Celebrations and Bicentenario

On the 13th and 14th of I don't know how many years ago, there was a battle between the Mexican natives and the Spaniards. Legend has it that on those days, on a little hill 3 blocks from our house, there was a battle, and while this battle was happening, the Spaniards saw a cross in the sky, thus leading them to their victory. So on the 13th they celebrate by having the longest parade I have ever witnessed (and no I did not stay for the whole thing) where people in their full blown head-dresses and people in suits representing the spaniards would run around with machettes to signify the battle. And on the 14th they have a giant dance session up by the church/nunnery that now sits on that hill. There were at least 7 different groups of indigenous people dancing to the drums, it was amazing.

As for the 15th, as I said before, we celebrate the beginning of the guerra agaisnt the spanish government, so at 930, we went with the crazies and the maaaasses of people to Plaza de Armas where we waited, and waited, until 11 when they do the Grito (which means yell) where they yell viva mexico, and the fireworks. So at 11, the govornor comes out of the building and starts his speach to get people all kinds of rallied up. They start the grito, which wasn't what I expected and much shorter than I expected as well, and after, the fire work show. First there were some normal lookin fireworks a bit aways from us. And it lasted about a minute and a half, so we all turn to eachother like, "Was that it?" Then the most amazing (and most dangerous and fire hazardous) firework show begins literally right above us. Imagine a fairly small plaza, with thousands of people packed in, with buildings all around. Well those buildings are what they were shooting fireworks off of. Lets just say I got pelted in the face a couple of times with firework casings and soot in my eyes. Oh and a kids wig caught on fire. But it was by far, the coolest thing I had ever seen, I felt so giddy! I don't know the last time I actually felt giddy.

Today, the 16th, which is the actual day everyone has the day off and whatnot, there is not a whole lot going on. Today is recovery day for most people, but we will go to el centro and see what is going on because I'm sure not everyone is hung over. And with that being said, today is my last day here. Ive never been so excited and so sad all at the same time, ever. Today is a day of crepas and walking around to remember the town, and will probably be finished off at Aleph, our home away from home (its kinda sad that that home happens to be a bar though..)

EPIC weekend

Lets start with Saturday. My dear friend Erin and I decided to go to the Gallos soccer game. For those of you who are unaware, soccer is very intense here. And although I thought I was aware of that before I went to the game, I clearly was not until we had safely made it home. First of all, Erin and I are both blonde (at least as far as Mexico is concerned). Therefore, we happen to draw a lot of attention. But this wasn't even the worst of it. So the opposing team (they were green so we'll call them greenies for the sake of the story) scored in the first three minutes. Everyone was quite upset right? Well of course the Gallos come back and the score is now 3-1. Everyone is full of joy and fabulousness, except for the defender of the greenies who got punched in the face for NO apparent reason without the ref seeing (I have never seen dirtier soccer in my entire life). Then something happens. The Gallos score on their own goal. Now Erin and I saw this occur because we were sitting right behind the goalie, however many people throughout the stadium thought it was a bogus call and thus, riots. The people below us began to fight because the fans of the greenies who weren't in the caged in area were fighting with the gallos fans. Go figure. Did I mention the SWAT team lines the entire soccer field? So the game goes on. La-di-da. I'm not quite sure what was happening in the caged in Greenie fan section but by the time there was still 15 minutes left in the second half, the SWAT team had escorted all of the fans out of the stadium, slowly but surely. Now the caged in, barb wire lined section was empty, however there were still a few Greenie fans spread throughout the stadium. Everyone now starts chanting "cinco cinco!" because they want to get a fifth goal. They did. And the game was over. Oh and somewhere in there another riot had broken out above us, so we were surrounded by rioters. Also, might I add, that there are VERY few women at these games. Maybe a wife or girlfriend here or there, but for the most part, men, young and old, with Erin and I, blonde as you can get, in the middle of it all. With that image in mind, and the chaos of the game, we decided to evacuate the premisis verrry quickly, however it was not quick enough. Lets just say it took us holding hands and literally running to shut people up (we were moving so fast they couldn't see us). What an experience that soccer game was. I had nooo idea that that was what I should have expected when people cautioned us to go. CA-RA-ZY!

