson to remind us what it is like to be a foreign language learner. actually i found his french accent somewhat dubious, mais qui suis-je a commentar?
the first rule he then taught us is that we are not to teach grammar under any circumstances. he gave as a metaphor that if you wanted to learn the piano, what good would it do you to know how many white and black keys there were, and what wood the piano is made from, and what different styles of piano there were, and what the history of the piano was, and how the hammers hit the strings to produce a sound. though i agree that we wouldn`t want to put people off with an overload of grammar, surely it enhances your understanding and learning to some extent. i gave him the metaphor (not metaphor in fact but real life experience) that as an amateur cello learner, i have found it very useful to know exactly how the sound is produces as this informs my making a nicer sound on the instrument. i think he thinks i`m some sort of grammar purist enthusiast now, which i slightly am (thanks to latin). anyway the conclusion was that we, as potential teachers, need to know grammar inside out but not force feed it, rather wait for students to ask specific questions about it. turns out also that most latin american english learners will not want to learn english to native speaker level, and it will be mainly for the purposes of getting better paid jobs - by 2010 65% of jobs in mexico will require english, and by 2025 90% will. interesting statistics, and at the moment around 80% of jobs in places like india already require it. so that answers my question of yesterday as to whether they will want to use their english to be reading shakespeare and chaucer - apparently not. unbelievable. in my lessons that is all they will be doing, that and grammar drills, whilst listening to baroque cello music.
after morning classes, we were supposed to return to our relative houses for lunch. which jayne did, as she knew where her house was. me and skye however walked round in circles, wishing we had paid more attention to the route our mothers took us on that morning. we had to decide whether to spend the remaining lunch hour time walking in circles, or admit defeat and go for tacos. given that we only knew our house numbers, not the street or direction, we went for tacos. juan reappeared to teach us some more but when we explained our ridiculous predicament - that we didn`t know where we lived - he took us to his house and made some phone calls and we were succesfully re-housed. this town is quite small, but the problem is it is a grid based town, so to me all the sides of the central square look the same, and there are 2 churches on opposite sides - i mean how confusing do you want to be? it is not a big town, population around 100,000. skye at least had the excuse that she had only arrived this morning and only had the address of her house, but i have no excuse except of course that the part of my brain that deals with complex instructions and remembering directions was removed by aliens when i was little.
anyway, visiting juan`s house was fun as it turns out he has a pool, a tennis court, a trampoline, a gym (not in his house but in the complex he lives in), and we can use these facilities as much as we like. which won`t be much given the horrendous timetable we were given this morning for our course.. so tomorrow me and jayne are going for a pre-grammar swim, rosa is going to send me off with a sandwich and banana for after the swim as we agreed it would be dangerous to swim after a big breakfast. and today`s breakfast was big, it was 2 quesadillas, papaya, refried beans, cheese and lots of really nice coffee and orange juice. apparently in mexico when you say no thanks to the offer of more food they take it to mean yes please, but i doubt she had any more food to offer me after all this. rosa makes her own cheese in the mornings, and also make and/or mends clothes. she is very well dressed and smart and well presented. last night we walked to the church, she goes to mass there every sunday night at 7pm. she had invited me to mass but i was unsure what this would involve, so i explained i`m not catholic, she said that was fine and that god was universal didn`t i think. yes i said. so instead i wandered around the town while she was at church, there was lots of candy floss stalls and little shops open and cars honking their horns, and little flags (bunting i suppose is the correct term) as they have had a week of fiestas this last week - quel surprise, a mexican town having a week of fiestas, they probably even have fiestas to celebrate it not being a fiesta day in mexico. then i peered into the church and it was beautiful so i may convert to catholicism and go to mass next sunday - or are you allowed to go to mass as a non practising quasi buddhist with slightly christian beliefs but who hasn`t quite decided but likes the gold and silver and incense burning?
so after the re-housing phone calls, skye got picked up by her mother, and rosa came to meet me and jayne. rosa and juan had a really funny conversation about what had happened, i wasn`t sure if it was a proper argument but i checked with her later and it was all in good faith and funny. i would`ve felt bad if they`d fallen out over me getting lost. then we went spontaneously shopping, i bought some very nice new trainers as i had thrown away my previous ones as they became so disgusting. slight shame as they were the ones that cycled me across the andes 2 years ago, but i think you can`t be too sentimental about nike trainers. when we showed the people in the trainer shop juan`s business card, we got a 15% discount - he`s clearly a useful friend/teacher to have. i also bought a mobile phone - for the massive price of 15 pounds - that includes sim card with 100 pesos of time on it (100 pesos is around 5 pounds, which makes the phone 10 pounds). very exciting. this means, blog readers, that you can now text or phone me, and it will cost me nothing, but you loads! what an offer, irresistable! el numero is 001-341-114-7987. though so far robert has tried to ring me and it didn`t work, so perhaps it`s not that straightforward, i will investigate tomorrow and update.
after this me and jayne walked home, her house is en route to mine, and her sense of direction is way better so it seemed a clever option to stick with her. i met her mother and had a tour of their house - much bigger and more modern than mine, on 2 floors, has internet and great view of one of the 2 confusing churches. she made 200 almond biscuits this morning, i tried one, they were amazing - that is obviously how she built her empire.
rosa is meeting me soon to march me home - am only100metres from the house, but obviously can`t be trusted, so i better go. blogs may get shorter as tefl days get longer and my brain gets more tired.
hasta luego x
did some general admin at the school and paid for the course - no going back now... met my fellow students, there`s me, skye and jayne (and a mysterious 4th one who will appear tomorrow, rumour has it). skye is 20, from beaconsfield, jayne is 50, from canada. they are both really nice and we get on very well and are all slightly scared at what we have let ourselves in for. jayne only booked her ticket on friday and left on saturday from canada, and skye has been living in mexico for a while and speaks really good spanish. i will use her as my translator. our teacher is called juan, he is i don`t know how old, but older than us, he wears glasses and i noticed they got more wonky as the day went on. he is the main tefl trainer at the school and has tons of experience, he is both american and mexican, and his father lived or was from kingston upon hull, east yorkshire. juan studied in leeds and london when younger, he preferred london, but liked the fish and chips from yorkshire. his approach to teaching is very humanistic and learner-centred, very relaxed and authoritative at the same time. a good role model. we had a faux french lesson to remind us what it is like to be a foreign language learner. actually i found his french accent somewhat dubious, mais qui suis-je a commentar?
the first rule he then taught us is that we are not to teach grammar under any circumstances. he gave as a metaphor that if you wanted to learn the piano, what good would it do you to know how many white and black keys there were, and what wood the piano is made from, and what different styles of piano there were, and what the history of the piano was, and how the hammers hit the strings to produce a sound. though i agree that we wouldn`t want to put people off with an overload of grammar, surely it enhances your understanding and learning to some extent. i gave him the metaphor (not metaphor in fact but real life experience) that as an amateur cello learner, i have found it very useful to know exactly how the sound is produces as this informs my making a nicer sound on the instrument. i think he thinks i`m some sort of grammar purist enthusiast now, which i slightly am (thanks to latin). anyway the conclusion was that we, as potential teachers, need to know grammar inside out but not force feed it, rather wait for students to ask specific questions about it. turns out also that most latin american english learners will not want to learn english to native speaker level, and it will be mainly for the purposes of getting better paid jobs - by 2010 65% of jobs in mexico will require english, and by 2025 90% will. interesting statistics, and at the moment around 80% of jobs in places like india already require it. so that answers my question of yesterday as to whether they will want to use their english to be reading shakespeare and chaucer - apparently not. unbelievable. in my lessons that is all they will be doing, that and grammar drills, whilst listening to baroque cello music.
after morning classes, we were supposed to return to our relative houses for lunch. which jayne did, as she knew where her house was. me and skye however walked round in circles, wishing we had paid more attention to the route our mothers took us on that morning. we had to decide whether to spend the remaining lunch hour time walking in circles, or admit defeat and go for tacos. given that we only knew our house numbers, not the street or direction, we went for tacos. juan reappeared to teach us some more but when we explained our ridiculous predicament - that we didn`t know where we lived - he took us to his house and made some phone calls and we were succesfully re-housed. this town is quite small, but the problem is it is a grid based town, so to me all the sides of the central square look the same, and there are 2 churches on opposite sides - i mean how confusing do you want to be? it is not a big town, population around 100,000. skye at least had the excuse that she had only arrived this morning and only had the address of her house, but i have no excuse except of course that the part of my brain that deals with complex instructions and remembering directions was removed by aliens when i was little.
anyway, visiting juan`s house was fun as it turns out he has a pool, a tennis court, a trampoline, a gym (not in his house but in the complex he lives in), and we can use these facilities as much as we like. which won`t be much given the horrendous timetable we were given this morning for our course.. so tomorrow me and jayne are going for a pre-grammar swim, rosa is going to send me off with a sandwich and banana for after the swim as we agreed it would be dangerous to swim after a big breakfast. and today`s breakfast was big, it was 2 quesadillas, papaya, refried beans, cheese and lots of really nice coffee and orange juice. apparently in mexico when you say no thanks to the offer of more food they take it to mean yes please, but i doubt she had any more food to offer me after all this. rosa makes her own cheese in the mornings, and also make and/or mends clothes. she is very well dressed and smart and well presented. last night we walked to the church, she goes to mass there every sunday night at 7pm. she had invited me to mass but i was unsure what this would involve, so i explained i`m not catholic, she said that was fine and that god was universal didn`t i think. yes i said. so instead i wandered around the town while she was at church, there was lots of candy floss stalls and little shops open and cars honking their horns, and little flags (bunting i suppose is the correct term) as they have had a week of fiestas this last week - quel surprise, a mexican town having a week of fiestas, they probably even have fiestas to celebrate it not being a fiesta day in mexico. then i peered into the church and it was beautiful so i may convert to catholicism and go to mass next sunday - or are you allowed to go to mass as a non practising quasi buddhist with slightly christian beliefs but who hasn`t quite decided but likes the gold and silver and incense burning?
