...and a happy new year

“Are you willing to help us out in the case of an emergency?” the chipper flight attendant asked me on my San Diego - Atlanta flight. “Nah. I think I’ll leave it to them” I responded, motioning to the people who were actually sitting in the emergency row. “I’m just kidding” I immediately cowered, afraid she would put me in an even shittier seat. “That’s okay! At least I know that you’re a leader!” she beamed back at me. I am really not sure why half the world talks to me like I am fourteen.

I actually got across the border without a lot of anxiety. I left about an hour later than I anticipated but still had plenty of time. After a taxi to the border, the actual customs and border crossing and trolley ride to San Diego, the most difficult part was getting a taxi in San Diego to the airport. It was a bit of a cluster fuck in the security line at the airport and a few of us were laughing about how we had no idea where to go. “You wouldn’t be in such a good mood if you had crossed the border from Mexico!” a pudgy anglo man to my right boomed. “Oh, I already did that this morning” I laughed, until I realized he was serious. “I had to wait two hours in my car!” he blustered. Might I recommend the trolley?

I remember while returning from Asia I inadvertently found myself spinning around and staring, in U.S. airports, when I heard English. It is not the same this time. When I boarded the plane I was a little disappointed that my exit row seat wasn’t actually an exit row seat. A couple of guys came on after me and indicated that they were in my row and didn’t look so thrilled at the pseudo exit row seats either. I have lived in the South for over twenty-five years but do not consider myself a Southerner. These guys were Southern. One sported a kind of genteel, Billy Bob Thorton accent, the other, a more Deliverance variety and both wore camouflage. For some reason, I identified with these men. “This sucks!” I exclaimed as soon as they sat down “I thought these were exit row seats!” . “So did I” responded one of them, in such a serious fashion that I regretted saying anything. I really didn’t want to help them fire bomb the plane. After the plane took off, BBT pointed “Tia Juana” out to his friend. I nearly knocked them over to see it through the window. BBT casually opened a book titled “Finding Inner Peace” and ordered a "spritzer" from the flight attendant.

I hit the ground running. I found the malls a bit overwhelming, but not as overwhelming as I did when I returned from nearly a year in Asia at Christmas time. The highlight was watching an Indian family run up the down escalator. Normally I find things like that annoying, just ride the stupid thing down and turn around and go back up. It made me laugh this time.

Staying at my mom’s house is like staying in a hotel. Everything is clean and warm, the bed is super comfortable and the cable TV is amazing. It feels like such a comfortable break. I am curious what the next six months will bring. And I am eternally grateful to have this exchange. All I can say is prospero año y felicidad - for me and everyone I know and come across in the second half of the adventure.

Feliz Navidad

My neighborhood makes a tremendous transformation every evening. By day, it is dusty and ramshackle. But by night, the light disappears and Tijuana is blanketed in twinkling lights for as far as the eye can see. I know that Christmas is relatively popular world wide. But for some reason, I didn't expect to see cars whizzing by with Christmas trees tied to the top and little pick ups sporting reindeer horns here in TJ. In the evenings, the run down shops in my neighborhood plug in the Christmas lights that adorn their windows and the town suddenly looks quaint. I feel as though I am in a small, homey village that is not American, not Mexican or even European, but from some other place and time.

I am excited to go home for Christmas. Alec was a little more hesitant. When we did our big Asia trip we both had dreams that for some reason, we had to go home in the middle of the trip and were unable to return. Middlebury discouraged people from going home, even for holidays, while we were studying in Spain. Their prime concern was language development; two weeks spent speaking English only would set people back. A lot of students were just hitting their stride around Christmas and would go home, only to return to Madrid and become horribly homesick again. I feel differently than I did in Asia. I knew I would come back to Spain when I went home during grad school, I had to finish my program. All my stuff was there. I had an apartment. And I know I will return to TJ. I have a job here. People are expecting me.

