¡Ya me voy!

Things have been slow at UNO all week. Students have been dragging and the office has been quiet. In fact, no one came for my last class of the day at all! I am just watching the clock tick by at this point. I have an hour and a half left of my last day of work before Spring Break officially begins. Admittedly, I´m feeling pretty restless and unfocused...Soooo, I thought I would take a few minutes to round out my blog posts to an even 50 before I come home tomorrow!
I´ve still got some packing to do this evening, but luckily for me, my empty fridge won´t keep me from eating tonight. The Guelaguetza people have come from Oaxaca to sell food, clothing, and various regional products. (They came in the fall as well, but because I was still new in town, I couldn´t take advantage of the festivities.) Tonight I´m looking forward to stopping by the festival in the park for some tlayuda for dinner. Tlayuda is like a big quesadilla, but the tortilla is crispier and the cheese is quesillo, which is traditional Oaxacan stringy cheese. The other night, I ate some mole oaxaqueño which was delicious, and they have amazing hot chocolate as well. I´m continually impressed by the fact that Mexican gastronomy is so multifaceted and that there are so many regional and cultural variations on the traditional cuisine.
Valladolid has been blessed with absolutely beautiful weather the past few days, but I noticed that the forecast for Bethlehem looks very promising for the coming week: low to mid-70s and sunny! I´m looking forward to my time in PA and being able to celebrate my Dad´s birthday (just a couple days late).
¡Saludos a todos! ¡Ya me voy!

Weekend bliss

Because my friends were visiting, I had the opportunity to do some of the things that Valladolid has to offer that I hadn´t yet taken advantage of in my 7 months of living here. Saturday during the day, Ashley and Jad and I rented bikes and rode to Cenote Dzitnup, which is about 3.5 miles from Valladolid along a bike path that is mostly used by iguanas sunning themselves and the occasional villager on their bicycle commute to or from town. It was a hot day, so taking a swim in the crystal blue water from within the cave was refreshing.
Then, Saturday night we went to a concert of the Symphony Orchestra of Yucatán, which was held in the cathedral in the center of town. The orchestra played an eclectic mix of music, including traditional Mexican Danzón, the Conga, a piece from Tchaikovsky´s "The Nutcracker", and music from Leonard Bernstein´s "West Side Story." It was wonderful to see this orchestra, composed of many amazing musicians from all over the world, yet playing in the most iconic place in Valladolid. And the acoustics were excellent!
On Sunday, we all drove with my friend Hans to Tulum for a spectacular beach day. Today it´s back to work for me, but only till Wednesday! So far, it seems as though things are going to be fairly quiet this week...I´m keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way.

One week from now...

I´ll be home! I might be the only person who is LEAVING Mexico to go to Pennsylvania for Spring Break, but así es...I was thinking about it and realized that it has been 3 years since I´ve seen an East coast spring! I am not counting on it being a true vacation/Spring Break trip, though. I´ve got to do my taxes for 2009, and most of all, I´ve got to attend to an aging dog...la Mira. Can´t wait to see her, and the rest of the family, of course! Just a few of the things I´m looking forward to are: feta cheese, sushi, & croissants, movies & TV, and New York City.
The next week is going to fly by, I´m sure. I doubt many students will be here next Monday-Wednesday for classes, so I tried to be proactive and I gave them their Final Project instructions yesterday. It is super awkward how this cuatrimestre was scheduled, with Spring Break falling just two weeks before the end of the term. I´m afraid that my students will come back in mid-April having forgotten all their English! It is especially troublesome with my 1st year students, because they´ll be having an actual Final Exam the last week of classes covering all the material from the entire course. It really puts the pressure on to review all the concepts in the second-to-last-week, but I´m planning on having my students do oral presentations, with each group presenting one of the topics we´ve covered.
Today, another friend will be stopping through Valladolid on a tour of Mexico. She´s from Monterey, CA and we met at MIIS. I´m looking forward to seeing her and her boyfriend, and showing them around this little city.
¡Saludos a todos y nos vemos prontísimo!

Vernal Equinox @ Chichen Itza - 03/20/10

I was lucky enough to celebrate the Vernal Equinox at one of the 7 Wonders of the Modern World: Chichen Itza. I went with a few friends and we watched as the sun's movement cast a shadow which, as it grew, began to form a serpent of light. The serpent really started to take shape at about 3:15 pm and the peak of the phenomenon was at about 4:30 pm. The ancient Maya believed it was the spirit of Kukulkan descending to earth. It is anyone's guess, really, how the ancient Maya celebrated this special day, but one thing is for sure: We were all in awe of the masterful architects who built this ancient city many centuries ago.

The triumph of silence

When people here (and by people, I mostly mean taxi drivers) ask me how I like living in Valladolid, I say I like it very much. They invariably respond, "Es muy tranquilo, ¿verdad?" In other words, "It´s really tranquil here, don´t you think?" The tranquility of Valladolid, I think, largely comes from the quiet that takes over this corner of the world.
Something I have noticed after living here for several months now is that there are no airplanes flying overhead...I have never seen or heard one flying above Valladolid. I realized today, too, how quiet it is to teach at UNO. We are surrounded by lowland jungle (and, a bit further off, Mayan ruins) on nearly all sides. It is a wonderful thing to give a test and have the loudest thing you hear be a sprinkler watering the plants outside the window...
From my new apartment, in the afternoons, the bar across the street plays traditional Mexican music at a very reasonble volume. In the mornings, I don´t even hear roosters crow (a rarity in Valladolid). And at night, I have the luxury of total silence. The only sounds I hear are the ones I want to have in my environment.
So, today I am thankful for the triumph of silence in my daily life...I realize it helps me make room for other things.

