Crazy for the rain!

Rain has been predicted for several weeks here in Cabo and finally yesterday it rained, for about 20 minutes. The clouds darkened, the wind picked up, lightening crackled and the kids went crazy. It reminded me of the first snowfall of the season in Minneapolis. There you are trying to teach your lesson and all the kids are at the windows screaming with delight. I was with my group of 9th graders and they begged to get out of the class to run around the campus in the rain. I, of course, agreed and they were out the door in a flash. I long ago learned you cannot fight mother nature. (Besides I wanted to run and close my car windows.) I was not the only teacher who let the kids out of class. Pretty much all were out dancing and screaming in the rain. Many of my high school kids went home because their clothes were wet, having stood under the downspouts coming off the roof. Oh to be young again!!


Harry comes home later today from his three week trip to England. Not an easy trip this time. Getting there and back took two days on each end including an overnight with Lex in NYC. He got a bad cold/cough once he got to England and has not completely shaken it. Grandma Olga is in very bad shape. She really needs to be in a nursing home setting using a wheel chair but she does not want to leave her home. Harry was able to secure her more and longer visits from care-workers, but she is at great risk of falling and not being able to get in and out of the bathroom, her chair and her bed while alone. Living a long life can be a good thing, but it can also be a terrible thing.


The air con in Patty's classroom has been broken for the past two weeks. We have shared my classroom and we have used other classrooms around the school when we can. Not an easy time. We are getting on each other's nerves a bit. Our styles are so different. It is a good thing she is a Libra and I have Libra rising or we would probably have killed each other by now. We have no idea why they cannot fix the air con. Everyday there is a new excuse. The owner of the school, Elsa, gave me a small purple Bible this week and in my thank you note I told her I was praying hard for Patty's air conditioner to be resurrected from the dead. Yesterday when I was using the 7th grade classroom the lights were out. I said to the kids it was a little dark and it must be hard for them to see what they were doing. They said the lights had been out all week and they liked it dark. Kids are great, much more adaptable than we adults.


We are beginning to book in the winter tourists here at the Baxter Cabo Hotel so let us know soon when you want to come to insure your suite is available. This year's accomodations include your own floor with bed/bath and balcony. Hope to see you soon!

Gifts

Today was full of wonderful surprises. Linda and Marvin packed up Linda's tutoring materials a month ago and shipped them off to Libertad. Patty and I were in heaven as we unpacked the box today. It has been fun to choose and design my own curriculum after being forced to use totally inappropriate curriculum at Mission last year. However it is stressful and a lot of work to create it all yourself. The Internet is full of good material for second language learners but having these materials we can use now at our fingertips is going to make all the difference. Patty having two jobs and no experience finding and using curriculum from the Internet was delighted with all these wonderful materials.

I am really loving my job. The kids are well mannered and so smart!! I find teaching the older students at my age is a lot easier. I have adjusted to the bleak school environment, which was hard after Mission, the most beautiful of schools. I am enjoying myself so much that I forget how stark the surroundings are. For the first time in my life I am living more in the moment and am unexpectedly surprised at work on a daily basis. Today I did a lesson with one of my classes around a short story with the theme of death. I had the students write a journal page on their experience with and thoughts about death. Well, this is Mexico where it is normally to express your feelings openly without fear. As students read their papers aloud many of them were in tears telling about siblings, cousins, parents and grandparents who had died. Pretty soon most of us were crying. Then in the next class the theme of the O Henry short story was gifts and love. I had students write about the best present they had ever received. Several of the students wrote that the best gift they have ever been given was the gift of their families. One boy wrote that he knows that someday in his life he will be given a wonderful gift.

Well I am off for pizza and a brew at the Baja Brewery with friends. Thanks so much Linda and Marv!

