Dreaming Up an Education in Oaxaca

10 May

 

Do you think your school looks like a prison? What is your school like? Are you bored and tired of the same old things? Have you thought about having classes under the trees instead?

These were some of the brilliant, attention-grabbing ways that my first year students introduced the topic of their ideal school. Okay, maybe I fixed their grammar and tweaked them a bit so as not to plagiarize my students, but still- brilliant, right? Makes you want to keep reading, doesn’t it?

It was an apt week for me to discuss education with my students, since we also pulled our 3 year old out of preschool this week. Here in Mexico, school is mandatory from three years and up, but there’s no big authority that will come looking for us if we don’t send her to school (which is nice for us, but maybe has different implications for students who might want to go to school and can’t afford it.)

Y’all already know I was angry with the daily homework situation at my kid’s school (homework for babies?!), but then it got worse. They informed me that she was supposed to be writing her name on all her homework. She doesn’t even know her letters yet, so it seemed particularly stupid to me, and I pretty much “forgot” about doing it with her. Her teacher kept reminding her, though. Then el colmo, the straw that broke the camel’s back, was her worrying that her teacher would be mad about her coloring part of her homework that wasn’t part of the assignment. She asked me if she could color it, and I said yes, of course. But then she said, “But my teacher’s gonna say, ‘No, Lucia, that’s not the homework; don’t color that.'” And I thought, hell, no! My daughter is too young to be afraid to color on her page. There shouldn’t be any age where it’s cool for kids to be scared to express their creativity, but not-quite-four is not gonna be the age for my kid.

Meanwhile, this week’s unit in our first year English book was about education. Because my students’ teacher (yours truly) is a fanatic of alternative education, I made them try to imagine the school of their dreams. We talked about the different aspects of education- location, methods, evaluations, teachers, schedule, subjects, materials, social activities- and they got started.

It was slightly depressing seeing how basic some of the things they want are- how simple and yet so far out of their grasp. They want things like colorful classrooms, lockers, and organized sports. A couple of students dream of a large library and laboratory. They want a gym and a pool. They’d like on-campus housing, instead of everyone having to struggle to find an affordable room close by. Many expressed their dream of air conditioning in every classroom as a must-have in their dream schools, since there is crazy, constant humidity here. They want a dance class, and a handsome man. (“Just one handsome man?” I asked my student, who quickly changed her spelling.) It was frustrating that these were some of the most outlandish, alternative things that they could dream about for their education- things that are mostly a given in universities in other places.

They’re dying for more chances to have social and recreation time, in a university where there’s no kind of student activities center. In fact, here they pretty much discourage kids from having fun or getting together. If more than a couple kids are sitting out on the library steps, it’s only a matter of time before some administrator comes along and tells them to move along. There’s a little bit of grass on campus, but no one is allowed to sit or walk on it. There’s a slab of concrete and a couple rows of concrete bleachers where they can play sports (and where I play volleyball on a regular basis), but there’s nothing organized. So it wasn’t shocking to see that their ideal schools come with green areas to rest, space to relax, sports fields for their organized teams, and study areas that are social, too.

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This may look prison-like, but at least these kids can sit on the grass.

The other sad thing in their paragraphs was about scheduling. Y’all might have heard me mention before that I love pretty much everything about my job, except the horrendous schedule. I work from 8AM to 1PM, then back again from 4 to 7PM. This is based on the Spanish (aka from Spain) idea of the siesta, which even the Spaniards now want to do away with because nobody actually gets to take a nap. The siesta only serves to lengthen our day, not to mention making us waste more time going home and back and/or fighting for transportation. It stinks for everybody, but it’s especially bad for the students. They don’t get to pick when their classes are, and they all have classes 7 hours a day on this schedule. On top of their class time they have homework, of course. Not only is there no time for them to have jobs (which is frowned upon anyway), there’s not even enough time for them to get a decent night’s sleep half the time. That must be why so many of them dreamed up a space to nap at their ideal school.

So of course most of them wanted a different schedule, but it only occurred to ONE of them to invent something other than the 5 days a week / 8 hours a day schedule. Many of them just dream of something like 7AM – 3PM or 8-4 because it would be so much better than our split schedule. One student wants two days without class every month. The wildest scheduling dream of all was 3 days a week of classes. That, along with the student who wanted a school in the forest or others that wanted classes not in classrooms (gasp!), were by far the most creative, outside-the-box requests for a dream school. Sigh.

Technology was another common topic amongst students. However, it didn’t occur to them to ask for a school with wifi across campus, although that’d be one of the first things I’d dream up for them. It would be uncensored too, since currently they can’t even get on Facebook or Youtube. I’m always griping in my office because our campus-wide internet censors (the hook-up kind, not wifi) won’t let me open any site that contains the word “game” (again with the anti-fun campaign around here). Let’s see you invent new review or grammar games without using the word game in your search (grumble, grumble, complain).

While most of our classrooms have a hook-up for a projector, that’s about as technologically advanced as it gets. There are a couple of computer rooms but often they are occupied for classes, and so it’s not always available to students. Thus I saw several students wanting “actualized” (up-to-date) technology, Smart boards, and tablets to replace notebooks- for conserving the environment, of course. So, okay, they might be pushing it in asking for an escalator, since there is only a maximum of two stories (and only in two of the buildings). But the rest isn’t so outrageous.

 

Before I started teaching here, I thought maybe students wouldn’t like English much because it is a required course that’s not about their major. But then I discovered that all of their classes are things mandated to them; they don’t get to pick any electives! Every semester they have a set schedule of classes, and that’s that. No wonder many of the students enjoy English class, even if language isn’t their favorite thing. It meets their desired criteria of having games, competitions and music, if nothing else. They can learn by playing and talking, although I can’t fulfill their dreams of not having quizzes.

Some might have exaggerated their love of English, however, by claiming they dream of “more English class” or a “special classroom for English.” (Suspected suck-ups, although I tell myself that they really do love English!). One perfectionist wrote a 5 paragraph essay (with help from a translator and someone else, which was not the purpose, but I’m a recovering perfectionist myself, so I forgive him.) Speaking of over-acheivers, one group of them wanted a special study room where only students with the highest grades would have access.

The most requested desire, though, despite all these other shortcomings, was about teachers. My sampling of students really would like some funny teachers, very intelligent teachers, more communicative teachers, no angry teachers, not bad teachers. They want teachers with more instructive materials, and “more prepared teachers,” meaning qualified (preparado in Spanish).

I was taken aback when I saw this in more than one student’s description, so I asked one of my classes if they felt like their current teachers weren’t very qualified. They said yes, they definitely felt like that about some of their teachers. Whether it’s true or not, just the fact that they feel like they’re not receiving a quality education is really disheartening. I suppose that living in the poorest state in the country, it’s hard not to be accustomed to poorly-qualified teachers. The university level doesn’t have the mafia-style union that public primary and secondary schools do, but I can see how it would be difficult to attract and keep a whole staff of amazing teachers to our small, hot and humid little town. It made me even more determined to do my best for them. I can sleep at night knowing that at least I fall into the category they asked for of friendly / not angry teachers. (I’m pretty sure I’m funny, too, but who knows if they all agree.)

I want to do more, though, for these (grown) kids, for my little kid, for all the other kids who are scared to color outside the lines. Maybe we should’ve been talking to the teacher and principal at my daughter’s school more this year instead of just thinking that our values at home would prevail. Maybe I should take my students’ paragraphs and send them to administration. It occurs to me, now that I’m writing this, that talking isn’t enough. Sending my kid to a different school isn’t enough. Trying to make fun and interesting classes for my students isn’t enough.

We’re failing our students- stifling them, turning off their joy of learning, starting at such an early age. Not just here in Southrern Oaxaca, but in so many places. Accepting this as the norm fuels inaction, and will just continue the cycle of failing our students.

I don’t know yet what I’m going to do about it all. I’m accepting ideas! But we all could surely be doing something more for our education systems- for the kids, and for the adults that they’ll become and the world that they’ll create.

 

P.S.- Just to clarify, this is a problem with the educational system, not with the schools or the teachers particularly. The school Lucia was going to is actually a really good school, but still I just don’t agree with the things that are supposed to be taught to her age group or the methodology in how schools here are teaching these tiny learners. At the university, too, I know that there are good teachers (because my students tell me about them!), and I know that there are some other really good aspects to the school. It just makes me sad seeing how little independence they have over their education, how little creativity and freedom of expression they’re allowed,  both physically and intellectually- and this university is more “liberal,” you could call it, than some others. It is definitely a systemic problem.

 

 

 

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Hop On the Cyclone of Compassion

2 May

A friend and I were talking about our small kids this week when she brought up her concerns about the teen years ahead. There’s a lot to worry about there, especially if my kids turn into rebel teens like I was. (I know, you’re shocked, right?) A couple years ago I would’ve jumped right on that gravy train of anxiety, realizing that, geez, I hadn’t worried about any of that stuff yet, and how am I going to make sure that my kid doesn’t hook up with online predators or use heroin or forget the condoms or become obsessed with crappy pop music a la Justin Beiber! AAHHHH!

Luckily for me, as I told my friend, I’m much too worried these days about whether or not I’ll find time to hang my clean clothes on the clothesline before they mold to worry about the distant future. And okay, I might just be dealing with my anxiety a little better these days. Or I could say that being a parent has obligated me to drop my control-freakness down about 27 notches. After all, starting in pregnancy, these little monsters start teaching you that YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER THEM. Nananana-boo-boo, stick your head in doo-doo.

