Rough Start....

17th June
I’m a few days into my new life as a live-in teacher now. All of the girls I live with are very nice and friendly – whenever my curtains or door are open, they come in to say hi and chit-chat. I’ve got lots of pictures of home and friends (both the Montana and Oregon versions), and they’re constantly asking me questions about them. Ironically, the truth is that it’s actually kind of made things a bit harder for me. They especially like to hear about my family and about Ricky, which means I’m constantly having to say “Yes, that’s my boyfriend. Yes, that’s my Dad…” which is followed by “Oh, they look so nice! Don’t you miss them? Are you sad to be here?” The truth is, yes, I miss them very much, and to be honest I’d rather be home than here thus far. However, I can’t very well say to their faces “Yes, I miss them terribly, and I don’t want to be here with you.” So instead I have to pretend that it doesn’t bother me at all, and that I’m really really excited to be here, but you can only say that so many ways without it starting to sound and feel a bit hollow.

It’s funny, because I clearly approached this whole moving to Guatemala thing as a great big adventure, a project which would be exhilarating and riotously fun. That was a bit ridiculous of me. Of course I knew better – didn’t I go through this whole same process when I went to Chile? I was homesick, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself or anyone else, because that felt like defeat. The truth of the matter is, it’s tough starting over anywhere – I even had a rough start in New York last summer, before I made any friends and before I felt settled in. It’s obviously going to take an adjustment period for everything to sink in, for me to get a regular routine going, for me to understand all of those unexplained MOs that every new place has. It doesn’t help any that teaching would be totally out of my comfort zone even if I was doing it at home. Long story short, this isn’t really easy, and I don’t think it will be anytime soon. The few days that I’ve been up here at the school have been full of periodical emotions. There are two wake-up bells which are long, loud and persistent, one at 6 and the other at 7. The 7am one is followed by breakfast, but after that I have nothing to do until lunch at noon. Following that, classes don’t start until 1:30. This means that I’ve got all sorts of free time, and I don’t know what to do with it. I can try and prepare classes, but since I don’t really have a clue how to do that, it doesn’t take long for me to get bored with that. The girls spend the morning lazing around in their rooms socializing, or doing their laundry or their homework, occasionally coming and visiting me. However, just like what happened to me in Chile, it’s pretty easy for all of this free time to dissolve into me trying to find ways to keep my mind off of being lonely and a bit depressed. I just don’t feel comfortable or at home yet, and I don’t know what to do with myself, and that’s not exactly a recipe for success.

Of course, this is only the first week. It’s probably no indication of what the whole duration of my time here will be like. Once I get a better idea of what I’m doing teaching, I’m sure it will be easier to occupy my time. It doesn’t help, of course, that my classes aren’t particularly interested in making this a good experience for me. Each of my seven classes has around 50 students in it, students who don’t have a very good idea of what it means to sit down and pay attention. They do a great job of jumping up and running around the room, falling out of their chairs, refusing to speak aloud when asked a question and refusing to be quiet when it’s someone else’s turn, and laughing at my every Spanish grammar slip-up. A good example is the matter of doing role-call. With all of my first classes I called of all of the names on the attendance list, despite the fact that they’re names like “Manuela Guarchaj Ecoquij”, “Angela Magdalena Ajtzalam Simaj,” “Diego Mardoqueo Marroquin Salquil” and “Isabela Rufina Tzoc Ixquiactap.” Multiply names like that by 50 and it’s needless to say that attendance alone took up a significant amount of the class period. Especially once you insert time for peals of laughter after my every attempt at pronouncing a name. Whew. Trial by fire, and although I survived, it was with third degree burns.

Then, come to find out later, every student has a number, and all you have to do is ask them to count off, and then role’s done. Thanks, kids, for telling me.

I think one of the major problems I’m facing is the fact that I’m the only English-speaker here right now. In the past, other English teachers have come down in pairs, or joined a teacher who had come down in a pair and then stayed for a significant period of time. In contrast, I’m replacing someone who had been here for a full school year, and had enjoyed the benefit of “student teaching” with another experienced teacher before she took over the role herself. It would certainly be nice to have somewhat of a guide to help me understand what is expected of me and the general way the show is run around here.

I don’t want to sound overly pessimistic, and I’m sure that if I’d sat down to right this an hour earlier or an hour later it would have had a different tone to it. That’s just the thing – I’m doing so much adjusting that it gets overwhelming. I’m alternately excited to be here and see how things shape up, and totally frustrated with myself for ever thinking this was a good idea. At the same time, I can tell myself with confidence that I’m a pretty strong person, and there are plenty of people in the world who go on long-term foreign missions and into the Peace Corps or – man, off to war, and if they can all make it through I will to. (Then it just becomes a question of why exactly I felt it necessary to test myself like this in the first place. I’m still working on the answer to that.)