so after the re-housing phone calls, skye got picked up by her mother, and rosa came to meet me and jayne. rosa and juan had a really funny conversation about what had happened, i wasn`t sure if it was a proper argument but i checked with her later and it was all in good faith and funny. i would`ve felt bad if they`d fallen out over me getting lost. then we went spontaneously shopping, i bought some very nice new trainers as i had thrown away my previous ones as they became so disgusting. slight shame as they were the ones that cycled me across the andes 2 years ago, but i think you can`t be too sentimental about nike trainers. when we showed the people in the trainer shop juan`s business card, we got a 15% discount - he`s clearly a useful friend/teacher to have. i also bought a mobile phone - for the massive price of 15 pounds - that includes sim card with 100 pesos of time on it (100 pesos is around 5 pounds, which makes the phone 10 pounds). very exciting. this means, blog readers, that you can now text or phone me, and it will cost me nothing, but you loads! what an offer, irresistable! el numero is 001-341-114-7987. though so far robert has tried to ring me and it didn`t work, so perhaps it`s not that straightforward, i will investigate tomorrow and update.
after this me and jayne walked home, her house is en route to mine, and her sense of direction is way better so it seemed a clever option to stick with her. i met her mother and had a tour of their house - much bigger and more modern than mine, on 2 floors, has internet and great view of one of the 2 confusing churches. she made 200 almond biscuits this morning, i tried one, they were amazing - that is obviously how she built her empire.
rosa is meeting me soon to march me home - am only100metres from the house, but obviously can`t be trusted, so i better go. blogs may get shorter as tefl days get longer and my brain gets more tired.
hasta luego x
Sunday, 26 October 2008
que hora es?
so i have now arrived in ciudad guzman where i will live for the next 4 weeks. it seems very nice so far, though i haven`t properly looked round. here is my last 24 hours or so:
last night- bought some crap food for my bus journey from the 7-11, sat around reading the paper in spanish (or rather pretending to, so i looked like a native), wrote some postcards (therefore not looking like a native). got a taxi to el terminal del norte for my bus, ate my crap food and a nice lady sitting next to me in the sala de espera told me i would get some food on the bus as well, i said oh, no lo supe (oh, i didn`t know that). that was our conversation. then i got on my bus, which was fairly confusing as there was 6 primera plus buses lined up, and no signs as to which was going where when, so i had to ask a few people. and sure enough i got a little bag with a sandwich and some fanta in it, but it didn`t look great so i left it on the bus.
they showed the film juno again on tv, which was weird as i had watched it in belize. i read my book instead to try to learn about mexican history, and then tried to sleep, which mainly didn`t work apart from a few half hours here and there. (i realised that the only time you use the word fitfully, is referring to sleep - unless anyone knows of any other usages?) i always in theory really like the idea of travelling on buses or trains through the night, it`s sort of romantic and special, but the reality is unless i`m zoned out on valium, which i really didn`t want to do for this short journey, then i just spend the night panicking that the bus/train is veering off the road/track. this was a really good bus, with even 2 toilets, one for men and one for women, and not very busy, and very comfy seats, but i still panicked. they put a speed limit on the buses, so that if the driver starts going above around 95kph then a little alarm goes off and a red light flashes. i was sitting near the front, so every few minutes heard the little alarm and saw the red light, and panicked. anyway, consequently i didn`t sleep at all well.
i arrived 45 minutes earlier than scheduled, at 5.45am today, which is in my book technically still the middle of the night. my school was sending someone called nacho to meet me and deliver me to my new family. nacho didn`t turn up until 7.30, almost 2 hours later. i had tried ringing him in the meantime, but his phone didn`t work, so i found a little man in a phone shop in the bus station who let me use his phone as well in case that worked, but it didn`t. i resigned myself to sitting grumpily in the bus station for the rest of eternity, with only a few carrot sticks from the 7-11 to sustain me. some mexican weirdo came to talk to me and told me i was beautiful, he was also drinking a coffee - seems like early morning coffee-drinking compliment encounters in mexico are my destiny... i thanked him and carried on eating my carrot sticks. nacho eventually turned up and tells me that the clocks had gone forward one hour, and he had turned up to get me an hour early and then an hour late or something. by now the sun was coming up and there was a really nice view of the mountains so i wasn`t too bothered what the explanation was. though it`s interesting they change the clocks here too, i always assume it`s just europe - he said they`ve only done it since 6 years ago, so maybe that`s why he hadn`t got the hang of it yet. he told me there are 7 foreigners in ciudad guzman, and i am the 8th. he also said he could maybe lend me a bike, which was very exciting, and that there is a swimming pool which is also exciting.
he took me to my new house and new family. totally different to my guatemalan family experience, there is just one lady looking after me, called Rosa-ellia. she is very friendly and lovely and talks to me lots and lots, some of which i can understand. there is a mexican student who lives there too, but he only is there during the week, so i haven`t met him yet. when i arrived, she gave me a quick tour of the house, it is much more modern than guatemala, and has a nice hot shower. i have 2 little beds in my room and a wardrobe and mirror and bedside table. she was explaining how clean it all was, and that look, the sheets were all clean, and then she pulled back the bed cover to reveal a big fat cricket sitting there looking at us. she shoo-ed it outside. i went to sleep for the next 4 hours, then got up and had lunch. she has 2 little budgies in a cage too, but there are no children which is quite a relief as i have gone off the idea of being in close proximity to children unless they are very quiet and very well behaved all the time.
tomorrow i start my course, apparently there are only 4 of us which could be nice if they are nice, nacho said maybe they were canadian. rosaellia told me she had some canadians staying once and they not only didn`t eat meat, but also didn`t like tortillas. that must have been hard work for her cooking for them. i told her i eat everything.
in other news - the word coche in south america means pig, but in mexico means car. confusing.
have just checked a world time zones website, and apparently in mexico it is 1245 at the moment, i thought it was 245 so i am now very confused. i think i put my watch forwards one hour instead of backwards one hour after all the nacho confusion.... my day is suddenly much longer.
last night- bought some crap food for my bus journey from the 7-11, sat around reading the paper in spanish (or rather pretending to, so i looked like a native), wrote some postcards (therefore not looking like a native). got a taxi to el terminal del norte for my bus, ate my crap food and a nice lady sitting next to me in the sala de espera told me i would get some food on the bus as well, i said oh, no lo supe (oh, i didn`t know that). that was our conversation. then i got on my bus, which was fairly confusing as there was 6 primera plus buses lined up, and no signs as to which was going where when, so i had to ask a few people. and sure enough i got a little bag with a sandwich and some fanta in it, but it didn`t look great so i left it on the bus.
they showed the film juno again on tv, which was weird as i had watched it in belize. i read my book instead to try to learn about mexican history, and then tried to sleep, which mainly didn`t work apart from a few half hours here and there. (i realised that the only time you use the word fitfully, is referring to sleep - unless anyone knows of any other usages?) i always in theory really like the idea of travelling on buses or trains through the night, it`s sort of romantic and special, but the reality is unless i`m zoned out on valium, which i really didn`t want to do for this short journey, then i just spend the night panicking that the bus/train is veering off the road/track. this was a really good bus, with even 2 toilets, one for men and one for women, and not very busy, and very comfy seats, but i still panicked. they put a speed limit on the buses, so that if the driver starts going above around 95kph then a little alarm goes off and a red light flashes. i was sitting near the front, so every few minutes heard the little alarm and saw the red light, and panicked. anyway, consequently i didn`t sleep at all well.
i arrived 45 minutes earlier than scheduled, at 5.45am today, which is in my book technically still the middle of the night. my school was sending someone called nacho to meet me and deliver me to my new family. nacho didn`t turn up until 7.30, almost 2 hours later. i had tried ringing him in the meantime, but his phone didn`t work, so i found a little man in a phone shop in the bus station who let me use his phone as well in case that worked, but it didn`t. i resigned myself to sitting grumpily in the bus station for the rest of eternity, with only a few carrot sticks from the 7-11 to sustain me. some mexican weirdo came to talk to me and told me i was beautiful, he was also drinking a coffee - seems like early morning coffee-drinking compliment encounters in mexico are my destiny... i thanked him and carried on eating my carrot sticks. nacho eventually turned up and tells me that the clocks had gone forward one hour, and he had turned up to get me an hour early and then an hour late or something. by now the sun was coming up and there was a really nice view of the mountains so i wasn`t too bothered what the explanation was. though it`s interesting they change the clocks here too, i always assume it`s just europe - he said they`ve only done it since 6 years ago, so maybe that`s why he hadn`t got the hang of it yet. he told me there are 7 foreigners in ciudad guzman, and i am the 8th. he also said he could maybe lend me a bike, which was very exciting, and that there is a swimming pool which is also exciting.
he took me to my new house and new family. totally different to my guatemalan family experience, there is just one lady looking after me, called Rosa-ellia. she is very friendly and lovely and talks to me lots and lots, some of which i can understand. there is a mexican student who lives there too, but he only is there during the week, so i haven`t met him yet. when i arrived, she gave me a quick tour of the house, it is much more modern than guatemala, and has a nice hot shower. i have 2 little beds in my room and a wardrobe and mirror and bedside table. she was explaining how clean it all was, and that look, the sheets were all clean, and then she pulled back the bed cover to reveal a big fat cricket sitting there looking at us. she shoo-ed it outside. i went to sleep for the next 4 hours, then got up and had lunch. she has 2 little budgies in a cage too, but there are no children which is quite a relief as i have gone off the idea of being in close proximity to children unless they are very quiet and very well behaved all the time.
tomorrow i start my course, apparently there are only 4 of us which could be nice if they are nice, nacho said maybe they were canadian. rosaellia told me she had some canadians staying once and they not only didn`t eat meat, but also didn`t like tortillas. that must have been hard work for her cooking for them. i told her i eat everything.
in other news - the word coche in south america means pig, but in mexico means car. confusing.
have just checked a world time zones website, and apparently in mexico it is 1245 at the moment, i thought it was 245 so i am now very confused. i think i put my watch forwards one hour instead of backwards one hour after all the nacho confusion.... my day is suddenly much longer.
