Alicia's year in Torreon, Mexico

The End

2010-09-16T20:24:00.000-05:00

* I am so greatful for the wonderful adventure that living in Mexico was. Teaching in another country had it's struggles, but the blessings were just as great. I loved the chance to travel and get to know another country. I am grateful for the time we had to make new friends both American and Mexican. And even how my Spanish improved through talking with parents, friends, and random people all over the place! I am so thankful for the parents and the students that I met at Colegio Ingles.

* Miss Perla and Miss Rosy were wonderful guides throughout the school year and full of huge hearts that were willing to help! They saved my backs many times and were so gracious to work with me through projects and through changing their schedule around.

* I am so grateful for all the packages my mom sent with items for the prize box and activities to entertain the kids! Plus all the yummy goodies for us. And for everyone else who sent me things Tammy, Andrea, and Sarah. And all the sweet cards that filled my bulletin board by the end of the year!

* I will remember the many trips to OXXO and Soriana for things we needed like soda and chocolate and Fifa World Cup cards!

* The countless nights we stayed up late playing rumikub, endless hours of phase 10, some spoons and of course disney scene it. And of course the movie marathons.

* The AWESOME V.I.P. movie theater where we sat in lazy-boys and could order any food or drink under the sun. We saw lots of cool movies too.

And too many more memories to count! Thanks for an awesome year Torreon :-)

Kindergarten Graduation, the year is already finished, I Cannot believe it!

2010-06-28T12:52:00.005-05:00

It was really cute for graduation they called the students names one by one and they had to come shake my hand and then move on to the stage and show their certificate to everyone. They were so nervous but excited. It was fun to see them too because everyone was there and after 2 days away from them it was nice to see their happy faces again.

Here they are on stage. Smiling and confused, embarrassed and nervous but so ready to be everywhere at the same time.

The kids got to sing the school hymn and did a good job of listening to each other and sitting in their chairs without playing too much or singing too loud.

The kids did a goodbye graduation dance. It was so cute. They danced to the Shakira song for the World Cup. It's a song that the kids love and the adults hate here because they think Shakira is a trader. The kids loved being able to sing and dance. It was a lot of work and they spent about 5 hours a week practicing it during school hours. The boys got a little more into the dance then the girls and that was pretty cute.

Miss Charo Villareal gave the kindergartners a big speach about how going to first grade was going to be different, but how they were going to be ready. That they just needed to remember responsibility, to try their best and to do things with a smile on their face.

Kinder World in the Spring

2010-06-25T12:35:00.003-05:00

Miss Perla hanging out with some kids during the Mexico game. A difference between living in the States and living in Mexico. It doesn't matter if you have things to do or not do which is unfortunate. They put all 240 kids in one room and tried to make 2 and 3 year olds sit in a small place. Watch on a blurry tv where you can hardly see antyhing.
However it was fun to see the kids pride and their excitement as everyone came dressed in green, with their faces painted and with an excess amount of noise blowers!

Viva Mexico! Viva Mexico. Viva Mexico!

These are the other teachers in the Kindergarten who I saw on a regular basis. The school system is broken into maternal, 1st kinder (2 sections), 2nd kinder (2 sections), and Preprimaria (2 sections).

Pato and Andres representing Mexico. :-) It has amazed me how much pride everyone seems to find in their country, their flags, and the other things that they get excited about.

Alex and Montse playing in the classroom. Kind of silly but during the last 3 weeks of school I got new toys in my classroom and was able to let the kids try new things as well.

Random Friend shots :-)

2010-06-22T12:03:00.002-05:00

Em and Eda smiling for a picture in our kitchen. They are so sweet. And I have loved having them as roommates! I am going to have to see them in Minneapolis sometime soon.

Luz and I smiling for a picture after a fun day around Torreon

and stopping to get Raspas, basically shaved ice with fun flavors except they're not just like strawberry, raspberry fruity ones like we have, they have all kinds of things inside them! You can get ice based ones, milk based ones, things with cookies inside them, ect.

This picture is from last weekend when we did our Spainish tapas and different dishes. It is fun to see all the different things people know how to make on their own.

It was only difficult becuase the house it was at lost electricty and it was really hot inside and we werent able to warm things up.

People: Emily, Katie, MariRosy, Jennifer

This was taken after a hard day at work. Everyone was sleepy the month of June. It was lots of work and never ending meetings and responsibilities.

Natalie and Em passed out on the couches.

This is my freind Cecy and Lesley. We met Cecy because she played soccer on Katie's soccer team and she was awesome. She made almost all their goals. Now though she has moved to Saint Louis to be a nanny again. This is her third year doing it. I am hoping to make it down to the arch and see her soon.

Emily B's birthday bbq

2010-06-17T11:36:00.002-05:00

Hanging out on the couch waiting for more food to be ready. It's amazing how many fun laughs we've had on these couches and how many different people have been on them throughout the year! We decided to have a carne asada to celebrate Emily B's birthday.

Candid shots in the living room. Gotta love catching people doing their own things. Kekis got us the blow up Corona thing since he works for Santos. There were pretty much 2 parties going on the whole time.

So many friends we have made already. Kinda crazy that we have made all these friendships in such a short time. Also strange that so many of these people speak English and yet have taught me tons of Spanish words as well. I love that we have conversations almost always half in English, half in Spanish.

Outside grilling. Let me say that I can't wait to be home and have a normal grill. It is difficult to use charcoal here especially. It's not fun to stand over a grill when it's already 100 degrees outside.

We decided to have smores on top of the fire. It wasn't quite the same as home, but one of the girls had graham crackers so we thought we would try!

Peter Pan

2010-06-07T19:43:00.005-05:00

Monday night Jenn, Emily F and I went downtown to Teatro Nasas. We went to watch our students dance to Peter Pan. It was kinda fun to watch, we were all remembering the days that we spent dancing and putting on hideous costumes.

These little girls were so cute. They're right at that age where they're so into it and actually have the skills to do a good job dancing.

The sets were really intense. They even had tinkerbell go down to the stage in a ring from the ceiling loft. Peter Pan was lifting people and running them all around the place. It was really fun to see them re-act such a well known story. The only sad part was the fact that some of the songs they danced to were in English and did not have children appropriate words in them.

These girls won the worst outfit award. I felt bad for them.

This group is the one that my student danced in. She was very excited about it and told me about 35 times that I NEEDED to come see her. It was kinda funny because she was that one girl who didn't have a clue what she was doing and stayed on stage even after everyone else had left!

Soccer Team...las bokitas

2010-06-03T20:02:00.003-05:00

My roommate Katie's soccer team temporarily fell apart. It is in the process of coming back together right now which is kinda fun and yet sad to watch.

I have enjoyed having things to do on Saturdays though, it's a nice trip outside of the house and fun to be around some people besides those we work or live with!
Since the team is still rebuilding there aren't always enough players. So on Saturday, the coach-Jessy- tried to ask Eda to play. Katie's team only had 9 players (2 were already from the other team) and the other team had 11....not exactly fair! keep in mind that we came as cheerleaders. We had on tank tops, jeans and flip flops. So the team rounded up a shirt, shorts, socks, and cleats. It was pretty funny to watch because Eda is so not an organized Sports person. She had no idea what to do and people were yelling at her in Spanish and she tried to run away from the soccerball. It was so hot to be playing soccer. They play their games at about 1 or 2 o'clock which is so intense.

Birthday photos!

2010-05-19T19:35:00.002-05:00

My friend Perla called me that night around 11:30. She had apparently come over, but the doorbell didn't work and we didn't hear her. BUMMER. So I went outside and had this wonderful suprise on our ugly gate! It is currently hang up on the wall in my room.

My sweet friends got me a really yummy cake :o.

This was after we went out to dinner at the Oriental Grill...a sweet place, but not the best meal. It was the going away party for Cecy, our sweet friend who moved to St. Louis. I am hoping to see her lots.

Birthday festivities :-)

2010-05-17T19:53:00.003-05:00

My birthday was on Saturday, but we got to start celebrating Friday night! We went out for dinner at a restaurant called Oriental Grill. It was one that we had heard about a long time ago, but had never visited it.

Saturday morning we got up and went to houses A & B to celebrate some of the other girls birthdays. They made lots of yummy things such as German pancakes, an egg dish, tons of fruit, and some other yummy things.

After breakfast we came home for naps and then got up and got ready for the day around 3:45pm :). Then we went to Wings Army bar (its an American chain that has good food, but really bad service) to watch the Santos game and see if we were going to go to the finals. Santos are equivalent to D-1 in the States and they are now going to the final final because we won 7-1. Wuhoo :-)

Then we came back home to play games. On the kitchen table was a present and some very fun balloons from my friend Luz. She's so sweet :-) We played Maffia or Assassins which was a lot of fun, some disney scene it, some cards. In the process I went to call my mama and they all invaded my room singing with a cake. Makes me very grateful to have the roommmates that I have :).

Sunday we continued celebrating by making breakfast- coffee cake muffins, fruit cocktail, some yummy juice and just hanging out together :-) And then in the afternoon we went to see the movie Date Night, but unfortunately it wasn't in the awesome theater but it was still fun. :-) Hopefully pictures to come soon!

Last day in Guadalajara-day trip to Tlaqapaque

2010-05-13T22:06:00.007-05:00

This was another fun shopping trip in the suburb of Guadalajara! We got a taxi from the hotel which was a little creepy because they brought us down through the alley and took us in the hotel's private taxi. It was just funny to watch happen! Again our hotel was awesome and let us leave all of our things in a room while we went exploring the next day as we got on the overnight bus again!

This town was little and full of fun little shops. I think that it's main revenue was tourism. The only things I ended up buying were jewelry and a really fun vase. I'm really hoping that the vase makes it home safely!

We ate at a really good restaraunt and were serenaded by a huge group of mariachi's who sang to us about our beautiful eyes. It was funny because in the same restaraunt there were 3 groups singing at the same time. However, the food was awesome.

We got back around 5 and took some time to look at the 2 churches we hadn't been in the downtown area and then headed to the bus station. ALways an adventure since they brought us to the wrong terminal, but thankfully we had plenty of time to get on a little minibus and get to the right place. And on to the smelly bus with the bad driver to Torreon.

Guadalajara Day 3

2010-05-12T21:25:00.008-05:00

We visited the wonderful town of Tequilla. It was an adventure like everything is in Mexico! On the way to Tequilla we stopped in Zapopan and of course because we're in Mexico, our bus broke down and we got stuck there for an extra 3 hours. However that was kinda cool because we got to meet new people and get to know the people in our tour group. I felt bad for our tour guide because some people were pretty mean to him and disrespectful. So we ended up checking out the cathedral, government building, putting more minutes on our cell phones, eating chips the Mexican way, and visiting the burrito woman.

Then as we got to Tequilla we got to tour the Jose Cuervo factory of Mexico. We had to wear hairnets, but it was pretty cool to watch the process and to get to learn about what Mexico is famous for after doing the winery in Spain! Inside we got to see the big agave pina's as well as the processing within the plant. This ugly bird is seen throughout the factory, on the tequilla bottles and even some kept in cages at the plant. Gross :p

We then had a two hour bus ride back to Guadalajara and were very ready and happy to see the hotel again!

For supper we went to a sugguested restaurant that just happened to be across the street. It was a really yummy taco place. I am beginning to love spicy food and even eat things that would be questionable at home. You should be very proud of me family!

We went to Red Pub at dinner time which is supposedly one of the top 20 bars to go to in all the world, maybe false advertisement? However it was an entertaining night as well.

Guadalajara day 2

2010-05-11T20:51:00.006-05:00

The main goal of this day was to end up in a massive market. What we did not understand was how huge it was! However it was really fun.

