Saturday, July 26

I realized in my last entry that I had miscalculated my time here; I have a little more than three weeks rather than a little less. It still feels like not enough. I don’t mind going back to MN and am looking forward to seeing my friends there and taking on a new teaching challenge; however, it’s hard to imagine not being here.

The classes I teach continue to go well after my bump earlier in the week. I am learning to let go and enjoy the way the teachers interact with me and with each other in the classes. There is often a lot of laughing in the classes. Last week, with Rafa’s help, I moved two teachers from the basic to the intermediate class, three from intermediate to advanced, and two from advanced to intermediate based on results of a test I gave them and on what I had observed. The changes seem to have worked well, and Selvin says he has heard positive comments from the teachers involved. All three classes are coming together nicely.

Rafa and I spent our four hours Friday comparing the school here with what I have experienced in my teaching in the States. True to form, he set up a chart on the board so he could categorize and analyze the information. We had a little scuffle when we were talking about how often the teachers have meetings here and in the US and I mentioned the importance of both time together and food. His response was, “Well, of course we have food at our meetings; that’s nothing special.” I pointed out that it was nothing special because he knew nothing else and that for me it is very special to be fed at the meetings; for me it brings an additional element of camaraderie and a sense of being nurtured.

Since my culture bump several weeks ago, I have been enjoying Guatemala with new eyes, often with my best friend here, Maria. She is 28 and from Ukraine but now lives and studies in Denmark. We have become very close and share very deeply about our lives. We also have a wonderful time teasing each other and laughing about silly things. She will be leaving in a week and it hard to imagine how life here will be without her. She has promised to give me salsa lessons before she goes.

We usually go out to eat once a day and are still intrigued by the presence of dogs, cats, drugs, and vendors in the restaurants. We had gotten used to the women selling “Pan de banana, pan de chocolate” in the garden restaurants, but it surprised us the first time they came to the second floor of the restaurant we were in. I am pretty used to bathrooms with no toilet seats. Toilet paper is optional, and if there is a sink, it is outside the bathroom, and there is cold water, no soap, and rarely a towel. Hot water is nonexistent in my life except in my shower (usually), and yesterday as I was taking a shower, I heard a loud pop and realized that the wiring for the hot water above my head was on fire.

I remember teaching my first class here and having one of the teachers announce that he had to go to the bathroom. I was a little shocked and suggested that I did not need the information. Since then, I have grown accustomed. The bathrooms at the school are in a shed directly behind the break area, so it’s impossible to use them during the break without everyone seeing, so why not talk about it openly? People are also very open about discussing their digestive problems in gerat detaail.

I have developed a new relationship to noise. My housemate, Cynthia, and I live next door to a bar, and there is constant noise from there and from the alley next to our house and the street in front: people calling, children playing, motorcycles, trucks, cars, and horses going by, and firecrackers going off at all hours. Now I can sleep through almost anything. Cynthia had some bamboo put up to make the fence around the yard higher and shield us from the restaurant next door. It is butt ugly, and we have had some good laughs when we talked about simply considering it very quirky art rather than being bothered by it.

It takes me about five minutes to walk to school. I start down the road in front of my house, where cars and tuc-tucs are allowed, and pass three restaurants. I take a left in to a smaller road, where only motorcycles and bikes are allowed and go a short distance past a house where a man sells used English books (I don’t have the time or interest to look.), another man does massage and sells European pastries, and someone else runs a small store (tienda) in the front of their house. Then I turn right and go past another store, four or five restaurants, a bar or two, a small hotel, a field of corn as I approach the school. There is always ongoing construction. Past the school are several more restaurants and bars, two places to get laundry done, an internet café and a place which offers balloon workshops (I haven’t stopped to ask.), this all within three short blocks. I have no need to go into the center of town, although I do go down to the el embarcadero (the dock) several times a week, where I usually run into someone I know. I find it intriguing that my physical world is so small and my relational and mental worlds so infinite.
I spend a lot of time at school. I start my days there giving Selvin a private class at 7:00. He is always so busy running the office that he can’t come to the scheduled classes, but he has made a commitment to working with me. I then meet at 7:30 with Javier, who prefers to work alone rather than in a group. He is one of my closest friends at the school, and our conversations range from grammar to philosophy to our life experiences, He is extremely well read, and we are attempting to translate Nietzsche from Spanish to English. I work with Rafa from 8:00 to12:00 , generally in Spanish until the break at 10:00 and in English when we return, and then come back home for lunch before I go back later in the afternnoon to meet with teachers who want private classes; there is usually someone. If not, I can always find someone to have an interesting conversation with, most often about grammar or language teaching. Most afternoons at 5:00 I meet with Lucas for an hour before going on to the teachers’ meeting Monday, my classes Tuesday through Thursday and Rafa’s grammar class on Friday. My school day generally ends at 8:00. On weekends I am usually at the school as well. Yesterday I met with Javier at 8:00 for an English class but ended up talking with him and Selvin for a couple of hours. I then gace a private class to Elena, who had missed her class during the week, and another class to Manuela, Javier, and Selvin at 5:00.

It is still remarkable to me how well trained and knowledgeable the teachers, especially considering that some of them are as young as 18 or 19 and many if not most have never attended college. Impromptu classes are held frequently when a teacher asks for some clarification about a point of teaching, and when I go into the office, there is usually a discussion going on about some aspect of language teaching. I found out the other day that if a teacher works fulltime and is at the top of the pay scale, he or she makes 600Q a week, or about $85. This entails working from 8:00 to 12:00 or from 9:00 to 1:00 with one student and then from 1:00 to 5:00 or 2:00 to 6:00 with another; the classes are one-on-one. Then teachers have a meeting at 7:30 Monday morning to discuss the week, a longer meeting at 6:00 to talk about the school, and generally at least one class or training later in the week for two hours. Right now the priority is English classes, but the newer teachers have grammar class on Friday evening from 6:00 to 7:30. They are not paid for any of the meetings or classes, although I hear from many teachers that they consider this time a good investment in their professional development. Teachers only get paid for the time they work, so if the school is not full as is the case now, some teachers are only getting paid for four hours a day.

There is also a tremendous openness among the teachers. One of them has spoken to me several times about his problems with alcohol. I asked him the other day if the other teachers knew about his addiction. His response was, “Of course, and everyone in San Pedro knows too.” It strikes me that because of the openness of the physical environment at school, the fact that being at the school is such a large part of the teacher’s lives, and that San Pedro is a relatively small town, teachers really have no secrets. I have heard quite a few personal stories from them, and talking about our lives and our feelings at work is a common pastime. If I am feeling down or have a question or concern about one of my students or about my teaching, I can always find someone to talk with. This is in addition to the hours and hours Rafa and I talk in my class. We generally study Spanish – and gradually more and more English- within the context of conversations about teaching but always bringing rigor to our teaching.