Saturday, 25 October 2008
desfile de alebrijes
mexico is just one big parade after another. last night there was another little protest parade through the main square, el zocalo, i don´t know what they were protesting about but i think i saw a flag that said no allianza, so i guess it´s something political again, obviously. today there was a parade of huge, weird, papier mache animals, followed by men on stilts, and the obligatory brass band. at one point it all had to disband as some fire engines had to get through. there is lots of dancing and drumming, and traditional costume wearing. i don´t know if it is always like this, or whether it is all to do with the run up to the day of the dead on 1st and 2nd november. either way, it´s lots of fun to watch.
today and last night i read lots of my tefl book and it was very interesting, all about language structure, and the ways in which people learn, and how there are now more non-native english language speakers, than native, around 2:1 ratio. it is therefore a big question exactly what type of english and to what level you should teach people, and it is getting to be more about teaching english as a lingua franca rather than up to native english speaking; nobody really owns english as such, and there are so many different varieties of it (australian, irish, american, singaporean, internet language, business english etc etc) that why should we expect that every english learner wants to learn the queen´s english. but there are counter arguments to all of this. i personally think if you are going to learn english (or any language) you would want to learn it to as high and in depth a level as possible otherwise you miss all the nuances and idiosyncracies that make a language what it is - it becomes just a referential communication tool. which is fine if that is all you want it to be, i suppose everyone will have a different requirement of it.
this morning i went for breakfast (not at the hostel where the coffee tastes like mud), and the man that made my coffee said i was beautiful (perhaps he had spilt coffee in his eyes). and then 4 policemen with guns and all stern looking, asked me how i was in english when i walked past, and said welcome to mexico so i said hola and waved at them (this is my standard response to things now). so that was a nice start to the day. and it was my favourite weather, a little bit cold and really blue sky and clear. i went to the palacio nacional, which has amazing murals by diego riviera, one of mexico´s most famous artists (another being frida kahlo). there were also lots of cute cats lying around sleeping. gatos dormiendo. from there i went to the square and watched the alebrijes (toy animal) parade, then tried to find a post office but couldn´t, so headed out on el metro to the museo nacional de antropologia. this is an incredible building, and has loads of very interesting artefacts and displays from way back in the past all about the history and culture of mexico and the aztecs and mayans etc. unfortunately i wasn´t in a museum mood so i didn´t learn too much, my feet were hurting and i was tired. but i stayed there for a respectable amount of time, then went for a pizza in the park nearby. i saw lots of mexican wrestling masks on stalls which made me laugh - jim i´ll send some over for your collection.
and now my night bus awaits me, what joy. i got up early so i would be tired for it, so hopefully it´ll be ok, plus it´s only around 10 hours this time, not 30.
adios x
today and last night i read lots of my tefl book and it was very interesting, all about language structure, and the ways in which people learn, and how there are now more non-native english language speakers, than native, around 2:1 ratio. it is therefore a big question exactly what type of english and to what level you should teach people, and it is getting to be more about teaching english as a lingua franca rather than up to native english speaking; nobody really owns english as such, and there are so many different varieties of it (australian, irish, american, singaporean, internet language, business english etc etc) that why should we expect that every english learner wants to learn the queen´s english. but there are counter arguments to all of this. i personally think if you are going to learn english (or any language) you would want to learn it to as high and in depth a level as possible otherwise you miss all the nuances and idiosyncracies that make a language what it is - it becomes just a referential communication tool. which is fine if that is all you want it to be, i suppose everyone will have a different requirement of it.
this morning i went for breakfast (not at the hostel where the coffee tastes like mud), and the man that made my coffee said i was beautiful (perhaps he had spilt coffee in his eyes). and then 4 policemen with guns and all stern looking, asked me how i was in english when i walked past, and said welcome to mexico so i said hola and waved at them (this is my standard response to things now). so that was a nice start to the day. and it was my favourite weather, a little bit cold and really blue sky and clear. i went to the palacio nacional, which has amazing murals by diego riviera, one of mexico´s most famous artists (another being frida kahlo). there were also lots of cute cats lying around sleeping. gatos dormiendo. from there i went to the square and watched the alebrijes (toy animal) parade, then tried to find a post office but couldn´t, so headed out on el metro to the museo nacional de antropologia. this is an incredible building, and has loads of very interesting artefacts and displays from way back in the past all about the history and culture of mexico and the aztecs and mayans etc. unfortunately i wasn´t in a museum mood so i didn´t learn too much, my feet were hurting and i was tired. but i stayed there for a respectable amount of time, then went for a pizza in the park nearby. i saw lots of mexican wrestling masks on stalls which made me laugh - jim i´ll send some over for your collection.
and now my night bus awaits me, what joy. i got up early so i would be tired for it, so hopefully it´ll be ok, plus it´s only around 10 hours this time, not 30.
adios x
Friday, 24 October 2008
mi querido mexico
hola hola de ciudad de mexico! i have finally arrived here after my momentous bus journey.
wednesday morning robert and his friend mick took me to the bus stop. i had been praying to the gods of rain that there would be too much rain to leave the town, as i was growing to love living in my little wooden house on the prairie, watching videos and eating chocolate ice cream. alas, this was not to be, as a little minibus turned up an hour later. it was just me on it, i think the proper bus was somewhere in a puddle near guatemala. so i spent from 9.30 to 3pm (4pm mexican time) on the little bus, which took me across the border to chetumal in mexico. i slept, looked out of the mud splattered window, daydreamed about cycling the journey instead, read a bit of my book, and slept some more. i had taken some rice and beans with me for the journey so ate some of that, and panicked in case they confiscated it from me at the border, but they didn´t look in my bag. which was good as i realised afterwards that i also had a big plastic bag full of calcium tablets which looked very much like illegal drugs, and i wouldn´t have wanted to have a border police drug situation, what with my limited spanish ability.
at chetumal, my bus driver bought me my ticket to mexico city (not with his own money obviously) (thought i have just checked the exchange rate and realised that the 264 belize dollars i gave the bus lady for this ticket (which had gone up from 225 dollars, see previous blog) was 120 belize dollars too much for the price of the ticket in pesos... i will get my contacts in belize to go and beat her up and get that extra money back). the chetumal bus station was in a large puddle, but not large enough to drown the buses. the journey was quite uneventful, the bus was amazingly nice and the roads in mexico are 1000% better than anywhere in central or south america. i slept, thanks to valium, from around 5.30pm on wednesday to 9.30am the next morning, with a few enforced awakenings, one at 9.30pm, one at 4.30am - why oh why did they need to kick us all off the bus at that time and take it away and clean it, i do not know... anyway i ate the rest of my rice and beans and cleaned my teeth and stared vacantly around me in a valium haze during these strange awake interludes. i did panic when the bus drove off at 4.30 but i kept my beady eye on my fellow passengers to make sure noone else was panicking which they weren´t, and sure enough the bus returned, cleaner, half an hour later and we trudged back on. when i came back to reality in the morning, i watched the scenery and listened to inspiring classical music. i´m not sure where we would have been at this time, but i suppose somewhere through south central mexico. it was blue blue skies, huge sweeping green mountains, little wooden huts/bars, a few donkeys, really well tarmac-ed massive windy roads, huge lorries taking tacos i suppose from one end of the country to another. it was exactly as i´d imagined mexico to be, and the vast scenery and blue skies reminded me of parts of south america which was very comforting. we went through a few towns, god knows which ones though - it was nice to be completely unaware of where i was and just to watch it all going past. after some more dozing i woke up and we were in mexico city, getting in to the bus terminal oriente. from here i got el metro a few stops to my mexico city hostel in el centro historico, right by the cathedral and main square. all very straightforward and not at all as horrific as i had been expecting.
contrary to everything you hear about mexico on the news, in the papers, in the guidebook, this country so far seems amazingly friendly and welcoming and not at all scary. perhaps i am becoming more of a seasoned traveller (tomorrow is 3 month anniversary), and am less flappable etc, but it is definitely not an intimidating place. there are the ubiquitous guns and military police (one told me off for drinking my beer on the pavement last night so i could smoke at the same time, but he was perfectly civil about it and didn´t try to shoot me), and on the bus we passed lots of military vehicles full of soldiers going south, but i don´t know why. i know there is poverty in this country just as there is everywhere over here, and there are definitely problems, and corruption and desparation, and huge drug related problems, but these things don´t immediately overwhelm you the way they do in guatemala, or in bolivia for example. i suppose i have stayed in the mainly tourist areas and met other foreigners so far, so i haven´t seen i suppose the real mexico, but just the fact that there is a really good infrastructure of roads, buses, underground system, paved streets, museums, cafes etc makes it seem infinitely more cilivized than everywhere else i´ve been on this trip.