Along the way we walked through downtown GDL and posed for many random pictures amongst statues, fountains and other fun things.

We stopped for lunch in a plaza and played some FARKLE as well as some cards. We ended up meeting up with my roommate Emily's friends who live in GDL and who showed us some other places to go.

When we arrived at the market we were overwhelmed! We spent 4.5 hours just walking up and down and encoutering all kinds of people, products, smells, and sights! The market had 3 floors and was at least a mile long. People sold all kinds of things and some even sold them right next to each other! There was a big section with live animals- birds, fish, someone walking around with a giant lizzard. There was a whole middle part where women were preparing all kinds of food. Quesadillas, tacos, gorditas, frijoles, elote, cake, sweet things, spicy things, things that were flavorless....needless to say, overwhelming!

After the market we came home (amazing how that changes so quickly when you're living not at home....) and showered and got ready to go another restraunt/bar to eat and watch some soccer. A past time I am becoming very fond of.

Emily's friends David and Manolo picked us up in their truck and some of us got to ride in the back and some in the front it was pretty fun! It was also cool to have their truck because we didn't have to pay for two taxis to drive at night or to have to mess with knowing where we were going!

Guadalajara! :-) Day 1

2010-05-10T19:13:00.004-05:00

Friday after school we came home and packed and headed off for our last vacation adventure in Mexico. This was a ten hour bus drive from Torreon to Guadalajara. We decided to stay in a nicer hotel that was right in the middle of historic downtown. We also decided to pay more and take the nicer bus. There are only 3 seats in each row instead of four, there are headsets to listen to movies, better blinds, less stops, ect. Our way there was very pleasant except for not being able to sleep. The way back was awful. Our bus smelled horribly of urine and was falling apart, literarlly. The driver almost went off the road and he thought it was a good idea to turn the heat on in the middle of the night. So not cool!
The hotel we stayed at was really awesome because they gave us a room at 7:30 am when we got there and let us all put our stuff in there even though check in wasn't for 7 hours and there were 6 of us at that time! We then ventured ever so far to the restraunt in the hotel...we were tired and their food looked good :-).

On our first day we decided to go on a horse carriage ride around town. Something one of the girls has been wanting to do in every city we visted and why not? It was like 12 dollars a person for an hour long ride. Then we wandered around the city looking for their gothic church, temples, roman cathedrals, and other beauties. Outside of the church there was a little market that was really pretty. The city was pretty because it had green grass, lots of open space, friendly people and tons of historical things to see!
For lunch we ate at a famous restraunt called la chata that had a huge line and pretty good food :-), they also had delicious iced tea....made me miss the south!
For supper we went to another famous place called Casa Bariachi where they had a live Mariachi band, some silly actors, some great live music, ect. Even though it was tourist place it was a tourist place for Mexicans to go to instead of the reverse.

Reading buddies on dress up day! for dia del nino

2010-05-09T22:31:00.004-05:00

Since mid-fall Miss Katie's 4th graders and my Prepri kids have been having reading buddies. We meet about once a week or every two weeks depending on crazy schedules and read books together, work on holiday crafts, play games or on the playground or with the parachute.

My kids ask me every week and sometimes every day when we'll get to see them and when they can come play! The studets gang up against us and will hound us after school if it has been a week since we've had them. It's pretty funny, but it's also awesome to watch them reading books with one another and challenging each other. The big and little relationship is also encouraging and will help them as they go into Primaria next year as well.
We are trying to come up with an end of the year craft or present for each others classrooms, so any sugguestions will be appreciated :-).

House of sickies

2010-04-27T13:45:00.005-05:00

Casa D de dedo has had a rough return from break. Each one of us has been sick at least once. A couple of the girls either caught a bug or some kind of intestinal thing. Em's alergies have been really bad, I had a stomach thing the first week and this week some cold sinus throat junk. I am home from school today because I literarly have no voice and that is a little rough for a kindergartener teacher whose kids don't normally listen! I would have gone like I did yesterday, but have a fever so am stuck at home. I feel like staying home would be way better in my own house! Here I'm stuck with nothing to do....I have been cleaning (it's not always fun to live with 4 other people who don't feel the need to clean up after themselves on a regular basis) and trying to relax! Currently I'm sitting outside in the sunshine.

Update on the kids.....This friday is dia del nino..aka kid's day. So this whole week at school we are celebrating. Yesterday was hat day, today was crazy hair day, tomorrow is pj day, thursday is costume day, and friday is party day. Literally my kids will be in my classroom for 45 minutes at the beginning of the day and 45 minutes at the end where I'm supposed to teach them the whole day short style :-). Hope all is well with you all :-)

Weekend fun!

2010-04-26T13:51:00.003-05:00

Friday night we went to the orchestra of Coahuila (the state of Mexico I live in) who were hosting these drummers who did some pretty amazing things! They played a piece from a man from Iowa. Wuhooooo way to represent :-). We also went out for dinner at this place that we were recomended to. It was supposed to have delicious food, but none of the stuff we ordered was very good!

Saturday some friends came over and we celebrated in typical Torreon fashion. We all made breakfast together and then sat around the kitchen table for an extra 4-5 hours. Something about our table just calls people to sit in it for forever! It's pretty awesome.
Then me and two of the other girls went to the club where we have a membership to lapswim. I can't imagine swimming outside in Iowa right now, but it was beautiful here! It just made me laugh when we were walking there because you take a left, take a right, take a right, walk through a rock/glass field with a side walk when you start and finish but nothing in the end, take a left, take a right, walk through a big parking lot, and then end up there. It's like they have all these good ideas for things, but never finish them!
After the club we got ready for one of the teachers, Amanda's, birthday party! It was fun because she's friends with some different people so we got to hang out with new people and then went to a karoke bar across town for awhile and then just chatted for a couple hours. Even if I want to, I don't think I'm going to be able to stay awake until 7am in Iowa, like I can here in Mexico.

On Sunday we went to our friend Javier's quinta (a club house kinda....) and swam in the pool, played some ping-pong, volleyball, soccer, and watched some girls do a swimming performance..it was pretty funny.
Of course i did not have my camera for any of these things so I will try and get pics from the other girls and upload them soon!

Last day of Spring Break two weeks late :-)

2010-04-25T13:33:00.001-05:00

Em and I had a later flight out than Kate and Eda which was nice because we could wake up slowly and get ready at our own ease, plus we didn't have to put our wet suits in our bags because they were dry. wuhoo. Em and I are both planners so we arrived at the airport earlier than we had to. We walked into the duty free store because someone gave us an add with milka bars (the purple kind you can buy in Europe) and Em really wanted some. We got up to the checkout and the lady was like you're staying in Mexico you can't buy anything here....we were sad.
So back track a bit...when we were checking in we realized we were "premire" which means that we were first class. They were the only seats available for that time so we took them. You would think they have to tell you what type of seat you are getting, but not in Mexico!
We boarded the plane on time, but then sat on the runway for about 40 minutes. This was a problem because we only had an hour and ten minutees layover in Mexico City....my seat mate was a soccer player. We didn't talk, but I think he played for D.F.
We landed in Mexico City 7 minutes before our plane was to take off. We jumped off the plane, ran through the airport, asked someone if our flight had left-they told us yes. We were randomly walking through the terminal and had to go through security again...dude we were just on a plane, how would we have anything dangerous? Missed our flight waiting. Had to go talk to three different people, found out there was another flight leaving in 5 hours or that we could wait til morning. We chose the 5 hour flight. Took our time walking around the airport, visited star bucks, bought some postcards and candy and then headed to the VIP lounge. I was very grateful we were first class when we had 5 hours to sit in a comfy chair instead of a metal one. When it wasn't loud and we didn't have to listen to all the boarding calls or security warnings. We met a cute couple from Austraila who had been traveling for forever, but were on their way to Merida! They almost missed their plane, because they had set their watches to LA time and didn't realize it changed down here...ooops. But we helped them out!
Then it was on the plane, to sleep...and sititng next to another soccer player-this one a Santos player. In the airport we were both happy to see our bags and were getting ready to get a taxi when we saw our friend Miguel there and he was kind enough to take us home. wuhoo :-).
.....When we got home, unlocked our doors, were ready to crash as it was midnight and we'd been attempting to travel since 10am....and were greeted each with two lovely cockroaches. :-(. SO then it was an hour checking for more, cleaning them up, trying to wind down and fall asleep. Rough end to a wonderful vacation!

Puerto Morellos

2010-04-21T13:02:00.003-05:00

Sadly I have 0 pictures from this day. I don't know how this has happened. Except to say that it was a quick trip between Playa and our way back to Cancun so we could fly out the next day! The point of this trip was simply to Snorkle. We didn't know where we were going, we didn't know how we were going to get there, or anything, I love that we feel that comfy! We were going to take a bus there, but ended up just paying an extra 50 pesos to go by taxi. The taxi driver asked in the town who we could with. A man found us and told us that we could go with him whenever we were ready on a private trip.
We decided to eat lunch first and we ate tons of food before going in the water. It was pretty fun. The men kept our luggage (a little scary since we had our passports, money, cameras, ect all just right there) and we were off for a 2 hour snorkle trip through the reef. It was really cool, but we did not find any turtles or cool things. At one point they told us to take our flippers off and get on the boat and then changed their mind and we were supposed to swim in the ocean- a lot harder without flippers.
Our tour guide was Charlie Brown- a 4 foot Mayan man who was hilarious and whose English was very cute. I don't remember the other guys name, but he also was funny. Then the girls got some sand to take home (I didn't...you should be proud of me mom) and we got yummy ice cream, some snacks from OXXO and in another taxi to the Mariot Courtyard we stayed out in Cancun. It was an awesome hotel and the beds were excellent and there were pillows toooooo!! Wuhoo :-)

Playa del Carmen

2010-04-20T12:29:00.004-05:00

After I put Berkley on a plane for her way home I met up with Katie, Eda, and Bernie for a few days in Playa del Carmen.

The first whole day there the girls all went to Excaret. Since I had already been I just got to hang out at the pool, the ocean, and wander around the city a little bit. I ended up buying two new rings. I really like them a lot, i'll take a picture sometime soon!

Then the next day we went to Chichen Itza. One of the 7 wonders of the world that was so full of history. We went on a group trip with a tour guide and all. Our group was a bit obnoxious and incredibly crazy. There were people from Spain, Germany, London, North Carolina, California, Tennesse, and then us from the midwest. The tour was given in Spanish, English, and German so each thing took a long time. We went to see the ruins, to a Cenote, and to see a different little town that was called Villa something or another :-). Chichen was by far my FAVORITE. It was amazing to see how huge it was and to see the way that they are rebuilding everything that had been completely destroyed.

The Cenote we went to was very different. There were steps you climbed down which allowed us then to climb up again and jump down into the big hole.

Xcaret part 2- the night show

2010-04-13T21:35:00.005-05:00

Gettting ready for the performance to start :-)

On the way into the theater there were people dressed up as Mayans as well as old statues representing things. We paused to take many pictures even though it was dark outside. We had really good seats close to the front, but not too close so we got to see everything!

During the performance we got to watch men play with a ball on fire. It was a game kind of like soccer except that they had to hit it with their hips, not with their hands or feet and try and get it to go through a circle about 15 feet off the ground. The winner or the mvp of the team was then killed and offered as a sacrifice to the rain god. It was a huge honor for each of them. (so weird!)

This was my absolute favorite part of the night! It taught us the history of Mexico-of the Mayans, and also showed us the things that are part of it right now. Most of the states of Mexico had dances or songs or different ways in which they were represented. The best way to show you is through pictures so here you go!

