Swine flu

Things really started looking up by the time the swine flu hit. By the third week of school, my mood was at an all time low. I really didn't come here to do everything wrong. I actually wanted to do a good job.

Alec and I decided early in the week that we would spend the weekend in Ensenada. After nearly two weeks of heat wave and living room sleeping, I insisted on a hotel with cable and air conditioning. After checking out the town, Alec and I ended up catching Rocky on cable, late, the night of the 5th, while the rest of Mexico watched Mexico vs. Bolivia. Honestly, Mexico could be playing me and Alec in soccer and it would still be considered the game of the century. Watching Rocky I led to a You Tube marathon back in TJ that included back to back, ten minute sessions of Rocky II and even III, the one with Mr. T. I could not convince Alec to watch the one with the big Soviet guy. I decided the week of 7th that I was not going to lose my mind here.

The heat finally broke. The fourth week of school, I started walking to school even though it can be hot in the afternoons. I am kind of a spectacle around here, people would stare at me in the street while I walked to school and to make matters worse, I was usually covered in sweat. Not usually, always, and with a bright red face and wet hair. My students also walk to school and though they teased me about the sweat, I felt like walking with them promoted camaraderie a lot more than riding past them in a taxi. They also were starting to realize that I did not live in San Diego and cross the border every day in my sports car to visit them. The saving grace was definitely my ipod. The afternoon walks can be easily summed up by listening to Galaxie 500's "Strange". Actually, that can sum up my Atlanta state of mind as well, if that is in any way noteworthy. The sweat and spectacle aspects of the walks were embarrassing, but the ipod portion made me look forward to them.

I still felt a bit uneven that week, but felt like I was wrapping my head around how I was going to survive in that school. I love the snack shop at school. A family prepares all of the food, and the first time I approached and asked for a Coke the youngish guy that works there stated: "You can speak to me in English. I have to ask, what are you doing here?" I explained my prestigious exchange and he responded "Why don't you just work on the other side?" Money, money was what he didn't understand and when he figured out that I get paid from the other side, things were a little clearer. He asked me where I live, "Villa Fontana" I answered proudly. "You live in the ghetto" he answered. "We live in Playas, it's middle class, you really don't even have a car?". I love this guy. The part I really don't want to say is that he was really the one that should be teaching English, not working at the snack shop.

Rumors started swirling midweek that one of the morning students had a confirmed case of swine flu and that the "pinche dirección" was hiding it, to avoid interruption of upcoming exams. The class suspensions were weird, school was not suspended when the hills around the school were on fire. Classes were suspended the evening the students had a dance, so that they would have time to get ready. They had also sporadically called off classes for impromptu faculty meetings, but the meetings never seemed to deal with anything really pressing. "Who watches the students?" I would ask, the reply was that they would either wait for us or go home. Late Thursday, we had a ten minute meeting that turned into an hour long affair - classes would be cancelled Friday because of the sick morning student. It was difficult to control the smile that was trying to spread itself across my face.

In the meeting, we were told that we would teach the rest of the day, though apparently the school was infected with a nasty enough virus to cancel classes the following day. The students were to clean their classrooms during the last class of the day. I went to my second to last class of the day and asked them if they had another class after mine. "Yeah" they said "Ciencias". Fine, I thought, move forward. They'll clean during ciencias. The kids were bad that day and I lost my shit with them and was a little bad myself. When I left their room to go to my last class, I found the door locked and the lights out. I ran into one of my sweet students from that group and asked him what was going on. "We already cleaned, everybody did, it's time to go home" he told me. Baffled, yes, baffled I was. Does clean during the last class of the day mean clean during the second to the last class of the day in Mexico? I watched my rather wicked group cleaning their classroom, the only group of students still dragging mops around. The sunset was kind of sinister that day; bright, red light burned through all of the windows in the school while the only group of students left at the school cleaned their room.

Alec and I went to San Diego the weekend of the 12th. I had received a notice that I needed to send my passport to Mexico City in order to process my work visa and decided to make one more border break before sending it away. That Friday swine flu break really did me right. On Monday, classes were back in session. The principal had told us that all faculty and students would have to wear face masks. As part of my new attitude, I decided not to run all around town looking for one in order to be prepared. Surely the kids wouldn't remember and they would have a big box of them at the entrance to the school. As I walked to school, a couple of my students and their mom offered me a ride. "Profe, where is your face mask?" they asked me. "They aren't going to provide them at school?" I asked. They shook their heads quietly, with that pitying, "this poor woman doesn't understand anything" look. One of the stores at the entrance of the school got smart and was selling them for 5 pesos each, and I managed to get one. I felt awkward wearing it, but the students seemed very chilled out about the whole thing. They actually looked kind of cute, sitting there doing their work, seemingly unaware of those things on their faces. By the end of the day, their masks had smiley faces, gnarly teeth and pot leaves on them. As I entered one group's room, they all stood outside, snickering. They had scratched the "dis" off of the "Disinfected area" sign, so that it now read "infected area". Well, we certainly couldn't go in there.