So you better work on getting some control over your reactions, because that’s all you’ve got. You can hope all you want that they don’t get hurt or killed, but the only thing you get to control is resisting your own urge to hurt and kill them when they are driving you insane. Okay, you can take measures to protect them, yes, sure, please do. But you don’t have control. It’s not enough. Even the most sheltered, protected kids can die, or become junkies, or major in philosophy in college. You just can’t make them the way you want them to be.

You can read 80 thousand books on baby sleep issues and still not be able to make your kid sleep where and when you want them to. You can try to ban them from playing dress up, like one father did to his 3 year son when I worked at a daycare for one nightmare month, but you can’t take that desire out of them if that’s what they want. You can teach them to fight peer pressure, but nothing guarantees that they’ll be able to invoke that in the mere moment when someone they think is really cool offers them a beer. Even if they can fight peer pressure, what happens when they just want to do something you don’t approve of? Even babies, even toddlers who are dying to please you because you are still like god to them- they’re not ours. They’re not something we can control, they’re not even someone whose death we can always prevent. They’re their own little being with their own fate, which we have the privilege to help watch and nurture and cultivate, but the way they grow is all theirs. It’s not mine, anyway.

I’m learning this slowly but surely, and I hope that when my kids are teens, I’ll try to keep it in mind. Yes, I’ll do everything I can to help them lay strong roots, and be my own tree for them to lean into. But when bad things happen (and they will), when they make bad decisions (and they will), when they get hurt (physically and emotionally, I’m sure), I’ll be there. And that’s all I can do.

Once I finished laughing at myself for overcoming anxiety thanks to exhaustion, this conversation got me to thinking about what IS really important to me. What do I really, really hope for my children? Knowing I don’t get to control anything for real, but knowing that we all model the best we can and cross our fingers from there, what do I dream for my kiddos? If I could wish just one thing for them, how do I hope they turn out?

Hands down, if I could pick something to gift them, it would be compassion. More than anything, I want my kids to be people that care about other people. Starting now, and including caring about everyone. I want my children to be the kind of people who don’t feel ashamed that the news is making them cry. Who wipe their tears and brush off their knees, getting up to ask how we’re going to fix this. To be people who say, “Of course your pain affects me,” to people across an ocean and those in their neighborhood, to people who look like them and people who don’t, to anyone who is hurting. I dream that my children will be people who ask, “What can I do to help?”

I hope my kids are the kid who invites the smelly, still-nose-picking-in-the-third-grade kid to their lunch table, even if they kinda don’t want to, because they know they’ll feel too sad to watch him eat by himself, and they know it’s the right thing to do. I hope my kiids keep asking, like my 3 year old already does, why don’t some people have houses? And why can’t they just come sleep at our house? I hope they turn into big people who maintain their capacity to imagine what someone else is feeling, and to question everything. I hope that they decide every day that even if they can’t solve world hunger or turn the tide on climate change or prevent domestic violence or keep racist, murdering cops out of the system or a million other things that they wish they could fix, they can still aim to be part of the solution, to not do more damage if they can help it, to be nice to everyone along the way.

I want them to be compassionate with themselves. To forgive themselves when they realize they’ve made a mistake, to try to make amends. To take care of themselves, so that they can better take care of others. To know that they’re good enough just the way they are, and still try to be better every day.

Of course there’s loads to worry about when they hit the teen years. When I think about my teen years, I am overwhelmed and a little embarrassed, remembering my raging hormones and sexual urgency, the intensity of my romantic concerns, the way that just a person’s name could make me break out sweating in anticipation. I sigh, remembering the goth phase, the punk phase, and the 18 different colors that I dyed my hair (plus that time I shaved it). I fondly still dance to the CD from my favorite punk/ska band, but shake my head at myself thinking about the senseless risk of all the times I got rides home from strangers after a show. I smoked cigarettes outside of school, I drank alcohol with friends in public restrooms, I tried several different drugs. I adopted any traveler kid passing through my city, and when I turned 18 I took off to hitchhike around Europe. It was quite a tumultuous adolescence (sorry, parents), but aren’t they all, really, to some extent or another?

When I write down all that, it sounds rather frightening. But even while I was busy getting into all this trouble, I was also doing cool stuff. I was learning to be a good friend, trying to talk friends out of suicide and drunk driving, holding friends’ hands after sexual assault. I hung out a lot with a group of activist kids, who were writing and publishing their own zine and taking action in the world. We’d do stuff like protest a Klu Klux Klan rally, go to the mall and put informational leaflets in the clothes that were made in sweatshops, march in the gay pride parade, no matter what our sexual identity. I became a peer educator at Planned Parenthood. I attended and then became a youth counselor at an alternative diversity camp for teens. I left high school at 15 to reeducate myself. I published my own zine. I wasn’t always nice to everyone, but when I wasn’t, it was due to my wild hormones and trying to defeat my self-loathing, and not because someone was different from me.

I think the coolest part about me is my constantly cultivated sense of compassion, my ability to put myself in someone else’s shoes more often than not, even when it’s really, really painful. What I most love about myself, then and now still, is my ever burning desire for everyone to have justice, for everyone to have their human rights respected. I’m no Mother Teresa, I’m not Mr. Rogers, either. I’m not as amazing as this beautiful writer and activist, or even as wise and caring as my Nonna. But I am always nurturing my ability to give people, including myself, the benefit of the doubt, and to dish out the respect and care that I want for myself and my children.

I want this so desperately for my children, this cultivating compassion, because it’s such a win-win situation. If the world were full of compassionate people, there would still be hurt and suffering, but not on the scale that it is now, and not in the same systemically unjust ways that it is today. And the more I can practice compassion, the better I feel everyday. It’s often something really small, that seems inconsequential. Like the way that I see my nursing students slack and fall behind and have too many absences in my class. Instead of thinking, “Those lazy nursing students! They’re the only group that gives me such a hard time!” I decide to think, “Those poor nursing students. They must have it so much harder than the kids in the other majors. When they do show up to my class, half the time they’re sleep-deprived, or they’re starving because they don’t get a breakfast break until later in the day.” And it makes me feel better. It makes me get along with them better, because I have an open, caring attitude instead of being pissed off at them for missing my class too much. More of them make an effort to have a decent attitude in my class, even when they’re exhausted.

Compassion, caring, respect, all of these things are cycles just like the negative cycles we talk about- the cycle of violence, of abuse. Compassion can be its own powerful cyclone if we can get ourselves into the path of the storm.

So boy do I ever want that for my kids. But since we don’t get to choose how our kids will turn out, mine will probably rebel against me and turn into excessively materialistic, sedative-abusing, constantly-complaining mall rats or something. Of course, our town would have to build a mall first, so at least there’s that on my side. Meanwhile, I’ll stay in my busyness-induced state of zen, and worry about the teen years when they get here.

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The Goddess of Admonishment, La Reyna de las Regañonas

24 Apr

We received a visit this week from the mother of all finger-waggers. She is bound for some kind of title in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most scoldings dished out per minute, a record carefully maintained daily throughout an entire lifetime. She could win an award for most creative admonishments, since she can even find a way to put innocent babies to shame. Here in Mexico, we call this kind of person regañona, a scolder. But this is an understatement; she is the Goddess of all Scolders.

 

The best part about this situation is that while this person is related to me through marriage, she is not my mother-in-law. Every time I see her I spend the entire next day saying Hail Marys to the Patron Saint of In-Laws, to thank her for blessing me with a mother-in-law who is not Tia Meya. Also due to her being an Aunt-in-law, I can actually enjoy her company and love her. Behind all the rebukes is a shining star of auntly adoration. You just have to look hard behind the reprimands and critiques.

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This lady’s toughness has  nothing on Tia Meya. But my aunt-in-law is much more attractive, always formally dressed, plus she’s got a big, big heart.

And perhaps, after all this time with my in-laws, I’m starting to see how scolding is another way to show affection. I should have known that Tia Meya liked me from that first time she laughed at me. I was just visiting Mexico, trying to wash my clothes by hand in the concrete washboard. She came up and all but snatched the clothes out of my hand, telling me something like, “You’re totally clueless about this, huh? Go, go.” She shooed me off as I tried to babble about my lazy style of washing by hand in Paraguay, that yeah, I’d done it before. “Go make yourself useful with something else. You’re gonna have to extend your visit by a few more weeks at the rate you wash clothes.” And she did it all for me. 

 

She’s a character, and a good one at that. So usually I can take her barbs and critiques with a grain of salt, but this time around it had been too long between visits and I forgot to not take it personally for a minute. The baby had a cold and she was telling me to put Vick’s Vapor Rub on his feet. “I’m out of Vick’s,” I told her. “Julia,” she told me sincerely, “you should always have Vick’s Vapor Rub around. Why don’t you have Vick’s? It’s really useful. You should just keep it stocked in the house.”

 

“Yes,” I told her calmly, “I agree. It is very useful. That’s why I normally have it. But since I also use it regularly, it runs out. So I don’t have it now.”

 

“I know but you should keep it in the house all the time. You need to stock it.”

 

“Yes but I’m not a pharmacy. I have to go out and buy it when I run out.” We could’ve gone for several more rounds like that but Conan distracted us with something, since he’s more expert at this situation than I am.

