Toto, I don't think we're in Upstate NY anymore

The San Mateo SMHC (Saturday Morning Hiking club) is currently in search of visionary businesses who would like to buy us T-shirts and support our continued awesomeness.  This would not be a frivolous expenditure because I must say that we are quite a formidable team with a lot of potential.  Today we hiked for over 4 hours on an expedition to reach Pittsburgh- as Chat dubbed the point of union of the two rivers that flow on either side of the town.  At the midway point of our hike we sadly accepted that our meager provisions of 3 Nalgenes of water and 2 rolls a piece would not support any further venturing and we must acknowledge the failure of our quest and turn back.  But please, do not for a moment think that this was an entirely frustrated attempt and assume our defeat.  On the contrary- on the way back Chat and I traversed down closer to the river at one point for a more careful examination and realized that Pittsburgh was right before us!  A mere 20-30 minutes away from town, we had simply been too exuberant and eager to forge ahead on the way out and had missed it.  The  morning’s activites were an unqualified success.  Especially after we slogged our bedraggled wreckages of bodies back into San Mateo, chugged some agua pura and refortified ourselves with some rice and beef soup at a comedor.

It was almost as worthwhile as the Saturday mornings of our youth, spent watching cartoons for hours, which we discussed at length this morning over breakfast.  It was great drinking sweet coffee and reminiscing about classics like Duck Tales, Animaniacs and Garfield and Friends.  As it turns out, no one else had ever suffered a concussion due to viewing these programs.  Must be I’m the only one who participated in XTREME saturday morning cartoons.

I know it’s still January, but on Thursday afternoon we has some serious March Madness right here in San Mateo.  In response to a very official invitation from another middle school in town, the kids from our school participated in a high-stakes basketball competition at the court in the center of town.  Classes were cancelled so the whole school could come watch and die-hard fans that we are, all the teachers came and suffered through chilly rain to cheer on our students and heckle the other team….in English.  Fernando helped out coaching both the boys and girls team.  The other school didn’t show up until almost 2 hours after we got there (probably trying to work up the courage to face us) so we got to enjoy the spectacle of about 150 kids on the court shooting some hoops.  The girls play in their long, tight cortes and small rubber shoes or even heels!  The girls on the team did change into sweatpants and jerseys to play and it was so exhilarating to see them really cut loose on the court and get into the game.  The misty rainy weather was not the best playing conditions, but it did amp up the intesity of the game.  Well, that combined with the 4 techno/Christian rock songs that were looped continuously and blared over the speakers.  We tried to maintain core body by sipping on hot arroz con chocolate kindly purchased for us by Kati.  Only to keep our temperature from dropping of course.

Classes are cancelled on Monday afternoon again because all the teachers are going to a small town nearby to attend the graduation of Eulalia, one of the other teachers at the school.  She invited us all and when we were informed that there would be a lunch followed by a dance party afterwards, we decided it wouldn’t kiiillllllll the kids to miss one afternoon of classes.  It was really kind of her to invite us, so I’m glad we’ll be there to offer our congratulations and celebrate with her.

Well, time to close this latest installment, as my brain and body are making apparent their refusal to cope with the combined effects of strenous hiking and over-large lunch.  Must go crash.  Stay classy San Diego.  Oh, if anyone is going to happen to swing through San Mateo in the next few weeks, we would really appreciate having a copy of Anchorman for our viewing pleasure.  It was one of the few popular films not available for purchase in Barillas.  Thank you for your consideration.

I love the smell of my Bath and Body Works Coconut Lime Verbena mixed with the smell of smoke from the Chuj. This is the scent of being clean, warm and relaxed. A strange juxtaposition of U.S. consumerism and San Mateo simplicity- I hope that as time goes on I will find myself beginning to blend and merge the influences from here and home with such balance.

On Sunday I washed my clothes by hand for the second time in my life and made homemade pizza for the first time. It was a great workout for my upper arms- vigorously scrubbing my dirty clothes and kneading dough. My biceps are certain to be ripping through my sleeves soon…..even more than they do now. The pizza turned out pretty well although the crust was slightly over-crispy. The sauce was great though- made fresh from sweet baby tomaotes, and we had a vast quantity of precious cheese piled atop.  We are considering making Sunday evening pizza night every week. Hopefully my efforts can only improve from here.

