Bueno Barato y Bonito

Coming back to work was hard. I'm not sure why.

"There is something in my beer" Alec stated. "Something I did not put there". I ran over, expecting to see a severed finger or bug in his Bohemia bottle. A perfectly petrified lime floated in the half empty beer. An old one. One that he did not put there. Before you all stop drinking Bohemia, I would personally like to vouch for it's quality. I have drunk about ten million since I arrived in Tijuana and this was the first that did not meet quality control standards.

A fart rattled through the other side of the teacher's workroom. "¡No seas puerco!" one of the teachers howled. "You're not showing the value of the month: Loyalty" Profe Julio remarked, wandering through the workroom with his shoes in his hand. "It's going to stink in here!" they yelled at him. "So how was your vacation, Hilary? Listen to me, I sound like those American movies when the Latino speaks English" Profe Julio continued, plunking himself in the chair beside me. "Good, good" I responded as Julio wrapped his scarf around his neck and over his nose.

"Hilary! Please tell your American friends to visit Baja California. They see Tijuana and turn around and go right back home. Tell them it's beautiful in the south!" Profe Berenice instructed me. "I think they already know, Profe," I responded, "there were a lot of them down there". "You should tell the exchange people to send you to Cancún next year!" she responded. Sometimes I have no idea what is going through this woman's head.

The teachers debated the ethics of something they were planning. "¡Lo no está prohibido está permitido!" they chanted in unison. I love this about Mexico. You do something you probably shouldn't do in the U.S., whether it's posted in writing or not, cops swarm you and throw you on the ground. "I was going to put the cigarette out, I swear!" you find yourself gasping, swatting the foot on your throat away. Here, things are kind of flexible. Go the wrong way and end up on the toll road to Ensenada? "I really don't want to do this," I told the toll booth agent "can I turn around?". "Sure, sure" he responded, moving cones and instructing the cars behind me to back up. I'm quite fond of the three Bs as well. "Bueno, barato y bonito, that's what we look for in a car" the teachers instructed me and were surprised when I told them that I would settle for bueno y barato.

"Where were you during the earthquake?" I asked one of my classes. This has become a popular question at school. One of Alec's students apparently was in the shower, felt the house rattling, and continued showering. All of my students pointed at one "kid", a student who says he is eighteen but everyone swears is thirty. "He was in el baño!" they shrieked. "Showering, right? Please say you were showering" I responded. "I was having intimacies, teachercita" one of my truly buck-wild bobcats said slyly. I am not sure what I did to give my students the green light to say things to me that they would never say to another teacher. I guess I haven't done a lot to discourage it either. I am curious about them, their real personalities, their slang. "Yeah, in your dreams," I responded "alone".

"Teacher!" one of my students called. "What's up?" I asked her, trudging through my first day back at work. "We made this for you" she stated, handing me a long necklace on a woven string. A plastic leaf hung in the middle, with my students names and group number on the back. It feels like a lucky, magic charm, a guard against anything bad that could come to me. I have been wearing it nonstop and have considered sleeping in it. I swear, these kids just break my heart sometimes.