my hostel is very clean and tidy, and empty, i have a whole dorm room to myself, which is nice if a bit odd. i woke in the night wondering where i was. after arriving yesterday i wandered around the main square and asked a few questions at tourist information. some little school children came and asked me questions in english for a school project - i answered them in spanish and they wrote their answers in english, i helped with their spelling as i wanted them to get good marks. they asked what was my favourite food, i said pasta, they thought i said pastel, which means cake. this made us giggle. they asked how i was, and how was my family. i answered accordingly, and they seemed satisfied with my answers. i then went to see the cathedral which was beautiful and made me nearly cry (i think through tiredness rather than religion but who knows), and i saw a little parade of military men with a brass band. i sat down and got talking to an american man called gustav. he is from california and was visiting his mother in guadalajara where she plays a lot of golf and doesn´t integrate with the locals even after 16 years there. he had been on 23 different metros in his life - what a cute thing to make a mental note of - and he commented on the fact that in london everybody seems to wear black coats of varying lengths, and no hats. i couldn´t quite empathise with this view of london life, but nodded in what i hoped was an intrigued manner, but probably came across as just plain confused. we went for a beer in his hostel which was just round the corner from mine, and met 2 boys both called david, one was french so we shall call him daveed. david (number 1) was from south east london, the best part to be from, and him and gustav talked EU politics as we drank corona. as you know this would not be my chosen specialist subject on mastermind, so i concentrated on learning more spanish from the lyrics of the little band that had started playing in the hostel bar. there is music absolutely everywhere in mexico, and really really good music. these guys must have only been teenagers, but were hugely talented, - a couple of guitars, bongos, trumpet, trombone, saxophone - they played buena vista social club songs and other mexican stuff, people spontaneously salsa danced (how i wish i could spontaneously salsa dance), and generally it was amazing, and i couldn´t have wished for a more enjoyable first night in mexico. it was exactly as i imagined it would be - corona, trumpets, sombreros, dancing. daveed by this point had disappeared, he seemed not impressed at our company, and had a really good camera so perhaps he was off taking photos of things. he worked as a food aid deliverer for the UN and other such organisations. you meet a lot of very interesting people on your travels. it is always quite embarrassing how much more all these foreigners know about english and european politics and history etc. i blame the yorkshire education system, we learnt about local dry stone walling, crop rotation and the feudal system, egyptian pyramids and then monasteries in our history lessons - my image of the world is thanks to this, quite peculiar. (though i did win a creme egg from writing a prize-winning essay about the monks so i shouldn´t be too downhearted i suppose).
after all this merriment i walked back to my hostel and slept soundly. i woke up this morning just before ten and rushed to get hostel breakfast which finished at ten. there is no need generally to rush towards hostel breakfasts, and i won´t do it again. there was a few scrapes of scrambled egg going grey and some white bread and a toaster and some butter but no jam. the coffee tasted like mud. i went out for a second breakfast, of huevos rancheros - a traditional mexican breakfast of fried eggs on a corn tortilla with salsa and refried beans, which was much tastier.
after my 2 breakfasts i wandered to the palacio de bellas artes, a beautiful arts centre, marble and art deco inside. i was hoping there would be an interesting concert this evening, but alas there isn´t. i think everyone is preparing for dia de los muertos as there doesn´t seem to be too much cultural stuff going on this weekend. i wandered from there to a big park on avenida benito juarez, complete with a statue of benito juarez (one of the goodies of mexican history, he was a liberal, indigenous president who fought off french occupiers). there was a little stage with children doing traditional mexican dancing, and then lots of old men with red flags with words on. a lovely mexican man whose name i never found out, came and talked to me about it all, and explained it was some children from northen mexico doing traditional dancing, and that it was part of the protests against the government (what a lovely way of protesting). he asked what did i think of mexico and was it better or worse than i expected, i said much much better compared to how it was portrayed in the news. we agreed this is often the way with places, and the only way to know the truth is to visit them and get to know people and experience the culture - not to just watch the news, it is not reliable ever and only shows one side of things. he told me lots about the politics here and how it is an amazing place, and how long was i here for and what was i doing etc. i was quite proud that i could understand most of what he said, and reply in a coherent fashion. i followed the procession for a while, there was a little band and girls dancing- i didn´t fully understand what the man was saying over the loud speakers, but i understood the words workers and farmers, so i suppose it was some sort of anti capitalist government demonstration. i´m going to read my guidebook about the situation here, so will maybe report back with more enlightened information next time.
after this i wandered along avenida hidalgo and then got el metro to the bus terminal norte to sort out how to get to ciudad guzman, my ultimate destination in mexico where i will be doing my TEFL course which starts on monday. i have booked a night bus leaving tomorrow night which is great as i thought i would only have today here to explore. the metro here is orange, and more spacious and less deep than the london underground, but the distance when changing from one line to another is miles and miles. i thought i just got unlucky the first time i had to change, but every single station the platforms are absolutely miles apart. they have interesting displays in the big long tunnels, one science and astronomy tunnel, one full of book shops, one with pictures and explanations of climate change, so at least you can learn something as you walk along. i learnt via lactea means milky way, it made me laugh for some reason to see it translated so literally. my new favourite spanish word is el picaflor, which means hummingbird, i think literally it means flower biter.
after this i did more wandering, and saw a huge statue of beethoven - it is always nice to see a familiar face, though i never realised he was from mexico city... there were some workers on scaffolding working on him, maybe trying to restore his hearing, they got in my photo so i said hola and waved to them. finally, with my feet hurting, i ended up in starbucks (apologies, but it was such a nice surprise i just couldn´t resist it). this was back near my hostel area, which also seems to be the area of opticians, and gold and silver exchange shops. how fortuitous for me with my broken glasses, and all that gold that needed exchanging. so i got my glasses mended at no charge by a nice optician man.
other things i have noticed - there are lots of vw beetles here, the green ones are taxis; i am tall by mexican standards.
interesting tortilla fact: the daily tortilla consumption in mexico is 1200 million. i have not had one here yet, otherwise it would have been 1200, 000 001.
non-interesting facts which i nevertheless feel like noting at this point - population of mexico is 105 million, mexico city is 18 million; population growth is 1-2% per year, that is a lot of mexicans; exchange rate is 21.4 pesos to the pound at the moment, their economy is not doing very well; one trip on el metro costs 2 pesos, which equates to 0.09 pounds which is very cheap. i am 6 hours behind england, and 1 hour ahead of belize now.
adios amigos, espero que ustedes esten bien xx
wednesday morning robert and his friend mick took me to the bus stop. i had been praying to the gods of rain that there would be too much rain to leave the town, as i was growing to love living in my little wooden house on the prairie, watching videos and eating chocolate ice cream. alas, this was not to be, as a little minibus turned up an hour later. it was just me on it, i think the proper bus was somewhere in a puddle near guatemala. so i spent from 9.30 to 3pm (4pm mexican time) on the little bus, which took me across the border to chetumal in mexico. i slept, looked out of the mud splattered window, daydreamed about cycling the journey instead, read a bit of my book, and slept some more. i had taken some rice and beans with me for the journey so ate some of that, and panicked in case they confiscated it from me at the border, but they didn´t look in my bag. which was good as i realised afterwards that i also had a big plastic bag full of calcium tablets which looked very much like illegal drugs, and i wouldn´t have wanted to have a border police drug situation, what with my limited spanish ability.
at chetumal, my bus driver bought me my ticket to mexico city (not with his own money obviously) (thought i have just checked the exchange rate and realised that the 264 belize dollars i gave the bus lady for this ticket (which had gone up from 225 dollars, see previous blog) was 120 belize dollars too much for the price of the ticket in pesos... i will get my contacts in belize to go and beat her up and get that extra money back). the chetumal bus station was in a large puddle, but not large enough to drown the buses. the journey was quite uneventful, the bus was amazingly nice and the roads in mexico are 1000% better than anywhere in central or south america. i slept, thanks to valium, from around 5.30pm on wednesday to 9.30am the next morning, with a few enforced awakenings, one at 9.30pm, one at 4.30am - why oh why did they need to kick us all off the bus at that time and take it away and clean it, i do not know... anyway i ate the rest of my rice and beans and cleaned my teeth and stared vacantly around me in a valium haze during these strange awake interludes. i did panic when the bus drove off at 4.30 but i kept my beady eye on my fellow passengers to make sure noone else was panicking which they weren´t, and sure enough the bus returned, cleaner, half an hour later and we trudged back on. when i came back to reality in the morning, i watched the scenery and listened to inspiring classical music. i´m not sure where we would have been at this time, but i suppose somewhere through south central mexico. it was blue blue skies, huge sweeping green mountains, little wooden huts/bars, a few donkeys, really well tarmac-ed massive windy roads, huge lorries taking tacos i suppose from one end of the country to another. it was exactly as i´d imagined mexico to be, and the vast scenery and blue skies reminded me of parts of south america which was very comforting. we went through a few towns, god knows which ones though - it was nice to be completely unaware of where i was and just to watch it all going past. after some more dozing i woke up and we were in mexico city, getting in to the bus terminal oriente. from here i got el metro a few stops to my mexico city hostel in el centro historico, right by the cathedral and main square. all very straightforward and not at all as horrific as i had been expecting.