As for not-so-new experiences, I got a pretty nasty sunburn while watching a soccer game played by Chat, Fernando and various students and teachers.  Natalia and I sat on a huge rock, which we dubbed the Skybox, and blithely chatted away while the sun brutally attacked our defenseless gringa skin.  At no point did we consider that it would be wise to put on some of the sunscreen that we had toted all the way up to the field with us.  We were too busy being entertained by the mama pig and 6 babies that were trotting across the field blissfully ignorant of dangerous projectiles flying their way….until they were hit by one.  That was sad.  I have a great affinity for the pigs of San Mateo, even after a frightening incident in which a venerable sow plainly demonstrated her disinterest in having her picture taken with me.

We are really developing our culinary skills here at the Foundation.  Everyone has chosen a night to cook and we have had some fabulous gastronomic success.  Last night Fernando grilled beef and onions and tomatoes and made mini shish-kabobs on toothpicks.  Tonight we all nursed our slightly demoralized immune systems with a hearty chicken soup compliments of Chat.  My favorite part was the slightly sweet root vegetable that bears no name we know of, but makes up for lack of nomenclature in outstanding taste.  We also found a new fruit this weekend at the market called zapote, which is like a sweeter, juicier sweet potato.   I intend to eat at least 14 pounds of these within the next 2 weeks.

Oh yea, classes are going pretty well this week.  But you all really just want to hear about the food right?  I know I would.

Yes, I know it’s afternoon now, but that is the song that the primero kids sing everytime I enter the room, regardless of what time of day it is.  They also tend to break out singing it in the middle of class, which I find slightly less endearing.  I may have spoken too soon with my pie-in-the-sky attitude about their wonderful “enthusiasm.” I had a really hard time with all 56 of them at the end of the week, and so I gave them a quiz on Friday, hoping that would sober them up a little.  I don’t know about them, but it definitely brought me down a few notches when I was grading them last night and only 3 students out of all 56 got higher then 65%.  I guess I’ll be looking for new strategies to reteach that unit next week. 

On a more positive and unrelated note: I just love public transportation.  There’s something I find so soothing about just hopping on a bus and cramming into a seat and staring out the window until, as if by magic, you arrive at your destination.  While the bus system here is very different from the municipal transport I adored in Valencia, I have just as much affection for the unique charm of the camionetas.  We took our first day trip outside of San Mateo today and traveled an hour and a half to Barillas, which is the nearest town.  After only 2 weeks of living here, I felt incredibly overwhelmed by this commercial metropolis.  There were stores and restaurants and a market that’s open all week and some kind of bizarre water park!  We were like country mice bewildered in the big city.  The only way to assuage our agitation was to go get ice cream, which was probably worth the whole trip.  We went all out and had bananas splits and rum raisin cones and were gloriously gluttonous.  Other essential purchases included a purple plastic strainer, pirated DVDs, tea, and peanut butter (which we can’t get in San Mateo and were thrilled to find in Barillas).  After lunch at a real sit-down restaurant we took the bus ride back home.

On Thursday we had a dinner here at the house with all the teachers from the school. It was great to eat and talk and laugh together and feel more like we belong here.  They graciously took over food preparations and grilled meat outdoors, which was served with tortillas, guacamole and beans.  We also had our first sampling of cuxa, which is a local liquor made from sugarcane.  When mixed with pineapple-flavored Yus (Guatemalan Koolaid) it’s pretty tasty.  We had been unable to procure it ourselves because apparently you have to know the right places to get it and use the special knock.  I hope they also mix it up in a bathtub like 1920’s Chicago.   After we had feasted, the other teachers left, but the celebrations continued as we threw a small going-away party for our friend the Cuban doctor who is going to work in another village this week.  There was of course dancing and vast quantities of terrible (awesome) techno/reggaeton/latin pop music.

Our plans for the evening include visits to the Chuj, viewing one of our great new DVDs and possibly Truth or Dare Jenga.  Hope everyone at home has wonderful plans as well!

If anyone is dying to know the answer to the riddle….(which is not diapers) you can e-mail me for clues or with your guesses.  I can’t post it on here and ruin it for everyone!