Alright, that’s probably enough musing for now. As I’ve told Ricky in emails, more than anything else, it’s mostly therapeutic to me when I spill my beans (literally, since that’s all I’ve eaten since I got here – beans. Every meal. Sometimes it’s only beans and tortillas, sometimes they mix it up by adding some cold scrambled eggs, or maybe rice. But always beans.) I don’t mean for this to be worrisome to anyone that I’m falling into some irreparable depression, or that I’ve become totally disenchanted with my decision to come here, or anything along those lines. More than anything else, it just provides a reality check for myself – something along the lines of “Sorry, toots, but as much fun as it was to imagine that this would be a tropical escape vacation, you knew better from the beginning. Time to face the music.”



18th June
It looks like I’m going to head to town at some point this morning, and hopefully post some of these blog thoughts which I’ve been recording, so I decided I should even it out a bit. That last part was clearly when I was feeling pretty unhappy about being here; so far this morning I’ve yet to feel that way. Probably because I haven’t had any classes yet.

Last night we had a great time. Yesterday was Father’s Day in Guatemala, and they did a big evening presentation for all of the fathers who work at the school. It was a pretty hilarious program. It was basically a talent show with an open invitation to anyone to perform. This means that there were kids standing up and singing off-tune, refusing to sit down when they were applauded loudly by their classmates, a four-girl group of scantily-clad young teenagers shaking their bootys in front of the panel of father professors (the principal spent most of the song trying to get the attention of the guy with the stereo, to make him cut it short), and a half a dozen lip-syncing acts. Of course, every single act which required music had to insert a long pause in the show while they scanned through all of the songs on several CDs before finding the right one. Real quality entertainment.

It went on for literally hours, and by the time I got back to my room it was almost 10 o’clock. As things go around here, I didn’t come up alone, but with a little band of merry followers, who stayed until 11 despite my hinting that I had classes to prepare. I wouldn’t mind staying up late and working, but the 6 am bell virtually eliminates any hope of sleeping in. Well, and if you do make it back to sleep after that, there’s always the 7 am bell to get you on your feet and on with your day. I need to try and figure out some way to record the bells, they’re really something. It’s a series of incredibly loud long and short tones (tones? Maybe screeches is a better description) which lasts about 20 seconds. That’s a long time when it’s waking you up! It’s pretty unfortunate, really, because I used to have a tendency to be the worst possible version of Jenna that exists upon awaking in the morning. I pretty much just spent my first half an hour or so of every morning scowling around and hating the world for not letting me sleep. However, I’d honestly gotten over that this past year, and was able to wake up and have a civil conversation immediately. Tragically, with my daily rude jolt from slumberland, I can already feel my previous condition returning. Bummer.

Despite that little problem, mornings here are pretty relaxed (which is why I’m going to go to Santo Tomas today. I don’t have much else to do.)

There have been some fun things, too. The girls are really getting a kick out of teaching me Ki’che’ , the native Mayan language, which sounds like a mix between Arabic, German, and the African bush language full of clicks. Basically, there are lots of lilting, pretty sounding words like iliawakan (toes), which are started, finished, or interrupted by guttural clicks and gurgles. Some of the sounds are pretty close to impossible for me to make, but everyone just dissolves into giggles when I try to pronounce them, so at least it’s fun. They’re all very sweet and caring, and a couple have already attached themselves to me. They’re very affectionate, stopping by to say “Que sueñas con los angelitos” (Dream with the little angels) before bed, hugging me around the waste when we walk places, and constantly tugging on my hands. I seem to tower over all of them, probably as a product of the malnutrition which they experience here.

That’s all nice, but the real fun of the day starts with classes at 1:30. Actually, to be more accurate, I should probably call it “horror” instead of “fun.” It’s just really quite difficult to stand in front of fifty or more kids, get them to all shut up and pay attention, and then somehow find an interesting or fun way to present a new idea. So far I’ve been consistently failing. It’s funny, because before I came down here, any time I told people I was nervous about not knowing how to teach they’d say “Oh, it’ll be easy!” or “Oh, it’ll come to you as soon as you’re in front of a class!” Yeah, that’s a nice idea, guys, but people get four year degrees in education for a reason. You don’t say the same things about nursing or engineering do you? There’s definitely technique and skill required, two things which I’m painfully lacking right now. Of course, it’s not exactly my fault, since I never intended to be a teacher and never presented myself to the Diocese as if I had any idea how to do it, but regardless of whose fault it is, I’m now the one dealing with it.

One of the main problems I’m running into, besides discipline, is knowing what each class needs to learn. There are three sections of one level and two sections of the other two levels, and it should be safe to presume that at least each section of each level has a similar background in English. So far, that doesn’t appear to be true. This means that I’m teaching seven different classes. I’m going to try and bring things together a bit, but doing that is a complicated endeavor.

Notwithstanding these various frustrations, I’m somehow able to ignorantly walk into each class thinking that it will be better than last time. A lot of the improvement, sadly, has to come from me being quite strict, which I hate. I never wanted to be the mean teacher, but I don’t have any better way thus far to get their attention. When three boys won’t stop singing under their breaths, I can’t just let them keep doing it! They just get louder and louder, and I spent the whole fifty minutes of class yelling. And then I go do it again, for another class. All afternoon long. It’s exhausting! So, instead, I have to yell at them, or threaten them, and the next thing you know I’ll be the Wicked Witch of English.

All of that being said, I should spend some time preparing for today’s classes before I try and go into town.