Pan dulce on a rainy day

So far this rainy day in Yucatán has been very agreeable. I woke up, made my coffee (in a new mini-French press brought to me by my friend Kate all the way from PA), listened to NPR streaming live on the Web (a godsend), and got to work a little bit early. I am now more than halfway done with my teaching hours today and it´s only 10:30 am. The students in my lowest group actually worked hard today in class doing peer revisions on an assignment I had given them to observe other students cooking in the kitchen and write down what they see, noticing any safety hazards, interesting techniques, good teamwork, etc. Then another student brought me a pan dulce that she had made in Bakery class yesterday. Pan dulce is a traditional Mexican baked good - it´s bread that´s a little bit sweet with a subtle layer of cocoa (or vanilla) icing on top.

An hour later...
Just had another hour of class during which I did a fun activity with my 2nd year Gastronomy students. I gave them a budget of $40 US and, splitting them into groups of three, had them plan a day´s worth of meals for a family of 4 (two parents, two kids, and a dog). I gave each group a Weis supermarket circular (my friend Kate brought those too!) and had them plan breakfast, lunch, and dinner for $40 or less.
They seemed to really enjoy the activity and it was fun to watch them pore over the circulars. It was also a good opportunity to teach them certain symbols and phrases, for example: 2/$7 = "2 for 7 dollars" and "buy one get one free." Authentic materials, or realia, can certainly make a teacher´s job easier because they are so rich with information and language in context. Thanks, Kate, for the awesome materials!

SPRING BREAK 2010!

My friends Kate and Lauren are here in Mexico and they´ve been doing some sightseeing in and around Valladolid. They seem to really be enjoying the hot weather, Yucatecan food, and natural beauty of the area. Today we are heading to Playa del Carmen for some beach time before they have to head back to the States on Sunday. I am so excited to finally get to have some time with them when I´m not working! It´s been a long, exhausting week, but we´ve been having lots of fun, and I don´t have to work on Monday (for the birthday of Benito Juarez, I believe), so I will have a nice, long, three-day weekend to unwind.
My Spring Break at UNO is rapidly approaching; it begins April 1st! I´ll be flying to Pennsylvania for the week and I am very much looking forward to that.
Well, I have to do some work before I am ready to head to the Riviera Maya this afternoon, so I better get to it!

Robot Battle

In my classes, I am fighting a continuous war against a robot. Google Translate is the enemy. Don´t get me wrong, it is an amazingly advanced tool for translation and has a lot of positive features, BUT it is by no means perfect. And it is all too frequently used by my students as a panacea for all their language woes.
It is nearly impossible to convince them, though, that this magic website is hurting them more than it is helping them. (And in the meantime, it´s driving me crazy trying to decipher and decode their oddly-worded, unnatural-sounding work.)
I was recently sent an article about Google Translate and its successes and they are many; it is an incredibly advanced tool. But due to all the problems I am having with it with my students, I wanted to find out if any other teachers of language were having this problem. I didn´t find much online about pedagogical implications, but I did find this interesting article about the weaknesses of the translation tool:
http://socyberty.com/languages/playing-with-google-translate/
I have tried to demonstrate to my online class the dangers of using this service without also doing the work on your own by using the service myself to translate English to Spanish, and now they seem to be doing their own work more than before. The worst offenders, though, are my 2nd year Gastronomy students. They are constantly trying to avoid doing the actual work of using English. It is bad enough when students depend so heavily on the dictionary that they try to translate Spanish to English word for word, but Google Translate takes away even the need to open a dictionary, look for a word, and physically write it down.
I have become an analog warrior in a digital war, and I am growing tired of repeating my battle cry: DO NOT USE GOOGLE TRANSLATE!

Big Bigger Biggest...

...NEWS, that is. (We are working on comparative and superlative adjectives in my Public Administration English 2 class, so my brain is in Grammar Land...)

Let me start with the big news:

The big news is that I am very much looking forward to making a trip home to PA for my Spring Break, the first week of April! It will be here before I know it!

Even bigger news is that I have two good friends coming to visit me this week. One is a former classmate from MIIS, Kate. She is arriving tomorrow evening. The other is a woman I met while I was the Coordinator of the Teacher Training program for Bilingual Educators from Madrid 2 summers ago in Vermont. Her name is Lauren and she arrives tonight. I am very much looking forward to seeing them both and to showing them around Valladolid. Then on Friday, we are all going to Playa del Carmen for a bit of Spring Break beach time! I have a three day weekend which will be wonderful, considering all the things that have been going on. Good times...

Which brings me to the biggest news: I am now officially living in my own apartment! After way too many weeks of bouncing from place to place, trying to find the right situation and never feeling settled, I am now moved into a pretty little studio very close to the center of town. I have wireless internet, high ceilings, a full kitchen, and lots of closet space. Best of all, I have it all to myself. I am looking forward to cooking dinner and doing some watercolor painting on my white tiled countertop. I will post pictures of the new place as soon as I can!

Things have been crazy but it seems like they may finally be mellowing out. I´ll be updating my blog more frequently now that I have a home of my own again.
AAAHHHH