contrary to everything you hear about mexico on the news, in the papers, in the guidebook, this country so far seems amazingly friendly and welcoming and not at all scary. perhaps i am becoming more of a seasoned traveller (tomorrow is 3 month anniversary), and am less flappable etc, but it is definitely not an intimidating place. there are the ubiquitous guns and military police (one told me off for drinking my beer on the pavement last night so i could smoke at the same time, but he was perfectly civil about it and didn´t try to shoot me), and on the bus we passed lots of military vehicles full of soldiers going south, but i don´t know why. i know there is poverty in this country just as there is everywhere over here, and there are definitely problems, and corruption and desparation, and huge drug related problems, but these things don´t immediately overwhelm you the way they do in guatemala, or in bolivia for example. i suppose i have stayed in the mainly tourist areas and met other foreigners so far, so i haven´t seen i suppose the real mexico, but just the fact that there is a really good infrastructure of roads, buses, underground system, paved streets, museums, cafes etc makes it seem infinitely more cilivized than everywhere else i´ve been on this trip.
my hostel is very clean and tidy, and empty, i have a whole dorm room to myself, which is nice if a bit odd. i woke in the night wondering where i was. after arriving yesterday i wandered around the main square and asked a few questions at tourist information. some little school children came and asked me questions in english for a school project - i answered them in spanish and they wrote their answers in english, i helped with their spelling as i wanted them to get good marks. they asked what was my favourite food, i said pasta, they thought i said pastel, which means cake. this made us giggle. they asked how i was, and how was my family. i answered accordingly, and they seemed satisfied with my answers. i then went to see the cathedral which was beautiful and made me nearly cry (i think through tiredness rather than religion but who knows), and i saw a little parade of military men with a brass band. i sat down and got talking to an american man called gustav. he is from california and was visiting his mother in guadalajara where she plays a lot of golf and doesn´t integrate with the locals even after 16 years there. he had been on 23 different metros in his life - what a cute thing to make a mental note of - and he commented on the fact that in london everybody seems to wear black coats of varying lengths, and no hats. i couldn´t quite empathise with this view of london life, but nodded in what i hoped was an intrigued manner, but probably came across as just plain confused. we went for a beer in his hostel which was just round the corner from mine, and met 2 boys both called david, one was french so we shall call him daveed. david (number 1) was from south east london, the best part to be from, and him and gustav talked EU politics as we drank corona. as you know this would not be my chosen specialist subject on mastermind, so i concentrated on learning more spanish from the lyrics of the little band that had started playing in the hostel bar. there is music absolutely everywhere in mexico, and really really good music. these guys must have only been teenagers, but were hugely talented, - a couple of guitars, bongos, trumpet, trombone, saxophone - they played buena vista social club songs and other mexican stuff, people spontaneously salsa danced (how i wish i could spontaneously salsa dance), and generally it was amazing, and i couldn´t have wished for a more enjoyable first night in mexico. it was exactly as i imagined it would be - corona, trumpets, sombreros, dancing. daveed by this point had disappeared, he seemed not impressed at our company, and had a really good camera so perhaps he was off taking photos of things. he worked as a food aid deliverer for the UN and other such organisations. you meet a lot of very interesting people on your travels. it is always quite embarrassing how much more all these foreigners know about english and european politics and history etc. i blame the yorkshire education system, we learnt about local dry stone walling, crop rotation and the feudal system, egyptian pyramids and then monasteries in our history lessons - my image of the world is thanks to this, quite peculiar. (though i did win a creme egg from writing a prize-winning essay about the monks so i shouldn´t be too downhearted i suppose).
after all this merriment i walked back to my hostel and slept soundly. i woke up this morning just before ten and rushed to get hostel breakfast which finished at ten. there is no need generally to rush towards hostel breakfasts, and i won´t do it again. there was a few scrapes of scrambled egg going grey and some white bread and a toaster and some butter but no jam. the coffee tasted like mud. i went out for a second breakfast, of huevos rancheros - a traditional mexican breakfast of fried eggs on a corn tortilla with salsa and refried beans, which was much tastier.
after my 2 breakfasts i wandered to the palacio de bellas artes, a beautiful arts centre, marble and art deco inside. i was hoping there would be an interesting concert this evening, but alas there isn´t. i think everyone is preparing for dia de los muertos as there doesn´t seem to be too much cultural stuff going on this weekend. i wandered from there to a big park on avenida benito juarez, complete with a statue of benito juarez (one of the goodies of mexican history, he was a liberal, indigenous president who fought off french occupiers). there was a little stage with children doing traditional mexican dancing, and then lots of old men with red flags with words on. a lovely mexican man whose name i never found out, came and talked to me about it all, and explained it was some children from northen mexico doing traditional dancing, and that it was part of the protests against the government (what a lovely way of protesting). he asked what did i think of mexico and was it better or worse than i expected, i said much much better compared to how it was portrayed in the news. we agreed this is often the way with places, and the only way to know the truth is to visit them and get to know people and experience the culture - not to just watch the news, it is not reliable ever and only shows one side of things. he told me lots about the politics here and how it is an amazing place, and how long was i here for and what was i doing etc. i was quite proud that i could understand most of what he said, and reply in a coherent fashion. i followed the procession for a while, there was a little band and girls dancing- i didn´t fully understand what the man was saying over the loud speakers, but i understood the words workers and farmers, so i suppose it was some sort of anti capitalist government demonstration. i´m going to read my guidebook about the situation here, so will maybe report back with more enlightened information next time.
after this i wandered along avenida hidalgo and then got el metro to the bus terminal norte to sort out how to get to ciudad guzman, my ultimate destination in mexico where i will be doing my TEFL course which starts on monday. i have booked a night bus leaving tomorrow night which is great as i thought i would only have today here to explore. the metro here is orange, and more spacious and less deep than the london underground, but the distance when changing from one line to another is miles and miles. i thought i just got unlucky the first time i had to change, but every single station the platforms are absolutely miles apart. they have interesting displays in the big long tunnels, one science and astronomy tunnel, one full of book shops, one with pictures and explanations of climate change, so at least you can learn something as you walk along. i learnt via lactea means milky way, it made me laugh for some reason to see it translated so literally. my new favourite spanish word is el picaflor, which means hummingbird, i think literally it means flower biter.
after this i did more wandering, and saw a huge statue of beethoven - it is always nice to see a familiar face, though i never realised he was from mexico city... there were some workers on scaffolding working on him, maybe trying to restore his hearing, they got in my photo so i said hola and waved to them. finally, with my feet hurting, i ended up in starbucks (apologies, but it was such a nice surprise i just couldn´t resist it). this was back near my hostel area, which also seems to be the area of opticians, and gold and silver exchange shops. how fortuitous for me with my broken glasses, and all that gold that needed exchanging. so i got my glasses mended at no charge by a nice optician man.
other things i have noticed - there are lots of vw beetles here, the green ones are taxis; i am tall by mexican standards.
interesting tortilla fact: the daily tortilla consumption in mexico is 1200 million. i have not had one here yet, otherwise it would have been 1200, 000 001.
non-interesting facts which i nevertheless feel like noting at this point - population of mexico is 105 million, mexico city is 18 million; population growth is 1-2% per year, that is a lot of mexicans; exchange rate is 21.4 pesos to the pound at the moment, their economy is not doing very well; one trip on el metro costs 2 pesos, which equates to 0.09 pounds which is very cheap. i am 6 hours behind england, and 1 hour ahead of belize now.
adios amigos, espero que ustedes esten bien xx
Sunday, 19 October 2008
the storm after the calm
what a prophetic title my last blog had. it has rained and rained and rained and rained here in the last week, so much so that the rivers have burst and houses are under water and little boats are rescuing people. yesterday we flew over the towns round the area to take photos of the flooding for the newspapers (the airstrip is still grounded but we got special dispensation from the aviation minister to do this). i'm not sure i can upload the photos for some reason, the computer crashes when i try, so you will have to use your imagination. a poor little group of sheep trapped on the highest ground they could find in the middle of their field - poor sheep, it was already round their ankles when we flew over, but i'm hoping they learnt to swim and are now safe; the market place in san ignacio under so much water it has moved its stalls to the top of town; rooftops and treetops which are normally 30 feet or so above the river poking out from dirty brown flood water; all the mennonites have lost their cornfields; the border between here and guatemala is closed, you can canoe from one part of the road to the other if you are desparate to get there; a puddle i cycled through was so deep it went up to my thighs (good exercise). i usually love the rain as it makes everything so cosy and otherworldly, but it is so relentless and actually dangerous now that i am changing my mind. the world is grey and cloudy and everyone talks about the rain all day. it reminds me of a short story i once read by gabriel garcia marquez about a family sitting watching the rain and their cow in a field just watching the rain forever and ever. sometimes it stops and after a while you realise there is something missing because it is raining in your head the whole time too.
so, i am supposed to be leaving on wednesday morning to get the bus from here to chetumal, the border town to mexico. this is to the east of san ignacio which hopefully will be passable, but as the rain has started again half an hour ago, who knows. there is a bridge in belmopan halfway to belize city which is already under 18 inches of water. from chetumal it is 24 hours on another bus to mexico city, so it's not a journey i'm particularly looking forward to in the first place. i have a supply of books - huckleberry fin and the adventures of tom sawyer amongst others. if needs be i could fashion these into a raft i suppose and float my way to mexico. buying my bus ticket this morning reminded me how infuriating things can be in countries like this - the bus lady had said 225 belize dollars for my trip 2 days ago, which is now magically actually 264 belize dollars - she wittered something about exchange rates, and the rain, and what can you do when it's the only bus ticket lady in town.... everyone is on the make here - if a bus goes everyday on the same journey shouldn't the price be the same everyday regardless of the peso dollar exchange rate?