Sunday we went to the pyramids called Teotihuacan, where the pyramids of the sun and moon are shared with the world. This was such an amazing experience thanks to our fabulous tour guides. They let us do things that other people were clearly not allowed to do. One of these being going underground, turning out the lights, lighting a fire, and playing the flute for us. The other being taking down a "prohibited, do not pass" sign and letting us pass to see the recently descovered god sculptures where we had to sit on the ground so the security gaurd would not see us. Our tour guides were indigenous men who still use these grounds to worship on to this day. They had sooo much cultural information for us that my mind was bursting. The way these people lived was amazing! After our tour, we climbed to the top of the pyramid of the sun, where at the top there is a tiny piece of metal where you can recharge your energy just by touching it. After this, we hiked up the pyramid of the moon as well. Our tour guide told us that if you don't go up both, your mother-in-law dies, or you best friend. However you can only go half way up the pyramid of the moon, but it was very very cool to see and there was a gorgous view as well. The trip ended with subway and ice cream from wal-mart, a well-deserved treat!

On wednesday and thursday we celebrate Independence day here in mexico. And facinatingly enough, this is NOT the day they won their independence from anyone, contrary to popular belief. It was the start of a very long revolution against the government that was in place at the time in Mexico. Because of what happened on the night of the 15th, years of war were to follow, leading, eventually, to Mexico's Independence. I'll let you know how the celebration is (its supposed to be craaaazy!)

Cloudy Monolyths

Sunday we went to Bernal, which happens to be the third biggest monolyth in the world. However there were no people climbing it because it was very rainy and very foggy and very cloudy when we went there, of course. So you hike to the base, and then you climb it, right, and when you get to the top, you can look down into it (because its an ex-volcano) and see the crater with the eternal ice and stuff. So kinda officailly and kinda unofficially, it is my goal to climb that! There is even a really cute little hostal right at the base of it all that you can stay at. As well as WONDERFUL gorditas all over town. This town is known for three things, 1. monolyth 2. gorditas and 3. opal (espcially fire opal). Its a very small place but has some of the greatest things ever! Maybe I'll climb it when I move to Queretaro in 2 years to teach ;) ha.

I teach again on Thursday, about special days. That should be a fun lesson! And tomorrow I get to teach the concept of backwards. That should be an interesting concept for them to try and grasp in English.

9 days and counting.

Lessons and Jobs

As you may have seen on facebook, I was offered a job yesterday on the side of the road to teach english here in Mexico. A friend and I were walking home from teaching at a school and a guy rode past us on his bike, then he stopped in front of us and turned around to ask us where we were from becuase he had heard us speaking English (that happens a lot if we hear the same language or people hear us speaking English because everyones story is always exciting and different). We got to talking about where we were from and why we were all here and he mentioned that he was teaching English at a school and I told him we were currently here getting our TESOL endorsement and I explained what that meant (most people don't know). He then mentioned that his school was hiring and we would be very hirable. Unfortunately I had to tell him we were only around for about 2 more weeks. But I took this as very good news because I always was just going to get my TESOL endorsement to make me look better to employers, little did I know that every country is always searching for TESOL teachers. What exciting news for me, because we all know how hard it is to get a job teaching these days, but not teaching English!
Today I got to teach my first full lesson to English learnin' kiddies. What better to teach on than climbing??? The kids have been doing a unit on climbing for a few days now so I got to close up the unit with a little story and slide show of some pictures of me climbing and a story about an "epic climb" I had done. I taught them some emotions and they really really enjoyed that so that was awesome. Then throughout the story when they heard the word they had to do the action. Apperently my supervisor said that went really well! The end of my lesson, meh...it went ok, but overall, I thought it went much better than I was expecting it to do, however I have much improving to do for my next lesson in a week. However it was a grand ole time and I loooove teaching (good thing thats what I wanna do with my life!) even though I'm slowly realizing with time HOW hard it is, or at least how hard its going to be the first fiveish years of my career.
This weekend we get to go to Bernal and, of course, back to Tequis. Go figure. I'm excited and I'll let you know it goes!