Xcaret-- Cancun

2010-04-12T21:10:00.003-05:00

Xcaret. We saw signs for this everywhere. It was painted on the buses. It was on the back of the magazines. I was told to go by the science teacher at school and a few other people. So I decided that Berk and I should go :-). This was like a park with absolutely everything in it! There were animals : sharks, dolphins, pumas, cheetas, birds, butterflies, deer (they should get them from Iowa), monkeys, giant sea turtles, a sweet aquarium, and the list goes on!

Also there were also things to see like a Mayan village, a grave yard, a soccer stadium where they used to play with human heads, a flower garden, a mushroom farm, an underground river where we snorkled, a riverboat ride, ect. We left for the park at 8am and got home at 10:30pm. It was an AWESOME day and worth every penny!

Cancun with Berkley! :-) hotel

2010-04-12T20:56:00.002-05:00

On Thursday, I headed back to Cancun to meet Berkley at the airport. She was flying in from Oklahoma! I was told when I bought the ticket that it was a 4 hour bus ride. However, I found out later that for some reason we were stopping for an hour somewhere...suprise Mexico! So we got to the bus station late and the I missed the airport bus that was going to get me to the airport on time, and so then I got on a later bus and talked to the bus driver for a bit and he dropped me off at the international terminal. I tried to find Berkley- hard to do when three hundred people are trying to get you in your taxi, you're an hour late and you don't know what flight she's coming in on :-P. I went inside and talked to the soldier (the one with the M16) and he was impressed that I spoke Spanish and told me I could wait inside. I wandered around to try and find her and on my lap back to the front I saw her! I screamed her name from across the way and she was confused :-). Once I found her I realized I was missing a bag. Went back to the bus (which thankfully hadn't left) then we attempted to get a colectivo only to find out it would be either an hour wait or 500 pesos, we went for 500 pesos. He brought us right to our hotel which was beautiful from the outside and we got all checked in! Our room was AWESOME!! Berkley has the pics, i'll get them soon I promise. We had a 2 story room with two bedrooms, 2 king size beds, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a little table. Our view was of the ocean of the pool, and of the hotel bar. The windows were the whole length of the rooms and it was awesome! I for sure suggest staying in Avalon Grand! (we found out later that it is actually a time share place and isn't normally available to the public...horray for looking off season online )

Day trip from Merida

2010-04-11T20:40:00.003-05:00

We heard that we should go visit these awesome Cenotes...so we decided okay lets go!

In Merida there were two other teachers hanging out as well (they stayed in a different place than me though) and they met up with a girl from Germany (Sabrina) and a girl from Britian (Lisa) who ended up going too!
Arriving there was a process. We walked 25 minutes to the colectivo (a big van) "stop". Took an hour van ride, ended up in the middle of nowhere, where there were men standing on the side of the road with their bike carts. We got on their carts for a 20 minute ride up and down some hills where we arrived at the horse spot. We then boarded a horse cart to start our 3 hour "trip" to the 3 cenotes. Cenotes are giant sink holes where you can swim in freshwater. There were bats and a few fish there as well. They put a little railroad like thing along the way and made these very skinny horses pull us along. It was only a one way path so when you ran into someone you had to get off the cart, pull it off the path, let them pass and then get on again. It was crazy rediculous, but it was a very fun ride all the same!

The cenotes were really cool. There were steep steps down into them and you could jump in from up above (not all the way up), we tried to swim down to the bottom and we could never reach it. There were roots hanging down that we swung on as well. While we were inside one of them, we heard someone screaming. It was a little girl who fell down the steps on her way out and ended up in her daddy's arm. Scary! But there is no railing, and when your feet are wet, it is slippery, very scary. We ended up tipping our guide an extra 70 pesos and when he realized it he screamed he was so happy. It makes me realize once again how little people are paid for how much work they do! Then it was back on the bike taxi, waiting for the colectivo, and 30 minute walk home!

Day 1- Merida

2010-04-10T20:17:00.003-05:00

Monday morning, I got on a bus and headed to Merida, Yucatan. I was going to visit a friend from Central- Alvar. He came to Central for a year through the exchange and we taught Spanish labs together! It was awesome to get to travel to a place that was someone's home! He showed me all around and introduced me to the things that were important to see. Also, since he has a car he showed me all parts of town. Where he grew up, his elementary school, his high school, his college, his current job, tons of stuff!

There was a miscommunication one night (spanish-english, multiple people) and we ended up at a not very good restraunt but Alvar told us to go to the one next door so we went there for desert instead and it was great!

Also went to a delicious Italian restrauant where we could see the city from our balcony window. And to a very cute chocolate coffee shop place. Where I got to see some of the video's he's doing for work. He did one for the doctors at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines where there's a heart transplant thing for little kids, it was sad to see, but an awesome story too! It's for the government to put on the televesion in the Yucatan..way to represent Iowa :-)

We got to see dancing in the street one night. Children young and old and lots of people watching the dances. The videos I took didn't turn out very well, but the music was great!

Spring Break Part 1- traveling..

2010-04-08T20:02:00.003-05:00

Spring Break 2010 in Mexico! What a great place to live :-).

It began Saturday March 27th with a bus trip to Monterrey with my roommate Emily F. We were flying out Sunday early in the morning to Cancun. We got to the bus station and were told "oh by the way your bus is canceled" ...we were like hmmm and how are we supposed to get to Monterrey then!? The director of the Lujo bus figured it out and gave us a new ticket on the other bus line.
At the bus station in Monterrey, we bought a ticket inside, tried to get in the cab - got all our stuff inisde, ect and then were told that he wasn't the "right" kind of cab....grr, so we got out and stood by waiting for a real one. The cute old man we got was helpful and took us to the hotel which was by the airport which is 40 minutes away from the bus station! rediculous :-) The hotel was nice it was a good place to sleep for a couple hours! We got on the shuttle to the airport at 4am Sunday. Our flight was at like 6:45, but because we didn't have seats on the plane (boo discount airlines) and had no idea where we were going. We were both really tired in the airport, but it was worth it! The great part was that we got into Cancun at 9am and had the whole day together before we were splitting ways the next day! Em and I did lots of walking around Cancun and exploring new things to see.

water complaint and Easter celebrations

2010-03-23T22:07:00.005-06:00

I miss hot water and comfortable beds. I can't wait to go traveling this weekend (wuhoo for two week spring breaks when you already live in Mexico!) and sleep in comfy beds in rooms that have hot water! It's only been a week of cold showers and I am complainy. How did people shower before hot water? And how do people still do it on a regular basis. BRRR!

This week at school we are preparing for Easter. They celebrate it different than I grew up celebrating it in that they paint hallowed egg shells. Also, when they find the hidden eggs they crush them. My kids don't do anything with plastic eggs or with hiding candy. Some of our Easter projects have been: finger painting easter eggs (Thanks mom for my package!), coloring endless easter pages, dying easter eggs (America style....my kids thought it was pretty awesome and the eggs looked pretty because they got dye inside and outside), creating Easter baskets, and learning a Spring song! We're singing a song about a farmer planting seeds, can you guess what state i'm from? :-)

Saint Patrick's rainbow.

2010-03-15T18:08:00.006-06:00

On Friday Emily B (the 2nd grade teacher) and I made a giant handpaint rainbow and pot of gold. It was super cute and really fun. The kids took turns putting their hands in paint and putting it on the rainbow. While they weren't painting they were sitting next to their friends and reading books or playing memory, numbers, letters, go fish, and crazy eights.

My kids were so excited and proud of all the things they had accomplished and are getting so ready for Saint Patrick's day. We'll have to see how the presentation goes on Wednesday! Yikes I am a little nervous, but it should be fine to get it all overwith :-) They all have practiced their lines and are learning how to encourage each other.

Long weekend!!

2010-03-15T11:51:00.004-06:00

This weekend we had about 100 different ideas about what we were going to do and ended up doing none of them. However, we accomplished a lot and got to do tons of fun things in Torreon.

On Friday after school we went to the mall to eat lunch. I got Chinese. yum :-) and then of course we had to get ice cream from a really yummy place and then wandered around the mall going shopping and just enjoying the start of the weekend! After that we came home for a little while (i cleaned my room) and then one of the girls parents were here so we went out to dinner with them at Farolitos (a super cute Mexican restaurant). After that we came home and watched 16 candles.

On Saturday we were going to go to the Dunas which are giant sand dunes, we were also going to go camping in Cuarto Cinegas (these swamp things with posinous turtles, snakes, and scorpians...sounds like a blast right??), or to the Prasa about an hour away....HOWEVER, we were going to with our friend Luz and her car is not operating (they were supposed to fix it this weekend) so we did not go anywhere!

We spent time downtown going to the market and clothing and shoe stores. It was really fun, but hard to go shopping with 5 people at the same time! We didn't really find anything we wanted, but it was still fun. While we were downtown my roommate Katie opened the door to get out of the taxi without looking and a bus drove by and got scraped real bad by the taxi door and she almost died. The taxi guy was yelling at us and freaking out. It was scary.

We also stopped at the bus station to get our bus tickets for Spring Break. It's going to be so cheap. For holidays it's 50% off for students and we're Spanish students (didn't you know that ;-) ) hooray!

After that we stopped at an American import store. They had secret deodrant for $8, lucky charms for $9 a box, fruit roll-ups for $7 a box. The only thing we ended up buying was gum (it was cheap) and pop so that we could make root beer floats. As well as enjoy different flavors we can't get here. It was a fun treat and a great experince to laugh about, but not something that I will need to do again that's for sure!!

Then we came home and played games at our house. Dad these people do not know how to play rummycube they've changed all the rules. Another game we played was banannagrams. It's like scrabble speed style and everyone playing on their own boards.

On Sunday we were maybe going to go to all those places again, however the car still wasn't fixed (gotta love Mexico) so we decided to just hang out here. We ended up working for a couple hours and then getting ready to go. We saw the movie Valentine's Day (yes it just came out exactly a month later...) in the V.I.P. theater and got popcorn chicken delivered to our chairs. After the movie we decided to go to the Alameda (it's like an open market place that's full of tents that sell things and have rides-ferris wheel, spinny things for adults and the rest kids rides-and have tons of great food). It's in a little sketchy-ish part of town, but because we went with our friend Luz we weren't worried! We ended up going to this giant Pineapple that has cream cheese slushy like ice cream (don't knock it until you try it!) We also went to a silly photobooth place and got keychains made that was fun!

After the Alameda we walked to this coffee shop/bar that has a live band and candle light tables. We ordered this giant plate of nachos that had beans and guacamole underneath all the chips in the middle and on the outside their was tons of chicken and beef.

After that I came home and watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith while working on grades until 2 am and now I am enjoying a wonderful day off of school! Wuhoo for random Mexican holidays!!

LIfe in my classroom

2010-03-09T21:58:00.006-06:00

Patricio's awesome drawing. He also has excellent fine motor skills and can make incredible things with his hands already! Last week we celebrated his VERY first all green week which means it was also a no fit week. Wuhoo! the whole class was happy for him :-)

Life in my classroom has been consumed with Saint Patrick's day this month! We have to do a presentation in front of all the kinder kids and my kids are so excited and yet crazy about it! They will be working in their seates (talking in Spanish of course) and then someone starts to sing "I'm a little leprechaun" and they all jump in!

It makes me laugh even thought it's completely disruptive. Besides Saint Pat's we have loved doing science experiments. You know in the book orders where they have the dollar books sometimes? I bought 3 different ones that are simple science experiments: one is "just add salt", "in a bottle" , and "simple color experiments". My kids LOVE this. The hands on part of watching how they themselves can change things! We have a science lab teacher, but she doesn't really do experiments with them, she mostly lectures and yells at them to talk in English.