H1N1

All the teachers at our school had to go to a meeting today in town about the school closings and the flu scare. The Mexican government and school officials did a two hour presentation about the latest concerning the H1N1 situation here in Cabo. My Mexican team-mate Patty is very critical of what she considers the dishonesty and government incompetence that is rampant here having had experience with H1N1 in her family. Her 6 year old grandson was diagnosed two weeks ago with H1N1 and was one of the lucky ones to get treatment. Patty says the reason he was treated is because her daughter is good friends with a doctor here in town. Her grandson's blood sample was sent to the mainland because of the doctor's intervention. He got the diagnosis and the drug. There are no lab facilities here that can do the analysis required to identify the virus properly. Plus there is a shortage of tamiflu. Patty told a story of her daughter's friend who went very ill to the hospital last week with her sick child. The hospital said they could only give her medication for one of them and she would have to decide who would get the drug. (And we think we have heath care problems in our country?)

There have been 58 cases of H1N1 here in San Jose so far with 12 deaths. We were told the government has purchased a shipment of 20 million flu shots coming from China in December. Mexico's population is 120 million. Nothing was said about the US selling vaccine or flu shots to Mexico. Teachers from the public schools voiced their concerns about poor parents not being able to afford to stay home from work to care for their sick children. Sick leave is not a reality here for most people. If you don't show up you do not get paid. Patty says the vaccine and flu shots will go to the wealthy and well connected first and anything left over will be distributed to those not as fortunate. Harry took our good camera to England so the quality of the photo I took at the meeting today is poor.

School Closes Again

The flu has hit Cabo this time around. In May there were no cases of flu here but there are many cases now. I walk by the hospital on my way to work every day and I noticed earlier this week people were streaming out of the hospital wearing masks with their arms bent the way you do after having blood drawn. My team mate Patty's grandson was hospitalized briefly last weekend, a blood sample was sent to the mainland and it was confirmed he had the H1N1 virus. The locals say several people have died from flu, including children. Wednesday this week is Mexican Independence Day so we have a holiday, but the powers that be decided to cancel school on Monday and Tuesday as well.

Harry arrived in England on Thursday after spending an overnight in NYC with Alexis and Curtis. They went out for Mexican food. Alexis is working two jobs, by night managing and waitressing at Baby Bo's in midtown and working at the Welfare Rights Initiative Project at Hunter college by day. Curtis continues his job with the 311 help line in NYC and he is going to start school this spring at La Guardia Community College. He is taking a trip to his Trinidad homeland next week. He has not been home in many years and is super excited. Lex has taken a pass on Monolo Blonics as her graduation present and is hoping to plan a little trip to Europe this spring before she starts grad school next fall. (Monolos are not good on cobblestones)

Harry says Olga is falling a lot of late. She went over backwards on their first evening together and Harry could not pull her up. She has put on a lot of weight since we saw her last and they had to wait until the carers arrived to get her up. She wears a call for help alarm pendant around her neck so when this happens she can press it and the para-medics come and get her back on her feet. She has caretakers who come three times a day. She refuses to leave her home for a more secure and safe setting. Harry has plans to walk up in the moors where the heather will be in full bloom and to golf with his old school chum Harold. Our friends David and Eileen had him for lunch yesterday in their newly refurbished cottage in Edmund Byers where we have stayed the past three years we have visited. It looks very likely that David and Eileen going to come to Mexico to visit us this winter here in Cabo.

Patty and I decided yesterday we want Harry, the lover of all things Dickens, to come in and teach Great Expectations, the senior novel, for us this semester. (He agreed to do so when I proposed it to him on the phone last night.) I thought he could be a bit of an actor using a thick English regional dialect of some sort so the kids could get used to a hearing a different English accent. He could come in as the retired college professor, unlit pipe and all, teaching a couple days a week. It would free Patty and I up a bit and lessen our heavy class load in terms of planning and student contact hours. It will undoubtedly be a volunteer job as there is not a lot of extra money floating around at Libertad or anywhere else in Cabo for that matter. People here were so hoping this next high season would be better this coming year but now, with a new flu outbreak, who knows what will happen.

