School of Rock

Some people seem to make it past our secure gate with ease. Jehovah's Witnesses descended on us one Sunday morning, while I was sitting on our porch in my pajamas with day old makeup smeared all over my face. Alec went to the gate to speak to them. He tried to tell them he didn't speak Spanish and a man with perfect English popped out of nowhere. I'm surprised that he didn't try "I'm Jewish" on them, but maybe he has been down that road before and knows that it only leads to more attempts to convince.

Various pets also enter our compound to use our "flower bed" as a litter box. A big Persian cat meows plaintively if I try to dissuade him. I actually don't mind the two chihuahuas that trot the street together, peeing on bushes and crapping in shaded areas. Animal friendships are cute and these two are inseparable. And here I was thinking that chihuahuas were some Taco Bell Mexican stereotype.

I dealt with the cop that came to the gate. He asked me for money for vigilancia, something I sort of thought was included in their pay. I quickly gave him 30 pesos, wanting to get him out of my door way before shots starting flying. During the first weeks of school, our principal told us about a new program that our school was participating in. Undercover cops would patrol the area before and after school, looking for kids selling drugs. The principal stated that they also had students participating undercover in the program that were patrolling our classrooms. For some reason this did not strike me as suspect, Alec found it downright dangerous. "People shoot cops here" he stated "are they trying to get those kids killed?"

The principal makes me a little nervous. He is overtly friendly to me but the faculty is squarely divided in two camps: for and against. I feel a little torn, I appreciate his support but do not trust him. During an impromptu faculty meeting on a FRIDAY night, one profe expressed discontent with how we are evaluated as teachers. "Why do you keep working here?" the principal abruptly asked, "Your union rep is here, we can settle this now". With his second in command at his side, the principal dug in. "You're absent a lot and you turned in half of your electronic folder empty" he continued, teeth literally and figuratively bared. Extremely awkward, to say the least. And in front of the entire faculty. I never want to be on the wrong end of one of those exchanges.

Whenever I take a taxi here the driver tells me that he lived in the U.S., often for years in a mid western state. I always imagine that they were deported, most people don't get a resident alien card only to give it up and return to TJ. There are people from all over Mexico here, the southern states, Sinaloa, Nayarit. Lourdes says that they come with the idea to cross, things don't work out and they stay. "Tijuana isn't doing that great, but it has more jobs than a lot of parts of Mexico" she told me. She is from Nayarit. For some reason the taxi drivers always make me think of the men on the trails in Arizona. Seeing men cry was very difficult for me. I remember one late, hot afternoon when I found two men sitting on the side of a road in Arivaca. They were older, in their fifties and not moving. I jumped out of the truck to speak to them and they didn't even stir, just watched me with tired, heat exhausted eyes. This is not normal. They started pulling out identification. I told them repeatedly that I was not migra and they continued anyway. One of them pulled out his federal identification badge, he used to be a cop. And then, they pulled out pictures of the children they hoped to reunite with in the U.S. and started to cry. I really couldn't take it.

The kids seemed to like the "Seven Nation Army" lesson. One kid, Francisco, proudly showed me the CD he burned of the song, he had hunted it down on the Internet. I am horrified about teaching modals. Coulda shoulda woulda? How are you supposed to teach that? Maybe with "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"? The students did not agree that the Clash is the only band that matters, but I sure did like tagging all the whiteboards with this phrase. Next, we will move to the glam rock portion of our lesson with "Queen Bitch". You know what they say, those that can't teach teach electives.