 

She’s very old school in her ways, and one constant point of contention is how we dress or otherwise take care of the kids. This time, like every time, she blamed our underuse of socks for the baby’s cold. “Julia, don’t let his little feet go around on this cold floor! No wonder he’s all snotty! Put some socks on that child, please! It’s hurting me just to watch him!” Never mind that it’s 80 degrees and that Khalil won’t even keep socks on his feet when it is actually cold. If you say something like that, though, she just shakes her head sadly, telling you it’s still you’re fault- if you’d have gotten him used to socks from day one, you wouldn’t have this problem. Sigh.

 

Our pet cat was the other major problem this visit. Tia Meya has decided that the cat is the obvious culprit in Lucia’s asthma. Furthermore, nobody should even have a cat for a pet because it’s just gross and wrong. According to her, cats eat all your food and leave their hair on your kitchen table, among other complaints. “But don’t listen to me! Go ahead and get more cats and see how your kids breathe then. Don’t come to me when the kids are in the hospital from all this cat hair!” And when you try to explain what the doctor said, or give some other kind of reasoning, she cuts you right off, with “Déjalo, vaya,” which is the regional equivalent of her saying, “Nevermind! Do whatever! You wait and see!” Oh, dear, Tia Meya.

 

Often there’s not even time to argue, though, because she zips around like a bee pollinating flowers. Instead of making honey, however, she’s busy questioning you and everything you’ve done or haven’t done (possibly while she’s also doing some random chore that she sees you’ve left undone.) She comes in to your house, gives you a hard time, and runs out the door, off to scold someone else. “Ya me voy,” is her theme song- I’m leaving– she announces as soon as she’s inside. If she walks in on you with a sink full of dishes, she’s guaranteed to say something like, “Look at all these dirty dishes! So many dishes! How can you stand it?! How’d you even make all these dishes dirty!” As she’s scolding you, though, she’s washing them for you. And then she’s gone. If she walks in on you doing chores, she’ll tell you how you’re doing it wrong. You’re using the wrong kind of cleaner, or you shouldn’t be washing dishes with cold water like that- it’ll be the death of you. “And I’m not going to stand around and watch you killing yourself like that,” she’ll shake her head at you and off she goes. “The good thing is,” she told us the other day, “I’m sure I won’t be here the day that Khalil brings the whole table down on top of himself with this seat you all put him in!” Even though the seat was designed and safety tested for use with babies, with the sole purpose of attaching the seat to the table, you will never convince her that it’s okay once she’s decided to criticize something.

 

She doesn’t even always mean what she says; she just has some compulsion to give everyone she cares about a hard time. Even babies are not exempt from her wrath/affection.  When Lucia was just a couple of months old, Tia Meya would come in and scold her about nursing. “Ay, ay, qué cosa comes?! Deja esa chichi, vas a acabar a tu pobre mama!” (My goodness, what are you eating?! Leave that breast alone, you’re gonna finish off your poor mother!) Mind you, she’s 100% in favor of breastfeeding. But if she hasn’t told you what you’re doing wrong today then it’s like she hasn’t even seen you, no matter what age you are.

 

Scolding is not optional for her; you can’t escape it no matter what you do. If you’re cooking something she’ll say, “You’re just now cooking lunch! My goodness, I’ve had lunch ready for two hours already! You guys like to suffer around here.” If you’re not cooking then she’s wondering aloud what in the world are you doing with yourself? It’s a miracle you’re even still alive, the way you may or may not get around to cooking lunch. If she arrives and you’ve already had lunch then she’ll surely criticize you for eating too early. There’s no pleasing her.

 

It’s not really about criticizing you, although I have no doubt that she truly believes her way / the traditional way is the only correct way to do things. Conan comes from a large family of women who believe that scolding equals love. Not all of his mother’s 7 siblings are women, but the majority are, and boy are they a majority to be reckoned with. They are the type of women who are constantly working, constantly pushing themselves to get it all done. They don’t take time to have fun or relax until all their work is complete. And they believe that everyone else should be like them, too, although they’ll go way out of their way to take care of everyone around them. So Tia Meya washes the dishes while she smilingly chastises you, because really she knows you’re busy and she wants to help. Or she brings you something she’s cooked, under the pretense that it’s so you’ll have something decent to eat, or you’ll be able to eat at a reasonable hour, according to her standards. She could never just do something nice and admit that it’s because she’s a nice person. No, there must be finger-wagging involved or it wouldn’t be Tia Meya taking care of you.

 

So I try to just remember, scolding is love in this family. The more of it they dish out, the more they care about you. So look out for Tia Meya in the world records. Say a prayer of thanks on my behalf, that I lucked into the most diplomatic scolding sister of the family to have as a mother-in-law. And if you’re ever down here in southern Oaxaca and you find yourself being attacked by too many regaños from critical old aunts (or your mother-in-law, God forbid), just tell them “Déjelo, vaya!” Because at least then they’ll laugh at you, probably tell you that you said it wrong, and you’ll know that they like you. What more could you ask for?

 

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What Not To Do When You Move to Small Town Southern Mexico

9 Apr

My dad always said that opinions are like assholes; everybody’s got one. So true, and yet we all still think that ours is truly valid, that we can really help someone out with our hard-earned wisdom. So I’m here today, ladies and gentlemen, to share my opinions, my own stellar advice for all of you pondering a moving to the marvelous state of Oaxaca. For those of you already in Oaxaca, this is still superb advice, but you might already know it. You guys can go ahead and laugh with me, please and thank you.

This is advice that I would have appreciated, theoretically. I mean, okay, sometimes I love to jump headfirst into things, blindfolded and grinning. But often I would prefer to research things to make the most informed decision possible. Usually that means I seek as much advice and information as possible and then jump briskly off cliff number one anyway. Sigh.

So here you go- I present you the fruits of my experience, aka some advice that you can read, reject and ignore. (I’m practicing for the kids’ adolescence.)

The first tidbit of guidance I have for you is second-hand, but it is first-rate advice nonetheless.

Don’t change your country of residence immediately after having your first child.

“Don’t plan any major life changes for a while. Transitioning to parenthood is hard enough.” Our lovely doula, the birth assistant we hired for Lucia’s birth, tried to warn us. Truer words were never spoken. But, alas, the U.S. government did not appreciate this wisdom. And you know, there’s gotta be some benefit to starting your kid off really, really early with the globe-trotting.

But it’s not a great plan for adjusting to parenthood sanely. Abandoning your entire support system and general way of life while learning how to parent is a special kind of madness. I mean, leave the country, yes! I am so glad that we live here- now. If we could have waited a year, though, it would have saved us lots and lots of heartache. So while I don’t recommend jet-setting first thing postpartum, if you find yourself doing it, you’re a special kind of badass, and I want to be your friend.

Don’t buy an automatic car that needs work.

Contrary to popular belief down here in the land of stick shifts, automatics are not bad cars. In the U.S. I owned several over the years, and a couple of them were fabulous cars. They go up hills just fine, thank you very much, when they work. The problem here is, unless your automatic is more or less new (or at least in such condition that it never needs to be worked on by a mechanic), you are screwed, because nobody knows how to fix it properly.

This advice is spawned by my current frustration- the impetus for this blog post- which is a recurring soap opera. Every time our car breaks down (which is about bimonthly) it either takes a week (or longer) to fix it, or in the process of fixing it they cause some other problem. This month both things happened.

At first I thought this phenomenon was due to having bought a lemon of a car. Then I thought it was because the mechanic we often took it to (the cheapest option, a friend of a friend) was just a slow and inexperienced mechanic. But at one point we had a problem that required about ten different mechanics. Ten! They didn’t know if it was mechanical or electrical, so we took it to all the types of mechanics. They didn’t have a clue. They took apart our car, broke other things. It was absurd. And it just keeps happening!

It was nice to use an automatic to transition into learning to drive on these bumpy dirt roads with lots of drivers who don’t follow any rules. But now I have my teacher lined up to teach me how to drive a manual car, and I’ll hook you up, too. Just say no to automatics that might need mechanics. Buy yourself a nice little Tsuru, just like the taxis and half of the rest of the population own. That’s what we’ll be doing next, if I manage to follow my own advice. (Don’t hold your breath.)
Don’t build a house to live in when there is not yet electricity in the neighborhood.

“It’s just an overgrown lot right now, there’s no electricity or water,” my in-laws warned me when we came to visit the plot of land in Puerto that Conan owned. “Right, but we can get that stuff installed, right?” I asked, thinking it was just a matter of getting things hooked up, signing a contract, paying the bill. Little did I know….

We got water hooked up just fine during the building process, thanks to some help from a family member. But with electricity, there was no “hooking up” because there was nothing to hook up to on our block. The electric company won’t set it up someplace new unless they’re paid to by the folks living in the neighborhood and/or government (and we’re talking thousands of dollars). So it was a lot of waiting and fighting and hoping and hopelessness. Perhaps someone tried to tell me beforehand, but I was too blinded by my desperation to get out of Juquila to really let it sink in. And really, if I had it to do over again? I suppose I would think about us renting a place while we waited for electricity. But would I stay in Juquila till the lights came on here? Hell, no. Hell, no. (Seriously. Double or triple hell, no.)

We got lucky that we only spent a year and a half (two years for Conan) living without electricity. I know people who spent years and years living “off the grid” by accident. So you just don’t know when you’ll get it. Don’t plan to live there unless you’re one of those amish-style hippy types who wants to go charge your iphone at someone else’s house and live without fans because your body odor just isn’t at its best in the A/C. And if that’s the case, bless your little heart, you’re made of sterner stuff than I.

