Back in Business

Christmas break was a very good / much needed break. I didn't realize how good it would be to be home for awhile, catch up with family and friends in person, and get out of Torreon. Travelling around would have been fun of course, dont get me wrong, but having the people around me was great [and in the end cheaper than all the hotels food and travel it would have been. Thanks for the room and board Padres :) ] Plus I got to be one of the first to see my little cousin Sammy's new baby girl! soo cute.
Now school is back in session (since the 7th really), and I'm back in the usual grind. It was good to come back to a three day week, ease into things. Someone had the bad idea that we should bring a toy from Christmas on that Friday though... good in theory, and maybe could be carried out better at a different school or with different kids... not my little hellions though - that caused so many issues.
I feel like my kids are somehow, miraculously(!? bad choice of word?!) worse than before break. We just had parent-teacher conferences last week... interesting tidbit on that: every single female students parent mentioned one girl's name: Queen Bee. 'Something needs to be done about her, my child is afraid of making her mad' She is feared! Thankfully the parents were very understanding and said they will run into many people like her in life but I should just watch out for it, believe me I have been. She can get any girl to do any dirty work she asks. "put this in my bag, hang up my jacket, dont play with her or I won't be your friend" that kind of thing. AND she's 5. Excellent. When she is gone from school it is seriously a 360º difference with the other girls, they play freely and talk more often! So imagine - I have 6 girls and that is the drama between them, now add in 12 boys where at least 3 are demons (said most affectionately of course) and they can cause a domino effect on many others. Makes for an interesting class to be sure.
Today I am very excited because we changed assistants, apparently they do this semesterally so nows the time. The new assistant I have knows more english and is much more outgoing. With my last assistant, the both of us being fairly shy/introverted didn't make for such a good team. Anyways, even after only today with my new helper, I can see a difference. She is also quite helpful with behavior management and thinks up projects to do on her own. Hopefully my students will start to miraculously shape up. Its getting exhausting

Goodbye for now, Mexico

School is finally over for 2008. Jenna and I will fly out tomorrow afternoon to MN, hopefully no bad weather interferences.... It still doesn't seem like I will be going home, nor that it has been 4 months! I don't know where the time went! I am excited that I get to see family and friends, traveling around would have also been fun, but a completely different fun. And after Thanksgiving when I Skype chatted with the whole fam, I am ready to see them all. Also hoping I get to see Sammy's new baby!!
My Christmas program is over now as well..... I was reminded I have to take it in stride that any 5 year old program would be mildly chaotic and not completely polished. My procrastinator habits maybe didn't help the fact but I think they did pretty well! I tried to talk as little as possible in front of the large crowd which included the usual - Maternal through Preprimaria classes (3-6 yr olds and their teachers/assistants) along with Jenna and her 4th grade class (which happens to be our Reading Buddies so they know my kids well) and Emily and her first grade class which was performing after us and helped with the decorating. We started off with reciting an acrostic poem about Christmas [this is the kind that says C is for.... H is for... R is for... and so on]. The morning of before school, I was still running around trying to get all the little details taken care of and one of my kids stops me as she walks in the gate. "Miss Breanna," she says, in her cute shy voice, pulling a folded paper out of her pocket [I had sent home the words to both our poem and our songs so they could practice with their parents], "T is for toys to play with" she said in a voice that was almost bold but certainly proud. Ahhh, I loved it, it was a perfect distraction I needed from being a little too stressed out about a program hardly any one would see and probably no one would remember. She made my day!
So anyway, the program began with the Poem, most too shy to speak loud enough for the sketchy microphone to pick up, but they each had a letter to hold along with a prop explaining their line. Next we dropped off those props to change for bells! Jingle bells, Jingle bells! Another change of props and we were all wearing Santa hats and singing and dancing our way through Santa Claus is Coming to Town! adorable if I do say so myself :) The show ended with a rowdy round of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, rowdy only because they know it so well they basically just shout it out and then we had everyone join in for an encore. Hopefully the audience enjoyed it well enough. One of the mothers in attendance told me after, and I quote, "It was good enough." I am hoping this was meant well, and maybe worded 'poorly' because English is not her first language, but either way, I guess she approved.. I think my kids had fun being on the stage and now it is over so all is well!
Today we didn't really have school.... we had to punch in at 830, the kids arrived at 9, and we got out at 1230. The schedule for the day was something like: time to finish parent christmas project, posada, auditorium for charoling, Piñatas, cake, home. Rough day. It was actually a hassle for the teachers simply because it was so lax. There were times we were told to get our kids ready for this activity and we would be in line ready only to wait ten minutes for it to begin... this means a lot of "get back in line, please" "dont hit him" "no kicking" etc. Overall though, it was a fun day. We colored the cutest picture of a little Mexican kid in front of a cactus decorated as a Christmas tree, they had a piñata for each grade, cakes galore, and then we were pretty much free to go. They took home their cute final projects we had painted for their parents, along with the stockings we had decorated with our Reading Buddies, yeah, we do more than read! I would add pics with this but I had forgotten my camera these last two days so I will have to wait and get the pics from the other teachers camera I used instead.
Thursday night we also had a Posada as a staff. It was the culmination of our Secret Santa gift giving as well as a big dinner-Merry Christmas celebration. My supervisor dressed up as Celia Cruz in order to lead the karaoke for the night, it was a pretty fun night. The night ended in a raffle that included prizes like a computer, an ipod touch, and other notsocheap items..... So it ended up being a pretty late night but luckily we had a late call time the next day :)
Well... now it is just one night before I set foot back in MN... back in cold, snowy MN. It was still upper 80s this week, just to let you know....