another theme this week has been the incessant ants in robert's house. you leave out a miniscule crumb of bread, or yoghurt, and in the morning there are 10,000 incessant ants swarming around it. i don't understand how they don't learn that they will get swept away and thrown in the sink, surely they see this happen to their friend ants? they are tiny little ants, they don't bite, or cause any trouble other than their incessantness (incessance?), but they crawl on your arms in their funny tiny little way.
i got a belizean haircut the other day, inspired by looking at some old photos of me, and realising i prefer myself with short hair. i normally hate having haircuts as it's so boring and takes so long and you have to endure inane conversation (a bit like hanging out with me i guess), but this took around 10 minutes, she just hacked loads of hair off and then tidied it up a bit, no messing around. and it looks ok, and was only 25 dollars (around 6 pounds). so belize definitely has its positives too.
yesterday i drank a few cups of good old english tea which was a refreshing treat after all this time (nearly 3 months since i left now). the consequence was weird dreams and i couldn't sleep well, so have enforced a no cups of tea after 2pm rule today.
other activities in my sluggish stagnant week (i'm not great at just chilling out, it makes me feel like a sloth): watched black hawk down, very interesting and gruesome film about the US army's raid in mogadishu (somalia) in 1993 to get rid of the warlord president who was starving the whole country. this made me feel bad for being so scathing to the US army people i have met on my travels, and made me realise that although i am a conscientious objector to war, what they do is totally necessary in situations like that, and very brave.
all for now. over and out.
so, i am supposed to be leaving on wednesday morning to get the bus from here to chetumal, the border town to mexico. this is to the east of san ignacio which hopefully will be passable, but as the rain has started again half an hour ago, who knows. there is a bridge in belmopan halfway to belize city which is already under 18 inches of water. from chetumal it is 24 hours on another bus to mexico city, so it's not a journey i'm particularly looking forward to in the first place. i have a supply of books - huckleberry fin and the adventures of tom sawyer amongst others. if needs be i could fashion these into a raft i suppose and float my way to mexico. buying my bus ticket this morning reminded me how infuriating things can be in countries like this - the bus lady had said 225 belize dollars for my trip 2 days ago, which is now magically actually 264 belize dollars - she wittered something about exchange rates, and the rain, and what can you do when it's the only bus ticket lady in town.... everyone is on the make here - if a bus goes everyday on the same journey shouldn't the price be the same everyday regardless of the peso dollar exchange rate?
another theme this week has been the incessant ants in robert's house. you leave out a miniscule crumb of bread, or yoghurt, and in the morning there are 10,000 incessant ants swarming around it. i don't understand how they don't learn that they will get swept away and thrown in the sink, surely they see this happen to their friend ants? they are tiny little ants, they don't bite, or cause any trouble other than their incessantness (incessance?), but they crawl on your arms in their funny tiny little way.
i got a belizean haircut the other day, inspired by looking at some old photos of me, and realising i prefer myself with short hair. i normally hate having haircuts as it's so boring and takes so long and you have to endure inane conversation (a bit like hanging out with me i guess), but this took around 10 minutes, she just hacked loads of hair off and then tidied it up a bit, no messing around. and it looks ok, and was only 25 dollars (around 6 pounds). so belize definitely has its positives too.
yesterday i drank a few cups of good old english tea which was a refreshing treat after all this time (nearly 3 months since i left now). the consequence was weird dreams and i couldn't sleep well, so have enforced a no cups of tea after 2pm rule today.
other activities in my sluggish stagnant week (i'm not great at just chilling out, it makes me feel like a sloth): watched black hawk down, very interesting and gruesome film about the US army's raid in mogadishu (somalia) in 1993 to get rid of the warlord president who was starving the whole country. this made me feel bad for being so scathing to the US army people i have met on my travels, and made me realise that although i am a conscientious objector to war, what they do is totally necessary in situations like that, and very brave.
all for now. over and out.
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
the calm before the storm
today i have been very productive and started doing some pre TEFL course homework - and realised i cannot write in cohesive sentences any longer. it took me around one hour to write one small paragraph, which was neither interesting nor grammatically correct once i looked at it again. and i'm supposed to be teaching english in a month? anyway, felt good that i'd finally started my homework. also of note today i have cycled around 8 miles, to benque, a small town on the way to the belize/guatemala border. shame not on a road bike, but i'll have one again eventually. went through lots of huge puddles and got very muddy. really amazing to have done some (proper) exercise for the first time after leaving england, i had forgotten quite how much i enjoy cycling. we had lunch and saw a parrot and a squirrel and a large chicken, but ate none of them. i have also contacted national geographic to see if they are interested in covering my mexico-patagonia bike ride, here's hoping... and i have also decided to give up on the trashy book i was reading about prostitutes in 18th century london, and start middlesex by jeffrey eugenides instead.
i am well aware that recent blogs have become somewhat uneventful and even, dare i say it, a bit boring for you readers. i do apologise for this. this week is a bit of an (eponymous) calm before the storm of what i am expecting will be a really busy 4 weeks of TEFL course, plus a pretty long bus journey before that to get to guadalajara (around 40 hours or so... any good books to suggest for the journey please do so), so i am trying to enjoy what is left of my free time by relaxing and eating and watching dvds. i'm not eating dvds by the way, that reads quite badly, but i did warn you in paragraph 1 that this had happened.
one thing i will miss when i do finally start working in mexico, is that at the moment whenever anyone asks what do i do, i say 'absolutely nothing actually'. there aren't many times in your life you get to be able to say this. sometimes i don't even offer any further explanation as to why i do nothing, i just walk off.
i am well aware that recent blogs have become somewhat uneventful and even, dare i say it, a bit boring for you readers. i do apologise for this. this week is a bit of an (eponymous) calm before the storm of what i am expecting will be a really busy 4 weeks of TEFL course, plus a pretty long bus journey before that to get to guadalajara (around 40 hours or so... any good books to suggest for the journey please do so), so i am trying to enjoy what is left of my free time by relaxing and eating and watching dvds. i'm not eating dvds by the way, that reads quite badly, but i did warn you in paragraph 1 that this had happened.
one thing i will miss when i do finally start working in mexico, is that at the moment whenever anyone asks what do i do, i say 'absolutely nothing actually'. there aren't many times in your life you get to be able to say this. sometimes i don't even offer any further explanation as to why i do nothing, i just walk off.
more photos (sorry,very unimaginative blog title)
some random photos, from the last few weeks (1-4 are guatemala, 5 is belize). 1. some pineapples drawn on a fence in poptun. 2. the sign on the way in to tikal - no hurt the animals, and no wrest the plants. 3. part of the tikal site. 4. mundo perdido indeed. 5. a little kid hanging off a diving board on caye caulker. cheeky monkey (mono travieso).
Monday, 13 October 2008
photos!
so - i have managed to put some photos on my blog, 3 here from yesterday when i went flying with robert in his ultralight. the last one is not of flying as i am on the ground, and yes i had seen the rainbow behind me, but was taking a picture of a nice tree the other way. if you zoom in you can see how frizzy my hair has gone. we flew up the river as you can see, it was really fun, very windy, but totally not scary like flying in an aeroplane is. they aren't meant to be flying at the moment as the runway needs to be certified by the aviation authorities so that bigger aeroplanes can land there to bring people to the resorts around the area. but we knew that the civil aviation authority man lives in the other direction to the river, so it should be ok to fly that way. if not, i'll be writing next blog from prison cell. robert was the first person to fly in an ultralight across the gulf of mexico a few months ago, and was the first person to hanglide off mount fuji a while ago.if you also go to previous blogs called shoes on a wire, you can see the aforementioned shoes on a wire, and if you go to israeli sandals you can see some hula hoopers in flores on independence day. i will try to add more photos later to other blogs.
anyway since last writing, i have finished my spanish school in san jose, and left guatemala on a small minibus to the belize border, around 2 hours (i got to sit in the front, vaguely more comfy, plus it made me feel special), the last 40 minutes of which journey is totally unpaved road, lots of huge holes and bumps and mostly driving on the left to avoid these, towards oncoming minibuses and lorries. nearly hit a mad dog crossing the road, and obviously saw lots of machete wielding farmer types, and children. anyway crossed the border and got a taxi rest of the way as it's not far back to san ignacio from there. my friend robert came to get me and we went and spent all his money at the supermarket - baked beans! and a new toothbrush!! very exciting. and other things of course, be a bit worrying if that was all his money spent on just those 2 things. spent the weekend mainly reading and sleeping and eating and washing clothes, and having a bath and getting used to being back in a proper house etc. yesterday we borrowed mountain bikes, so for the first time since leaving london i have ridden a bike! this was very exciting, though we only cycled about 5k, but i plan on doing lots more this week. need to get practising for my mexico to patagonia extravaganza...
in other news:
mosquitos in belize are officially worse than ones in guatemala.
thanks for recession updates. has everyone started growing their own fruit and vegetables, or was mum over exaggerating the situation?
francis ford coppola is making a film of on the road by jack kerouac, should be good.
i watched juno the other day, it's totally brilliant, if you haven't watched it you should.
