“A different language is a different vision of life”

When I first arrived in Mexico, I began to realize how much I DIDN’T know about the country, the culture, and its history.  It’s actually embarrassing not having much knowledge about the culture of a bordering country.  A few weeks have passed and I have been picking up more Spanish and cultural facts just by observing and interacting with my surroundings.

Adding to my previous list, here are ten more cultural differences I’ve noticed:

 

1)      Tortillas are eaten with every meal.  Yes, they are eaten with everything, even with Spring Rolls.  When I’m back in the US, tortilla withdrawals are likely to occur.

2)      Using an invented measurement of “Americans,” sidewalks in Mexico are approximately one American wide. This makes it difficult sometimes to walk past people without running into them or stepping in the street and getting run over by a car. But don’t worry, there’s a form of “excuse me” in Spanish that is used when trying to pass someone: con permiso.

3)      Students always ask to come into the classroom and to leave the classroom. For example, if a student is a couple minutes late, they will ask “Teacher, may I come in?”

4)      For the last month I haven’t worn a seatbelt, considering seatbelts in backseats tend to not exist. I’ve also gotten used to crossing busy streets and weaving through traffic on crowded streets.

5)      Unlike in France where you kiss people on both cheeks as a greeting, in Mexico you greet people with a kiss on only one cheek.

6)      Coke is extremely popular and is offered at every lunch.

7)      Sundays are family day. Family would always be over at the house on Sunday, even though being with family is valued every day in Mexico.  It’s an important part of their culture, and I was lucky enough to experience that with my host family.  I even got to hold my host mom’s one-day-old great grandson.

8)      Toilet paper is usually found outside bathroom stalls in public places.  But often it’s BYOTP (bring your own toilet paper).

9)      It’s cheaper to pee in Mexico than it is in France.

10)   Students are often late to class, as time is not as strict as it is in the US.  It’s a slower moving culture and people aren’t always rushing places.  There is even a verb in Spanish for wandering aimlessly or sauntering lazily: Pajarear

My host mom

             As my trip to Mexico comes to an end, I just want to thank all of you who made my experience in Mexico what it was.  First of all, thanks to my parents for giving me this opportunity.  Thanks to my host mom Yolanda for being patient with my Spanish, encouraging me, teaching me Spanish, and always making me feel at home. Thanks to all my TESL friends for all the laughs and good times. Thanks to my housemate for putting up with me 24/7 and for always letting me run through my lessons with you. Thanks to my mentoring teacher at the UAQ for all the advice and for letting me be a part of your classroom. Thanks to all my students for being such a supportive group and for letting me teach you.  Thanks to my Spanish/culture teacher for all you taught me, for making class fun, and mainly for putting up with me in class! =P  I cried at the end of my trip because of all of you. But I think back to what one of my professors in France once told me: “I love when students cry at the end of their stay because it means they were happy to be here.”   I was sad to leave Mexico, but I am grateful for those tears because they meant that for the past month I was happy and had yet again another unforgettable experience.  

The TESL group



My housemate

 

My Spanish/Culture professor

Learning about the world is achieved best by living in different cultures and learning their language.  Because one can only truly understand the values and viewpoints of a culture by speaking their native tongue.  I can’t wait for my next opportunity to see the world and wonders of life through a foreign language.  Stay tuned.

 

"Hi, teacher!"

             I know most of my posts have been about the different places I’ve visited in Mexico and things I’ve done, but let’s not forget that the reason I’m here is for school and teaching.  I thought dedicating a post to my teaching experiences would only be appropriate. 

             Before doing my teaching practicum, I was pretty nervous about having a large class to myself and teaching full lessons while being observed.  However, as I spent more time with my students, I began to feel more comfortable in the classroom, as I got to know them better and figure out their interests and English level.  It wasn’t until the second week that I felt like I had found my place in the classroom. 

I especially began to feel like a teacher when I would run into students outside of class and they would say, “Hi, teacher!”  I’m not going to lie, it took a while to get used to being called “teacher” when most of my students are my age.  There's something about being called "teacher" outside the classroom that felt new to me.  Soon, when students would say “teacher” in class, there was confusion as to which teacher they were talking to: me or their full-time teacher.  Students even started asking ME for permission to go to the restroom, and permission to enter the room, instead of their original teacher. 