I went over Profe Hector's house to eat pozole last weekend. I think he is one of my few, real friends here. While others view my cultural blunders as a sign of my innate stupidity, Profe Hector finds them hilarious. We talk about the students that irritate us without fear of being accused of not being a real, child loving teacher. He lets me borrow his Almodovar movies and eat his lunch when I don't have any. When Hector enters the school with a snarl on his face, wearing his crazy, gold rimmed seventies sunglasses, I know he, like many teachers at my school, was simply napping in his car in the parking lot, having arrived a little early from his morning teaching job. He and his roommate, Karen, are curious about Casa del Migrante. "My house was Casa del Migrante when I lived by the border!" Hector exclaimed, explaining that various friends and family members used his place as a way station before crossing the border illegally. "Look, Oil of Olay is on sale!" he pointed out shortly afterwards, as we perused the sale magazines the boy that wore 'pants' now puts in every one's door, after deciding that school wasn't for him.

The months have gone by quickly, though it seems like a long time ago when Alec and I arrived at the Hotel Riviera and wandered around TJ trying to figure it out. I remember my crazy flight from Atlanta to Mexico City and then, to Tijuana. I sat there, watching the people cram their luggage into the overhead bins and search for their seats. I was a little hungover and concerned about my haphazard packing job. Someone caught my eye. A Mexican man, with a tight, cowboy style shirt on, unbuttoned to his waist, showing his chiseled chest and multitude of gold crucifixes. He wore a huge cowboy hat, tight jeans with a belt sporting a tremendous, jewel crusted buckle and obligatory cowboy boots. As he sat down, I noticed "Ranch" carefully embroidered on the back of his shirt. "I wish I was him..." sighed the pasty, overweight businessman to my left. So did I. The rock star ordered an orange juice and promptly went to sleep, his cowboy hat carefully balanced on the toe of his boot.

And America's next top model is...

"Congratulations" I thought, while calculating one of my student's class average, "You are still in the running to become America's Next Top Model". Grading redos is a bitch. For lack of formal guidance as to how to conduct my school's elaborate retesting policy, I decided to come up with my own system. I have been re-teaching and re-testing for two weeks. In an attempt to comply with a system I don't wholly agree with, I have ended up giving second chances to students that most teachers would have refused and given myself un montón de trabajo. "I'm sorry, Jorge. Please pack your bags and leave" I thought, upon grading another failed test. Tapping my foot to the tune of the gas trucks, I continued tearing through the pile of tests.

"You have to sign this" instructed one of the secretaries that presented herself at the door during one of my classes. Oh God, what did I do now? Oh wait, okay, it wasn't bad, I was being sent to visit some university with the other English teachers. I had only taught two classes the day before because most of my students were on a field trip and would only be teaching a couple of classes the following day, because of my pending university visit.

We piled into Profe Enrique's car and immediately began gossiping about all of the things and people we can't talk about in the presence of others as we wheeled out of the school and onto the highway that skirts the desert. The grocery store song hummed in my head. We arrived at an attractive school after a couple of wrong turns, waited for Enrique to put the club on his steering wheel and promptly got lost within the university. "¡Miranos! ¡MIR A NOS! Profe María wailed with embarrassment. Finally, we arrived at the computer lab we that were supposed to visit.

Other teachers and administrators from various campuses of our school were there. I was surprised when a British man introduced himself as the head of languages at the university. He described his lengthy experience in Spain and ended his sentence with a little chuckle by saying "and then I ended up in...Tijuana". It was unfortunate. I don't think he meant it the way it came out but still noted an uncomfortable silence in the room after his faux pas. His description of their program was impressive and I found myself nodding and agreeing with this man while my counter parts watched with skepticism and confusion. It made me feel like an asshole. What's wrong with me? Pass months in a Mexican program and jump ship the minute I am in a room with a white man that speaks English? His program sounded very, well, American, but in the best sense of American academia. It reminded me of some of the universities I have attended, but not of the schools I have taught in. A student doesn't show a mastery of the basic concepts of a class, they fail. Yeah, the kid might be nice and have extenuating circumstances, but did he master the concepts or not?

His presentation was met with some opposition and out right lies, thankfully not by the teachers from my campus. An administrator from another campus expressed interest in the university's textbook, stating that we were considering "adopting" a new one. Profe Maria and I nearly laughed out loud. A new textbook?! How about A textbook, as our students don't have one? When the same administrator questioned our presenter about the stringency of his program, he answered her with a question. "Do you fail students?". "Oh yes, of course!" she answered, "And if they want to continue studying, the have to wait a year until the course is offered again!". Profe Maria visibly shook her head. Sorry, not our reality.