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
itchy feet and sham-poo
hola
above or left depending where these photos have gone on the page, is the lake by san jose, and the house i was living in, the wooden shutters is my window there.
today´s blog is in 4 parts, as follows
part 1. a factual list of things i have done in the last few days
spent the weekend at the finca in poptun, saw the tarantula again. went to the hostel bar on saturday night, and who should we meet, but more U.S army soldiers... being as secretive as ever... it was the birthday of one of them, so we drank tequila with them. then some people did a fire dancing display thing, which was most impressive, but we wondered how come it didn´t set their t-shirts on fire, and wondered if they have to never use hairspray in this line of work.
last thursday´s san josé activity was cooking comida tipica (ie local food) with the abuela from rebecca´s house. we made empanadas, from a ball of corn dough, which you flatten out into a circle and then put a bit of refried beans (frijoles) on, and then fry in very hot oil. mine got better with practise, the first attempt was screwed up by the abuela for being not circular enough. they tasted great actually, and very nice to eat something that we had cooked ourselves, and thus knew exactly what was in it.
sunday was spent being hungover, and travelling back from the finca in a collectivo minibus thing, not comfy enough to sleep in, but can´t complain as they are very cheap, and generally fairly direct, though they tend to go round the houses when you go through a town or village. sat by the lake in the evening, and wondered how there could every so often be waves on the lake when there mustn´t be a tide on a lake, and other such profound thoughts. any suggestions as to this phenomenon, is it that any body of water has a bit of a tide do you think, if so, would even a puddle be subject to this phenomenon?
monday´s activity was making some body lotion, with some of the abuelas from the town. they sell this as part of the school/nature reserve. we were quite excited about this, expecting to learn lots about how to make soap-shampoo etc from scratch using just local aloe vera plants. so we chopped up the aloe vera leaves, with mini machetes, then abuela thelma put them in a big pan to cook, then poured out the water to cool down. then out came a huge bucket of plain cream, ie. not cream you eat, but body lotion cream stuff. we poured the natural aloe vera into the very unnatural (and bought in guatemala city i think) thick white cream, and stirred it interminably until it looked less like curdled milk and more like something you would want to spread on your body (i suppose that depends on your own particular penchant though..). abuela checked it after a while, and decided it didn´t smell good enough, so added some equally unnatural watermelon flavouring.... then we poured this into little plastic bags which we cut at the end and poured into little bottles, which are then sold as ´natural body lotion from san josé´. hmm. not sure how i feel about this guatemalan scam. anyway, interesting experience as always.
in the meantime, aderito, one of the teachers, had been breaking the padlock of the bodega (storeroom) as the key had broken. he started off with a saw, but it wasn´t strong enough, so he got out a huge axe. we all stood back while he hammered at the little padlock, and sure enough it broke very neatly, without smashing the door or anything (imagine if i´d been in charge of that axe instead). we looked in the bodega, there were a few bags lying around that said ´gel´on them, but i didn´t know what to believe anymore about what anything was, so we looked around and said bueno a few times and left to go and get a (natural) ice cream.
tuesday´s activity was basket weaving with a local basket weaver. this was great fun, just like when you´re little and you make something at school that´s totally crap and useless, but because you made it yourself you think it´s the best thing ever. there was lots of machete wielding as the girl tapered the thin branches you use for the weaving, we kept saying ciudado, but here they grow up around machetes, and use them for everything from mowing the lawn, to cutting their hair (probably, i haven´t actually seen that yet though). she showed us some sombreros and a chair she had weaved, very impressive. we went off with our baskets for a beer in the town
and today (wednesday)´s activity was making necklaces from little branches. again, i can´t remember the name of the tree it was from, but i think it´s the thing that monkeys swing around jungles on, so not exactly a tree, but a sort of bendy branch that´s not very thick. i put the letter L on one of them, and on the other my mayan nagual sign, which is like a starsign. mine is called kej, and is a deer, and this is what the information said about people who have that sign, see if you agree:
they are wanderers, merchants, they are strong because they possess four legs (i´m pretty sure i don´t). this is the nagual of money, of success in business (!). Kej is very masculine, and if a woman is bown on this day, she will have a strong character and voice, and she´ll be very mannish.
hmm. not so complimentary. i was wearing a skirt today, so didn´t feel too mannish. later on it says
.. will either become a leader in both worldly and religious matters or else an evil witch who will go through life mounting others (?), causing trouble and sorrow to all who know him or her. finally, after enough calendar diviners have returned these troubles and illnesses, he or she weakens or dies.
nice prospect. i welcome your comments.
part 2. things i have learnt:
´tranquil atmosphere´is cleverly disguised language that guidebooks use, which means ´boring´
it is not very clever to drink too much tequila and then sit on your one remaining pair of glasses thus squashing them, and then trying to bend them back into shape using your amazing drunken glasses mending ability.. they now have sellotape on, like a true gipsy.
if you say in guatemala voy al bar, thinking you are saying i´m going to the bar, you are actually saying i´m going to a brothel
i´m not 100% sure i still want to live in a little hut in the mountains anymore. it is hard living without home comforts, and internet, and other people to converse with in your native language etc
i need to stop losing things, so far this week it´s been 2 watches (yes, i lost the new casio, but have since replaced it with the same casio), a necklace i´d bought in belize (though turns out it had the wrong nagual sign on anyway, so nevermind about that), my water bottle (found it again today in the bar (ie bar, not brothel) we were in yesterday
part 3. things that still remain a mystery to me:
how to flush the toilet in my house here
who the hell the members of my family are here
whether the people here are genetically indisposed to boredom by some evolutionary present, or whether they are as bored as i have been in my free time (which i have filled by eating ice creams and reading lots of books and doing profound thinking, but nonetheless it´s been a challenge)
whether i have dengue fever, or in fact just a cold (i think the latter)
whether my feet will ever look like my own feet again, i am covered in mosquito bites, and have still a slightly swollen right foot, and am generally very dirty and smelly. it´s not for lack of washing (well, maybe a bit), just that it seems impossible to properly feel clean here
whether the chicken i had for dinner last night was the same chicken i saw running around in our kitchen the day before. i think so
why, when i am in one of the foremost coffee producing countries of the world, am i drinking instant coffee everywhere...
part 4. dates for your diary:
1st november, in san josé, where sadly i won´t be at that time anymore, there is a huge festival, and people come from everywhere to take part in it. i´m going to investigate further with my teacher tomorrow what exactly it is, but apparently it is televised on the discovery channel, live. it´s something to do with the sacred skulls of the church, one of which each year is taken out and paraded around and various other things happen, and it lasts a whole 24 hours i think. i will update you when i have investigated
28th april 2009: my equivalent date of birth in mayan is 10 kej, and this date occurs again on 28th april 2009. thus i will from now on be celebrating 2 birthdays per year. not decided how old i am in mayan yet, perhaps still 25ish.
tomorrow i will be learning the subjunctive tense. or should i say oh how i wish i would be learning the subjunctive tense! is that the correct usage?
all for now. xx
Saturday, 4 October 2008
community chest
so here i am again at finca ixobel in poptun, the place where we saw the tarantula a few weeks ago. senor tarantula is alive and well, we spotted him trotting towards our room last night. after screaming for a bit and shining our torches on him, we made sure he was going the other way, then carried on home. we googled it today, and apparently tarantula bites can't kill you, but they can hurt a lot. hopefully no more sightings.
in other news, me and rebecca (the american girl who is studying at san jose with me) played monopoly today, which was a blast from the past, except this board was in american. we spent the morning and some of the afternoon doing our spanish homework, it's exhausting looking all those words up in the dictionary, there certainly are a lot of words in spanish. we then read our books and sat by the lake, but it's not such good weather so no swimming. lots of mosquito bites, i spent most of the night itching my foot, which has now swelled up like my ear did last week. it's been nice to eat proper food (ie pancakes and burgers) and not the fried plantains, eggs, rice and beans etc of the last week. even though these have also been nice.
our journey here on the bus yesterday was interesting, in that we checked with the bus driver a few times that he would drop us off at the finca, i'm sure he said he would, so we stayed on the bus past poptun. after a while i thought this is strange, it's only 5k south of poptun and we've been going for a while already, so did some rubbish spanish speaking and gesturing etc, and yes we had definitely gone past it a while ago. off we got and stood on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. thankfully we hadn't gone too far past it, and after a while one of the many minibus shuttle things that zoom up and down the country picking people up at random picked us up and dropped us nearer the finca. all the people on the bus were laughing at us, i guess we looked pretty lost and stupid when they found us. anyway all good travelling experience, and that's what you get for not speaking the language properly. it was a relief to get off the first bus as i had somehow got sat next to an evangelical christian. the conversation started quite innocently, he was asking me where i was from and did i like guatemala. next thing he was talking about europe and the euro. he asked did i know the history of the euro, turns out (according to him) it's all written about in the bible (la biblia), and so that's how you get from talking about europe to talking about the bible, clever hey. i told him i would spend the weekend reading la biblia, as he had told me that if i didn't believe in eternal life and jesus, then i was pretty much damned. i'll be damned, he might be right.
raining again now. time for dinner and reading more of our books. incidentally has anyone ever read anything by jorge luis borges? he writes short essays and poetry etc, quite bizarre - catchpole i think you'd like it, it reminded me of you a bit, you should look it up.
jim, i hear you've had your first order for a pair of boots, well done, and jo molloy happy birthday from the other day, and dad please send an explanation of the british economy (or what's left of it) for my complex spanish lesson conversations... i felt very stupid telling her i literally had no clue what the economy in my country was. any help appreciated. please make it simple though and only using the verbs 'to have' or 'to be', and don't include any passive or subjunctive forms please.
ciao xx
in other news, me and rebecca (the american girl who is studying at san jose with me) played monopoly today, which was a blast from the past, except this board was in american. we spent the morning and some of the afternoon doing our spanish homework, it's exhausting looking all those words up in the dictionary, there certainly are a lot of words in spanish. we then read our books and sat by the lake, but it's not such good weather so no swimming. lots of mosquito bites, i spent most of the night itching my foot, which has now swelled up like my ear did last week. it's been nice to eat proper food (ie pancakes and burgers) and not the fried plantains, eggs, rice and beans etc of the last week. even though these have also been nice.