Don’t start a business that you know nothing about.

When we lived in Juquila, we couldn’t find decent jobs. Everyone and their mother wanted me to teach their kid English, but nobody actually wanted to commit to regular classes, or pay more than 20 pesos an hour (less than 2 US dollars). Conan’s construction skills were not in demand, either, since everything they construct here is very different. He got a job at one point, but he was working about 12 hours a day, 6 days a week for next to nothing.

So we decided to sell cell phones, accessories, and recargas (prepaid minutes) out of his mom’s storefront in the front of the house. That’s right- we sold cell phones. Imagine me selling cell phones. Me- who refused to have a cell phone until I lived in Chile in 2007. Me- who then held on to the same flip phone for like 6 years. Me- who still had cassettes until I moved down here, just to give you an idea of how resistant I am to new technology. It was totally my dream job to sell cell phones- Not! (Haha, look how backwards I am! Still using kid quotes from the early 90s- that’s me.)

In fairness, Conan knew much more about cell phones and accessories than I did (and do; I’m still clueless). But neither of us had any idea what the people of Juquila would buy, really. It was a pretty uninformed business venture, which seems to be kind of the M.O. in Juquila. There are no corporations; it’s all small business. You don’t take any classes or write up a business plan. You either have experience because your family owns something or you just scrape together some money for a small investment and get started with your tiny business that you hope will do well so you can expand. It’s a respectable way to do things in the circumstances, but it did not make us a living. Now if we had invested in statues of saints instead….

It wasn’t a total waste of money. We sold most of it over time. We used some of the phones and accessories ourselves. We earned some money, slowly. It was certainly an interesting experience. And I certainly admire the tenacity of the neighborly small business owners who just open up the front room of their house and stock some snacks and sodas along with the most common of vegetables. I mean, why not? Who says you have to have a stupid business plan? Granted, bigger small businesses down here do still have a plan, I’m sure. And maybe a small business could still work for us someday. But not in Juquila. And not cell phones. This lesson was learned, for now.

Don’t let your small child sleep in the same bed with you “just for the transition.”

Don’t do this unless you want to sleep with them forever. There is no “just for the transition.” Once they worm their way in, you will never get him or her out of your bed again. The transition just keeps on keeping on. Just say no to bed-sharing, for the health of your grown-up relationship and the sake of your ribs, which will remain bruised throughout the duration from all that kicking and thrashing these mini-monsters do. ‘Nuff said.

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this is our near future…

The Moral of this story is…..

Well, nothing, really. As you can see, I don’t have any real advice. I don’t have a clue what you should do, but I have a wealth of savvy on what not to do. Not that you should listen to me. Counsel such as this probably would have saved me lots of heartache, but that doesn’t mean I would have taken it. My dad was always futilely trying to save me from making the same mistakes that he made, but heartache is ours to find, one way or another.

Furthermore, if I had known then what I know now, would I have done things differently? In general, probably not. For one, I love rollercoasters, and I am constantly learning to appreciate this roller coaster that is my life, no matter what. Also, I’m working on not judging myself harshly, and both Conan and I have done the best we could with what we were working with, and that just has to be good enough. Not to mention that I always figure these brilliant “mistakes” are good for my character. And I’m pretty damn cool on a good day. So if you find yourself by happenstance moving to small town Oaxaca, look me up and I’ll impart more thrilling opinions. Worthwhile? Well, that and a few cents will get you a stick of gum, as my dad would say. So on second thought, come on down and I’ll give you a cup of coffee instead.

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My Stupid / Stupendous Stay-cation

4 Apr

Staying home for vacation is one of those win / lose situations. At the end of it, I felt like I had been some exaggerated caricature of a manic depressive person. One second I was overjoyed, skipping around, singing about how happy I am and knowing it, with a smile plastered on, and it wasn’t even that semi-hysterical, will-this-get-the-baby-to-calm-the-hell-down smile and singing that I often do. The next second I was stretched out in bed, still in my pajamas at noon, refusing to concern myself about the baby scavenging those Cheerios he threw on the floor earlier, telling the 3 year old that sure, she could watch a 700th video in one day. I was ecstatic, energetic, blues-out, relaxed, stressed, busy, lazy, content, overwhelmed- sometimes all in the same day. It was my first-ever stay-home vacation.

 

Here’s a little breakdown of my ups and downs in this premier stay-vacation.

 

Good News: I get a paid vacation five whole weeks a year! Plus other federal holidays give me frequent three-day weekends. FIVE WEEKS! I’d never had any paid vacation before this year. This is astounding! Revolutionary! I’m the luckiest person alive!

 

Bad News: My vacation time is precisely the same time as the vacation time for every single other person in the entire country of Mexico.

 

This is part of the reason we’re on stay-cation in the first place. I had planned an exciting trip to Oaxaca City, to see a friend, go to museums, relax, and get the kids’ Mexican passports renewed. Y’all know how I love to combine work and pleasure like that. But of course, since it was holy week, nobody in any bureaucracy works either, so I couldn’t get an appointment for their passports. I fared better than a friend of mine, though, who had an appointment to get her son’s U.S. passport renewed and the consulate cancelled on the day of her appointment– after 7 hours of travel. Oh, Semana Santa, how bitter-sweet.

 

Bad News: The ubiquitous retén (police roadblock)

We also had plans to take a day trip or two to nearby places, to have adventures we never seem to have time for on the weekend. But with the influx of both national and international tourists, police are busy keeping people safe and getting bonus bribes by putting up road blocks all over the place. We are not up to date on our car’s registration, and Conan’s license is expired. Now, in the U.S. I never would have let this happen. But here it’s very common to not have your registration paid, because it’s too expensive and it’s totally meaningless. Just like licenses are meaningless. There’s not even a driving test for licenses, as witnessed by the driving that goes on around here! The only requirement is to have money and an electric bill as proof of residence. The electric bill doesn’t even have to be your own! The lady at the license office told me could bring a friend’s when I told her we didn’t have electricity. But I digress. We didn’t have money for fines or bribes, so we stayed close to home instead.

 

Bad News: Car being held together by a coat hanger

We were going to at least go to Juquila for a couple days, but our car did not get fixed in time. There’s some part that’s currently rigged together with some spare wire or something, and Conan didn’t want to risk it falling apart on a road trip to the mountains. We tried to get it fixed, but it was too late in the week- by Thursday we couldn’t get the right part sent down from Oaxaca City because everyone was already on vacation.

 

Good News: No trips means more relaxing! Not spending time in a vehicle with a baby-turned-toddler who doesn’t understand the purpose of sitting down. Not having to spend an entire day packing a bag, planning all the necessities for three people. (Conan packs his own stuff: he puts a pair of underwear in my bag and then wonders aloud why I’m not finished packing yet.)

 

“This will be awesome!” I told Conan. “I’m going to spend time with you guys and catch up on housework!” I envisioned us sitting down together playing games in a fabulously organized and relatively clean house.

 

Bad News: Getting caught up on housework is a cruel impossibility if you are currently living in said house.

I now suspect that people really go on vacation just so they can clean the house, go somewhere else, and have that fleeting joy of coming home to a totally clean house- because no one has been there in a week. (Gosh, I think I used to think differently about travel, once upon a time. Perhaps I will again someday?)

 

I called my mom about day 5 of my vacation. “I need a pep talk,” I whined into the phone. “I’ve been home for 5 days and I still don’t have the clean clothes put away. I haven’t seen an empty sink the whole time! How is it possible that I can be off work and my house be the same as if I were working?”

 

“Well,” started my wise and witty mama, “Are there still people in your household wearing clothes while on vacation?” She asked. “Are people eating and dirtying up dishes? Is somebody cooking?” Yes, yes, yes. But…. “And is half of your household unable to do their own laundry and wash their own dishes?” Oh. Right. Yeah. That.

 

It’s easy to blame it on the small creatures, and I’m sure the housework situation will improve once we can enslave them in household tasks as well. But regardless, this stuff really is a bottomless pit of essentially unfulfilling activities.

 

Good News: I invented a new song to keep myself from freaking out about housework.

You guys remember “The Song That Never Ends”? My adaptation goes: “This is the job that never ends. Yes it goes on and on, my friends. Some people started doing it not knowing what it was. But they’ll continue doing it forever just because this is the job that doesn’t end!”  You can do it with any household job. “These are the dishes that never end! Yes they get dirty and dirtier my friend! Some people started washing them not know how it was, and they’ll continue washing them forever just because these are the dishes that never end!” Pretty great, right? Don’t worry, I have no copy write issues; you guys go ahead and sing it in your own houses. You know you want to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good News: We really did make time to do some things that we don’t normally have time for.

We went to the library together. We ate most of our meals together. I tried to say yes every time Lucia asked me to read her a book, instead of telling her we could read it that night at bedtime. I sat down and played with Khalil, who’s suddenly not a baby anymore. (Geez, did I just now have time to notice?) Lucia was thrilled to wake up from her nap to find me there and not at work. I soaked up every minute of watching these two sweet siblings interact, giggling hysterically, chasing each other around the house, stealing each other’s toys.