One of the experiments we did was to pour a bunch of milk in a pie plate and and then add food die and watch as the light colors disappear and the dark ones "eat up the light" with the help of dishsoap and of antibacterial hand soap. After colors we made coffee filter butterflies that turned out super cute. I wish I had taken a picture!

As always the prize box is a favorite in our classroom. Kids get to chose from this if they have a whole week on green (behavior chart), if they fill up their sticker chart (positive reinforcements), if they bring their folder back on 5 Mondays and that's all! My kids have been truly motivated by this and love the things they find in the box! Thanks to all of you who have sent me things! The glow braclets, bouncy balls, notepads, race cars, have all been a huge hit!

LIfe in Torreon

2010-03-09T11:47:00.002-06:00

We haven't heard much more about the unrest that is here, however while I was walking to the grocery store with my roommate Em last weekend we saw 14 big military trucks full of over 100 soldiers with their machine guns, protective gear, hard helmets, and tough faces. They were parked on the same street we live on about 8 blocks from our house and 3 from school all the way to the grocery store. I'm guessing they were waiting for someone, but they were just standing around the trucks smoking or sitting in plastic lawn chairs in the back of the armored semi-like trucks. All this to say we haven't done much lately! We have been hanging out with our teacher friends and our "exciting events" have been going out to lunch or an early dinner on the weekends!

Sarah thank you!

2010-03-03T21:50:00.003-06:00

When my cousin came to visit in October she brought some things that the kids have loved! There are this bendable stick things (we call them palos) where the kids can trace templates and create things or make their own. The shark has definitely become a class favorite after Pato mastered it, but here are some of their designs and their pride!

The other thing we have used almost all of is the colorful poster paper. The kids now have it for nametags, we have it for labels all over our room and we have it for our days in school numbers on all sides of the room! Plus, the big markers you got that write on both sides I used to check their writing notebooks the last two weeks and they think they're the coolest things! I even noticed a child had "borrowed it without asking" and trying to hide the fact that they were using a giant marker. I had to laugh :-)

You're the best and I miss you!

Life in Casa D de dedo

2010-03-02T20:46:00.002-06:00

We have become addicted to television. We have downloaded all the episodes of NCIS up until this current season and watched them all! We also downloaded Glee season 1, and now we are in the process of downloading Season 1 of the Mentalist. We watch them all on my computer (yes sometimes that means 8 people smooshed around a tiny screen) so by the time we've watched a couple episodes I am done with computer time and therefore don't want to update my blog, so I'm sorry!!

Monterrey update....finally!

2010-03-01T21:27:00.003-06:00

At the end of January, beginning of February we took a trip to Monterrey, Mexico on our long weekend. We ended up going with two of the girls on Katie's soccer team. One of the girls, MariRosy, had a car (which was awesome) as well as her grandparents are from there so she knew where everything was! It was different to travel with two Mexicans who didn't care to see some of the historical or even the city important sites. We went to a couple really nice restaurants while we were there and loved just being out of Torreon! One of them had karaoke music and dancing while the other one just had music in the background with lots of music videos.

One day while we were there we took a car trip (it reminded me a lot of driving through the East coast and all of us getting sick in the car....) to the waterfalls that were beautiful even though they were pretty little. It was nice to be in a place that was super green and full of beauty away from smelly industrial Torreon! At the waterfalls you could go ziplining, ride in a mule kart, or take a horse, however we opted for walking.

That same night we went to Lucha Libre. This is a complete joke, but something that all Mexicans do and is even celebrated on tv, in movies (aka- Nacho Libre), and my kids' toys. Monterrey is said to have the second best fights only to Mexico City. We met up with some people who were teaching in Monterrey (Eda's friend's brother and his teaching buddies ) and got the inside scope as well as some funny laughs and stale cotton candy!

In Monterrey we were able to wander around shopping and exploring. One afternoon I wandered into a Christian bookstore and found a new Hillson c.d. that I have been playing like crazy in my classroom since I have a c.d. player, but no c.d.'s :-). I also found the book Fearless by Max Lucado (in Spanish) that I have enjoyed reading!

Sorry for the lack of updates!

2010-02-20T12:55:00.005-06:00

Hey all, I am sorry that it has been about a month since I have updated this blog. We have not had internet at home since the 25th of January. So in order to use internet I have to bring my computer to school (which of course I can't use in my classroom because kinder is too far away from the router) and sit outside or in someone else's classroom and it is just kinda a pain. Plus when I have internet I am trying to send emails instead of update this!!
Also, there was some drug lord upsets a few weekends ago and we have been told that it will be coming back even worse sometime soon. There was shootings in bars, a restraunt, a mall, downtown, ect. I say all this to explain why we haven't even felt safe walking to school at night to use internet- super frustrating to be on house arrest without internet! Needless to say we have been playing lots of games at our house and hanging out with some of the other teachers. We are all very ready for spring break and to be able to go out and do things again. This weekend things have started opening up again in Torreon, but we still haven't really gone anywhere. Plus since we're "waiting" for internet they tell us we have to be at home from 3pm-8pm in case a tech comes over. It's super obnoxious! But, we are hopefully going to try our 3rd internet option and should have internet this next weekend (so they tell us ).
Hope you all are doing well! Take care :-) When I have internet there will be more updates to come!

My kids crack me up.

2010-01-21T20:55:00.005-06:00

My kids crack me up. This past week has been an interesting story. My kids have noticed that beanie babies have hearts that have a story, a name, and a birthday. My kids have learned all about responsibility. All of our beanie babies have lost their tags. The kids are sad because now we don't know all of the beanie babies names or birthdays. We only have 8 of the tags and they love to check them out randomly.

So on Monday it was Slippery the seals birthday. The kids wanted me to bring in cake so instead of that I brought them all a mini pez. :-). They were super excited!

Then today, Thursday was Sr. Squirrel's birthday. This was the first beanie baby that I brought to the classroom. I made the kids cupcakes last night and they were super excited. No one could belive that I made them myself. Today we sang happy brithday to him and I recorded it, I hope you can hear it. :-) Also today, one of my kids brought in a present for the beanie baby. They brought little plastic soccer balls, a mini rocking horse, and perfume so he doesn't stink. It cracked me up.

Goodbye again Iowa...

2010-01-05T15:56:00.006-06:00

I'm sitting in the airport in Des Moines just waiting for my plane and to fly to Huston and then to Torreon! I am hoping that when we get home we will have heat and warm water, some of my friends (other teachers) who are down there already don't have any! It could be very chilly and by that I of course mean 50 degrees :-) I can't wait to not freeze with layers on! I am also very excited to get into my classroom and put together some of the things I'm bringing back and to just prepare for this second half of the year! Plus, I need to do all my grades before Thursday! Yikes :-). My principal told me the day before we were flying home that grades would be do the Thursday we're back for teaching.....oops. that could have been useful to have earlier :-). Oh well! I hope that you all have a wonderful week! I will try and be better at blogging this month :-)

Just a little bit of Christmas...

2010-01-05T13:45:00.004-06:00

I hope and pray that you all had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy New Year :-). That you are all doing well and aren't freezing in this winter! I hope that this year is full of many blessings for each one of you and that you are surrounded with love from those around you :-)

home for Christmas. How wonderful to be back with family and friends. To get to go to church, travel throughout Iowa visiting friends and family. Thanks for all of you who came to me and who came to the New Years Eve Party, grandma & grandpa for coming and playing lots of cards! Aunt Sharon for letting us crash Christmas at the farm, for friends who met me for lunch, shopping, dinner, baking cookies, making almond bark pretzels, booking trips for spring break, drinking hot chocolate, eatting chinese, it was a WONDERFUL two weeks at home to which I tell you all thanks!!! Andrea and Phil thanks for spending so much time with us and letting me hang out with the kids lots and for playing games.....yes- even clue :-) I miss you all already and am looking forward to seeing you all again in July!! :-)

Star Student updates

2010-01-01T14:34:00.004-06:00

One thing that I do each week is have a "star student". My kids all know their week and have been invited to bring a mom,dad, family member, or friend into the classroom and teach us how to do something or share with us about something different. For example, someone's mom came in and made cookies with us.

A student's dad who is an eye doctor came in and taught the students about the eye and how we need to take care of our eyes and with what we see.

Another mom taught us how to make ghosts at halloween. Someone taught us how to make bead ornaments for our christmas trees.

The friday before coming home someone taught us how to write letters to Santa and then to tie them to helium balloons and let them reach Santa (a Mexican tradition). My kids loved this! Since writing is a little difficult for us we had to draw some pictures and just "sound it out". Then his mom had made his favorite cookies and his dad did magic tricks for us to learn about :-) It was an interesting experience and awesome to be a part of something that is the "normal" for these kiddos.

This has been super fun for me to get to know the kids as well as for the kids to be proud of their families and those that love them :-). It helps me to know where the kids are coming from and the things that make each one of them special and unique and I think that they appreciate that a lot.. It has been good lessons in respect and gratitude (we always make thank you books for the parents...) It also lets us experience fun things in our classroom on Fridays.

Christmas celebration

2009-12-21T15:12:00.002-06:00

The Friday before Christmas break our kids participated in a Christmas Pasada. Basically, this means that my kids loved having a Christmas party for the afternoon. For this party we walked around our kinder area where we stay and sang for the pasada (in Spanish) asking if we could come inside and join the party basically. The party consisted of 3 pinatas, tons of cake, bags of candy, watching movies (thanks for sending them to me Tammy), and playing outside! I also gave my kids their Christmas presents which were just little bags with candy, stickers, coloring page, and a baby ornament for a tree :-) My kids were so generous and sweet to me. I got some awesome Christmas presents from them as well! One of my favorite was chick flicks from one of my sweet boys. They are in both Spanish and English which is exciting because it will help me out later when I'm back in the states!

This video is the song my kids sing for each child as they have a turn to thit the pinata and about how you "do it do it do it (and then it ends with) oh time's up"

Teacher Christmas Pasada

2009-12-21T15:03:00.001-06:00

Thursday the 16th or 17th we had our teacher pasada at school. They catered in some amazing food from our favorite restaurant, however they didn't have vampiros our favorite food! We were told this would last for about 2 hours, but in the end it lasted for 4 hours! THe school hired a clown (i have no idea why....) to entertain us and he did some funny things, but generally speaking he was just obnoxious!
This party made me really sad! I noticed a couple of the cleaning ladies standing around and then didn't see them later on...Perla, one of the aids, and my friend came up to me and asked me to help get Stella some food (my cleaning lady...) Because there wasn't a chair for them they went back to work. No one noticed they were missing or did anything about it! And when we did tell a principal and the woman in charge of us, they just tried to make the ladies feel stupid. If there had been 3 teachers waiting around for chairs we would have gotten one immediately, but it just shows me really how much they are disrespected and belittled. It was really sad. I told my roommates at home that night and they felt really bad too.
Also that night we ended our secret santa and got to give them our "big gifts" which mine just got a coffee mug filled with choclate and these really cute 3-d snowflakes that my mom had sent me in a package :-) She was really excited about it which was wonderful!

Christmas Party

2009-12-20T14:54:00.002-06:00

The Sunday before flying home we had a dressy Christmas party at Casa E- our neighbors. It was fun to be able to relax with each other and dress up. The girls all wore dresses and the guys had on suits or dress pants and nice shirts. It was our goodbye to a lot of our friends until we came back! People made appetizers and just hung out. We had the party both inside and outside which was fun. I love Christmas parties outside, that never happens in Mexico! :-) Here are some pics of my friends. Sadly I can't tag them all and let you visualize who is who but know that these are most of our friends!