My Practicum University: Universidad Autonoma de Queretaro

I was lucky to have the opportunity to teach such wonderful advanced-English students, who were so supportive for each of my lessons.  Before my second lesson they even started chanting my name.  I had two one-hour observed lessons, both of which went really well.  Before and after my lessons, some of my students would ask me how I felt, or say something that always encouraged me. It’s the small things and the relationships built with students that make preparing lessons worth all the effort.  If I learned one thing from this experience, it’s that I’ve gained a greater love for teaching international students.  Seeing a student finally grasp a concept or seeing them having fun learning English is… priceless.

Me with my mentoring teacher and one of my classes

I’ve always joked with my friends that I’ll go to school for life because I love learning so much.  But now I think I’ve found a way to do that realistically: teaching.  The last four weeks I learned a lot from just having to teach my students.  Teaching advanced grammar, sometimes I would have to teach myself the concept first, before explaining it to the class. For example, inversion of negative and limiting adverbials, or hedging.  Other times, I would learn new vocabulary words, such as “rashers of bacon” or “slog.”  I think I’ve gained a greater appreciation for my own language as well.  You don’t realize exactly how complex your native language is until you are forced to explain it to someone.  My students would make me think about my language in ways I have never thought about it before. Let me ask you, what’s the difference between a tree’s shadow and a tree’s shade?  I know, I had never thought about that subtle difference before either.

Working with international students, I not only get to learn more about my own language, but I get to learn more about the languages and cultures of my students as well.  What’s better than learning while simultaneously helping others learn?

             At the end of all of this, I can finally say that I’m a French and Linguistics graduate from Western with a certificate to teach English to speakers of other languages!

TESL certified!

Western Washington University graduates!

 

Miscellaneous Adventures

This blog entry consists of a few short summaries of some more of my adventures in Mexico.

Pyramids:

Temple of the Plumed Serpent

For one of our weekend excursions, we went to Teotihuacan to see the pyramids.  We first visited the Temple of the Plumed Serpent, which was built between 150 and 200 AD.  This temple was also known as the Temple of Quetzalcoatl and was thought to be dedicated to the concept of time, as Quetzalcoatl was considered the originator of human activities on Earth, creating the land and calendar divisions.  Between 150 and 250 AD, human burials were found below the temple. It is believed that they were sacrificed as an offering to their God.  We know they were buried alive because they were found in a kneeling position with their hands tied behind their back (as pictured).  During this time, death was not considered an end to one’s life, but rather a door to another life.

Human sacrifices (pictured as originally found)

 

 

After visiting the museum that contained artifacts found in the area, we went to a buffet lunch.  It was of course after our huge lunch that we climbed the largest pyramid in Teotihuacan and the third largest in the world: the Pyramid of the Sun.  The name of this pyramid was given by the Aztecs centuries after the city was abandoned.  The original name that was giving by the Teotihuacanos is unknown.

Pyramid of the Sun

View from the top

After, we visited the Pyramid of the Moon, which is the second largest pyramid in Teotihuacan and was completed between 200 and 450 AD.

Pyramid of the Moon

 

French in Mexico:

                One Friday, the Language Coordinator at my Practicum University invited us and our mentoring teachers to go out for a night of Karaoke.  Being French, she invited a few of her French friends, along with another mentoring teacher who was also French.  It was a fun experience, doing karaoke in Mexico with French, Mexican, and American friends.  Four other friends and I ended up singing Britney Spears' song “Oops… I did it again” before the end of the night.

 This same French woman that invited us to karaoke also gave a French class twice a week in a French café. It was a basic beginner French class, but of course I couldn’t ignore an opportunity to speak French.  It was a cool experience because I got to meet four other Mexicans around my age and got to feel what it was like to constantly switch between hearing/speaking French, Spanish, and English.  I was paired with one of the Mexican students during activities, not to complete the worksheet with him, but to help him when needed.  Each time he had a question, he would ask me in Spanish and I would try to respond in Spanish, yet we were talking about the French language. Bizarre. Someday I hope to be able to switch between all three languages naturally.