Lucia and I had an outing, just the two of us. I carried her part of the way to the bus stop (I never get to carry her anymore, thanks to her little brother). We rode the bus, which pleases her half to death for whatever reason. We sang “The Wheels on the Bus” song while on the bus. We went to the playground and I let her play for more than 15 minutes. We went to “the big store,” the only department store in town, where she loves to check out and play with the toys, and she shocked the hell out of me by not asking to buy a single thing. (Thanks to a conversation with her Papi, apparently. Plus it helps that they don’t have a space ship, the only toy her heart desperately desires currently.)

I took time for myself, too. I did a little personal writing not just for my blog. I finished a book in the middle of the day. I watched a movie with Conan. We had a date night. Lots of wondrous things.

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Stinker #1 and #2, playing beautifully together. It’s not all the time so it’s nice to have a chance to enjoy it while it’s happening!

Good News: No alarm clock!

Okay, that Monday I still got up at 5, because I forgot to turn off my alarm. But most of the other days I slept till like SEVEN AM! I even lowered my coffee consumption because I wasn’t living on a sleep deficit!

 

Bad News: Vacation means getting out of my healthy routine.

I got lots more sleep. But not getting up till the baby gets up meant I was on-the-job immediately, struggling to drink my coffee before changing the first poopy diaper. There’s no time to exercise when you have to be constantly vigilant, getting food in little bellies, preventing consumption of toilet paper, etc.

 

I also ate more than normal, because I was home more and had time to prepare food and snacks. Which leads us to….

 

Good News: Being home means time to cook slightly more than normal.

We made popsicles. I made elaborate casseroles. I made enough to freeze a couple things, although it wasn’t as much as I’d hoped, because goodness, four people eat a lot of food. Plus I remembered what it was like when I was a stay-at-home mom in Juquila. It’s all too easy to spend all your waking hours just keeping people fed and clothed and clean. So I didn’t even cook all of our meals because it was too overwhelming. But we did have french toast, and oatmeal (haha, yes this is a beloved food for Lucia), and other exciting meals that are only for weekends.

 

Bad News: Everyone being off in the same week means that going to the beach is impossible because 2 out of 3 residents of Mexico City are also on vacation on our beaches on the same day. Going out to eat involves a wait. A wait! Here in tiny little Puerto, population 45,000.

 

Good News: We live here, so we know about places to eat that tourists don’t know about. One of our best meals was from a tiny three-table restaurant that ended up being cheap and delicious, with no wait.

 

 

Conclusion: Staycation is a lot like regular life if you’re a stay-at-home parent. (If you’re not a parent of small children, I no longer have any idea what life is like for you. My memories of such things have been wiped clean during all the butt-wiping.) If you’re not a stay-at-home parent, count your blessings that you have a job to escape back to so you can appreciate your family and your messy house again.

 

If you are a stay-at-home parent, count your blessings that you’re your own boss, and you get to spend all this time with your awesome family. It won’t last forever. From my experience / memory, it’s great as long as you can keep in mind that there is a whole universe outside your door, and that you must get out into it! Abandon the dishes! Let them eat cheese and crackers today! Finish that chapter of your book! My stay-catation was  still just like when I’m working, in terms of trying to balance it all- some basic necessity things, some pleasure things for the kids, a little time for me. It’s a balancing act whether you have an outside job or not. It’s full of ups and downs no matter what.

 

Conclusion, take two: Count your blessings, period. You only get this day, once, on vacation or not. Might as well attempt to enjoy it for the good, the bad, and the dishes, too. When you’re too bummed by last week’s laundry to enjoy it, call me up and I’ll give us both a pep talk. Or we can cry into the dishes together.

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In North America, Only ‘Merica Doesn’t Do Sick Days

27 Mar

My immediate boss at work is Canadian, which is absolutely relevant when it comes to all kinds of cultural stuff. I mean, Canadians grow up with things like universal health care and gun control. Radical stuff like a year’s paid maternity leave, you know- social policies that set people up to have a good life. So even though I believe in all those kinds of things, sometimes it’s glaringly obvious that I was not raised in that kind of culture. It’s the same reason that no one can say, “Race doesn’t matter.” When you live in a culture permeated by racism, it can’t not affect you greatly.

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Hehehe… (Missing some commas in this meme, though.)

It was one of those glaringly obvious moments when I went in to work yet again with my ragingly snotty nose, sore throat and cough. My mommy immunity had finally failed me after the kids had had an almost month-long cold and cough thing going on. It was the first thing in the morning, and I was in the bathroom using up all the toilet paper on my nose. My boss heard me as she walked in. “Julia, is that you? Are you sick?”

“No, it’s nothing.” I told her. “Just a little cold. These damn germ magnets of mine, you know. They finally gave it to me.” Cough, cough, sniffle.

“You sound like you’re pretty sick. You can’t be feeling good. Why don’t you go home?”

“It’s not that bad. It’s just a cold.” This is not just something I said. This is a mantra in my family. I can totally hear my mama’s voice, repeating, “I don’t feel like crap. I just have a cold. I don’t feel like crap. I just have a cold.” It’s part of the mind-over-matter prescription we give ourselves. That, along with gargling with warm salt water, is all you really need to take care of a cold. Rest? Pshaw! There’s no time for rest! That stuff’s overrated, anyway.

“Seriously. You’re not doing yourself any favors. Even if it’s a cold, it doesn’t feel good, and it’ll get better faster if you rest.” What? Did she not get my mental memo? Rest is not necessary for illness. I brought tea to work.

“And you’re not doing anyone else any favors, either.” She continued with her logic. “You don’t want to pass it to all your students. We complain about them coming in and hacking all over us, so you should set a good example.” Damn. She got me there. “Plus I don’t want to get sick. Vacation is coming up in a couple of weeks and I don’t want to spend it in bed.” Double damn the guilt! Especially when it’s all reasonable-sounding like that.

“Okay. You’re right. I’ll think about going home.” Years of stubbornness can’t be reversed with a 5 minute conversation, even if there’s good logic and guilt involved. But it’s not the first time I’ve had a conversation like this, and the thing is, I know that my attitude is absurd. Well, not the mind-over-matter or the salt water gargles part. But the idea that we should go ahead and go to school or work or whatever your regularly scheduled program is, despite whatever illness.

And the culprit in that part of my attitude is definitely my country’s culture. In part it’s that work-a-holic, can’t-rest-because-the-world-NEEDS-ME attitude. We’re all so damn important (eye roll, ‘Merica). And part of it, of course, is because most of us there don’t get paid leave. So if you’re sick but not actually on your death bed you might as well go to work. You might even get fired if you don’t go, so just pretend you’re not sick as best you can, guys.

Thanks to U.S. policy and culture, and the way I internalized those beliefs, I have taught classes despite losing my voice from illness. I’ve attended classes because I didn’t want to miss them (in college, not high school, mind you). I’ve walked around with pneumonia because I was too busy and broke to go to the doctor and get diagnosed until it reared its ugly head and put me into bed forcefully. I’ve gone to the hospital for a urinary tract infection that turned into a kidney infection because I was too busy to get it treated for real, and wished it away with copious amounts of water. I’ve waited tables with colds and fevers, because I couldn’t get a sick day. This is what U.S. culture looks like. We don’t need universal, free healthcare. We don’t need paid leave. We like our cooks and servers to snot all over our food, because that’s better than giving poor people benefits. People being in debt for hospital bills because they didn’t have access to preventative medicine, or better still, people dying from something curable, is preferable to changing our system. This is what the U.S. system looks like. It looks like not getting the care that we need. It means believing that you don’t deserve to rest and take care of yourself.

When I stop and look it all like that, I feel a bit sheepish about my attitude. Sure, I don’t want my students to miss class. But they’ll be thrilled about it! And it’s not going to make or break their entire language practice if they skip a couple days of class. Goddess knows they do it for themselves all the time. Repeat to self: I am not all-important. Everything will be fine if I am not there. I am important enough to deserve to rest when I am sick.

And we get paid sick days here. This is Mexico, folks- the part of North America that the U.S. treats like its Cinderella-style stepsister. The part of North America that’s “underdeveloped.” This is where I had to move to get maternity leave, sick days, and my first ever paid vacation time (5 weeks a year, thank you very much). I had to move down here to get reminded by a Canadian to take advantage of my rights here in Mexico.

So I drank my tea and assessed my situation. I decided that it was, indeed, a good idea to rest, even though it was “just a cold.” Imagine what it would be like to have constant access to tea and kleenex all day long! How it might feel to lie down! I might, indeed, actually get better faster.

The only thing standing between me and my bed was the insurance company, IMSS. I needed a note from IMSS to take off for two days. (It was Thursday already, and I was sure even 1 day would help, but I wanted a whole day to sleep past five in the morning.) IMSS is my nemesis here. I pretty much prefer death to IMSS. And the process is so slow and bureaucratic, and so many of their staff so incompetent, that death is certainly possible there, although it might start off as just a cold. Plus, as the secretary at my work informed me, I was not going to get an appointment that day. I can only get an appointment for the same day if I arrive before 7AM (preferably around 6AM to get a good spot in line for their opening at 7). Emergency services won’t see me without a fever or some other type of emergency.

Thus, IMSS was a no-go (disaster averted). I could go to a private doctor and that would buy me a paid day off, but only for one day. So I’d still have to go to IMSS at 6 the next morning in order to get off the next day. I decided to power through the Thursday (sorry, boss, coworkers, students, for sharing my germs).

