February

The last few weeks have found us teaching our shopping conversation; a variety of phrases from "How can I help you?" to "I'll take it." We do at least one period of a fun review (usually in the form of a game) for each conversation. For this one we decided the best way to engage the students would be to set up an actually store in class. $600 pesos, generously donated by Norman and Toby Campbell, bought us pens, pencils, erasers and candy for grades 3 through 6. We gave them fake money and they had to make the transaction completely in English to receive their goods. They were thrilled to get to keep the supplies! For this week we developed a jeopardy-style game to review all of the English they've learned so far. It's a bit, as they have no idea what jeopardy is or how it works, complicated to get the directions across, but once they get it they really get involved. It's funny how putting a competitive spin on the material makes it so much more appealing :).
In mid-February we took a weeks vacation to do a tour of central Mexico with Richie (Sarah's boyfriend). We hit Morelia, Michoacan; Queretaro, Queretaro; and Guanajuato, Guanajuato. They are all beautiful colonial cities. Walking downtown in their historical centers is more reminisce of Europe than other parts of Mexico with all the brick and beautiful architecture. In Morelia, the boys went to a Mexican rodeo. They saw two teams, local and out of town, compete to lasso, hog-tie, mount and re-lasso a dozen bulls. The show was much more about the lassoing than the riding, to show, none of the riders were bucked, they all rode it out (often just sitting on a standing bull) until it was re-lassoed by the team. Guanajuato was our favorite; it's a hip college town packed with people our age, an element missing in Zihuatanejo. We took a tour of the city which included going to the "mummy" museum, actually just well preserved bodies (see Richie´s picture). Several are bodies the government took from the graveyard when the families couldn't pay their required rent. There are some special qualities in the air and soil that naturally preserve the corpses, so there are mummies hundreds of years old with their skin, hair and clothing still intact. The end of the tour brought us to a massive stone statue overlooking the brightly colored town.

We traveled between city by bus, economical and way more comfortable than most airplanes. We stayed in hostels, which we really enjoyed because it is so easy to meet so many interesting people. Despite all feeling a little under the weather, we still really enjoyed ourselves.

We just have three weeks until the school´s spring break and only two weeks in Mexico after the break. So quickly the last three and a half months went!

Pretty Much All of January

While recovering from sicknesses caught on the bus ride home, Sarah and I came up with curriculum for the new year. We now have the weeks planned out with general subjects until the end of our stay. The weekend before each week we figure out the logistics; what review to do, how to introduce the subject, what games to play and how to say everything we want to teach in Spanish. We are having to supplement our conversation class with more basics because we have realized you need quite a background to have even the most basic of conversations. Sarah made a pretty professional (complete with lamination) alphabet poster with words for pronunciation with pictures and I downloaded an alphabet song that is great for the third graders, but not so much for the sixth graders. We´ve also introduced Spanish-English dictionaries and plan to distribute classroom sets from the donated dictionaries we have.
This month has been the month of volunteers. Jennifer and Anthony, from around Chicago, arrived in mid-January and another group of a dozen volunteers came from Denver to work for a week. The group from Denver split up into several groups and accomplished a variety of projects. They repaired one of the outside classes that was practically falling down, completely rebuilt a section of perimeter fence and made arts and crafts with the children. On a couple of days I got out of school early and was able to help with the fence. It felt good to do a little physical work for a change.
Jennifer and Anthony arrived very similar to Sarah and I; willing to help with anything, but with little idea of what there was to do. After coming up to school and helping us in English class, their plans were to take over 1st and 2nd grade and start an English class for the teachers. They were able to do one class of each before Jennifer was forced to return to the States because she couldn´t regain her deteriorated health. They are both very serious about volunteering and Jen wanted to make and send us curriculum from home, but we insisted she didn´t have to. She decided to for the teacher´s class though. Anthony stays until the beginning of March and will continue helping us in all our classes and teach the teachers. He hasn´t had any Spanish education though, so I told him I´d help in the teacher´s class. I didn´t know what I was getting myself in to; we both realized today we have much to learn about our own language.
It´s a very loosely formed class. Anthony brought some subject material and worksheets, but besides that the teachers just ask questions and we provide answers and pronunciations. It was going okay (just some of the regular communication problems) until the director asked for the rules of conjugation for past tense verbs. In Spanish, each pronoun (I, you, he/she, we, they) has its own ending, different for each tense. On the spot, in front of the class, neither Anthony nor I could name a rule as we milled over verbs in the past tense. I ate, I spoke, I had, I was; these are all just completely different words than their infinitives. How can you teach a rule for those? Luckily, the other group of volunteers entered the class to say goodbye and were able to straighten us out. Ann, one of the group leaders who works for the U.N., told us that in English, like many languages, the most common verbs are irregular. So all the verbs that had come to our minds were the most common and all irregular. The rule is of course, add ¨ed¨. The subject was much easier to explain when I knew what I was talking about (except that I forgot the word for common in Spanish).

Manzanillo Visit

On the 24th we started walking from our apartement to the bus station at 10:30 am and made it to the Langbauer´s condominium in less than 13 hours. We had them a little worried because we waited for two hours for an urban bus that never came (we ended up having to go out of way a little to catch a more frequent running bus to their location). Besides that part, the long distance bus was far superior than any Alaska airline plane in comfortability, I just wish the spectacular view of the Michoacan coast didn´t have to compete with bad American movies.
We had a great time in Manzanillo, being treated to some luxeries we don´t usually get. Hot showers, a swimming pool, french toast for breakfast and nice restuarants at night; to name a few. Mainly, it was wonderful to be with friends and family (Sarah´s brother) for Christmas and refreshing to catch up and see some familiar faces. But also, we got to explore Manzanillo´s newly updated ´historical´ center where we discovered a type of gorditas, a sweet tortilla-like soft cookie about the size of four or five half dollars stacked on top of each other. One of the days The Langbauers brought us on a guided tour of Colima. We saw bananna, coco, agave, pineapple and many other plantations; the colonial age capital and surrounding towns

(picture of colonial church in Colima), Colimense ruins (see pics) and a good view of an active volcano. The last part of the tour was lunch at a busy tapas bar where we ordered drinks and were served everything from tacos to boiled pig flesh. All in all, a great tour.

Our ride back to Zihaut was slightly more eventful with a huge traffic jam in the mountains. A semi truck had slid across both narrow lanes on the steep curvy roads the midnight before. But we were very fortunate and got out quickly. In the two hours of confusion and waiting I met a man from Oregon looking for seasonal work here, a backpacker from Mexico city and a surfer from Israel. Sarah and I both decided the journey was a lot of fun and needs a sequel.