At the end of his presentation, the boss man approached me and we chatted a little about what I was doing there. He casually offered me a job. Flattered, flattered, flattered I was. A university. A university with a strong program. I found myself thinking about it. A few things slowed me down. Do I really want to keep living in Tijuana? Do I want to move to an even worse neighborhood even closer to the actual desert? Exactly how much money could I expect to send Sallie Mae on a teacher's salary in Mexico? And the biggest thing...I don't want new students. I want my students. How could I stay in Tijuana and not teach my ass wild kids?

We left feeling a little deflated, the jovial mood replaced with a little reality. We felt ghetto. His reality was not our reality. Our school is not pretty. We don't have a book. We are forced to have low academic standards and at times, no standards at all. "It's not our fault" the teachers repeated over and over again.

We returned to the school to teach our remaining classes. One group pissed me off so badly that I walked out on them. So much for professional.

Just another day

The rottweilers stared at me, their smiling faces displaying all of their teeth and their ample jaws. The street was completely empty. Instead of facing the escaped dogs, I decided it was a good time to clean the patio. My neighbor pulled up in her minivan. "I'm afraid of the dogs!!" she screamed from her window, as she honked and gunned her engine in an attempt to scare the dogs so that she and her kids could get out of the car and into the house. She ended up opening her garage door and cramming her van into her driveway between clothes lines, plants and kids' toys, so that she could close the garage door and enter the house safely. A tremendous pile of dog shit sat in front of my gate, with a tire track through it. Eventually the dogs returned to their yard through the hole they escaped from and people quickly filled the street again.

I decided to visit a doctor for two reasons. The pinching pain in my chest whenever I laid down and because I had to after calling in sick on Friday. After the dogs went back in their cage, I braved the street to walk to the little clinic next to the pharmacy. I thought these small, 30 peso clinics existed only to satisfy prescription requirements of Americans buying drugs in Mexico, but Profe Hector insisted that they are convenient and thorough. As I walked, I noticed something in the street and dodged it. Two chickens, smashed completely flat. I arrived at the clinic, was immediately seen by a man in a white coat who weighed me, listened to my lungs and took my temperature. I left about fifteen minutes later with a bag of medicine, all for around eighteen dollars.

I really wanted to be well by Sunday. The couple that normally oversees the majority of the cooking on Sundays at Casa del Migrante were going to be out of town. A full time volunteer had asked me to come early so that we could prepare the dinner ourselves. I didn't want to leave her alone to cook for sixty, eighty, one hundred people. I was imagining it as a replacement for my Thanksgiving that wasn't.

Casa had been a little lower key the previous week. I spent most of my time with the older couple that carefully prepares the Sunday dinner. When I am in the kitchen with them I have these Like Water for Chocolate fantasies that I am going to learn to cook Mexican food from an older, knowledgeable Mexican grandmother who will eventually think of me as one of her own. Though it's not really turning out that way, I do like assisting them and listening while la Doña sings all of the songs on San Diego 102.9. They have no idea how many years I spent working in kitchens and seem pleased that I don't mind getting dirty and seem to know what needs to get done. They think it just comes naturally.

Sometimes I think of returning to kitchen work. The only problem is that I like health insurance and labor laws. After dinner, I sat in a little room with my imaginary grandparents and passed razors, soap and towels through a little window to the migrants that passed by. We put tooth paste directly on passing toothbrushes and handed the stick of deodorant through the window to be used by various people. La Doña kept on singing with the little boom box they bring where ever they go.

I ended the evening by making eighty sandwiches and helping a long term volunteer with attendance. Previously, I was intimidated by taking attendance. Something about entering room after room, some inhabited by up to twelve men made me nervous. It was okay. The migrants were ready for us when we came, many already had their ID cards in a little stack, in alphabetical order. One room had the atmosphere of a boys sleep over party. The men giggled and joked in their bunk beds and called out various English words they knew before calling "Good night! Good night!" multiple times as I left.

The weather was not helping me get better. We experienced our first cold, rainy day in Tijuana last Saturday. I spent the day laying on the couch, watching an entire season of America's Next Top Model on my computer. I found myself wondering how, even when I was eighteen, I couldn't maintain a 90 lb. body weight. I hadn't bathed since Thursday and had no intention of taking a cold shower. Alec and I ate some cold leftovers as we still could not cook and I am still suffering from some sort of food poisoning as a result. Sunday finally arrived and I took my filthy, sick self to Casa.