My profuse apologies for the fact that it has been more than 48 hours since I last posted. I’m sure you were all concerned for my safety and well-being. There is a valid explanation however- the internet wasn’t working yesterday, which we discovered was due to the fact that we had turned off the power boxes to stop the incessant shrill beeping that occurs when the power is low between the hours of 6:30 and 8:00 pm. Ah yes, that computerized symphony that serenades us nightly….and haunts my dreams. My particularly adverse reaction to it can be ascribed to the beginning of my tenure as la profesora de computacion this week, which has proven to be an exercise in improvisation. The first class was a painfully hilarious disaster: a class of 21 8th graders barrels into the lab, eager to get their little paws on the keyboards. Extremely eager. Perhaps they thought they had to prove their worthiness to operate these machines through sheer brute force by pushing every other student on the way in. They all immediately start to turn on the computers, as I’m struggling to pull a McGuyver and create more chairs out of whiteboard markers and a stick of gum when I realize there are way more kids than seats in this room. The computers start to turn on, opening magic portals to the world of binary code, cyberspace and word processing programs, when it also brought to my attention (i.e. bellowed) that several computers are not working. …….And then the beeping starts. I’m running back and forth across the room pushing any buttons I can get my hand on, just trying to MAKE IT STOP. This story would be so much more effective told in person so you could see the crazy look in my eyes. Ask any of the fellow teachers who were graced with an encore performance of me rapidly losing all rationality when I recounted my experience later that night. Also, my entire lesson was based on an internet site which unfortunately only works if the network server is functioning. It was not. At that point I gave up and just took the kids back to the classroom to play a name game for 20 minutes. That went well except that I thought one kid’s name was Cornelio when it was actually Rogelio and they thought I said Conejo (rabbit) and now they all call them that. Look at the bright side kid- a quirky new nickname! I forgot that I hate computers. And yet I love blogging…..a paradox. But class has gotten better. I haven’t had even one more experience that would induce me to bludgeon myself unconscious with the keyboard.

That night we were invited to dinner at the Cuban doctor’s house and we ate good food and danced for hours on end. The sweet sounds of reggaeton music blaring from a laptop finally drove the piercing echoes of beeping sounds from my head.

I was a little nervous about teaching the primero class (7th graders) because it’s basically a small nation of adolescents- we have now reached a grand total of 56 children.  However, I have discovered that they are my favorite class.  They have a lot of energy and can be difficult to rein in, but they are so enthusiastic!  Perhaps the square-dance atmosphere of their classroom has something to do with this.  They had to build another room on the roof of the building to house this herd of eager learners, which reminds me a lot of a big empty barn.  I feel inclined to start up a country jamboree everytime I enter.  Maybe I could teach them line-dancing!  I feel that’s an American cultural activity well worth exporting.  It sure changed my life in the 7th grade- thank you Mr. Webber.

Beth Neville and John left to go back to los Estados on Wednesday and the house immediately fell into disarray in the hands of this motley crew of young adults.  Well not exactly- the Foundation is still standing, but the first night after they left we found ourselves scrounging in the fridge for lame leftovers, and realizing how spoiled we were with the amazing culinary works Beth and John had provided for us.  We also had to eat standing up because all the chairs from our house were relocated to the computer lab.  In their absence, the Foundation Fellowship has spent a lot of quality time on important bonding activities among the remaining members- such as discovering what celebrities we look most like on the internet (I bear a striking resemblance to Laura Bush, Chelsea Clinton and Stephen Hawking in case you’re wondering….and that’s not a joke).  We also endeavored for 45 minutes today to solve a riddle posed to us by Natalia.  Give it a whirl and see if it takes you slightly less time:

He who makes it doesn’t use it

He who uses it doesn’t know it

He who buys it doesn’t need it.

Fernando frequently exclaimed out loud: “Why would you buy it if you don’t need it!!!!”  That didn’t really help, but we did laugh every time.