Orphanage Visit:

                One day we brought food to an orphanage and stayed there for a few hours in the evening to play with the children. This was probably one of my favorite experiences in Mexico.  There were about 8 girls between the ages of 9 and 12.   We first kicked a soccer ball around in their courtyard for a while.  I had noticed one of the girls left the group playing soccer and went to shoot hoops by herself in the corner, so I decided to go join her. After playing basketball for a while and cheering every time one of us made a basket, she ran inside and brought out hula hoops.  Her and her friend showed me all of their hula hooping tricks, and I can honestly say I have never seen two 9 year olds hula hoop that well.  When they handed me one to see if I could do the same, they were surprised to see that I could keep it around me for some time.  They even had to get the attention of some of the others to say, “Look! She can do it too!”  It was like I was now part of their hula hooping club or something.

                Afterwards we went inside to draw, but after one of the girls got bored of coloring, she dragged me outside to teach me how to play a handheld game that involved numbers and colors.  (Luckily I knew my numbers and colors in Spanish).  After that, she took me to go jump on the trampoline, and before I knew it, I was jumping with three other 9 year olds.  At one point, one of them looked at me and said, “You have beautiful eyes. They’re blue!”  She was adorable.  When it came time for us to leave, my heart melted as they looked at me and said, “No, don’t leave! Are you coming back? When are you coming back?”  It was hard to answer, not knowing if or when I’d be able to go back.  As I kissed them all goodbye, one of them said to me, “I love you.”  It might not have been a normal Friday night, but it was definitely one on the best spent nights and one I won’t forget. 

San Miguel De Allende:

                During my last five days in Mexico, I didn’t have any more class or homework, so I was able to enjoy each day without worrying about school.  On top of that, my friend from Slovakia, who I hadn’t seen in over a year, came to visit me. It was a perfect way to spend my last days in Mexico.  On Saturday, three of my friends and I took a bus to another city 2 hours away, called San Miguel de Allende.  When we arrived at the bus station in San Miguel, we waited for a taxi to drive by so we could take it to the center of town.  I saw a green taxi truck drive into the lot, and since it was so different than the other taxis, we all decided that that was the one we wanted to ride in.  But on top of that, we didn’t just want to ride in the truck, we wanted to ride in the back of it. Because, why not?  We asked the driver if that was okay, and he just gave us a weird look and responded, “yeah, if you want. But it’s more comfortable up here.”   So he rode into town with four Americans in his truck bed and no one in his front or back seats.

Taxi ride

 During our day in San Miguel we....

         ...walked around town...

 

      ...visited the churches...

 

     ...shopped at the markets...

     ...saw donkeys walk through the street...

 

      ...ate pizza on a rooftop...

 

     ...got lost trying to find a park...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       ...found the park, got cat-called by a clown, and ended our day eating churros.

Independence Day Celebrations:

                On the night of the 15^th, they celebrate their Independence Day.  We all went to the center of town to be part of the celebrations. There was music, firework shows, and ‘el grito’ in the main plaza.  El grito is the cry of Independence which the President delivers in Mexico City, but is displayed on screens everywhere.  The crowd joins in the shouting of the names of their Independence heroes, and ends with shouts of “Viva Mexico!”  Following el grito was a huge fireworks show.

 

Soccer, Wine, Shopping, and a Monolith

                Before I post more about my teaching experience and what I’ve learned about Mexican culture, I thought I would first write about a few should-have-been-on-my-bucket list-items that I’ve now checked off.  After this weekend, there are many new things I can now say I have done.

                To start, Friday night I went to my first professional soccer game with a few friends from my TESL group.  After going into the stadium with a general admission ticket and figuring out we were on the side with the wrong fans, we exited in order to re-enter on the other side.  However, we thought it would be nice to sit higher up in the stadium, so we tried going in the entrance that lead to the upper seats.  Apparently with our tickets, it wasn’t possible, but the guy snuck us in anyways.  Querétaro ended up losing 0-1, half the stadium lights went out for 30 minutes, and I got attacked by a giant moth the size of a my face. But despite that, I had a fun time and even caught on to some of the chants and grabbed a t-shirt that was shot into the crowd.