I vowed to take Friday off, however. And I did! I slept in, thanks to going to a pharmacy doctor! I laid down for an hour in the middle of the day! I drank unlimited tea! I didn’t have to talk for hours on end. I rested much more than I would have at work, although I still did too much at home. It will take more than a day for me to really, truly convince myself that I deserve to rest when I’m sick. That I deserve to take care of myself. I don’t want a martyr complex. I don’t think any job I do needs me so much that I can’t rest when ill. I know I’m not irreplaceable. In theory I know this. But the idea that I deserve to rest is not what my country believes. It’s a powerful cultural message that I’ve been breathing in for 32 years. I did not grow up in Canada, although from now on, I’m going to try to pretend that I did. Let’s all try it, dear compatriots of mine, and maybe someday we’ll succeed in changing our culture and ourselves. Someday we can truly believe that we all deserve to rest and be well, and we’ll demand the paid sick days and insurance with which to do so. And hopefully the insurance will be better than IMSS.

To Serve or to Self-Serve, That is the Question

20 Mar

This is not an urban legends, guys, but a true story. In Kentucky, back when we lived there, there was this one lovely lady’s husband who insisted on an extreme version of being served by his wife. We’re talking about being served everything ingestible; if his wife’s hand hadn’t passed it to him it was not yet worthy of his mouth. He’d be sitting next to the pitcher of water and he’d call his wife in from the other room to come pour it into his cup. Unable to get his own silverware from the drawer. He didn’t have any sorts of abilities lacking to cause such behavior- just a big ole case of over entitlement.

That couple was from somewhere in Mexico, but I’d never have called that behavior a cultural phenomenon. My male friends from Mexico weren’t like that. My partner from Mexico was nothing like that. I chalked it up to a case of extremist patriarchy, which is tragically common worldwide (and yet none of these anti-terrorist organizations are doing anything to stop it).

Fast forward to us living in small town southern Mexico. I’m planning kid #2’s first birthday party and decide I want it to be different from the norm. I don’t want to serve typical party food (here that means tamales, pozole, barbacoa). I thought it would be fun to have finger food in honor of my birthday boy who eats everything with his hands. So I made sandwiches of varying types and cut them into cute triangles like I do for Lucia’s lunch, so people could mix and match with different kinds. I made cream cheese and cucumber, cheese and avocado, and peanut butter and jelly (on both white and wheat bread). Conan grilled some hot dogs to give carnivores something to eat. I cut some fruit and some veggies, too, to appease my own standards of giving my kiddos healthy things to snack on. To drink we did rely on the standard agua de jamaica (sweetened iced hibiscus tea) because it’s easy and cheap to make a ton of it (and good for you if you don’t add too much sugar).

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Pozole- A soup with chicken and/or pork, hominy, cabbage and other “fixins” on top… Delicious, but not what I wanted for the birthday party.

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Barbacoa is nothing like barbeque, although it is meat. It’s often goat or beef, and the seasoning is not sweet at all like BBQ sauce. It’s slow cooked and delicious. Also not what I wanted for the party. 

The radical part wasn’t so much what we served but rather how we served it. We laid it all out on the table and let people serve themselves. I was stoked to mix it up a bit from the normal boring party thing. Because that set-up, in my little potluck-loving Kentucky heart, is so dull and restrictive. You end up not talking to anybody; there’s no mingling. It’s all business. You sit down, get served, eat your food, get up and wait for the cake or the piñatas or whatever the next order of business is. Done. Half the time people can’t even be bothered to stay and eat the cake. They take their plate of cake with them as soon as it’s served, because apparently their quota of socializing is all used up for the day.

So I was determined to do something different. Yet I suspect that some people were as appalled by our style of self-service as I was back in Kentucky by the extremist husband. Going to the table and getting their own food was probably like they hadn’t even been invited at all, a sort of anti-hospitality. But it wasn’t on purpose! It didn’t even occur to me that it could be offensive to people. I thought it would be pleasant, so that people could pick and choose what they ate instead of being served things they might not like. I thought it would be more fun than the traditional style. Some of our crowd liked it, for sure. But there were definitely some that were far from impressed. There were women and men alike at the party who felt embarrassed to go up to the table and serve themselves. That’s just not how the roles are supposed to go at a party. That’s not what hospitality looks like here.

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Khalil is like, “Are they going to give me that thing? Or are they just teasing me?” You can see our buffet table there in the background.

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More of the set-up: laid back! Relaxed! Chairs here and there for socializing! I had a great time, anyway.

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Finally! Cupcake deliciousness- banana cupcakes with nutella on top… I think it was a hit with the birthday boy.

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Here he makes sure to devour it all while being on the lookout for anyone coming to take it away from him.

 

So I got to thinking some more about the whole concept of serving and hospitality. Y’all that know me know that I pride myself on making sure that guests and visitors feel welcome and taken care of. I’m from Kentucky, after all. And I’m also a feminist (aka believer in equality).

Thus I think that serving food can be anybody’s job. Usually, if I cook something and I’m stoked about it, or we’re having people over for a sit-down dinner, I want to serve it, because it’s a matter of pride. But sometimes I just reheated some frozen soup and I’m in the middle of nursing the baby so just go help yourself, please and thank you. I refuse to believe that other adults should not eat when the person who cooked is obviously busy and they’re perfectly capable of adding their own finishing touches. Furthermore, I know that men can cook. Men can serve food. I have confidence in men. My dad was a great cook, for example, and when he cooked, he served the food. Ideally, I believe that everyone should be able to cook at least some things. Everyone should be capable of serving themselves, too. This is a basic and important skill, folks. I learned to pour from a pitcher of water in kindergarten, and you can do it, too.

I also think that being in charge of the food and the serving of food is both a tedious, never-ending chore and also a serious power. Anyone who’s ever been a server in a restaurant knows this. There are always some customers who lash out and treat you poorly, trying to make you feel little or unimportant. They confuse server with servant, but really the customer is at your mercy. They can’t eat their soup if you don’t bring their spoon. They can’t do anything useful for themselves; they rely on you for everything. It’s almost like them being a baby all over again, except most customers have better communication skills than babies (most, but sadly not all of them).

Here, it’s like all meals are restaurant meals, and some woman or the other (mom, grandma, oldest daughter, whoever) is the server. Men become these helpless creatures. There’s the food, right there on the stove- so near and yet so far, because there’s this invisible barrier preventing them from getting their plate and piling it on. Seriously! Okay, not all the time, not everybody, but more here than I’d ever seen on any of my travels or my time in Kentucky. Sometimes it makes me outraged, and sometimes it makes me sad for the helpless men. Because ye who wields the serving spoon wields part of the power of deciding who eats what!

But this avoidance of self-serving is not just a patriarchal thing. (Do I think that overly defined and restrictive gender roles are at the heart of it? Yes, mostly. But that’s not the only factor.) At its best, it’s a case of meal time being a special time for family and sharing. It’s the antithesis of microwave dinners in front of the TV. And I love that aspect of it. It’s nice to be served sometimes, just like it’s lovely to serve, when it’s a show of welcome and love. It’s a case of a non-individualistic culture, where it doesn’t always matter that you want less vegetables and more rice, you get what gets put on your plate because that’s what everyone’s eating. It’s about community, and feeling taken care of, too. There’s a lot of good things to be said for this style of eating together.

Self-service is just not a phenomenon here, and I can respect that in a culture. I can appreciate it lots more, though, if the roles of serving changed equally- if everyone took a turn and not always only women. If it weren’t the case that at giant neighborhood parties, for example,  it’s filled with women in aprons doing all the work, and men with their beer and mezcal enjoying the party. So while we work on that (in every culture), there’s an extra present for my son on his first birthday: I promise to teach him equally the basic life skills to take care of himself and others. Everyone can pour the pitcher of water! Cheers to that!

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“Kids These Days” in Oaxacan University

7 Mar

The best part about teaching is that I have whole classrooms full of willing victims who are forced to interact with me and with each other every day. And I get paid to facilitate this interaction. And I have lovely, wonderful students! Bwahahaha!

So I am bubbling over with excitement this week, because the new semester has started. It seems like we had months without classes, although the calendar assures me it was only a couple of weeks. As soon as I stepped back into the classroom, my energy level rose about 10 notches. The spring was back in my step by the end of the first day. I had a big smile plastered all over my face, despite finally coming down with my kids’ never-ending  runny nose and cough. The fact is, I’m really a sociologist / social butterfly who just happens to also be an English teacher. I figure you have to be willing to learn about and learn with other people before you can try to teach anything. Thus, I always have an extra special place in my heart for the first week of classes, when I get to come up with thrilling icebreakers and review games to get them back into English mode. (I might be the only one in the classroom that calls my activities thrilling. But they’re cool, dammit!)

This semester I taught both of my levels the informal (aka not always grammatically correct, but always fun) expressions “me, too,” and “me, neither.” Students shared interesting facts about themselves, and the rest of us chimed in if we had that in common. For example, when someone said, “I want to see UFOs,” then everyone who wants to see UFOs had to say, “Me, too!”  They had to make some sentences using negatives, too, so we could say “Me, neither!” It made them come up with some pretty interesting stuff.

In my level 1 classes we stood in a circle and I got them to high-five and/or fist bump when they agreed with someone. My level 2 students were too cool for that sort of thing, so we just sat in a circle. My level two students were just as interested to share about themselves, though; we added “Not me!” to the mix so they could express their differences, too. (Yep, also not grammatically correct most of the time. Oh, well.)