Socccer

2009-12-03T19:46:00.005-06:00

My roommate Katie had a championship game and they won! Interesting fact- the team they played against had some Colegio Ingles kids on it (15 yr olds) and Katie's team had up to 30 year olds. After that game we went to our friend David's game. His game is at this giant fake ship caled "la marina" where they play basicaly rec soccer. He ended up playing two games instead of one and then after that was our friends Paco and Juan Carlos' game. The best part was being able to get suntanned in almost December! It's fun to watch soccer in a country where soccer is loved and respected!

Thanksgiving

2009-12-03T19:39:00.005-06:00

So it's not exactly the same in Mexico as it is at home. First of all, we had to work on Thursday which was not quite the same at home! And then we came home from school and made our food. We ate at 6:30 p.m. and everyone just made a dish or something. There were things missing from normal dinner such as home (thanks mom :-) ), lefse, pumpkin pie, cheesy potatoes. My dish i made was cheesy corn and noodles, which wasn't the same because there's no Velvetta in this stinking country! Another difference: there was about 30 people there, 18 Americans and 12 Mexicans...I've never eaten thanksgiving in Spanish or had flan as a dessert.

Santos game

2009-12-01T19:26:00.002-06:00

We went to the game! This is 4 of Katie's teammates and her coach along with my some of my roommates! Sadly they are out of the finals now, but it was fun to be there!

This is the hall of fame that is outside of the stadium. It's full of players and looks wonderful. This is Sarah and I :-) Thanks for coming to visit me!!

While Sarah was here I wanted to take her to a Santos game (the professional soccer team here), but because it was a qualifying game all the tickets were sold out but, Friday night Katie's soccer coach called us and asked if we wanted to go! He had wonderful box seats wtih free drinks and free food. The tickets were supposed to be $1,500 pesos (like 130 dollars), but instead we only paid $500( $38) for them! It was a wonderful game and Santos won which means they got into the semi finals. It was great to see our kids at the game as well!

Sarah's visit!!

2009-11-28T18:45:00.004-06:00

My cousin Sarah came to see me!!! It was so fun to have a visitor and to have someone come visit me here and get to see where I live and what I have to see and do. She stayed in my room which made me remember having a rommmate in college! It's fun to get to tell stories until you fall asleep! She also came into my classroom and helped me all day long! It was wonderful to have someone who actualy likes kids (unlike my aid) and knows how to help those kids! My kids covered twice the amount of material as we normally accomplish. Also that day we got to play with the parachute she brought me! It's like about half the size of the one we use for AWANA. The kids thought it was the coolest thing and so much fun. We went out to eat at a fun restaurant called Taco Stao. We also got to watch soccer both my roommate Kaite's and the Santos game. We also got to go to our friend Cecy's birthday party Saturday night, unfortunately it was outside and freezing cold, but Sarah got to try some nasty candy and experience a birthday party here!

The girls :-)

2009-11-12T21:02:00.005-06:00

Here are some snapshots of the people I've been hanging out with! The 5 of us from Casa D de dedo and our two friends from Canada! One of the girls from Canada is the other one who teaches Prepri (kindergarten) with me so we spend lots of times together sharing stories and hiding in each others rooms during recess! It's pretty fun because we all get along and our personalities mix pretty well! We of cousrse all have different opinions and things that make us get annoyed, but we also know each others buttons and avoid them.

acueducts in zacatecas

2009-11-12T20:56:00.007-06:00

This one is for you mom :-) These are the crazy acueducts we drove all over Spain trying to find. I think that Spains was way cooler, but it was fun to find them in Mexico. Remember where we slept that night? ;-)

La Mina

2009-11-08T11:48:00.008-06:00

The mine!

Zacatecas is famous for it's mine. For over 300 years slaves and children dug this mine out without using any dynamite. Our guide said that between 8-10 people died everyday for 300 years. The children had to work in the mine when their parents died to "pay off their debt"...was super sad to hear that!

In order to enter the mine you have to wear a yellow hard hat and hair net (super nice...not) and then take a little train that has glass surrounding it. Our tour guide kept making fun of us because when he asked us where we were from we said Torreon and he was like no...like where do you live and we answered Torreon he was just getting frustrated with us. I felt pretty good about this day because the tour was all in Spanish and yet I understood everything he was saying! He liked us so much that he gaves us each a stone to keep :-)

Inside their a statue that supposedly if girls rub his tummy and touch the rock in his hand you will have good luck for the rest of your life. The men have to hold his gun and touch the stone in order to have good luck.

It was kinda creepy because once the tour was over they say you can leave with the tour guide or you can walk out the other entrance to the cable car. This is what we did, but there is no guide and you just follow random arrows...major difference between america and mexico! We would never let people wander a historical site where they could get lost or hurt or damage something by themselves!

Also interesting info about the mine is that during the day it's a touristic attraction, but at night it turns into a club. It's the worlds first mine club. now there are like 4 one in mexico, germany, australia and somewhere else.

Views from the trolly....

2009-11-08T11:32:00.007-06:00

Here the cables are kind of close to our heads, but there were times when we were sitting and had to duck so we didn't lose our heads. A couple times we had to make people sit down so they didn't get hurt!

This was a beautiful way to see the city. Most of our time we were only within our 4 block radius, but we loved being able to see how big and old and pretty everything was! We all were dreading going home on Monday and wished that we had two or more days to see more!

There was a beautiful park which reminded me of being in Spain, we didn't get to go back and see it, but it looked really pretty....it was where our hostel owner suggested we go eat a picnic lunch and if we had had an extra day I think we would have!

Torreon is a really modern industrial city and Zacatecas was an old historic city that was so full of colors and where people were proud of their city! One morning we were sitting in the plaza outside of a cathedral and an elderly couple came up to us and asked us where we were from and if we were enjoying their city and that they were happy to see young girls like us enjoying the beauty too! People in Torreon don't stop and talk to you unless they are going to say something you don't want to hear!

a beautiful old city....Zacatecas

2009-11-08T11:06:00.007-06:00

For the day of the dead (Nov. 2) we had school off which meant we had a 3 day weekend! We left Friday right after school and took a taxi to the bus station and then a 6.5 hour bus ride. This ride was fine, they showed two movies. 1- armagedan in spanish...needless to say we were all crying by the end. 2- lindsay lohans love bug or something like that...the remake of herbie goes bannanas. All my roommates thought I was crazy and didn't believe it was a real movie...I need to bring it back after Christmas dad!

When we got there we took a taxi to our hostle which was in the perfect spot! Right out one of the rooms was the cathedral and out of the other room it was another side of the cathedral. Our side also had a bar outside of it which was a little loud! But it was only open Friday and Saturday night. The other girls' room had the bells that went off ever hour. However, the rooms were so dark that we had no problem sleeping in!

Friday night we went to a little cantina and then went to bed because we were tired. When we were getting ready for bed there was no water...we thought nothing of it...

Saturday morning we woke up and there was still no water. By this point were like crud...but we get ready and we go to this cute little restaurant that apparently has only the best breakfast and the rest of its food is bad....

Then we went to the cathedral which was beautiful and made me think of Europe. Next we took a double decker trolly around the city. We had to duck a few times so we didn't get our heads cut off by cables.

day of the dead. All over the city there were altars to remember the people who have passed before those who are left behind. After walking out of the cathedral we were wandering, trying to find the trolly and saw something very colorful.....a guard told us we could come in and look. What we saw was truly amazing! All of these are created by different colored rocks, pasta, or fruit. It was huge and truly amazing to see how much time and detail they place into remembering those who have passed. The tradition believes that the dead will come and eat what is left for them on the altar. Also, that it's important to remember what the person loved or what made them unique. For example at other altars there were stuffed animal dogs to represent their dogs. Or there are guitars if they played or loved music. Each family decides how the person would like to be remembered.

Halloween party with my kids!

2009-11-06T20:50:00.007-06:00

Thursday night Ms. Cassidy and I got invited to the kids halloween party! It was fun, but crazy to see. There was probably 250 people there. Keep in mind that between us we only have 48 kids. Then add one mom to each of those who were sitting at a table and smoking, gossiping, not paying any attention to their kids. Then there was at least one nanny for each kid and an endless amount of sibilings. It was so weird because it wasn't at a house, it was at a party spot. It was strange to see the division and to really watch people not care for their kids. Granted there were some moms who were excited and taking pictures and following the kids around, but there were many who were not.

It was awesome to see our kids so happy to see us there and the parents were also excited that we were all together.

Halloween party Oct 24, 2009

2009-11-06T20:34:00.006-06:00

Halloween party!

The week before Halloween we hosted a halloween party at our house. We did it a week early because during halloween there was a puente and we were going to travel :-). The party was a custom party! It was fun to watch everyone preparing their costumes and being inventive. It was a time we wished we had a sowing machine, instead we used hot glue guns, super glue, safety pins, a lot of creativity was used!

The party began at 9pm and did not end until after 8 am. At 8 I finally went to my room and slept for a couple hours! When we woke up our house was completely trashed, but everyone was super excited and said they had a ton of fun. We had pinatas, a giant candy bowl, and loud music.

Here are some pictures to capture the night!

My roommate Eda dressed up as a duck...she was going to be chicken little, but then she got duck feet instead of chicken and changed a little :-)

This is my friend Ale, I have gotten to hang out with her quite a bit and it's nice because she has a car so we have gotten to go to different parts of the city and see new things :-)

Katie and Rulas. This is KT's 3rd year in Torreon.

Jenn is one of the teachers who was here last year and is incredibly helpful!

Little update on my class activities :-)

2009-10-18T21:24:00.006-05:00

Check out these awesome things my kids made out of clay! I think this was the quietest they have ever been and they were super encouraging to each other which was also fun :-)

One thing we do in my class each week is have a star student. The star student gets to see lots of things and share with their friends different aspects of their lives. For example, we read their favorite book on Tuesday. On Thursday they get to bring their favorite toy, and on Friday they get to bring someone from their family to share with us or teach us aspects of their lives. This weeks girl brought her mom who made oreo candy spiders and cute origami boxes to take them home in!

Victoria 10 K

2009-10-18T21:03:00.004-05:00

Two Sundays ago, my roommate Emily, my prepri teaching partner Cass, and our Mexican friends Omar and Paco ran in a 10 k. It was in the bosque (a big open space that has a bunch of shopping places) and we also saw a bunch of other people we knew from school.

These were the supporters who were here to cheer them on for the races. We got up at like 8 am so we could stand outside and freeze together. We made this sign that says they're the best runners in the world of course :-)

This is a picture of our house with Em in the middle. :-)

Copa Libertad

2009-10-18T20:45:00.010-05:00

Starting Thursday Colegio Ingles hosted the Copa Libertad. This was a sports invitation that the school has been preparing for for months! The kids were super excited and it was awesome to see how many parents, grandparents, family members and friends came to watch the students' games. Games started at 9 am and went until 10:30 p.m. depending on the night. It was a tournament with ten other schools from Coahuila (our state) and surrounding states. Sadly, Colegio Ingles did not do very well, but it was stil lfun to see school pride.

My little kids are super cute to watch playing, but they always had to play against kids that were bigger than them. They did not get to show their skills because the composition was far more advanced than they were.

Since I had nine kids playing soccer and 7 kids sick, the left over kids in my class and I went to watch them play. It was SUPER cute to listen to them sing "hip hip hooray" in Spanish for 45 minutes straight.....NOT :-p

Once again my school mascot is an eagle, just like it was when I was in elementary school. Kind of fun to go back to the same animal. My kids thought he was AWESOME. Apparently, this is the first year they've had a mascot. One of the students designed the costume and made it as part of a contest to win a free class trip. Pretty awesome!