 

              I can now also say that I climbed one of the tallest monoliths in the world.  What is a monolith you ask? It’s a giant rock.  Like this one that I went to in Bernal:

              Not only can I say I climbed this huge rock, but I can say that I climbed it in sandals.  If only I had known before the excursion that we were going to climb the rock and not just take pictures of it, I might have come prepared with tennis shoes. Oh well, I like challenges.  Let me give you some examples of what the climb was like:

 

Now imagine climbing that with sandals that have no grip. Let’s just say that there was a lot of climbing with hands on the way up, and a lot of sliding on the way down. Not to mention a lot of sweating from the heat (not so many trees that provide shade while hiking up a rock).  But in the end, the view was worth the climb!

At the top!




At the bottom there are several stands that sell many different types of rocks that are from the area. My Mom will be surprised to hear I’m not coming home with a bag of rocks like I would from the beach when I was younger.  Still fascinated by rocks, however, so I was in heaven!

 

Gorditas

Afterwards, we all went to a restaurant to order Gorditas, which are very famous in this area. Delicioso! In Spanish, “gordita” means “little fat one,” and it’s kind of like a thick tortilla made of masa and stuffed with various fillings.  Mine was filled with chorizo and potatoes.  I had also ordered a bottle of orange soda, and after about the tenth sip I realized it had a big black thing floating in it.  Passing it around the table, my friends were trying to guess what it could possibly be, but I came to the conclusion that I didn’t even want to know. Following lunch, we spent some time walking around the town and shopping.

Streets of Bernal



Bernal

Later that day we went to a Freixenet winery, which involved a tour of the wine caves and a degustation! Now I can say I’ve been on a wine tour in three different languages! After that stop, we went to Tequisquiapan, which is a town mostly populated by indigenous people.  There were lots of markets, so we shopped for a couple hours until we took the bus back home.  It was a tiring but fun-filled weekend of firsts!

A church in Tequisquiapan

 

 

"Shame on you"

                It has now been a week since I’ve been in Mexico, and I think I have finally gotten over the culture shock stage.  Or at least that’s what I told myself, until the other day when I ran into a cockroach.  I’m seeing them more often now, but still not over it. Though I am getting used to eating lunch at four.

                Wednesday I started my practicum at UAQ, which is a University about a 40 minute walk from where I live.  I’m teaching at the Engineering College, to two different classes of 20 students.  The first day I just observed the class, and the next couple days I either taught a few mini lessons or helped out with classroom activities.  My mentoring teacher, who is the normal teacher for these classes, is not a native speaker of English.  In fact, believe it or not, he’s a Frenchman.  So, of course, the first time we met, I couldn’t help but speak French.  Who knew I’d get to practice my French in Mexico?  So far he’s been a nice mentoring teacher, and I think we’ll work well together and I’ll learn a lot from him.

To give you an idea of what I observe and his humorous teaching style, at least 20 times each class he will use his favorite phrase, which he has taught me to use with the students as well: “Shame on you.”   If a student forgets their book, makes a stupid mistake, is late to class, etc. he will pull out this phrase without fail each time, making the whole class laugh as he says, “shame on you!”   He will also make students do push-ups in front of the classroom for every word of Spanish they speak (it’s an “English only” class), or for every minute they’re late (10 minutes late is on-time for Mexican culture, but not for the English teacher!)  Wednesday I will be teaching my own lesson for an hour, which will be observed and graded by my professor. Exciting and terrifying at the same time!

La Creperia

Last night one of my housemates and I ventured into town and ate at La Creperia, and ordered crepes. (What? Did you think I wouldn’t find the French places around town?)  Nothing like sitting in a French café, in Mexico, with Britney Spears and other American music playing in the background. 

On the list of other random things I’ve done in Mexico so far is: Learned how to Salsa dance, helped a friend bid on a bottle of Tequila with fake pesos, and met an old Mexican man at a theatre who might have been a famous actor (he met the Mexican President and was once on Broadway).