Like most carefully laid plans, my Thanksgiving that wasn't didn't really turn out like I had imagined. But, the sun did come out.

Thanks

"Teacher, have you been assaulted?" Jorge asked me quietly, as we walked down one of the dark streets, away from the school. I really hate their word choice. "Not....yet..." I answered slowly, trying to find a way to answer that wouldn't constitute jinxing myself. Why can't they just say 'robbed'? Is it because most of the muggings my students describe generally end with being punched in the face, whether you have money or not?

"Have you?" I asked Jorge and Jesus, a sweet, quiet boy who has taken to walking home with me until our paths diverge about ten minutes from my house. "Yeah. They pulled knives on me. I didn't have any money, but they still punched me in the face" Jorge answered. Jesus remained quiet. I like walking home with my students. I admit I feel a little more secure. I detect an air of chivalry from them, as they walk the lone, foreign female home. And as an adult, as their teacher, I feel protective of them. As I watched Jorge and Jesus walk down the dark road where our paths diverge, carefully carrying their assigned dolls, I wondered who really protects who.

Thanksgiving crept up pretty quickly. The Wednesday before, I woke up with a full blown cold. It was chilly inside the house, but outside, the hot Santa Anas were blowing trash everywhere. It didn't feel like November. I had to go to work. I was being evaluated that day. I got ready and stepped out into the hot street and over a pair of clean, children's underwear that had obviously been ripped from some one's clothes' line by the wind.

I hate being observed. I knew when my observer was coming, during a class with a group that has become increasingly antagonistic towards me. Chronically absent, unwilling to work in class, yet angry when they don't receive passing grades. Excellent, watch me teach! I was shocked when we had one of the best classes we had had in weeks. Those kids put on a real dog and pony show for my observer, hands raised, dozens of volunteers vying to answer questions, students successfully solving problems I never thought they would be able to complete. I have to admit, I really owe them one.

"Teacher, have you been assaulted?" I was asked for the third time within one day. They know I walk to and from school and their questions were making me increasingly nervous. "You shouldn't use your MP3 player on the way to school, there's a lot of rateros out there" one advised me. I have stopped. No more ipod walks, one of the highlights of my day.

Alec woke me up Thanksgiving morning. "The water heater caught on fire. I went downstairs and I all could see was orange. I went out back and there were flames, I put it out". My cold was worse than ever. I struggled through my long, seven class day. Students kept asking me if I was angry. "No," I stressed "just sick". A teacher visited me in the middle of one of my classes, to ask if a couple of students could turn in a small assignment next week that was due a week ago, because he had taken them to a one day, science fair. "No" I answered, "that work should have been done a long time ago". I don't have a lot of patience with this guy. In order to impress the students with his knowledge of English, he gave a group of my students the answers for their last test. "But, but, but..." he argued. Finally, I said yes. "When should they hand it in?" he asked me happily. "How about January?" I answered, "Or June if they they don't have enough time".

I finally got to go home. One of my many, chivalrous students named 'Jesus' saw me struggling with the gate outside of our privada. "I'll wait with you" he said "so that you don't get assaulted". Alec came to the gate to let me in. The fire had left us not only without hot water, but we couldn't use our stove. We ended Thanksgiving with a delivery pizza.

I guess I like pizza no matter what day of the year it is.

Mi barrio

All of the little things don't catch my attention as much anymore. I hate this part of the acclimation process. My favorite part about traveling is that moment when your plane hovers over the city you are about to visit and you have no idea what is going to happen next. Upon arrival, you stare at everything, "What's that!? Look at this! Let's eat it!"