Pictures of Cristo in the mountain

2009-10-18T20:27:00.005-05:00

This allowed us to look out over beautiful Torreon, sadly the day we went it was a little cloudy, but it was SUPER fun to see everything :-)

It's sad that Jesus isn't the tallest thing anymore that there are power lines overlooking the city that everyone can see.

This is a view outside our house driving down the street as we were coming home from Jesus.

Random Snapshots of Life in Torreon...

2009-09-30T19:55:00.005-05:00

We went to see Jesus Cristo. The giant Jesus statue that is in the mountains here. It was a funny story because my roommate Katie answered the phone and thought it was my roommate Em's boyfriend who called and said he wanted to take us so we all got ready to go and then Eda opened the door and it was some guy she did not know and had never seen before. Thankfully the other Emily met him through one of the other girls, but needless to say, it was a bit awkard!

Last week we started a Tuesday dinner tradition. We are going to take turns making meals for the 5 in my house, Emily's boyfriend and his friend, Paco, my friend Luz, and whoever else comes along. Last week we made lasagna, this week Paco made us Pastel Azteca which was super yummy!

I went and explored Wal-mart on a random Sunday. I bought fun things to make my room more of a house. Such as a candle, a puzzle, a new shower curtain, some food, and other fun things.

My students updates....

2009-09-30T19:43:00.005-05:00

My children are super naughty! I have kids throwing chairs and kicking and biting and twisting skin and being all around naughty. I have kids who say they hate me and this school. They wish that I would go away and not come back. I have a boy who runs away from my classroom and makes the other children afraid. I have kids who scream all day long. Welcome to Mexico. My principal says that what I am supposed to do in this situation is let them be. That even if they are destructive they “hopefully” won’t hurt anyone else so just let them be. Talk about a different standard than at home! Here you’re supposed to let kids run away from your classroom and when you send them to the office they get to color pictures and get stickers, oh yeah….really helpful! At the same time I have super sweet kids who are always doing their work. I have kids who are starting to use English more. They have a sticker chart that they are trying to fill up to get something from my prize box. I had one girl who turned from green (good) to yellow (so-so) today and had a meltdown. It's such a difference because some of my kids don't care at all.
It's so different because the kids are not expected to be respectful or responsible for their things. These kids are used to just getting new things and an endless supply of everything. Plus, these kids say unkind things to their friends all day long and when they are called out on it, they lie!
Last week some of my kids ript the pages out of my books. On Tuesday one of the kids stole one of my beanie babies I brought back here, On Wednesday my kids broke my coffee cup (The one Berk gave me for my graduation present :-( )

My trip home....

2009-09-30T19:38:00.005-05:00

Okay, two weeks have passed. Sorry I have not updated. Life right now has been super crazy! I spent this past weekend in Iowa. I went home for my grandpa’s funeral and it was good to be there. Here is my adventure of the way home:
5:10- wake up
5:45- wait outside for Luz to pick me up in her bug
6:05- talk to the continental lady and learn that I need my “blue paper”- visitor paper, I’m told that I cannot leave Mexico. I was told that I could pay $100 at the airport to get a new one, but the customs man would not give me one.
6:30- We called and woke up Erendia and asked her for Ms. Patty’s number and told her where I was. I also called my house and asked Eda and Emily to look for it in my house even though I was certain that it was at the school in order to get my working visa. Then we went back to the continental lady and she tries to pull strings to get me one. When she can’t she changed my flight so that I would not lose it completely. However, there were no tickets on Friday so I had to wait until Saturday to fly.
7:00- Luz and I leave the airport to go look through everthing and wait for school to open or for the Torreon government office to open so somehow I can get home by plane, bus or some other way.
Home: all the girls gave me hugs and told me it would all work out somehow. Then they all went to school. Emily and Emily let me borrow their computers so I could call my dad (he’s the one picking me up in Des Moines) and look for flights. My dad told me to try other airlines and to go to other locations such as Chicago.
7:45- got to school. I asked Anna in the main office if Charo or Paty were there. They hadn’t arrived yet so I went to kindergarten and cried with Cassidy.
8:00- Charo head principal found me and apologized and gave me a hug. I went with her to her office and we looked at flights and options:
- Take a bus to Monterry and fly from there
Problem: there’s been tons of water and she didn’t know if the road would be wiped out or if the bus would have problems.
- Take a bus to McAllen
Problem: very dangerous right now and would take more than twelve hours and is not good to cross boarder at night plus bus stations is far from the airport.
- A bus to Laredo
Problem: dangerous, long trip and not safe to cross boarder and no flight until tomorrow.
- Flight from Torreon to Dallas
Problem: super expensive, full tomorrow, left today before I could get the paper

8:35- was in computer lab and sent my dad an email about how upset I was about being trapped and updated him on flights. Charo came in and told me she had a plan and we needed to go quickly.
8:45- we left Colegio Ingles in Charo’s super suburban for the Torreon government building where I could get a paper.
9:15- a man flagged us into our spot which my door opened up into the middle of a bush! He “watched” the car for us when we went inside.
- Inside we signed in and got a visitor sticker and waited. As we were watching Charo told me that for her husband’s job he goes there a lot. He has a friend who can help us named Lupita, but she didn’t know which girl it was. She told me she had bought her cakes though.
9:33- Lupita helps us! She has a file full of information and my FM3. This is my ticket out of Mexico. There were only 5 teachers' papers ready and mine was one of them- such a God thing. The other option would have been to get some paper saying I’m in the process of getting my visa. This is what Charo is getting for all the other teachers in case something happens and they have to go home before they have their FM3. Lupita was super happy and helpful. Charo said it must be because she was recently married :)
10:00- we left the government building to go buy a flight from Torreon to Guadalajara where I could then take a flight from Guadalajara to Huston and Houston to Des Moines. We had to wait a little bit here because Miss Mexico was buying a ticket and chatting. She was very beautiful, sweet, and fun.
10:17- we left that office to go to the continental office to buy the Guadalajara to Houston ticket. This office had just one girl working and no form of security accept a bell on the door. Charo told her to be super careful.
10:40- we arrived back to my house to get my stuff. A suitcase full of children’s books. My broken computer, my camera, and a few other presents. Charo noticed the large whole outside the house where we’ve lifted two cars out of and the reason we lost electricity. It’s for this that she called Fernando. Colegio Ingles' Mr. fix it. During this time I called my dad and told him I was getting on a plane and would be home sometime that night.
11:05- we arrived back at the airport, got checked in, said goodbye and thank you to Charo. Found out that I needed to get my suitcase in Guadalajara and Huston because I was switching airlines.
11:40- walked upstairs and found out there’s hardly anyone there as in two cleaning people, 1 security woman, 1 kiosk lady, and 1 man waiting for a plane. So incredibly weird.
12:00- boarded plane #1 to Guadalajara without a problem
1:20- arrived in Guadalajara 15 minutes early which was a huge blessing. As I was waiting for my bag a security guy told me he thought it had left already and asked to see my claim ticket. While he was checking, out came my suitcase. I then tried to figure out how to get to Terminal 1 the international one. You could wait 30 minutes for a bus or take a walk. I chose to walk finding randomly posted signs for 15 minutes. Then I had to re-check my bag and fill out the Mexico FM2 form. A kind airport man helped me.
1:50- I walked through security and on to the international gates. I took a minute to stop and go to the bathroom. As I was walking down the final escalator to get to my gate, my Uncle John was walking up the stairs! I wondered when I knew I was going through Guadalajara if they would be there since they had been doing missionary counseling there. I gave them both big hugs and told them the whole story.
2:20- I had to board my flight that left at 3. I get in the line and find out that somehow I was supposed to go through immigration and get a stamp. I left the line, went up the stairs, down to gate 7 and immigration. There no one helped me and told me to turn the corner and go right which of course was nothing. So then I talked to this girl almost in tears asking where I could get the dumb stamp. Next she sent me to a table with 5 security checker people who also had no idea what I wanted. I explained it all in Spanish this guy took me to the same area as the lady who told me to turn right gave the dumb paper to a guy who asked for no information and just stamped it.
2:45- I have to walk out as an “arrival” through security AGAIN, walk around, down, over, up, down to get back to my gate so I can leave.
2:55- they’re checking my carry-on for the 3rd time now and I’m getting excited as I am finally on a plane that will take me to America.
3:00- I had originally asked for an aisle seat, but the woman I’m sitting next to had so much stuff and was looking for her ticket so I just moved over.
3:30- her and I were talking and Spanish and were able to talk about Guadalajara and an accident her family had. She said that went straight from the hospital to the airport and are going to relax in Huston for two months.
5:15- arrival in Huston! There were so many tall pine trees and there was a ton of English! :-) We had to walk away and then go through customs and security. Apparently if you set off the metal detector they now take an x-ray more or less of your body to see what you have on you. Then you keep walking until baggage claim. Then have to go through some homeland security guy who takes your customs form. Ext I went up an escalator through security again and then up another escalator and took a train to the correct terminal. Then I did some more walking and for the first times since 5 am had something to eat 6:15.
8- our plane left a little late and then there was a backup on the runway, but supposedly we have good wind pushing us along so we might arrive on time. Then once again to find my bag and my paper :-). Then drive two hours home and find my bed 21 hours after this crazy traveling began.

Hooray!! Mexico's Independence Day

2009-09-16T01:57:00.006-05:00

Today (Wednesday) is Mexico Independence Day! This means...we have no school!!! Tuesday at school the 4 yr olds did a play about the children hero's from the American vs. Spanish war. It was interesting to listen to it from the perspective. Also how 6 kids held off a bunch of American men to save a castle for a few more days...I didn't quite catch the whole story because only parts were shared and because I had kids not listening to whom I needed to talk.
After school today I took a siesta. It is becoming a bad habit, but the days get so long with the kids and the fact that we stay out late. Tonight we went out to dinner, but since we didn't start making lunch until 4:30 and were cleaning up at 5:45 we didn't eat much :-)
Then later we played games at one of the other houses with 5 Mexican friends and about ten other female teachers. We played Spanish gestures and it was super difficult, but really fun!
Tomorrow we are going to go downtown to the Plaza de Armas to see what festivities we can take place in. We are hoping to go to an open market and do a little shopping and find some authentic Mexican looking things.

What the kids were up to this week!

2009-09-10T22:31:00.005-05:00

Today I let my kids play with the tangram puzzles. The classroom aid had laminated them and kids were ready for some new toys. However, I found out that there were only enough shapes for one child to work at once so while the rest of my kids were playing around the room I traced shapes out of the foam stuff and created enough for 3 kids to play at one time.

Another activity they love to do that is math related is to play with rubber bands and make shapes. We have lost a lot of rubber bands, but I have been impressed that we have NOT hurt our friends with them.

Another activity that we have done often this week is to color pictures while we wait. I got so tired of the question "que puedo hacer miss. quiero jugar con toys// what can i do Miss. I want to play with toys" every 5 seconds so I spent awhile searching and printing them. The kids love to see their work on the walls and to take it home to their house to show their parents.

School side of the week...

2009-09-10T22:20:00.004-05:00

I have begun to notice some of the "politics" at school already.
For example, my classroom assistant is best frieds with my principal. She therefore is always out of my classroom and truly rarely working.

Yesterday, Cassidy the other prepri teacher had a child who stabbed someone with a pencil after punching a different kid. both my assistant and the principal were missing and Cass had to take her kids to the science lab so she brought me my girl and she just sat in the corner... It would have been a great time to have someone around...