our journey here on the bus yesterday was interesting, in that we checked with the bus driver a few times that he would drop us off at the finca, i'm sure he said he would, so we stayed on the bus past poptun. after a while i thought this is strange, it's only 5k south of poptun and we've been going for a while already, so did some rubbish spanish speaking and gesturing etc, and yes we had definitely gone past it a while ago. off we got and stood on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. thankfully we hadn't gone too far past it, and after a while one of the many minibus shuttle things that zoom up and down the country picking people up at random picked us up and dropped us nearer the finca. all the people on the bus were laughing at us, i guess we looked pretty lost and stupid when they found us. anyway all good travelling experience, and that's what you get for not speaking the language properly. it was a relief to get off the first bus as i had somehow got sat next to an evangelical christian. the conversation started quite innocently, he was asking me where i was from and did i like guatemala. next thing he was talking about europe and the euro. he asked did i know the history of the euro, turns out (according to him) it's all written about in the bible (la biblia), and so that's how you get from talking about europe to talking about the bible, clever hey. i told him i would spend the weekend reading la biblia, as he had told me that if i didn't believe in eternal life and jesus, then i was pretty much damned. i'll be damned, he might be right.
raining again now. time for dinner and reading more of our books. incidentally has anyone ever read anything by jorge luis borges? he writes short essays and poetry etc, quite bizarre - catchpole i think you'd like it, it reminded me of you a bit, you should look it up.
jim, i hear you've had your first order for a pair of boots, well done, and jo molloy happy birthday from the other day, and dad please send an explanation of the british economy (or what's left of it) for my complex spanish lesson conversations... i felt very stupid telling her i literally had no clue what the economy in my country was. any help appreciated. please make it simple though and only using the verbs 'to have' or 'to be', and don't include any passive or subjunctive forms please.
ciao xx
Thursday, 2 October 2008
all quiet on the western front
[update - photo - on the right is my abuela thelma, and on the left another abuela from over the road from our house, at the garden of medicinal plants and trees in San Jose.]hi everyone
long time no blog.
not too much to say about last week after last blog, i bumbled around in belize, then bumbled back to guatemala at the weekend, to flores. had a drunken night out, but no poker or car crashes or fights etc. bought a nice new notebook for my spanish homework, and a new watch as i mysteriously lost mine during the drunkeness. of course got the same retro casio one, even cheaper here than it was originally.
so, am now in a little town called san jose, over the opposite side of lake peten itza to flores. i´m living with a family in a little blue house halfway up the steepest hill i´ve ever had the misfortune to live on (yes even more steep than haugh end and gipsy hill put together, it´s like scaling a mountain going home after school). thank god i don´t have to cycle it. the house i live in is very basic, people here are very poor. it has a tin roof, and 3/4 high walls, so when someone is snoring in the other side of the house you can hear it quite clearly. the kitchen is at the back, outside but with a sort of roof, an open wood fire (very bad for health), and properly outside is the toilet and shower. there are chickens and dogs and cats and pigs wandering around, along with the various children who live here. i can´t figure out properly the family structure here, basically there is abuela (grandma) thelma, and abuelo ipolito at the top of the family, and at the bottom there are 4 ninos, rosie who is 1, justino is 1.10, angelita is 4, and alessandro is 6 (7 tomorrow). somewhere in the middle are their parents, but the children seem to call everyone mama and papa, so it´s hard to know who belongs to who exactly. not that it seems to matter out here, it is all one big family really, there is massive emphasis on the family unit, and the community in guatemala. sometimes there are other children from other houses who may or may not be related to my family, i have given up trying to fully understand it.
so each day abuela makes me breakfast at 730 (today was porridge, other days i´ve had plantain, pancakes, pineapple, water melon etc), then i abseil down the hill to school. my teacher on the first 2 days was umberto. he yawned his way through the 4 hours each day, i´ve never seen such a poor attempt at someone being interested in what they are doing. another good lesson for me in what not to do for my TEFL course... it got quite tiresome, he would disappear off to make phone calls or just look at dogs or cats over the balcony, then tell me how tired he was, then tell me he´d had a new job offer (quel joy!), then talk at me for half an hour about guatemalan politics and corruption and environment. as you know, i am interested in all these things, and it´s all part of the learning experience, but i had lost interest in him as a teacher by then so couldn´t find it in me to listen properly. yesterday he left the lesson at 8ish (which is also the time the lesson starts), to go and make a phonecall, and at 8.30 i had a new teacher. turns out umberto was busy organising some other event in town, some visitors from southern guatemala, coming to plan the next year of activities of something or other, and he didn´t have to time to also be a teacher this week. which suited me totally fine. i´m not convinced he would ever find the time to be a teacher with that attitude but that´s not my place to say it.. my new teacher, marisol, is completely the opposite to umberto, she actually teaches me spanish! she´s training to be a lawyer too, and we have very interesting conversations about the situation in guatemala, and how things are in england etc etc. and lots of grammar and lots of homework, perfect combination.
each day classes finish at 12, then it´s home to abuela for lunch. i never eat with the family, i think they just eat whenever and wherever, but i always eat at the table, and she will sit with me. i try to make conversation, she is really sweet, but it´s very hard trying to make chit chat in spanish when you can´t really speak it and i don´t think she´d be too interested in hearing me conjugate verb tenses or explain what the subjunctive is used for. then at 2, there is some sort of activity. monday was a trip to local mayan ruins called motun (which in mayan means full of macaws - there aren´t actually any there any more due to factors i can´t remember). they should change it´s name to whatever in mayan means full of mosquitos. i´ve never seen such massive noisy mosquitos, i spent the whole time running away from them, abi you would have hated it. i got bitten on my ear, and it swelled up to 3 times its normal size. my ankle too. anyway other than that it was a nice little excursion. tuesday was a trip to their local garden which grows lots of medicinal plants and trees, from which they make shampoo. sadly we didn´t make any shampoo or anything, just had a guided tour of the plants. wednesday was a trip to the academy of mayan languages, up the road from our house. very interesting, there are around 24 varieties of mayan languages remaining, the most widely spoken of which is chichi. maya itza which is the variety in this area, has 17 people remaining who understand and speak it. and around 30 others who just understand it but don´t speak it. the academy is working to try to preserve this dying language by teaching it to children, and writing it down etc etc. as usual the spanish conquistadors are to blame for this situation, they banned mayan speaking when they invaded, and destroyed most of the literature of the mayans. today´s activity is cooking local food with our abuelas, and then eating it for dinner i suppose. let´s hope it´s nothing too complicated therefore..
after the afternoon activity, i have dinner with abuela at 6, then generally either read, do my homework or play with the kids, who are very cute. so far i´ve given them my butterfly stickers, pencil crayons, pack of cards, and taught them how to play snap. i hope that is enough as other than that it´ll have to be my ipod and camera that go next. they have a tv in my house, which i don´t understand, given the level of poverty, and one of the dads has a motorbike, which i also don´t understand. i felt quite guilty at first, just about the general situation here, and was worried they may resent us foreigners coming here with our money and taking our photos and all that, but i reflected lots about it and decided there isn´t anything per se i can do about it (not meant in a defeatist way), and at least i am contributing something to their upkeep by choosing to do my spanish course here rather than in other more touristy places where they have more money. the situation here is really crap to be honest, the government, whilst ´better´than they´ve had in the past, is still neither good nor bad, nothing is changing as such for the rural villages. there may be increasing tourism in the country, but that only affects the places that are directly seeing the tourists, ie antigua, lake atitlan, tikal, rio dulce. as for the rest of the country, the money doesn´t trickle down to them as you would hope it would. there is no real access to education past the age of 12 unless your family can afford it, and mostly they can´t, and even if they can there aren´t enough schools within walking distance anyway. usually at the age of 12 you just work in your house with your mama and abuela, cleaning, cooking, growing things, washing clothes, passing the time. girls often have children at the age of 12 and 13. there is loads of domestic violence (thankfully none that i´ve witnessed or heard of, but marisol says it´s a huge problem here), massive inequality between men and women, and since recently there is also the fast growing problem of AIDS, for which obviously there is no money to deal with, nor enough education about it. 49% of children are malnourished in guatemala. i had read about all these things (see earlier blog), so was aware of them as issues, but it is really sad to talk to marisol and others about it and see how upset she gets. she asked me what i thought of guatemala- i said it was interesting, and hard to understand, and there seems to be a lot of both positive and negative things here, but the people are so friendly and happy despite it all and it must be getting better. she said we seem happy, but we are not, how can we be, we have nothing, we can´t trust our government, nothing is improving, we have no opportunities and no money. it´s all really upsetting, and it´s impossible to justify why they should live like that and we live like we do. to not have access to education, and clean water is completely wrong, let alone not having any health service to speak of. it makes me fully realise how lucky and privileged i am in comparison, but this inevitably leads to massive guilt and sadness.
not wanting to end on a low, so here are some random comments / questions:
why don´t you ever actually see mosquitos biting you?
i discovered what leaf-cutter ants do with all those bits of leaves, they spend all summer cutting them up and transporting them to their house underground, and then spend all winter living off the strange pulp that the leaves turn into. what a life. even more bizarre than mine.
the mayan cross is yellow to the east for the sunrise, red to the west for the sunset, white to the north for the north star, and black to the south for the underworld, and green in the middle for the ceiba, which is their national tree. also there are those 4 colours of corn (yellow, red, white, black), and of people in the world.
that´s it for today. got to do my homework now. hope all is well, how is the recession coming along back home?
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