They use some crazy words here in TJ. Every Spanish speaking country has a few twists when it comes to language. Anticipating Mexico, I switched coche for carro, zumo became jugo and pisos for apartamentos. Working with adolescents is tricky. If you use a word that sounds funny to them, they do not assume that your crazy word might be used in another Spanish speaking country. They just think you're wrong. As do some adults. I was corrected for calling a pool a piscina and instructed to use alberca. Apartamento was overruled for departamento. And here in TJ, chaquetas are chamarras and muchachos, chamacos. Oddly, sweat pants are called 'pants', but with a little latino pronunciation. Profe Hector and I snickered a lot about a kid we both teach that gets on our nerves. We always referred to him as the kid that wore 'pants' everyday instead of khakis. One hot afternoon while I scaled the hill that leads to the school, the sweat pant wearing child was mysteriously at my side. "You're not wearing 'pants'!" I howled, upon viewing the jeans he was wearing. "I always wear 'pants' because se me rompieron the khakis" he explained. He used one of the beauties of the Spanish language; the khakis "broke themselves on me", instead of saying that he himself had apparently ripped the pants. That day I learned that if you rip your pants in Mexico, you're relegated to wearing the same pair of sweatpants to school everyday for a solid semester. I don't joke about the 'pants' anymore.

I have achieved a certain level of notoriety around the neighborhood and the school. While I walk to work, the various taxi drivers who have given me rides beep their horns and call "Hey, teacher!" in English. One day, I had to go to school early, before my afternoon students arrive. "Are you going to teach in the morning too?" one of the morning students asked me. As I passed through the sobreruedas one afternoon, one of the vendors called out "Hey teacher, the road to the school is closed, you have to go the other way!". On yet another day, a minivan with two students that I have never seen in my life pulled to the side of the road and their father insisted on giving me a ride. It's flattering, yet mysterious. Was there a mass mailing that the neighborhood received describing my presence in Tijuana?

I now know that the majority of dead dogs I see lying in the street are not dead, just sleeping. The people that stand outside of the OXXO staring inside are not simply amusing themselves, they are waiting to use the ATM.

The border has changed since I arrived. I crossed recently to pick up a video that I had ordered from the UPS store in Chula Vista and to visit the wonder of their Target store. I always make a point to drink out of the drinking fountain and flush the toilet paper instead of throwing it in a little trashcan beside the toilet, simply because I can in Chula Vista. When I crossed back, I noticed that the Mexican army, machine guns and all, now greets visitors instead of the ordinary customs agents. And on the American side, the U.S. Border Patrol hassles people entering Mexico. I have never seen them stand directly in front of the turnstiles before. After my visit to Chula Vista, I noticed a Wackenhut bus parked directly on the line between Mexico and the U.S. A long line of men stood beside the bus, waiting to be deported to Mexico. I inadvertently stopped walking. Twenty, thirty men. Were they okay? Did they know where they were going? Had they been to Tijuana before or were they laterally repatriated? I hovered. I could explain to them how to get to Casa del Migrante. I have walked right up to Border Patrol agents in Arizona while they detained large groups of migrants and asked them if I could speak with the people and distribute water. Why didn't I know what to do? I stood there with my Target bags, worrying that I might make an ass of myself if I was misreading the situation. What was there to misread? Wackenhut isn't Greyhound. The men were shuffled into the Mexican immigration office as I walked slowly past the border patrol and into Mexico.

I guess I am not used to everything.

Que viva la Revolución

We had big plans for our three day, Revolution holiday weekend. We decided to rent a car and finally see a little of Baja California. I even got to leave school a little early on Friday. Many teachers were out sick last week and several times throughout the week I was approached by students or the prefectos to ask if I could "adelantar" my class. "Our teacher isn´t here" they would tell me "can you come teach us now and we can all go home early?". Absolutely no problem and something that would never be possible at home.

We left Tijuana Friday night for Tecate, which is only about thirty minutes from where we live. I found Tecate charming. I am not a fan of their beer, but liked their little central plaza and their awesome bakeries. I was surprised to visit a border town that hadn´t become an overblown monstrosity like Tijuana or Mexicali. Please don´t mention Tecate to anyone.

Saturday morning, after eating about three or four pounds of sugary bread, Alec and I headed to the Valle de Guadalupe, Baja´s wine growing region. Though we weren´t far from Tijuana or Ensenada, we were surprised by the complete change of atmosphere. Alec kept commenting on how quiet it was. And uninhabited. It was a good time tearing around on dirt roads between vineyards, trying various wines. And a hell of a lot prettier than Sonoma.