Christmas Time is Here

December is here! I can't believe its already been 3 months, it flew by so quickly. Two more weeks left of school and then we get over two weeks off for break! I'm pretty stoked about that! And the weekend of Thanksgiving I decided I wanted to come home instead so I bought myself a plane ticket to MN!!! I think it is better this way because Jenna and I would have been basically the only people here so that would have been a bit lonely and my mom ditched out on me :) and it will probably save me money this way in the end instead of paying for all the travel, food, and hotels throughout that time. Plus I get to see many of my wonderful family and friends :D I think we need a break from Torreon too, school is getting me down lately.
I think it is mostly due to the fact that I am a little more stressed than usual. My class is in charge of the Christmas program for the kindergarten area, so I have to plan and practice and teach all that stuff on top of normal things. Plus this is of course a very 'crafty' time in kindergarten so there are those things to plan and execute as well. Hopefully all goes well, wish me luck. Teaching English language learners christmas songs can be funny. I like when i stop singing the words and I just listen to what they think they are supposed to be saying... not quite right but its cute! Does it really matter?! I hope not!
I should take a picture of our Christmas door... and tomorrow Jennas 4th graders are going to help us make stockings out of foamy paper! Its a fun time, I should be enjoying myself right?!
Anyway, Heck Yes to homecoming! December 20-January 5, get ready Minnesota
[and by get ready, I mean get warmer and you dont have to snow so much... its 80º here still!]

Mexican Turkey

Thanksgiving in Mexico!

It was such a good night! All the American teachers got together, each bringing a dish to pass. Thanks to Jenn, our wonderful coordinator, the school even delivered tables and chairs for us to set up in the courtyard of one of the houses! It was perfect. After school, my house had a cooking fest to get our part of the bargain ready. I made the ever so delicious Double Layer Pumpkin Pie. [Unfortunately, Mexicans apparently don't eat pudding, so the JellO I got was really vanilla flan, which made it a little different than I'm used to...aka it didn't really pass my test but I guess no one else knew right.] Tye came over to join the fun, he made a jalapeño corn bake and a green bean casserole type dish (again due to lack of american ingredients we're used to). Jenna had $17 worth of potatoes to peel, cook, mash and make glorious (a guess... it was maybe 10lbs?! I'm no good at that game but..). And Emily had large servings of carrots and green beans to cook as well. Our oven/stove was working its little but off!

When the main event finally got underway, we were able to see just how much food we had brought together. I think it may even have been more than our Amundson gatherings! (wait, can that be true?!)

How perfectly cute, no?!
We even had Pilgrims and Indians in attendance

Thank you to first in line and layering up the plates! :) It was alllll soooo goooood! There were two big turkeys, three types of potatoes, corn, beans, carrots, sweet potatoes, stuffing, cornbake, two/three types of pasta, a green salad, gazpacho, a fruit plate, a cracker-cheese-meat platter, and at least four types of pie, a few cheesecakes, and orange fluff! And I'm sure I'm forgetting something! Man, it was so worth the little belly ache!

