19-January-2019, Sunday, 9:37 CDT
Well look who it is, and only three weeks since the last post. Just ignore him, Constant Reader. Welcome back and thank you for being so constant. What's happened since we were last together? The first three weeks of 2020--that's what happened, Barbara Walters! But seriously. My lack of occupation has since been filled. Last week started winter courses for interested students. My colleagues and I have to condense an entire semester's worth of material into two weeks, Monday thru Friday. It's been a new challenge for me, trying to include everything an effective lesson should while covering as much as three different topics in one hour and a half class. One more week of these winter English courses, then we start the Spring 2020 semester.
My schedule's going to be a lot different than it was last semester. In order to better achieve Peace Corps's goals, us volunteer teachers need to be working directly with our Mexican counterparts. Last semester I taught five classes on my own. I had no problem with this, and in fact really enjoyed it, but me only teaching students is not sustainable. For better sustainability, we need to be teaching teachers. Last semester I was just giving fish. This semester, and those remaining, I will be giving Mexican professors fishing rods which they can use to better teach students English. I don't know exactly what my schedule will be, but I knew the teachers with whom I'll be working, and all three are amazing. I can't wait to get started next week.
There's been carnivals going on around here. They remind me of the fair back home, except scaled down quite a bit. There's games for kids, young and old, like throwing darts at balloons, catching rubber ducks with a little magnetic fishing rod, and smashing bottles to win more bottles. There's also a lot of food at the fairs, delicious food. Mostly tacos--de suadero, enchilada, arabe, pastor--con salsa, cilantro y cebolla. Oh my gatos! So freakin good. I will never look at Taco Bell the same again. I'll try not to become a taco snob, but once you've been El Dorado it's hard not to cast a judgmental eye on foods of lesser esteem. At the fairs, it's common to have bull riding in the evening and a band play through the night. Yesterday at San Sebastian's fair (a neighborhood in Tepexi), five guys made a human tower to mount a greased pole for prizes at the top. It was quite a sight.
I was down with the sickness a few weeks back, just your common cold, but it still wasn't any fun. Despite my poor state, I accepted and invitation from a friend to go to a swimming hole called "El Ojo de Agua," The Eye of Water. It took a half hour to get there on foot after we were dropped off in the mountains by a taxi. We followed an irrigation path dug by hard-working people some time ago until the woods opened up on a field with a horse tied up in the middle of it. She seemed like she wanted our attention, but we were running out of daylight and heat. The end included a difficult stretch through a bamboo colony, a section that is particularly difficult if you're tall. But the struggle was worth it as we were released onto a bed of boulders that overlooked a crystal blue eye of water. It was a beautiful sight to behold, and the temperature was such that it felt warmer in the water than out of it. I will definitely be going back when the weather gets hot again.
Yesterday I washed my clothes with dish soap, but everything was ok, I also walked into a dangling thorn that tore into the skin on the side of my head, just before the ear, at the fair in La Colonia I won a Goku piggy bank (but I don't even watch Dragonball Z, sorry fam), I've still been lifting a lot, but am putting on a little too much poundage and need to work in some cardio (thankfully a friend and I plan to do so next week), I'm still writing an undersea story in Spanish that's coming along nicely, still playing to much MtG Arena, but ready to be busy with school here next week. Thanks again for reading, and we'll see you on the other side of tomorrow.