I know I just posted less than 24 hours ago, but I realized there was an critical omission in my description of yesterday’s events and I could not let this grave oversight go unchecked.  When we went to my favorite comedor yesterday to buy tortillas we got a whole lot more than the 10 quetzales we had planned on.  The amazing and talented Dona Geli (who I thought was 13 but is actually married and has kids) gave us a tortilla-making lesson!  My efforts were fairly deplorable, but I did see some improvement throughout- it’s so much harder than she makes it look!  You take a ball of the corn-flour dough and roll it into a ball, then through a series of deft movements, miraculously form it into a perfect, uniform, flat circle, just a little bit bigger than the size of your hand and place it on a hot flat grill, heated by a wood fire underneath….all in about 27 seconds flat.  If you’re Dona Geli that is.  If you’re me, you spend 2 1/2 minutes forming a lumpy, oblongesque, freeform shape with rips, tears and holes in it and sheepishly place it on the grill where it shrivels up and burns slightly.  We had a great time and the family had a great time laughing at our dismal failures.  Hopefully they will allow me further chances to perfect this art and one day I too can be a tortilla-making (and eating) machine!

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep up this breakneck blogging pace the whole time I’m here, but due to numerous, frequent requests I am going to take this opportunity to introduce my compadres and fellow teachers here at the Foundation.

Everyone reading this is probably familiar with Chat, my fellow Penn Yanian and linguaphile.  We now both subscribe to word of the day in English and Spanish and love nerding out and discussing important vocabulary like fizgig- multiple definitions including a type of firework, and a flirty, frivolous girl.

Angela is the other teacher that arrived on the same plane as us and is currently my roommate.  She has taught in France, Martinique and Japan prior to this and spent part of this summer in Xela.  Obviously she needs to get out more and see the world.  She taught me how to pose for pictures like a really cool Japanese girl- I owe her so much.  She also gives me a fun financial fact every night from her reading for a financial management course she is taking.  I will be a tax guru by the end of this year.

Fernando is actually the instigator of this post.  Everytime he sees me on the computer he asks if I’m blogging and if I’ve talked about him yet.  This should put an end to that!  (Right Fer?)  He is from Argentina and likes to ask questions.  He also claims that he enjoys complaining and I have suggested that he start his own blog that is solely complaints.  I will make sure to post a link for your reading pleasure.

Kati is doing her thesis project here for anthropology which is about photos and construction of identity.  It seems really incredible.  I posted her blog site and her photo site on here so you can check it out.  Her photos are fabulous….and as I haven’t taken too many yet…..(sorry Mom!) you can check those out in the meantime.  She’s really into biking and actually brought her bike to San Mateo with her- I miss my sky blue Raleigh!

Natalia is here from Bennington College to teach the little ones in Kindergarten, and sadly is only staying for 3 weeks.  She speaks German, knits and enjoys Scrabble.  (This sounds like descriptions from a dating show and it’s hilarious.)

What a casa de locos!  We are actually quite a team and have a lot of fun sitting around the table, playing rock paper scissors, rearranging the schedule (oh….not so much) and…..hiking!!  We went on an incredible journey today that took us up above the town, around a mountain peak, through woods, fields.  We had to ford the stream and sadly lost 2 oxen and 7 boxes of bullets.  It was so refreshing and perfect after a  somewhat  frustrating meeting this morning.  It was finally sunny again and the weather was perfect and we were tromping through the mud…I can’t express how full my heart was for those two and a half hours.  These things are what make us realize that all the scheduling conflicts and paper-pushing and space issues are not the end of the world….but just small obstacles in our path to the top!

I had a revelation last night that I feel must be shared with the world. And it has to do with…the chicken buses, actually known as camionetas by non-gringos. I forgot to mention in my description of these awe-inspiring, death-defying chariots that they don’t simply leave them as run-down, ramshackle, second-hand school buses. Oh no- the camionetas are totally blinged-out, souped-up machines. They repaint them in vibrant colors and designs and put chrome all over and put slogans in Gothic lettering across the windshield. Examples include “Regalo de Dios” (Gift of God) and “Dios conmigo, quien contra mi?” (If God is with me, who can be against me?) So my inspired idea is that Xzibit really really needs to come down to Huehuetenango (a hub of camioneta travel) and do a show entitled “Pimp My Camioneta”. I think it’s exactly the refreshing burst of new energy and diversity that MTV needs. Please write to your local cable company in support of this programming.