After languishing around the wine country, we cut across the peninsula on Highway 3 towards the Sea of Cortez. It was getting dark and I was getting tired on that winding road. We realized when we had a quarter of a tank left that we really needed to get some gas. I knew we would make it. I remembered coasting down canyon roads in Utah with my sister on fumes, pleading with the car to survive so that we wouldn´t get stuck in the middle of nowhere. Alec and I broke down once on the "loneliest highway" in Nevada and still got picked up by an eighteen wheeler and got to ride run away truck all the way to town with this guy and his family. We always make it; the worst never actually happens. And then the car started to sputter. Okay, the worst happened. I pulled off to the side of the road in the middle of fucking nowhere.

We just sat there for a minute. A few random cars raced by us. I saw a truck coming in the distance with some sort of flashing light on it. We flagged it down and it actually stopped. A couple of construction workers jumped out, they had started their day around 7AM in Tecate and had lost "a bag" somewhere on the road. Their boss made them go back in the night and look for it. Dear God, were they drug runners? Could the give us a ride to a gas station? "It´s far..." they said, in a way that told me it was really, really far. "The motorcycle men will have gas" they told us. Motorcycle men? Was there really not a gas station? They insisted on visiting the "motorcycle men" and jumped back in their truck, only to discover that it was completely stuck in the soft sand on the side of the road. We had trapped two more people in our Bermuda triangle.

I felt like a real ass. I could sleep in the car, but now we had snared two innocent men after a long day of work in our trap. They were just trying to help us. They flagged down a pick up that passed and asked to be taken to the "motorcycle men". I just stood there, freezing.

A few minutes later, another big pick up truck pulled up. "Hey y'all!" a boisterous, American voice called out. "Bet ya thought all white guys where assholes!" they called, as they jumped from the truck and tied a rope to the trapped pick up. "We'll fill you up too, that car's gonna run great, we got 110 octane for the bikes!" I was stunned. Who were these people?

They yanked the construction workers' pick up up out of the sand and sent them on their way, adding "We saw y'all pass earlier today, bring that pick up by our camp, we can fix the alignment!". And to us, "Y'all don't have enough gas to get to the station, come by our camp and have some beers, we'll fill ya up!". Our car actually started and off we went to the motorcycle men's camp.

There were dirt bikes everywhere, two big trailers and a bunch of white men sitting around a camp fire. "Have a beer!" one said, handing us a couple of Tecates. "We're here for the Baja 1000, biggest off road race in the world!" they told us, "You from San Diego?" I told them that I was teaching in Tijuana, in a public high school. "That's Navy Seal stuff! Aren't you scared?" one asked me, in complete seriousness. I do like to think of myself as a Navy Seal. "Wanna ride the course?" Ah, okay. I hopped in some sort of four wheeled, open sided vehicle, beer still in hand. The thing roared off as I clung to the side so as not to be thrown from the vehicle. "Better put the seat belt on!" my driver informed me, which I did. Suddenly we were going about eighty miles an hour, tearing over a hilly, rugged desert path. I was screaming inadvertently and beer was spraying everywhere. Tears were flowing from my eyes from the wind and my ass was not touching the seat, the only thing holding me in was the seat belt. Most people would have avoided the crests and pits in this path, this man accelerated and dove at them. I knew if the vehicle flipped I would die. As we screamed through the desert under a blanket of stars, I knew that I wouldn't rather be in any other place in the world.

"Please let us pay you for the gas" we pleaded upon leaving. "Pay it forward" one of the racers said with a smile. We went on our way on the dark highway toward the coast. The car really was running well. We stopped at one of the many military check points that line the highways on the Baja peninsula. "Please step out of the car so that we can revise it" a young, machine gun wielding soldier in camouflage instructed me. I have been through quite a few of these check points and generally don't even have to roll down the window. We got out. In an attempt not to litter, Alec had thrown a couple of empty Tecate cans in the back of the car. This worried me. The soldiers climbed through the car and instructed us to open the trunk. They really didn't seem too intent on searching everything and couldn't seem to care less about a few empty beer cans and my beer splashed jacket. It actually didn't seem very abnormal to be standing in the desert in the middle of the night with a couple of guys in ski masks carrying automatic weapons, chatting about the differences in size and crime between Atlanta and Tijuana.

And then we drove to the sea.