I made students write out their ideas about themselves and turn it in to me, partly for the needed writing practice and partly so that midway through the semester, when the students are driving me crazy, I have something nice to read to remember that they’re really lovely people.

I was all wound up and excited reading about my interesting students this semester,  loving their writing, so I thought I’d share with you lovely folks, too.

 

Most Popular and Most Awkward Things to Say about Yourself

One of my students couldn’t get anyone to agree with him. He said he loves to play online games, and everyone was like, “No, I don’t have internet,” or “The internet’s too slow.” He said he doesn’t like tomatoes, which is almost as bad as not liking tortillas, given the typical diet down here, so everyone just kind of looked away. Apparently that’s my class full of outlaws and rebels (aka brainy computer nerds), because he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t get any fist bumps. One of his classmates was daring enough to say, “I don’t believe in God” (except he actually said, “I don’t believe in the gods.” Article usage is so tricky.) Everyone just looked at each other in silence. “Try another of your sentences,” I told him, moving right along.

Lots of high-fives happened with the ever popular “I love the babies!” Riding horses was the other most popular activity, for both guys and girls, in case you were wondering. But the absolute most popular phrase in all of my classes was: “I love my mother.” It was a high-five and fist-bump fiesta then. I love that you never grow too old for mama love in Mexico.

A Case of Confused Tenses- and Articles and Prepositions and Spelling and- Geez, English is Hard

I din’t die in much years. (He meant to say he hopes he won’t die for many years.)

I don’t like people lived in the poor. (Even in Spanish when I inquired what he meant to say it took us a few tries to confirm that it’s the situation of poor people that he doesn’t like, and not the poor people themselves.

I don’t love to cat (Was this supposed to be eat? Or you don’t love cats? Or you don’t love to eat cats? Is there a cat verb I don’t know about? All of the above?)

I don’t drink bear. (Dear English language, how can heel and here and hear all have the same vowel sound but not beer and bear? Sigh.)

I don’t have noise nuisance. (I still haven’t found out what this means. Maybe on Monday I can get enlightened. I think I might like it, regardless.)

I am a person lovely and friendly. (Good adjectives! The battle to change noun-adjective order is ongoing.)

I don’t want to smoking someday. (Glad to hear that’s not your goal, dear.)

The Obvious Feminists

There were a few radical comments from some young women in different classes that lifted my spirits a bit extra:

I will not hit children.

I don’t want women to experience violence. (Wow, way to use the verb experience from last semester’s target vocabulary!)

I’m not going to have many sons. (She really meant she won’t have many children, not that she’s against male children. Another victim of sad choices in the dictionary.)

And finally, my personal hero wrote that she likes travel and natural zones (areas, zones, whatever), and “I don’t like the liar people” and my favorite phrase, “I don’t like other people to decide for me.” Amen, sister, and impressive use of English to boot.

Most Common Desire

By far the most common theme of hopes and future plans was to travel, to visit and live in other places! These guys have plans and passions for places including England, China, Spain, Argentina, Paris, Uruguay, South Korea, Africa (country unspecified), and “in all the world.” They want to visit uncles in Italy, work in Canada, see snow in Alaska, and eat pizza in the USA. Some, perhaps, haven’t decided where they’re headed, but they have vowed, for example, “I will not live in Puerto Escondido.” Bravo, university, for helping students dream of other places.

Inspired by the Teacher- For Better or For Worse

Some students were inspired to not be like me, which was pretty amusing. They wrote things in direct opposition to things I wrote on the board as examples for the assignment. I wrote that I love to cook and eat international food, and a few students wrote things like, “I don’t eat international food.” I wrote that I was a vegetarian for many years, and so a student wrote, “I am not going to be vegetarian.” I wrote that I will learn Portuguese and live in Brazil someday, and somebody wrote, “I will not listen to music in Portuguese.” I suppose negative imitation is a different kind of flattery. At least I’m inspiring them to write!

 

Other Fabulous Randomness- The Struggle to Express Yourself in a Foreign Language is Real!

All of these comments below are just little things that tickled me to read, to think about my students and how unique they are. I was so impressed with how well even my level one students were able to express many things about themselves. I was thinking about how, in general, we’re so quick to have a nasty attitude about the youth of today, to have that “kids these day don’t/aren’t (insert complaint here).” I was also thinking about how people in the U.S. often get sold an image of Mexican people that is racist and not based on the reality of the people of Mexico. So I wanted to give you guys just a few more excerpts from these lovely young folks, who are a much more real face of Mexican youth than any images you’ll see on TV.

I will listen to music of Beyonce in live. (in Spanish we say en vivo, so it was a pretty smart translation.)

I didn’t learn the book of biochemistry. (Me, neither, guys.)

I never thought about Santa Claus when I was a child.

I will be an important businessman. I won’t be poor.

I am going to drive an airplane 727.

I will not listen to heavy metal. (Is this like a New Year’s Resolution? Giving it up for Lent?)

I will not leave English class. I will learn English to finish school. (This is from my student who’s auditing my class after failing multiple times due to goofing off- not due to any lack of capability. This is his very last chance to get through and graduate. To show me that he’s serious, he even used comparative and superlative correctly in his other sentences.) I want to have a dog bigger than a horse. I don’t have the car fastest in the world. (Almost perfect, right?)

I don’t play football. (aka soccer, dear USA) I went to study music when I was a child. (So, you’re trying to tell me you’re not into the typical guy stuff, huh? Got it.)

I learn fast. I like to work in class. I like to eat cakes. I am positive. (I’m positive, too, while eating cakes.)

 

I am participatory. I think much about the birds. I believe in the fairy. I can play football. (Don’t you want to hang out with this person?)

 

I love to cook and paint. I love to cook and movie terror. (Does she really, really love to cook or did she run out of other verb ideas?)

 

I am not going to fight for bad people. (I suspect that this student gets picked on some, and probably got picked on a lot in middle/high school. He’s a bit unique and expressive for the world of small towns.)

I don’t like people with negative attitude. I didn’t say that I can’t. I will build a tae kwondo school. (This student chose to share his second sentence in class, but nobody understood it. We had to translate it word for word, and then he still had to explain his meaning. Obviously there aren’t many other posi-core kids in his class.)

I didn’t play extreme sports. I like to see the movies from Star Wars. (True story- Star Wars is not a popular thing down here. Nobody cares in the slightest that I’ve never seen it, and  nobody ever tries to force me to watch it, because at last half the population here hasn’t seen it, either. It’s just like me being short- fitting right in down here!)

I read books every day. (Yay for my students who love to read!)

 

I love bikes. I like to watch the sky. (Me, too!)

 

I love my girlfriend but I don’t know why. (From the flirtiest student of all- but he’s not flirty in an aggressive or inappropriate way, so you really can’t help but like him.)

 

I hope to be a teacher. I listen to listen to classical music.

 

I love exercise.

 

I can dance ballet.

 

I don’t understand the women.

 

I don’t like party. I don’t like the school schedule. (This is the same student who loves “the babys.” She doesn’t have any, she just loves them. Much cooler than parties for some eighteen year olds, I guess.)

 

I don’t listen to music rock. I don’t watch horror movies. I don’t eat vegetables. I want to go out with my friends. I love my mom. I am happy.  (I don’t know why this one- all of her responses together- tickled my fancy so much. She made herself sound so simple, and yet- I don’t know- so sure of herself, and thus, interesting.)

 

 

You can see why I’m so ecstatic with my job- and my great students. Kids these days in Oaxaca are awesome, and the best part is that I get to be their teacher!

 

No Medicine is the Best Medicine Sometimes

26 Feb

“Oh, she’s the doctor who doesn’t give medication,” our family friend said when she realized who our pediatrician is. It amused me to hear her reputation described as such, but the good news is that it’s true- in all the right ways, anyway! We have a radical, thoughtful, socially-minded doctor for our kids now. This has been revolutionary for our life.

A while back I mentioned in a blog post that my parenting anxiety was more extreme because of not having a doctor that we had trust and confidence in. (You can read about that here: https://exiletomexico.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/just-keep-breathing/  ) But then- ta-dah!- we found our ideal pediatrician, Dr. Anja. And as we recover from another bout of Lucia’s asthma, and bask in a reassuring check-up for Khalil, I thank my lucky stars yet again for her existence in Puerto and for us finding her.

You guys just don’t know how novel it is to have a doctor who has a file on our kids, a doctor who wants to see them for check-ups. I can quit referring to old Facebook posts to check on their previous weight. I can ditch some of my excessive notes from every illness ever- because now their doctor has that info. I can ask questions and get advice on what to expect, what to watch out for, how to keep my kids safe and healthy- information specifically for my child, not generated by parental desperation, academic websites and parenting books! Her information comes from medical school in Germany, residency in New York, experience in a public hospital here in Puerto, plus her own practice here. It is a much, much wider range of experience and education than most doctors around here. (Not to mention her credentials are much, much better than mine; I don’t even have aspirations for being a doctor, guys! I just want to be healthy and informed.)