Also- I want to start dressing like a little Guatemalan boy- they have these awesome black motorcycle jackets and tall mud boots.

One more thing!  I tried a granadia this morning and it was delicious- kind of tart.  My only problem with it is the same one I have with pomegranates; the crunchy seed texture is a little unpleasant.  Consider yourselves informed.

Yesterday was a real bummer. But that’s all I’m going to say about that because I learned from it and improved and today was approximately 17,000 times better. (Actually I cried a bit first…and then learned and improved, let’s be honest.)

Today was another market day- I’m still learning to navigate the market here, but I’m sure that one day I will be cruising through there with produce savvy akin to that which I possessed at the Rochester Public Market. There are 9 people eating here at the house now because the 3 other teachers arrived on Tuesday so we had quite a shopping trip. We bumbled around until we found the things we were looking for and ended up with quite a cornucopia of delicious fruits and vegetables, some of which were transformed into an incredible lunch of scrambled eggs, sauteed tomatoes, tomatillos and onions, ripe avocadoes, and fresh warm corn tortillas which were made while I waited by the sweet family at Comedor Ixtateca. (The little baby there is named Jessica! Or actually Yesica I presume.) So far they get my vote for the best tortillas in town. This of course is a topic I intend to more fully investigate…solely for the sake of knowledge of course…and not at all because I could probably eat a stack of 43 tortillas for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We also got an interesting new kind of squash and a watermelonesque fruit and Beth Neville bought granadias which are a fruit I’ve never seen- they’re small and yellowish and kind of oblong and have seeds like pomegranates inside, except they’re clear. I’ve yet to try one but I will report once I have.

In between market and lunch I taught my second class of the year, which went pretty well. We did a review of note values and then clapped out some rhythms which they seemed to enjoy. I got really excited when they got it and would yell “Casi! Casi!” (Almost!) when they were close.

With the arrival of the new teachers we have to almost entirely revamp the schedule we spent 18 hours last week working on. All we can really do is laugh about it and do it over again. I think I’m going to switch a class with Kati, one of the other teachers because she’s doing a really cool photography/anthropology project and she wants to work with the older kids in quinto. So I’m going to take on her 7th grade social studies class. I think it could be really fun! The only little cloud over that parade is that there are 47 kids in primero. That’s a big class- maybe I should invest in a megaphone.  They are currently building another floor on the roof of the building so we will have a room that can house that many students.  They are working really hard and really quickly- maybe because the past few days have been cold and rainy.  Nasty weather, but good incentive to stay inside and work on my plans.  It’s kind of a cool ambiance with all the fog and mist though- the other day we went for a walk up above the town and when we looked down all you could see was the tops of the mountains as they appeared like islands.  The town was like Atlantis submerged under an ocean of fog.

The annual school inauguration on Tuesday was really exciting.  All the women showed up in their bright huipiles and the marimba group played and at the end there was dancing!  That makes any event a success for me.  I guess not a lot of people here dance though because there were only 2-3 couples on the floor at any one time.  Chat danced with a very enthusiastic but apparently ryhthm-impaired older woman and I had the pleasure of jammin with Juan Jacinto, who is one of the administrators of the Association.  The dance was a pretty easy kind of waltz because all the marimba music is in 3.  Juan Jacinto put a little groovin into the steps though and it was a lot of fun.

This is probably way too long already so I’m going to finish eating this delicious bag of peanuts.  I’ve discovered that the variety that has 3 nuts in each shell is superior in taste to the regular two-in-a-shell variety.

Oh- the title is from a great poem sent to me by the incomparable Richard Q. Weiss that totally validated what I’m doing and made me recognize how beautiful my time here will be.

I really should be writing my class plans right now, as I currently have completed only 1 of 6, but I think I owe it t o my readers to fill them in on the exciting events of the past few dats.  In an attempt to put myself in a very relaxed state in the face of the massive amount of planning ahead of me, I will start be describing the very Zen and amazing experience of the Chuj on Saturday night.  Chuj is the name of the native Mayan language spoken here in San Mateo, but it is also the name given to the steam-hut/bathing apparatus that takes place twice a week.  After being given a brief Chuj tutorial by Chat (a relative Chuj veteran, having experienced it twice before) I crawled through an Alice in Wonderland-size door to find myself in a tiny smoky chamber, dimly lit by a single candle.  Mystical, no?  In one corner sits the pile of heated stones which you pour water onto to make steam.  Then you sit there and meditate…or just clean yourself with the water.  Apparently I got a little to into the transcendental nature of this experience and totally lost track of time.  It was great for me, but I kind of forgot there was a long line of others waiting for the Chuj!

