Teacher's Day Continued...

Well, if there’s anything they know how to do here, it’s celebrate themselves.

I know I mentioned that last Friday they had a “National Teacher’s Day” celebration which lasted the entire morning. It nearly ended up causing the cancelation of classes, actually. However, it was an outdoor affair, and the customary early afternoon torrential downpour put an end to the festivities.

Although you or I would probably consider the fanfare-filled party on Friday sufficient in celebrating the profession, that’s clearly not the Guatemalan way. I left Xejuyup and enjoyed a wonderful, restful weekend away from teaching, anticipating Monday’s abrubt return to the daily grind.

The day certainly started as any normal day would, with the first set of classes as usual. However, I was soon made aware of a Teacher Appreciation event which would be going on at 5 pm, overlapping with my last two classes. Not feeling particularly inclined to battle for classroom time, I acquiesced, and arrived in the library as requested at 5.

The celebratory affair ended up being in many ways simply a smaller-scale version of Friday’s event. Students read short, silly, relatively tacky poems about how their teachers have done magnanimous things like change the course of lives and inspire greatness beyond our wildest imaginations. There were “concoursos,” which I’ve quickly learned is the name for goofy little competitions like chugging sodas or pantomiming animals for everyone to guess. Of course, prizes aplenty were awarded. I myself am the lucky new owner of a shiny pink and blue umbrella. We were fed dinner, serenaded, applauded, awarded gift certificates, lauded for our greatness and occupied for approximately three and a half hours.

Well, I thought, as the festivities wrapped up, that was a decent way to fill a large chunk of time, I suppose. I don’t know what else I would have been doing, so this works. Additionally, we were given little cards from the administration inviting us to another little party the next day at 2 pm. Nice! Missing more classes!

I went to my room and worked on some class plans for the next day and medical school application stuff for the next few hours. I wanted to make some progress, so I closed my curtains and my door, an act which generally prevents a significant number of drop-in visitors which otherwise occupy all of my time in the evenings.

Not until around 10 pm did anyone come knocking, and by then I was more than happy to welcome another person into my little hermitsville. It was one of the girls, coming by to say hi, of course. “Aren’t you glad we don’t have any class tomorrow or Wednesday?” she asked me. This was the first I’d heard of it, and I told her as much. It turns out class had been surprise suspended as a gift to the teachers, in appreciation of all of our hard work. You think they’d have explained that to us at our gathering a few hours earlier, but somehow it must have gotten lost in the details. Strange.

I spent the next morning writing and reading (I finished my third book since I’ve gotten down here this morning. The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston. It’s a winner; if the whole medical school thing doesn’t work out and I don’t fall in love with yelling at little brats all day I think my next fall back is becoming a virus hunter in the African jungles. Probably the coolest job God ever allowed anyone to invent. Anything cooler he’d probably be threatened by – people would just start to worship this new position; that’s how sweet virus hunting is.).

I also washed my clothes in the “washing machine” for the first time since I got here. If you’re wondering why I put washing machine in quotations, allow me to explain. If you saw what I’m referring to without any accompanying explanation, you’d probably call it a concrete tub. That’s what the uncreative mind sees, anyways. Apparently, Guatemalans, and now me, see clean clothes. It’s a bit of a challenge figuring out a good system of lathering and rinsing when you’re working with a stagnant pool of water, but I assure you it can be done. In all honesty, it doesn’t really bother me to hand wash my laundry. Well, let me clarify. It doesn’t bother me until Ricky brings up the fact that he has a maid and laundry service which regularly scrubs every surface of his dorm room and delivers fresh, folded laundry at his bidding. Then I start to feel like maybe I’m getting gypped.

I went to lunch at noon, where I was offered a watery pool of whole pinto beans garnished with a cow hoof. I turned down the hoof.

At 2 pm, I went down to the classroom where the little teacher’s party was held. They had set out trays of tostadas with beans and some sort of mystery pate, along with fresh squeezed orange juice and bowls brimming with fresh cut fruit. We spent another several hours talking about how awesome we are, listening to inspirational songs, and playing the sorts of games which we would usually reserve for sugar-fed kindergarteners. Considering the fact that we were all adults, I felt a bit foolish, but apparently asking grown adults to choreograph dances to corny songs and improvise poems with interpretive motions are pretty ageless activities around here.

I make fun, but I have to admit, I did have a good time, at first. It may have been silly, but it’s hard to be judgmental when everyone is clearly having a good time. The truth is, this is the most feel-good-Dr-Phil-Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul group of people I’ve ever been around. We’re constantly being given microphones and everyone’s attention in order to express “How we feel,” and part of the festivities today included hugging every single person in the room and wishing them a Feliz Dia del Maestro. Lordy. I hadn’t even met 80% of them! Of course, one of the mottos of the SoCo Crew has always been “Handshakes are for strangers. Friends give hugs!,” so I didn’t mind.

Although I was already full from essentially eating two lunches, after we’d been there for a while they brought out a whole new feast of barbequed shrimp, chips and fresh homemade guacamole and delicious burning hot chili sauce. Despite being fully satiated, I dug in with delight, never one to turn down shellfish. (That’s probably a really dangerous characteristic, now that I think about it. Maybe I should work on that.) Remarkably, my plate was heaped with such an Everest of shiny pink shells that I was unable to finish it. (I did, however, squeeze in some space for an ice cream cone once I’d licked the shrimp goo off my fingers. I don’t know what I’m going to do for garb once I, err, outgrow everything I brought with me!)

All said, the whole production lasted well over 4 hours, full of feasting and repetitive praise to our little core of dedicated educators. I have to confess to feeling a bit like Whoopie Goldberg in Sister Act. I may look like a teacher, but I sure don’t feel like one yet!

I retired to my room stuffed to the point of being uncomf-ter-full, and feeling slightly trapped. I was dying to do something physically active after a day of such gluttony, but I really can’t go anywhere alone and didn’t have any idea where I could go even if I could find a comrade in exercise. When I heard a bouncing ball outside my room, I jumped up and found its owner. There’s a pretty decent basketball court here at the school, so I went and shot around by myself for about a half an hour before being joined by some of the girls. Being the ever educating spirit that I am, I can now proudly announce that three more people in the world know how to spell H-O-R-S-E now. Too bad I lost.