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, two other students and I have a Mexican Pal who we hang out with for a few hours every week.  It’s a really good way to get in Spanish conversation that isn’t in a classroom.  He takes us to visit a lot of places around town, like the churches (there are so many of them!):

Templo y Convento de la Santa Cruz

My Spanish classroom

Speaking of Spanish, my language class has been going pretty well and I already feel like I’ve improved my Spanish a lot! It’s amazing how quickly you learn and pick things up being immersed in the language.  I’ve only had a few problems in class where my French slips out, but luckily my teacher and classmates understand, so we just laugh.  I’ve noticed it mostly happens with numbers, where I say a French number in a Spanish sentence, and don’t realize it until my teacher gives me a weird look. “Shame on me.”

 

"It's a disgrace, a crunchy taco!"

After a 2 hour flight to LA, a 2 hour layover, another 4 hour flight to Mexico City, then a 3 hour bus ride to Queretaro, then a taxi ride, I finally arrived at my homestay Saturday afternoon.  For those of you reading this that have no idea why I’m in Mexico at the moment, let me explain.  I’ll be here for four weeks teaching English at a public university to a group of university students who are in an advanced English class. For two hours every day, I will be working them.  I will be in a two hour intensive conversation Spanish class as well almost every day with just one other student.  I will also be taking a Mexican culture class, along with my Seminar and Practicum class for my TESL minor.  A couple times a week for two hours, I will be with my Mexican pal who will take me around town, or on small trips.  Just another great way to practice my Spanish! 

That leads me to the next thing you’re probably wondering: “How good is your Spanish?” Well, I think I can finally respond to that question properly.  I can understand most of what people are saying to me. But even if my host mom thinks I don’t understand, she won’t hesitate to start acting it out. It always gives us a good laugh.  As for my speaking skills, well…that’s another story.  It will all come with practice though.

I live with Yolanda, who is in her 70s, her daughter, and her granddaughter, a lady named Patti, and four other American students.  It’s a pretty large house, which isn’t expected by just looking at it from the front.  Queretaro is the second safest city in Mexico, and the cleanest.  It’s quite charming, and the people here are really nice.  Below are a few pictures of the town:

My homestay house

 

Even though I have barely been here for three days, there is already so much I have learned.  There are many cultural differences I’ve picked up on and a few other things I have noticed from being here.  Here are ten things I have figured out so far:

1.       Regarding meals, you eat a light breakfast before school.  For la comida (lunch), you eat a large meal between 2pm and 4pm.  This is their main meal, so it consists of quite a lot of food. Dinner is between 8-9pm, and is very light.  For the last few dinners I’ve eaten a bowl of cereal around 10pm.  Apparently this is common to do before bed since milk helps you sleep.

2.       Comida usually begins with a bowl of soup, and the main dish is always served with rice.

3.       Don’t make eye contact with people in town.  You only make eye contact with people if you need something from them.  When a female makes eye contact, it’s like an invitation.

4.       Never tip anyone, not even a taxi driver. The only exception is a waiter, who you tip 10%.

5.       There are not a lot of white tourists in this town, mostly just Mexican tourists.  And apparently because I have blue eyes, I’m sure to get whistled at a lot. (That explains why a guy asked if he could take a picture with me.)

6.       You have to be careful when crossing the streets because cars won’t stop for pedestrians.

7.       Rules here are just suggestions. Traffic lights are just suggestions. Seat belts are just suggestions… if there are any.

8.       You can buy a bag of crickets and eat them like chips. People also eat worms, ants, and caterpillars as well; though caterpillars are pretty expensive.

9.       When it rains here, it pours. Us Seattleites thought we knew what rain was, but compared to here, Seattle rain is like a mist.  Standing in a rainstorm for ten seconds will have you looking like you just got out of a pool. (I can now say I swept water out of a restaurant that was beginning to flood, and ran home in the flooded streets during a downpour and thunder and lightning storm).

10.   Tacos are always very small, and hard-shell tacos don’t exist here. According to my Spanish teacher, “It’s a disgrace, a crunchy taco.”   

Can’t wait to learn more about the Mexican culture!