The food... this is before some people arrived with their dishes too! and this is only the entree table as well! See those monster turkeys in the background!?

MMMM!!! :)

Once we all had a bit of time to settle we went back into the house and saw all the leftovers!! after 30+ people ate you'd think we could have dented it more than that! Leftovers are the best part though aren't they!? So Jenna and I walked back to our house to get some Tupperware. Just as we exit the gate of the party, we see the family that often comes by and asks us if we have any food! What a fantastic coincidence!!!!!!!! What they really wanted tonight was to sell me oranges or something but I told them we had just had a party here and had tons of leftover food so if they could just wait... I think we all felt very good that that happened, Jenn had just been feeling bad for having organized such a gluttonous feast ...'and then totally redeemed herself!' (another Dumb and Dumber quote, you'd think I love that movie....) No, but it was definitely a situation to make you feel better about yourself to see that family looking soo happy and grateful. 'Thanksgiving' at its finest. We sent them away with a both plate and a box full of food!
I then proceeded to pick away at the turkey for a good 10 mins to fill up our own leftover container, much of the time spent laughing at jenna getting more and more grossed out by it. and now the tryptophan is really kicking in! :) Too bad we have school tomorrow! geez. oh well, I guess I will survive. It was a great holiday!

Zacatecas, Zacatecas

Three day birthday weekend!!!!!!!! Love it! Jenna, Erin, Emily, and I (the same group that went to Mazatlan) decided to take a minivaca to Zacatecas.

I started the celebration of my birth by getting up around 430am in order to get my stuff together and ready to catch our earlybird bus. I believe I slept off most of the morning hours, but we arrived in good time around noon in Zacatecas. This city seems very European which was a welcome change from our drab Torreon. It was also quite chilly which made it seem more like the middle of November. One night we made a pit stop at the local Starbucks and being decked out in our 'its cold outside' attire and having Starbucks already changed over to the Christmas theme: cups, decorations, flavors, music, and all.... it felt like it might be December back home! For an hour or so we were surrounded by the Christmas spirit :)

My favorite part about my birthday was that the girls and I stopped to eat 3 times in the first 4 hours! And they weren't just snacks :)

Apparently, it is quite a touristy city... I guess I didn't know much going in. Shopping was abundant, we all got a few gifts for family and friends back home... and a few for ourselves too!

It was the super chill vacation I think we all needed. Saturday we just wandered around the city and did whatever, ie eat :) But we also took the trolley ride through the city which was a fun way to see a bit more.

Isn't it a pretty city

We went to a karaoke bar and
didn't even drink any of this
but asked if we could get a pic with it anyway....
get it.... J & B....

These pics are also evidence of my 4-5" haircut...doesn't even look different does it?!

Sunday we slept in late, another favorite! Then, we visited the mine. Complete with hairnets and hardhats we toured the depths... There is a club at the bottom of this mine! The other group of American teachers that went actually went to the club and said it was awesome, who ever thought of that was genius. Outside the mines we enjoyed the silver shops... we all got a new necklace with either a Virgen de Guadalupe or an Aztec Calendar pendant, they are pretty sweet :)

that's hot :)

Monday we had until 130 to take in the last delicious dregs of vacation. We got on the teleferico(cable car) and rode up to the Bufa. It was a fun little Willy Wonka glass elevator ride :)

The trip was much needed and I think we were all sad to have to come back to work, but who isn't sad when vacation is over I guess....

A weekend packed with fun

This weekend was quite exciting... we had a Halloween party, a house picnic, AND a Juanes concert to look forward to!

On thursday at school the Jardin de Ninos teachers/assistants dressed up
"Mira! una Abejita!" (look a bee!)

On Friday we then celebrated Day of the Dead, this is the altar the kinder kids made.

Lately, it has been getting more and more difficult to get up and get ready (and peppy!) for school, I'm still not using the snooze button, but I will lay in bed thinking about what I have to do as if thinking about it ahead of time will make it go faster in the end. This of course doesn't work, but sometimes it makes me feel better. You can tell the whole house is doing something similar as all of our arrive-downstairs-times are getting later as days go by. So, I definitely am working for the weekends right now: get through the week and then forget that I teach for a few short hours until I have to get ready again for school...

