I have officially started work at the American School and the past two days have been great. It is a bilingual school so the students take classes in both english and spanish which means that about half of the staff is American or Canadian and half is Mexican. Most of the staff is returning (which is pretty rare) ad there are only three new english teachers at the school (including me) and the two others are fairly proficient in spanish so basically everyone speaks spanish except for me. Usually during meetings with all the teachers they would say everything in spanish and then translate to english but because there are so many teachers who speak spanish they kind of assumed they didn't need to translate which left me feeling like my brain had to move in fast forward to even catch half of what they were saying. Luckily I had katy to whisper (mostly accurate although sometime inappropriate) translations in my ear. While it does feel a little overwhelming I am glad I am getting so much spanish immersion right at the beginning so hopefully that will help me pick it up faster. All of the teachers and staff are super friendly and the school itself is lovely so it is definitely feeling like it will be a great work environment. My classroom is a little bare at the moment but I am hoping to be inspired by my blank walls soon and let the creativity flow!
After school yesterday Katy and our friends, Dave and Amy and I participated in a lovely workout session led by a P90X DVD (I guess it is some big new workout trend). Anyways due to the extreme heat and number of people we had we decided to do it up on there roof which was very enjoyable, not only for us but also for the Mexicans who got to watch the crazy gringos doing strength training moves like "the wacky jack" or "the heisman", you can imagine the spectacle. We had a lovely workout and madre nature was definitely on our side when it started raining right as we sweated in to the cool down session.
Speaking of rain the weather here has definitely been quite hot but I am getting more used to it by the day. It is not too bad when you are inside cause cause you are shaded and there are usually fans blowing but I definitely notice it the most walking home from school. It is also at that time that my mind is boggled by the many Mexicans walking around in jeans and long sleeved shirts, I mean really? It is 95 degrees out and you are wearing a turtleneck? something isn't right with this picture.
Anywho after our workout we decided to go out for Chinese at a chinese restaurant down the street called Hong Kong (very creative name). I was curious to see what Mexican Chinese would be like but overall it was pretty similar to American Chinese. I will leave you with a bit of wisdom from my spanish chinese fortune cookie...
"El quien sabe que tiene sufieciente; ya es rico"
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