And that reputation for not giving (useless) medication? Perhaps it’s frustrating for people who believe you always need medicine, but that’s not us. For us, it’s a miracle to find a doctor here in Puerto Escondido that doesn’t want to inject a patient with antibiotics every time they cough. “It’s an infection,” they tell you, as if infection were a synonym for bacterial-problem-requiring-antibiotics. Or else it’s something like, “When they have a fever they do need antibiotics.” Really? So, the flu now requires antibiotics? Mosquito-borne illnesses, too? Give me a break, doctors. Even when they don’t give antibiotics around here, they always give you some kind of medicine to buy. Of course, if you go to one of those doctors that works in a pharmacy (which costs about a tenth of what a non-pharmacy doctor charges), they pretty much have to sell you some kind of medicine. But even when we took Lucia to a different pediatrician, he still prescribed us some symptom-relieving medicine for her virus (which I didn’t give her because he didn’t resolve my questions about it, and because I’m a mean, mean Mommy). But our pediatrician has the same philosophy that I do about medicine: You don’t need medicine that’s not going to help. Revolutionary, right?

Before finding Dr. Anja, we also had the medical establishment* here telling us that my healthy, in-the-normal-weight-range daughter is underweight and malnourished. I think they told us that because Lucia’s tall and thin now, and thus out of the very limited “healthy” range for Body Mass Index here in Mexico. I mean, they were working with limited information, bless their little hearts. They certainly couldn’t check her growth over time, since they didn’t keep files on her. By using those same limited standards, she would have been considered overweight as a baby, and they probably would have advised me to breastfeed her less or some other such insanity. I suppose the plus side of not having well visits for her as a baby here was the lack of opportunity for them to tell me she was too fat.

By the way, I did not resort to violence, thank you, and I didn’t even laugh in their face at the word malnourished applied to my healthy, often voracious eater. Both times I nodded politely and left as quickly as possible, before they could suggest I feed her chips or something to fatten her up. Yes, that is plausible; a doctor told me I needed to eat more sweets because my blood sugar was a bit low during pregnancy. If doctors prescribe candy to pregnant women, then why not chips and donuts to “malnourished” children? Sigh. The saddest thing is that these 2 different doctors didn’t recommend anything at all for Lucia. They told us she’s underweight with no suggestion as to how to remedy the supposed problem (not that I would’ve listened, but that’s beside the point).

But all that is in the past! Now we have our doctor. And did I mention that my kids like going to the doctor now? Lucia’s always excited to go there. “Are we going to my doctor? The one with the toys?” she asks. You guessed it, Dr. Anja has a waiting room with toys and books and puzzles! There are colorful things hanging from her walls. There’s a giant stuffed animal in the exam room that Lucia likes to hold during asthma treatments. Her walls are painted and her space is inviting. As an added bonus, there’s always soap for hand washing available (you can’t say that about every health center, unfortunately). We haven’t been to any other medical place with this kind of kid-friendly (or even just friendly) environment.

dr anja waiting room 1

The waiting room- You wish you had this doctor, too, don’t you?

dr anja waiting room 2

There are even more toys than what you can see in this picture.

Even if she had an ugly, boring office, though, her awesome manner with the kids would still make up for it. The first time we took Lucia there was the first time she wasn’t scared of a doctor. Our doctor knows how to get kids to take a breath before they understand what taking a breath means. She is friendly and talks to them in a respectful way, but on kid-level. She tries to be as noninvasive as possible while doing her job, not making them sit still for more time than they have to, distracting them with toys while she does some things. Of course, I’m sure it also just helps that she’s not trying to give every kid shots of antibiotics every visit.

Dr. Anja explains things to us, the parents, as well. She wants us to understand and be part of our child’s health and care, instead of assuming that we’re completely ignorant about all things health-related and that we need to be protected from ourselves.

She is also trying to reach out and make her adopted community a better place. She now has a bus she uses to take her important services to smaller towns, places where they might never see a pediatrician otherwise. (read more about it here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pediatric-mobile-clinic-in-mexico#/ ) She is also interested in maternal health and promoting more options and information about pregnancy and birth, which is another desperately needed service down here. (What’s that? You guys can sense the future collaboration happening between us? Here’s hoping!)

Being from the U.S., of course it makes me feel at ease knowing that our doctor is familiar with best practices and protocol on an international scale. It’s nice to be able to talk about health issues in my native tongue, too. But it’s not her being foreign and trilingual, or her having experience abroad, that makes her our ideal pediatrician. There are great doctors around here who are from here; for example, my gynecologist is home-grown on the Oaxacan coast, and he’s brilliant and ideal for me, too (someday I’ll write a gushing post about him). Likewise, you can find plenty of doctors in the U.S. who are just as willing as most doctors here to give you antibiotics for your virus. I’m sure Europe also has its share of doctors who think all patients are idiots because they didn’t go to medical school. So it’s definitely not her being foreign. It’s her attitude, her way of doing things, combined with her knowledge, that make her the perfect pediatrician for us.

So amen again for the peace of mind that comes from having a great doctor available. Now we just need to find a good general practitioner for us grown-ups, so the whole family can get sick whenever we want, without the stress of relying on Google and tea to cure us. Meanwhile, y’all who don’t live in Puerto can hope you find your own Dr. Anja. Good luck!

 

*I’m sure there are plenty of good doctors around here. I’m not saying other docs are all awful, but we’ve had some unpleasant consultas, and I am saying that the other doctors that we’ve visited are not a good fit for us. And, okay, I am talking bad about the many, many doctors everywhere who don’t want you to ask questions. They are bad doctors if they don’t want the patient involved in his/her own care, in my humble opinion. For more examples of the madness, you can read about my fight with my insurance company doctor during my pregnancy here: https://exiletomexico.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/me-versus-the-insurance-company-doctors-a-saga/

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The Camote Conundrum

22 Feb

I never really understood the difference between yams and sweet potatoes, despite the internet’s wealth of information, but I damn sure know the difference between sweet potato and, say, potato. I definitely can taste the difference between the smooth sweetness of a sweet potato and the starchy blandness of yucca. Or so I thought, anyway.

If you’re from the U.S., you probably don’t really know the difference between sweet potatoes and yams, either. According to the Huffington Post- and several other websites*-, the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) long ago decided to label some sweet potatoes as yams based on their color and texture, even though yams are actually a different plant. (´Merica. Sigh.)

When you add Spanish language and American cultures into the mix, things really get messy. Here in Oaxaca, it all gets called camote, the word used here for sweet potato.  However, some of the things that are called camote look and taste to me like yucca (the term used in Cuban restaurants in Louisville) aka mandioca (the term used in Paraguay where it’s a diet staple), which apparently is called cassava in English. I think. Confused yet? Great. Me, too.

Since I’m not a botanist, perhaps all these multicolored roots are all camote, and I just can’t wrap my little gringuita head around so many types and flavors of sweet potato.

camotes

Just a few of the many kinds of camote I run into in the market

They don’t all taste the same, either, so occassionally I buy something and am unpleasantly surprised by its flavor. It happened to me the other day- I found myself with a whole kilo’s worth (2.2 lbs.) of boiled camote that tasted bland and sticky and starchy like yams (cassava? yucca? mandioca? Whatever it’s called- the semi-flavorless one.) Now, according to what I’ve since read on the grand internet, cassava requires more processing or it can be poisonous. Since we didn’t die of cyanide poisoning, I suppose it really wasn’t cassava. But geez was it dull!

But as any good cook knows, really bland food is an artist’s blank palette. Did you know, for example, that tapioca comes from that boring old cassava root? So I set out to make it taste like something a little jazzier. I used my typical tactic of blending about 5 different recipes with my own ideas. Here’s the recipe I came up with, in case you ever find yourself in a camote conundrum like mine:

Camote Patties

Ingredients:

2 cups camote, boiled and mashed (perhaps 1/2 – 3/4 lb.raw)

1/4 lb. ground beef, fried with 1/2 an onion and 2 cloves garlic (could be omitted or substituted for soy, with extra spices)

3/4 cup corn kernels

handful of cilantro, chopped

very generous sprinklings of salt, pepper, cumin, paprika

garlic powder and hot red pepper (cayenne or other) to taste

2 eggs, beaten

breadcrumbs

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my mixture… the purple part is the camote

Instructions:

  1. Boil the sweet potato / potato / other root vegetable (I bet turnips would work nicely, too) until soft. Mash with potato masher and set aside.
  2. Fry the ground beef with onion and garlic and the spices listed above. Set aside. (I did this in steps- one day I cooked the camote. The next morning I cooked the meat. In the afternoon I actually finished cooking the meal. It’s no big deal for things to be refrigerated while you’re getting it all together if needed.)
  3. Mix in all the ingredients for patty mixture- camote, meat, corn (thaw first if frozen), cilantro and more spices. Form into patties whatever size you want. Dip in egg and then in bread crumbs.
  4. Fry for 5 minutes on one side and 3 on the other (disclaimer: that’s an estimate. I didn’t actually time it- I just eyeball it.) on medium heat, until a little browned on the outside.
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frying the patties

Alternately, you can mix the egg and breadcrumbs into the patty mixture and fry from there. I opted for this dipped version to cut down on the amount of egg and breadcrumbs I used, but I made a couple the alternate way at the end and they were really good. Regardless, my kids devoured these, and Conan and I both enjoyed them as well. I plan to use this recipe next time I accidentally purchase the wrong kind of sweet potato. Enjoy! Buen provecho!

*This website had the clearest explanation: https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/sweetpotato.html

Or here’s a funny flowchart if you’re still baffled and need to know:

http://lifehacker.com/this-flowchart-shows-you-if-youre-eating-a-yam-or-a-sw-1472702569

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