What day is it?

Alec and I began the treck back to Tijuana on August 7th, but didn't actually do our trolley, on foot border crossing, bus trip and walk back to beautiful east TJ until the 8th. We spent the weekend furnishing our apartment with some of the crappiest appliances the segundas on Cucapah had to offer - my cheapness bought me a stove that requires constant relighting, a washer that merely dumps soapy water on the clothes and then sort of drains all over the ground and a refrigerator that works pretty well, all for around $200. We also had a bed, but not one other shred of furniture. Sitting on the tile floor was not helping my back, nor was walking up and down Cucapah. On the 10th I began preplanning at the school. It was a bit maddening - everyone was really busy and I had a million unanswered questions. The way they grade the students here is confusing, not the 1-10 scale, but that they don't appear to give a lot of grades during the units, instead waiting until the end for students to hand in a big notebook of work encased in plastic protectors. Then came our schedules. We all sat in a room and awaited the principal to call our names. When called, we had to sit at a table with the principal, academic coordinator and a union representative, whom I'm sure was thinking "What exactly am I supposed to do for you, pinche gringa?". Upon presentation of our schedules, we had to sign about a million copies of it. I would start work at 1:30 in the afternoon and teach as late as 8pm. Fine by me, the worst part about working is getting up early. I was surprised to see that I had 29 hours on my schedule, though Fulbright said we should only have 25 - but was intimidated by the process and began signing away. Later, I felt some resentment from fellow teachers because I had so many hours that I truly did not want. Here, the teachers are paid by the hour, somewhere around $5 to $7. The system is quite different here, students remain with the same group of classmates all day in the same classroom and the teachers run around the school to their various bases. It is their ecosystem, they are even responsible for cleaning the room in the evenings, including mopping the floor. I had nine different groups on my schedule - something no one envied - approximately 350 students. I also learned that my students were not receiving textbooks. The schools here do not have copy machines for general use - the expectation is that if the teacher wants to use photocopies - something that seems necessary considering the students don't have books - we give a master copy to the "jefe del grupo", the elected student leader of each group and the jefe collects money from all of the students to pay for the copies of their school work. Yeah, the idea of charging Mexican students from low income families for a copy of their homework kind of bothered me, worse, trying to organize nine jefes to have my copies on the right day seemed too complicated. My brand new schedule looked insane - I would see each group for three, fifty minute periods per week. I would see some groups on Monday, Wednesday, Friday others on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and worse, some groups for two periods within the same day, with a third class on some other random day. Homework anyone? How do you assign it when the group has two classes back to back, or one class at 2:00 and another at 5:00, with a full schedule of classes in between? Some days I would have five classes, others, like the dreaded Thursdays, seven in one day. I spent the week and weekend agonizing over my monster schedule and working on a horrible electronic folder that consisted of copying and pasting various parts of curriculum, school calenders and all of the tests I would give during the semester. I also worried that I might be getting jacked by my new school . When I inquired about the hours I was warned that my exchange partner would receive less money if I didn't work all of them and probably made my first mistake as an American teacher in Mexico simply by asking the question. I felt kind of indentured. I color coded my schedule in an attempt to organize when and where I would see these groups and repeatedly asked myself "What day is it?" "Which month is it?" "Where am I and how long have I been here?"