Today, I had a child who went from green-yellow-red-blue-no cards by 9am. Now, I was not just grumpy or hadn't gotten enough sleep or something like that...this girl was super naughty! So when they pull their cards out they have to go to the principal's office for 30 minutes. Unfortunately, for this child it was a treat to need to go there although she was upset at me that she missed computers.

Also, there have been a lot of kids gone from school. There are many with "flu like" symptoms. Has this happened in the States to and I'm just out of the loop?? They have canceled 4th grade for a week (how strange is that?) because there were too many kids sick, but they have not canceled school yet which is very strange to me. Everytime I've gone in the office this week it has been crawling with sick kids and angry parents and people talking loudly on the phone in Spanish..it makes my head hurt!

I found out this week that I get to take my kids to the science lab once a week which I am super excited about! We give this teacher a theme and she will prepare the activity and find all the materials (a very hard task when you have to ask for EVERYTHING you're going to need the following week on Thursday).

Tuesday while I was teaching one of the ladies from the office came to my classroom with two men in black suits and said "this is Miss Alicia", they looked at me and checked my name off and then that was everything...so strange this place is!

Sorry for the lack of updates....weekend

2009-09-10T17:44:00.007-05:00

Life has been very crazy lately. Last night was the first night I've had electricity in my room since Thursday night. No electricity meaning that I couldn't find anything in my closet in the mornings, I got to shower in the dark, I couldn't blow dry my hair in my room, I couldn't see after 8pm to do any of my school work. Also my fan did not work nor did the air conditioning. Not our WHOLE house was out of electricity. My room did not have any, Emily's room upstairs didn't have any, our pantry and part of our kitchen was out. As in the part with the fridge and the oven...

---side story: Sunday night we were hanging out with my roomate Katie's soccer coach Jesus and his friends. (random fact....one of his friends is one of my kids at schools parents....) They kept making fun of us for not having power and didn't believe us. They kept saying we just needed to flip our breakers and we'd be fine. So they came to our house and what do you know...they found out we REALLY don't have power. lol. So while they were there they helped us empty our fridge which stunk horribly and they pushed our fridge to another outlet in the living room.

This weekend since we knew we didn't have electricity at home and because it was hot with no air we spent little time there. Here's a recap of the weekend:

Friday night Emily, Eda, and I went shopping down a street we had never been on. We found a clothing store Class, a fun jewelry place, a dried food/chillied everything store, a party store, a paperleria, a bakery, a dulceria, ect. Then Friday night we watched wedding planner. We had no water this night so we decided to shower outside on our closed in patio in the ran.

Saturday we woke up and went to Katie's soccer game and got to hang out with her team after the game and just learn about Torreon from them. On our way home Jesus wanted to take us to one of his friends birthday parties so we went since he was driving. Jesus and Eda decided to make a bet which resulted in her jumping into a wall in the pool and cutting/brusiing both her legs badly. Then Saturday we went to another place to watch the Mexico/somebody soccer game and then listen to/watched some of our friends participate in mexican karioke.

Then Sunday Jesse picked us up and brought us to his soccer game...he plays on a 25-40 yr old league team. When we got there I was certain I saw one of my kids dads and then I saw Roberto and knew that I knew both of them. Jesse's team won really easily. After the game Roberto (the dad) invited us to his house for a barbaque. The guys were ver nice and served us tons of amazing looking food. They however did make us eat a bunch of hot things like jalepenos, some chili something and a vegetable I had never heard of that was very hot!

Sunday night someone tried to take a shower only to find out that the water in Katie's batroom wouldn't shut offf. All of us had to shower in her bathroom one after aother and then we turnd the power off for over 24 hours with no water. They fixed this water problem on Tuesday finaly.

laughter...how we surrive the strange things...

2009-09-03T17:35:00.005-05:00

Emily and Eda are hanging out with the pinata from casa E... these are the returning girls who apparently bought her around Christmas last year and have kept her since!

These are the 5 girls I live with. Me and Emily in the back. Emily, Katie, Eda in the front! I am so blessed by the girls I live with and the laughter that we share daily!

I promise I am not normally this sunburnt! This was after our day at the waterpark, plus it looks way worse on here than it really was!

Emily, Emily and I sitting around the kitchen table eatting some lunch! Random side note....the water men just came. It only cost 15 pesos(1.20) to fill up a 5 gallon jug. Each week we get 5 of them.

Some pics of my kids...

2009-09-03T17:18:00.004-05:00

Here are some of my kiddos. Each day we have free choice or center time...Today we had more since one of my specials randomly changed times and I had an extra 30 minutes of class time, and I had a behavior problem that took 30 minutes to deal with and I needed the rest of my kids distracted and engaged so...free choice it was!

The "I don't like it here" phase of culture shock....

2009-08-30T16:51:00.003-05:00

This has been a draining week! Each day it seems like something happened that was annoying or not what should have or would have happened if I was in Iowa.
On Monday we did not have electricity at school and it was a rough first day of school. Also, I found out that my grandpa had a heart attack and his appendix burst (he's 91).
On Tuesday we found a dead bird outside our house and ants and other rodants trying to eat it.
On Wednesday I went to the emergency room since they wouldn't let me go to a normal doctor and ended up spending a lot more money than I needed to.
On Thursday there was a cockroach in my shower. He was on his back and couldn't move so I had to kill him and then Senor Burbujas (Mr. Bubbles) my shower.
On Friday I found out that I was getting a new student and that my 3 students who are still yet to come may not come for another two weeks or so.
On Saturday we found a dead mouse in the bucket we have outside our house to wash our feet with. Plus we had a very creepy possibly drunk taxi driver drive us home.
On Sunday my roomate Emily got an email that her friends dead passed away and she took a bus to Monterry and was in tears and stressed out about everything. I took her to the bus station and waited with her until she got on the bus.

Okay...so not everything is bad here. We have had a lot of fun and gotten to do some fun things. On Monday we went out for lunch at a really nice Chineese restaurant and they gave us resh squeezed lime ade.
Tuesday night we went and found another street place that has really good ice cream-ish stuff that was close to home and cheap :-)
Wednesday night we went to watch our roomate Katie play soccer. She is playing on a womans league here in Torreon and has games twice a week.
Thursday I had a suprise meeting with our principal she said we'd have them every couple weeks or so (such a strict schedule :-p). She told us we don't have to come back in January until the 7th. We are also trying to get to leave earlier in December because the contract dates and the school dates don't match up so we'll have to see what we do there....
Friday night we had a cowboy and indian party at some of the other teachers house (casa e) and ended up talking to some Mexican friends until 4am. They told us all about places we should visit and things to make sure we do.
Saturday we went to 4 Galerias which was a giant mall full of clothing stores, a big food court, a little train that drives children around the mall instead of walkinig.
Saturday night the casas b girls came over and we played phase ten and just chatted.

First day of school

2009-08-25T20:58:00.004-05:00

This was a little rough! I got to school at 7:10 to find out that I did not have electricty. I found my principal who didn't believe me, but then had to find the man who is responsible for all these things, he did not arrive until 7:40 and I didn't have lights until 8.
So I had parents who were upset with me for not having lights and kids who were super scared to have to go to a dark classroom and leave their parents. The parents stayed at school until 8:30 so I just let the kids play and did introductions to let them ease into the day. I had 7 kids in tears and a child who switched during the day to the other classroom.
I have 3 students who have still not shown up and are on vacation "for awhile" for whom I'm supposed to be saving papers and work. I have 14 boys and 8 girls.
I used a lot of Spanish throughout the day because everything I said in English two times I then said in Spanish once. Plus, with the kids who were crying I spoke in Spanish to help them feel at ease and to be able to find their seats.
Later in the morning I took my kids to their special to be told that they weren't having specials today and might not have them this week yet. Would have been nice to know BEFORE I got my kids all lined up!
I also found out that my kids have no math books even though they told me they would. They have only one English book and a notebook for writing and a blank paper one for coloring. For the Spanish teacher they have two text books and 5 notebooks. A little miscommunication there!

Okay, I think those are all the random things I want to remember from my very first first day of teaching!! :-)

Water Park!

2009-08-25T15:07:00.005-05:00

We went swimming on Saturday at a water park in the sububurb of Torreon called Laguna. It only cost us like 4.50 cents to go and one dollar for gas. We all went in a ford explorer, by all I mean 16 girls. We sat 7 in the truck, 6 in the middle seat, and 3 in the front. It is illegal to have more than two in the front otherwise we would have put more. We went with 3 of our Mexican friends from school who are super sweet! Here is the group:

This water park was huge and very spread out. There were tons of places to sit and even places where one could make their own food or places where you could buy it.

The pictures of all of us in the car are on someone else's camera, but I will try and get them soon. When we all started climbing out of the ford explorer some people were laughing at us and completely impressed that we all fit there!

I forgot my desk!

2009-08-21T19:13:00.003-05:00

This is my desk! The bird my mom and I bought the day I flew out of Des Moines at the Learning Post (an awesome teacher store!!). He is a puppet too. The two bookshelves behind my desk are where my teaching supplies are as well as all my curriculum the prize books, bulletin board things and inside the little boxes are the hand out to students things.

My Classroom!

2009-08-21T17:34:00.008-05:00

On Tuesday we got the keys to our classroom. I am in room F in the kindergarten wing of school. With me is the nursery, the toddler, the preschool 1, preschool 2, and kindergarten. However, they are called backwards here. Here's the explanation: I am teaching preprimaria (preschool), but there is a kinder 1 (4 year olds) and kinder 2 (5 year olds).

Here is what my classroom looked like:

This is what it looks like now. Keep in mind that everything that is in here was done in three days and the majority of it was brought in my suitcases from Iowa. I had awesome cooperating teachers while I did my student teaching and I have used a lot of their ideas or things that I made or did in their classrooms in mine as well!

This is the star of the week and the happy birthday bulletin board from my classroom :-)

This is the calendar, weather, days of school and my pointer part of the classroom which is next to the chalk board and in front of the carpet.

We can do it! This is the behavior system I am going to use in the classroom. Each students' name is writing on an "I think I can" post-it and behind it is a green, yellow, red, blue piece of paper which the studetns will have to turn based on how they have behaved that day. The kids will also take home a calendar to their parents with the appropriate color for each day on it.

Over in the corner is our jobs chart, the yellow board has three special student rewards which I will change each week. The big red one will have student work displayed on it once we create some :-) The bookshelves have some of my manipulatives including really old puzzles, some fun art materials, math counters, and a big book :-)

This is my big carpet for the students to sit on and share ideas. Along the wall is the list of centers and where they are throughout the room. Above the windows are numbers 1-20. In the windowsill are 6 puppets that I found in my closet!

Week 1 at school update

2009-08-21T16:23:00.004-05:00

A lot has happened in this last week which has been strange, overwhelming, exciting additions to the adventure. There's lots to say so this will probably sound random so I hope you make it through.

* Tuesday we had meetings at school and then we came home and took naps. This seemed like such a great idea, but then I was awake until 3:30 in the morning and that was not helpful! I ended up watching a Monk episode and went to sleep that night with stickynotes full of questions, things to do, and places to go.

* Wednesday mid-morning we met with the kindergarten principal and talked about what we had learned and which things we needed to know more about. Also during this meeting we got our class books which was overwhelming! And since that wasn't overwhelming enough she also told us that we needed to turn in our plan books by 2:30 on Thursday every week including this week. So I planned 9 subjects for five days in 24 hours :-)

* Wednesday evening we went grocery shopping and got the Soriana card so that we could earn points and get free things. I spent 700 pesos on groceries which seems like a ton, but I bought things like spices and condements and all the beginning things. I also bought goggles so that added up! To go shopping we walk to the store and then take a taxi close to our home (we never let them take us to the house) and carry our stuff inside. This picture was after we had unpacked some of the food.