Sights to be Seen

So this weekend, my dearest mother found a lovely place for some friends and I to go called Tequisquiapan. Yeah good luck pronouncing that. They call it Tequis for short. So we booked a hotel for 4 or 5 with some natural hot springs and a pool and decided to take the 45 minute bus ride for 5 dollars to the town. We got there on Saturday and we were super excited! It was definetly one of my favorite places so far. We were in paradise! Although the website said 1,000 of natural hot springs, we quickly learned that what that really meant was that the two pools and hot tubs were filled with natural purified water from hotsprings that exsisted elswhere in the city. However we were more than ok with that because this meant we could lay next to, or in, the pool and enjoy the very hot mexican sun. A few hours later we wandered into the small town of Tequis and ate some food and did a little sight seeing. Little did we know that the next day we were the ones who were the sights to be seen. Today (sunday) all of the workers and bartenders thought it would be a good idea to secretly take pictures of us with their phones....can you say AWKWARD...gotta love being from the US I guess... Finally the one worker who spoke English to us yesterday came up to us and was like, ummm i need a picture with you... and we were like really? In our bathing suits? But at least he asked. We shoulda asked for a free drink from the situation...didn't think on our toes. SO that was probably one of the most awkward things ever. We decided shortly after that that we needed to swim and sit at the OTHER side of the pool, and that shortly after that, it was time to check out.
Overall we REALLY enjoyed our weekend getaway to Tequisquiapan, I might easily say it is my favorite place I have been so far. Very quaint, very pretty, and very relaxing. YAY! Thanks mommy.

Practicum!

So my practicum started on Monday. I'm in a third grade classroom at what is thought to be a bilingual school (more or less). The students have English class all morning from 745 to 1045 and then the rest of the day they have their classes in Spanish. The way the school works is there is a coteacher situation where in the morning, my mentor teacher teaches English to third graders and then at 1045 she switches to fourth grade and the teacher who was in the fourth grade classroom switches to third grade. This aspect of it makes this a bilingual school. However I was informed that its not considered fully bilingual unless the English instruction is in all subjects. As far as I can tell, its not; we only do literature and grammar stuff in the English part. Soooo is our school bilingual? I don't know. However either way I love the kids and my mentor teacher is completely awesome as well. I have a class with only 10 students (yay private school!) and they're great kids. Love em all. I'm sad I only get to be around them for 3 weeks, and one of those weeks is pretty much over! The good news is, with this practicum schedule, that I am done everyday at 11. Therefore, to kill time since we really don't have that much homework for our practicum, I walk 2 miles home everyday. Good fun. The other good news is we never have practicum on Friday! Hello 3 day weekend...oh wait...we don't know what to do here and end up bored a lot of the time (although I think this weekend may include a trip to the hot springs!).
I have now had the wonderful experience of riding the "chicken busses" from the market to my school because it is quite far from my house. Thats fun. The first day I was super scared because I didn't know where I was going or how to get there but I had to figure it out on my own, and that I did! I'm getting to know this city better and as I am doing so it seems to be shrinking, which is pretty cool.
I think thats all I have for now...OH! The first unit we're starting in on in the classroom is climbing...tooooo bad I didn't bring my gear because that would be SWEET realia. However either way I'm excited to throw a little first hand experience in there!
Hasta Luego!

Correction

I was informed that that was not a drug exchange. For all you worried people. I was told that the reason for the "shhhh" finger was because of the fight, not because he was doing illegal things (even though im sure that wasn't exactly legal).
This week was crunch time for the first half of my time here. We had lessons to teach today and tomorrow as well and I had a paper for my cultural studies class due today as well. Fortunately, as of now, I'm pretty much done so that is pretty much awesome. On monday I start my practicum and I'm going to be in a third grade classroom. I'm very excited but don't know what to expect because we won't get to talk to our teachers until Monday I think, which is stressful because everyone else got to meet theirs this week except for like four of us. So we'll see what happens. I'm excited either way. And I'm more than half way there!!! wooo!