The schedule for this weekend was a great way to forget about school for awhile! Friday night we had quite a large gathering for a costume party at the neighboring house. Teachers getting together for costume parties is such a fun thing, just imagine the crafty-ness that comes when we all combine minds! 7 of us all decided to have a theme: the personification of different mexican beers, namely- Corona, Indio, Estrella, Leon, Modelo, Victoria, and Sol. So respectively we had Jenna as a queen (crown), Natalie was an indian, Tye was a star, Jenn a lion, me a model, Victor as Victoria, and Megan as a sun. I thought it was clever, and a lot of fun! The party was attended not only by the american teachers from Colegio Ingles, and some of the spanish ones as well, but also a few americans from a different school along with many of the spanish friends various people have made while here. The best part of any Halloween party is the costumes! Some were so clever or funny... one of my favorites was Wolverine, from XMen, it was one of the american teachers from another school but all he had to do for this costume was shave his chin and add some gel to his hair! thats what made it good. The Incredibles also showed up, along with some pretty good pirates, even Obama was there. It was a pretty good time!

Saturday I invited myself to a picnic put on by a few of the students families from CI. Many of the teachers were formally invited, I wasn't, but I figured no one will notice right :) There were quite a few people there and it was really fun to see this type of interaction for a change. These families apparently get together a lot as their kids are all involved in the same things. We met at this house with a huge backyard, so much grass! They had a big Rainbow jungle gym, a mini soccer field, a trampoline, a pingpong table, and more free space to run in! The food was quite good, they cooked the meat on a disco which is traditionally the tilling disc used in agriculture... why not just rip it off the tractor and cook on it ay?! It was fun to see the families playing their backyard games as well. They did everything from soccer (of course!), to sack races, to musical chairs, to kickball, to walking with not an egg on a spoon, but a lime, because that's the mexican way! Not only did the kids participate, but many of the adults and the teachers did as well. It was good wholesome fun :)

On Sunday we went to the Juanes concert!!!!!!!! it was a lot of fun. It started an hour late, but somehow I dont think we were too impatient. After a very short hour of performing he left stage but after much chanting of "otra, otra" he came back on and sang about 6 more! It was fun, he's good-looking, sings well, and we knew most all of the songs so we could sing along! I bought a cheap T-shirt outside as well, yeah souveniors :)

lucha and lunch

Thursday night is Lucha Libre night in Gomez! A fellow American teacher, Victor drove there with me and 4 others so we could enjoy the entertainment. If you are unfamiliar with this term, it is the mexican wrestling they do with masks, more recent pop culture reference would be Nacho Libre. As I have no former experience with it, I didn't go into with many expectations, it took a little bit for me to get into it, but that stuff is funny! As was pointed out by a few fans, the best part is really the crowd, the hecklers if you will. Fortunately for us, we were seated just in front of a very vocal, witty fan. The fighting itself is ridiculous; contact is hardly ever really made and the choreography can be so blatantly obvious. But couple this, first with a good sense of humor and an open mind, but second with the crowd and the announcer as well cracking jokes nonstop... you have yourself a good time. The show stopper of the night was probably Sexy Piscis, this was an unusual drag wrestler who won the crowd over with the large array of jokes to be had at her expense. The only complaint I can come away with is the seating: why are the benches tilted back at an angle complete with metal back? The bruised spine was worth the show though!

Sweet action move! looks more like the worm, no?!

and here is Victor, Emily, and I looking almost as ridiculous as the fighting!

On the left there is Sexi Piscis...

we were IN the action!
you can see Natalie in the bottom left corner,
and she was sitting next to me.
So you know we were close.
Bringing the fight into the crowd?! love it! :)

Friday after school I went home with one of my kids. His mom speaks English very well, and the older children are also going to a bilingual school so there was a lot of English being spoken. Good and bad, I should be practicing my spanish much more than I do now.... Anyway, it was interesting to see their house and hang out for a few hours. I am now on the cool list I think too because A) you should have seen his face when he heard I went to Lucha and B) I played Wii with him! His mom joined in on the action too which was fun, we had ourselves a Mario Party. Teachers can be cool people too you know :)