I will be home, probably for a week, until this scare passes, or longer if things get worse. There is not a lot of vaccine down here (if any) and I don't think flu shots are readily available either. I'll be washing my hands a lot. My friends Mary Ellen and Doreen and I are driving into Cabo today to go to Costco. When Harry and I went to Costco in Cabo last May all the workers were wearing masks and they greeted us at the door with one of those sanitary wipes. I wonder what things are going to be like now that there really are cases of flu here.

A room of her own

After a week of teaching in other teachers' classrooms, I got my own classroom. It did not come easily of course, because this is Mexico where people are well schooled in hardship. We went back to school on Thursday after the hurricane (Hurricane Fizzle I have renamed her) and my classroom was supposed to be ready. By ready, I mean cleaned up a bit, with tables and chairs. Our English director had told Patty and me for two weeks the rooms would be ready but nothing had happened. I began to suspect there was a bit of bad politics between the Spanish and English departments that was the source of this delay. When I arrived on Thursday and the rooms were not ready and we began scrambling to organize a different space, I decided to apply what I have learned about Mexico: actions will speak louder than words. (That was my Mom's favorite saying in life.) I walked out saying only to call me when the room was ready. Patty, who cannot afford to step out of line, told me she supported me totally. I walked home thinking that at least I have a pension, but then my cell phone rang just as I reached my back door. It was Rosie, the English coordinator, and she said the room was ready. I walked back to school and the classroom was at last set up. As you can see from the photo this is not a high-tech fancy classroom, so not much was involved in the set-up. In fact nothing is high-tech or fancy at Libertad. Yesterday once again the teachers toilet was broken and the kids' bathroom had no toilet paper for most of the day.

The highlight of all this is the kids. They are wonderful and not just because they all do their homework. (Patty says they are good for me because I do not speak Spanish to them.) I had the students write essays about their plans and dreams for the future and I was blown away when I read them. Many students wrote about their dream to have a good career which would help those less fortunate. I guess compared to the public schools this place is paradise but the poverty at Libertad is still very hard to accept. I keep thinking that these bright, hardworking, polite, respectful students should be in a school like Mission.

My schedule was changed so it is not going to be as light as I thought. I think the school thinks that Patty and I can do a good job at this teaching English thing, so the 7-12 students who usually have 5 hours of English a week are now going to have 7. We are going to try to support each other so that we can have a few more breaks in our day. (Either that or we die, being the old ladies that we are.) Our classrooms are next to each other with a sliding door separating us. We work well together although I know my teaching methods seem new and different and probably a little crazy to her. Of course many of my teacher friends in the states would testify that my teaching methods were crazy at times: fun maybe, but crazy. I have done most of the planning for the two of us so far and she seems to be very willing to change some of her methods. I am basically creating all our curriculum because there is very little to be had. Of course nowadays there is an endless supply of curriculum on the Internet and the school lets us make as many copies of things as we wish. My experience teaching immigrant adults English in St. Louis Park is helping me now and just understanding the culture better helps as well. Harry says my walking out was a shot across the bow: it didn't hurt anyone but they know now that I do have a bottom line! I can go without toilet paper (although that's a bummer too!) but not without a classroom.

SUNSHINE RETURNS TO CABO

It's over and it never started...

The hurricane, Jimena, blew by us this afternoon without a big huff or puff. She tracked up the coast of the Baja about 200 miles from the coast, predicted to make landfall at Magdelena Bay and across the peninsula to Loreto tomorrow or Thursday. We had a good rain today, but it lasted only a short time. The winds were stronger than normal but nothing dangerous. I assume that school is back on tomorrow. At least things will look a little greener. The negative in all this I learned on Comcast.net's web page: the sewer system in San Jose, our town, backed up and flooded because of the rain...yes, my question exactly, what would have happened if the hurricane had hit here? I did notice a very bad smell earlier today. The city is currently building a huge bridge to nowhere (we call it Palin Bridge!) on the edge of town. We, of course, wonder why this is a priority and a sewage system is not. Just received a text message that school is cancelled again tomorrow for clean up. Gotta love these hurricanes!