* Thursday morning one of the girls forgot her keys so she borrowed mine and said she was going to bring them back. She never brought them to me so I walked home after school and was able to get in the gate, but could not get into the house so I went to the ice cream place and got an iced coffee because I had been out of water for 2.5 hours and was incredibly thirsty. Thankfully the girls came home 40 minutes later.

* Thursday when we all got home from school for the second time and were standing in the kitchen talking we lost power. We had no idea what had happened or why, but we were not the only ones. The whole block was without it for about 45 minutes.

* Also Thursday night the two male American teachers invited us to a fiesta Saturday night with all the Am. teachers, some of the Mexican teachers and some of their Mexican friends.

My Address

2009-08-17T21:33:00.002-05:00

Alicia Herman
Colegio Ingles Torreon
Division del Norte No. 1915
Col. Rincon de la Hacienda
Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico
C.P. 27271

Random Updates...

2009-08-17T17:32:00.002-05:00

* Da me mas gasolina (remember that one from Spain girls???)...So apparently the reason our stove/oven hasn't worked since we got here AND the reason we haven't had water is because our gas was out. So we have been eatting out/on the street since Thursday because we haven't been able to cook anything...We have a microwave but there are limited things we can cook with it because we bought our groceries for an oven!

* They told us today at our school meeting that if we go to the hospital to make sure we stay at least 24 hours so that insurance pays for it. I thought the idea was to get out of the hospital right away, but apparently not...

* All the DVD's I brought from home don't seem to be working in our DVD player..something about it being a different zone, I'm not sure the mechanic is coming again tomorrow.

* Today we had a list with many problems with our house. For example, my shower drips, another girls sink drips, one girls ceiling leaks, we didn't have hot water, the oven/stove didn't work, we were missing 6 light bulbs throughout the house, our outside lights don't work, the mailbox is facing the wrong direction, our plant hook is no longer in the wall....also known as rediculous amount of problems for one house!

* We have been on our own in the city until this morning when we had a 5 hour information overload information covering topics as our new Mexican social security card, tour of the school, how we need to be fingerprinted, classroom management/discipline rules, where to buy chocolate cake, how we pay our bills, when to get more gas for the house, getting our own router, where to go to buy stamps, and many other random things! Tomorrow we get to go school and get fingerprinted, our social security card, fill out more paper for our working visa and we get to settle into and decorate our classroom a little! I'm super excited to be doing something and not just wandering around for days on end with no idea what to do or where to eat or how to tip or anything like that!

I hope you are all well!

Shared House

2009-08-17T17:21:00.006-05:00

Here are the pictures of the shared part of my house. There are 4 more bedrooms almost identical to mine with slight differences.

This is the living room where we have watched Finding Nemo in Spanish as well as gotten really frustrated with the internet together!

This table is maybe the main reason that we chose this house. The other houses either had small tables or plastic ones or plastic chairs. We wanted to be able to share meals together and eat food with one another.

Here are the pics I promised a few days ago!

2009-08-17T17:05:00.006-05:00

Here is my little mirror outside the bathroom as well as my shower and toliet which get a lot of sunlight as you can see.
This is the other half of my room nexted to the bed and my closet which is at the end of my bed.

This is my desk and my bulletin board.

Thursday Evening

2009-08-14T19:43:00.001-05:00

We told Erendia in the morning that some of us would go with her to the airport to pick up the other girls who were flying in so I stayed at our house while the other four girls (one more came in during the morning) went to wal-mart to pick up a few more things. As I was waiting I decided to unpack and re-arrange everything, it took about two hours, but I had everything where it needed to be for now and it feels like my house. I wish that I had brought pictures, but it said we couldn’t put anything on the walls so I just have my laptop full of photos, but now there is a bulletin board we could have used so someone will have to mail me some ;-)
For dinner, seven of us girls went to a café that is across from the Casa A y Casa B. I ordered quesadillas that were really good and didn’t eat the lettuce or tomatoes. We were really tired by the end of dinner, but we came home and the other girls unpacked and I labeled some of the things I brought. In the process I found a coloring book from a friend (heather) with a sweet note in it that made me so happy. Once again I had a hard time falling asleep, but I think with time I will fall asleep easier at night.

Thursday am

2009-08-14T19:40:00.003-05:00

We were met at 11am by the woman who is in charge of housing and making sure we have everything correct in the houses in order to see if we were interested in another house or if we were happy staying in casa a y casa b. We went to Casa D to look at a 5 person house which would hold all of us and would allow us to just be together and give us time to get settled in instead of having to wait longer and live out of suitcases for two days. We chose casa d which has some pluses and some negatives. A major draw was the fact that we have better air conditioning and we have a real table and chairs instead of just plastic ones. One drawback is the fact that our desks are just these wire crates with a painted white board across the top and a green plastic lawn chair.
After we got our suitcases we decided we were starving and headed out looking for a restaurant. We had no idea what was around or where good food would be. Along the way we stopped and wandered around the school after we were let in by a guard! The school is huge and has an awesome open courtyard and it also has a stadium seated soccer field on the high school side of the school. At school the curriculum director directed us to the mall where we could find a place to eat. We tried to cut through a parking lot, but security guys told us we weren’t allowed to and needed to walk all around the giant hospital (nice and close if we get sick). We walked through the mall and ended up at a restaurant that advertized tacos and other food, but after receiving a menu we discovered it was only seafood. We talked about getting up and walking out, but couldn’t because people were looking at us and talking about us. Luckily, there was a little box on the back that had non seafood things on it. We could not figure out how we were supposed to tip the waiter or ask for the bill.
After lunch we asked a security guy how to get to Soriana which is like a grocery store that has everything in it such as pillows, sheets, towels, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, and school supplies. The problem with this is that whatever we buy we have to carry back and we had tons of things we were interested in having/needed in order to unpack our bags and move in.

Torreon International Airport

2009-08-14T19:39:00.002-05:00

Once we have boarded the plane and are airborne the pilot comes on and says that the Torreon airport is staying open in order for us to land, but otherwise they would be closed. We filled out our customs forms on this flight which was only in Spanish there were no English copies available. It was a smooth flight and only about an hour and twenty minutes. When we got to the airport we had to walk from the tarmac into the airport and then a 25 foot baggage claim circle went around with all our luggage. We were the last ones to leave the airport and we had the most stuff, it was ridiculous! There was a huge crowd of people waiting for people, but by the time we were ready to send our bags through there seemed to be no one left waiting. We theorized about getting a hotel or taking a taxi to the school and worst case scenarios, but then we saw three sweet ladies who were there to pick us up! They came in a suburban and a jeep which we packed full with our luggage and bodies. They dropped us off at casa a & b and told us that we had a meeting on Monday at 10 am, but nothing we had to do before then. We all ended up staying in one house together instead of the two houses. We didn’t go to bed until 2 am and then all had an awful time sleeping because the beds were hard, the fans were loud, the noises were too much, we thought someone was sneaking in, the dogs outside, etc.

Oh Houston...

2009-08-14T19:36:00.002-05:00

I only had an hour and twenty minute layover in Huston which I was excited about, just enough time to get some food, read a little bit, and be ready for the plane again. I was also hoping to meet some of the girls who were flying into Torreon. I knew that there would be five of us, but I did not know what any of them looked like. About 30 minutes before we were supposed to board I saw a girl named Emily who I met at the UNI job fair where we got this job! Her and I found a seat and were talking just waiting, by this time we knew that our flight was delayed about 40 minutes. About 20 minutes into talking we hear this girl say that the flight has changed gates and been moved up, she looked kind of like a teacher and we were hesitant and so we decided to check the monitor and sure enough that was the flight to Torreon. So they moved the flight to a gate that was on another long hallway plus they moved the time up 25 minutes. After we got downstairs (we carried our 40 pound carry-ons down the steps because the escalator was broken) they continued to delay our flight because the plane wasn’t in or the crew was missing . By this time all 5 of us are talking and getting to know one another which was nice. Three of them graduated from Luther College in Iowa but are all from the Minneapolis area, another is from Green Bay Wisconsin.

Luggage Disaster...

2009-08-14T19:35:00.001-05:00

My mom drove me to the Des Moines airport on Wednesday. I wanted to get there early in order to move stuff around in my bags so they all were an okay weight since I added a few things. As I was checking in I found out that there was an embargo for Mexico until August 30th. This means that you are allowed to take only TWO fifty pound bags. At this point I have 4 bags, two that weigh 50 pounds and two that weigh 70. However, my mom was the one who was told this because I helped this Spanish speaking woman find her missing bags since no one else spoke Spanish we walked to the other end of the airport and talked to some very rude unhelpful officials.
So, I moved to a wall and opened up all 4 of my bags and began the process of unpacking/repacking/leaving behind a ton of stuff. At this point I’m sitting on the airport floor crying and getting a lot of strange looks from business men who walk by with their black suits and little carry-ons! We only had about an hour to do all of this and the ladies said that we could have 70 pounds instead of just fifty. Kathy was a very helpful lady while the other women were rude and unsympathetic. So basically I had no idea what was actually in my suitcase or if I was missing anything important as well as I had things all over the place and nothing was as neatly organized. But, thank God all of my luggage made it and almost everything I need is here!

I have arrived

2009-08-12T19:34:00.002-05:00

Sorry I did not update before leaving, but I am in Torreon, Mexico now living in Casa D de dedo with 4 other girls. Our house is huge and would be awesome if we could decorate or paint the walls, but we can’t! So we are going to buy some plants and things to put on all of our end tables and on top of the fridge and other places as well! Each of us have our own room which includes a walk-in closet, a bathroom with a toilet and shower inside it and a sink on the outside with a mirror. Also there is a twin size bed, a four shelve book shelf, a desk, and a bulletin board. There are two bedrooms on the main level and three upstairs also with our laundry room. Our living room has a huge entertainment center with nine (I think) squares you can put things on a dvd player, vcr, and a television. The living room has two couches, 2 end tables and opens up right into the kitchen. The kitchen is very nicely furnished. We have a wood table with 8 chairs around it, a little island, and a lot of cupboards, a pantry, a fridge/freezer, microwave, coffee pot, blender, dishes, pots and pans. Outside the front door is our courtyard which is shaded with trees along one side.
The house is situated between two other school houses- the returning teacher’s house and the male teacher house. It is only two blocks away from school. On the opposite side of school is an internet café. Two blocks the other direction is casa a & b which is other female teachers. On the corner of our street there is an ice cream store called bips where we got iced coffee. Across the street from bips is a OXXO gas station, a pharmacy, and a little restaurant. About 5-6 blocks away is a Soriana and 12 blocks away a Wal-mart which we visited to buy cleaning supplies, groceries, and better pillows!

Packing...

2009-08-09T23:26:00.002-05:00

Such an overwhelming daunting task. I am blessed to have a mother who has spent a lot of time packing and knows the best way to fit 50 pounds in a suitcase....After five hours and a bit of frustration and lots of moving things around I have 4 packed suitcases and a partially packed carry-on. My bags weigh 49.8 pounds, 48.9 pounds, 69.4 pounds and 70.0 pounds. Unfortunately two of those are going to require excess baggage charges, but I am moving myself and my future classroom to Mexico! As my dad reminded me tonight it's not just a plane trip it's a moving process which unfortunately has to be done through an airplane.

I take off Weds. afternoon at 4 something from Des Moines so we are going to leave home around 11. I still want to stop at a teacher store and buy a puppet (where it will fit, I know not. lol) Off to bed, but I will update soon!

Torreon

2009-05-12T22:49:00.001-05:00

This is where I will be living from August 14th-July 1st. :-)