The next morning was market day.  Relaxed by the Chuj, I overslept and didn’t go with some of the others at 7:30, but woke up around 8 for breakfast and then checked out the slightly less bustling market afterwards.  As it were, this was probably a slightly easier introduction to the scene- even at the late hour at which we arrived the large concrete building and surround area was completely “teeming with humanity” (as described by Chat).  They were selling produce I had never seen, like spiky green round things, and some things I couldn’t even guess at- dried fish?  Wood chips?  Chat bought some hot rice drink from a very giggly little vendor, and I got a lot of consternated looks due to my giant sunglasses- which no one wears here…but the sun is so bright!!

That afternoon I attempted to do some planning while sitting out at the ruins because it was a beautiful sunny day.  I was thwarted however by the picturesque nature of my surroundings- I looked out over the valley and up at the mountains, and the slope covered with bright houses and said “I can’t believe I live here.”  I ended up just eating peanuts and being entertained by various pigs, dogs and children ambling about.  They sell peanuts in the shell at every one of the 14,000 tiendas here in San Mateo as well as on most of the corners.  They are so delicious and addictive I want to buy them everytime I pass.  I think this is a sustainable addiction, as they only cost 1 quetzal a bag (7 quetzal= 1 dollar).  After giving up on my good teacher intentions, I helped Beth paintt some of the classrooms while serenaded by opera duets (from Beth’s laptop) and marimba (live from the marimba group practice).

Today was the “first day” of school, but as the building is not ready yet, the morning was spent cleaning out the old school and moving things into the new one.  I got to meet some of the students and be astounded by their energy, strength and capability already.  The 7th graders were hauling furniture up the side of the building like it was nothing!  Guess I should have hit the gym a little  more before my departure.

Tomorrow is the opening day celebration for the school, and then….classes start for real on Wednesday!  Wish me luck- and now, to plan!

I just got back from an afternoon stroll around San Mateo and I’m still breathing heavy as I sit lethargically here in front of the computer.  I feel like at any second Lando Calrissian is going to appear and welcome me to his cloud city.  Yea, it’s seriously that high up here.  I know I’ll get used to it eventually, but I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to truck up hill at a brisk pace while carrying a baby, a bundle of firewood and 3 pounds of beans.  Well I guess I shouldn’t count anything out- I have only been here 3 days.

Our first few days have been dominated by meetings at the school and some brief exploration of the town.  I think 75% of my waking hours have been spent in a small backroom of the school while we toiled endlessly over the nightmare of scheduling. However, we are now the proud creators of a master work which successfully integrates all necessary classes.  And I managed to get all of Friday afternoon off!  This was somehow accomplished through sitting in a chair and not saying much for 8 hours….I’m not gonna question it.  As it turns out I will be teaching music to primero, segundo, tercero, quinto and sexto, the equivalents of 7,8,9,11,12th grades.  I am also teaching a computer class to segundo and tercero.  They have told me it just needs to be very basic computer skills, and I’m going to take them at their word, because I guess I might as well admit that I’m not exaaaactly a techno wizard.  I might try to focus on using the internet for research and probably throw some Power Point in there, because who doesn’t love a good Power Point presentation complete with charming little animations and spinning titles.

We’re slowly organizing the house and figuring out how/what to eat here.  The diet so far has been heavy on eggs, beans and tortillas- which is amazing.  I’m discovering more fruits and vegetables and tomorrow is market day so I’m sure that will be a good introduction to all the produce San Mateo has to offer.

This entry seems to be a trifle heavy on exposition and low on interest so I’m going to conclude here and take a nap to rejuvenate my creative flow.  Don’t worry- I’ll have some dazzling anecdotes to present you with in the near future.  Let me know what you want to hear about.  This blog is for you- help me, help you!  (Cause Jerry McGuire quotes never get old….)