So what do you do?

I hate Puebla. It is no fun. Everything closes at 10. There are good enchiladas. There is a really big pyramid (largest in the world by volume) in nearby Cholula. I yoinked some pictures from someone we met there. The pyramid is earthed over now, so it really just looks like a big hill with a church on top. It was pleasant, but not so impressive. You can also see a volcano from it. I might not hate Cuernavaca, but I may never know because I spent way too much time being sick in my hotel room there. I ate a lot of bread. If I had stayed in the first hotel (I'd rate it at about one fourth of a star) one more night, I'm pretty sure I would have died.

Irene and I returned to Mexico City and went to talk to the good people at International House Mexico. We really thought that we were just having a chat, but then we noticed that we were already on the teaching schedule and they kept refering to us as if we already worked there. Yeah, so now it looks like we work there. Oops! I do like the city, but I think I only want to live there for five or six months. I filled out a form and wrote something besides "student" as my occupation for the first time in my life. That somehow makes me feel both very old and very young at the same time.

The next day we went to the IH Mexico Christmas party. It was on the 47th floor (somewhere in that big round thing at the top) of the World Trade Center in Mexico City. The view of the city was stunning, mainly by virtue of just how expansive a city of 18 million people truly is. It is intimidating and thrilling all at once. Dinner was incredible, but I honestly wish that I hadn't eaten a bite so that I could have eaten more cake. Cake is good. Irene won a DVD player in the raffle. That is good, because it looks like the school is going to hook us up with an apartment, so I pretty much won a DVD player by association. The school is apparently going to furnish said apartment, so we are hoping that we get to help shop for furniture and the like. We have also been promised phones, visas, and the occasional paycheck.

When I checked the monitor at the airport in Mexico City, it showed that my flight to "Austin Robert Mueller" was right on time. That seems like excellent news until you realize that the last time a plane landed at Robert Mueller Municipal Airport was May 22, 1999. I felt like I maybe should mention that to somebody. Do I tell the pilot? Should I give him directions? Someone must have clued him in, because we landed safely at ABIA. Silly Mexico. Now I am back in Texas for a couple of weeks. I am enjoying the BBQ, drinkable water, and milk that doesn't make me see pretty colors.

Home and Away Again

Well, my camera is officially dead. The internet said it was probably dead, but I took it apart anyway. That didn't work, so I moved on to a 'tapping method' which had worked for some people. That didn't work either, so I moved on to the 'banging and throwing method', which I actually devised myself. That mainly just broke it enough that I could give up. So that is why there are no pictures.

This problem will likely be solved in a matter of weeks, however, as I found a direct flight from Mexico City to Austin and will be home on December 17. I may be home for as little as ten days, giving me a chance to reload and set back out.

Add my suitcase, often known as The Tank, to the list of broken things. One of the two zippers to the main compartment has broken, and The Tank appears to be slowly dying. This was the suitcase I bought for my Israel trip in high school, so I am deeply saddened by this. Yeah, I know that's stupid.

The last night in Playa was insane. At various points in the night, I had friends who were on the floor of the bar and behind the bar serving drinks. A couple of us washed some dishes, too. I don't really know how that happened. Three of us had a flight to Mexico City the next day. Only two of us made it onto the plane. Intense.

I stayed in Mexico city for a couple of nights. It was nothing like the picture in my head and was quite beautiful at times. Walking from neighborhood to neighborhood, I often felt like I had walked into a different city. Irene and I dropped off resumes at a couple of schools, including one affiliated with the school in Playa. Traveling is great, but I am finding that traveling with a specific purpose in mind can be much more exciting. Everywhere I go, I am constantly evaluating whether or not I could see myself living there for six months or more.

Now I am in Puebla, a city of about two million people. It feels nowhere near that large, and is full of colonial architecture. It is said to retain the Spanish influence more than most any other city in Mexico. It is a far cry from both the beaches of Playa and the bustle of Mexico City. It is also cold. Actually, I think I am going to stop typing and go explore. If you are going to be in Austin in a couple weeks, I will see you soon.

Mexico Breaks Stuff

A lot has happened since my last post. I will get to all of that, but what consumes me at the moment is that I am going to flip out if one more thing breaks. My guitar case, my flip-flops, and my camera have all been casualties of the last few days (though I must thank Isobel for discovering the other zipper on my guitar case). Apparently sand is not good for cameras, and the life expectancy of Old Navy flip-flops drops dramatically to about five weeks once you cross the border.

On the last night of the course, class gave way to a pretty intense party in the courtyard of the school. The lines between students, teachers, and course tutors suddenly no longer existed as the nearly unbearable pressure of the past month was finally released. Eventually the party moved to the beach. Things get a little hazy at this point, but I did wake up the next morning (afternoon) with the ability to fake my way through salsa dancing.

The following week was all about the beach. Sometimes it rained, but the rain made us sleep now and then. We finally got to do a lot of the things that we talked about doing all the time but never had time for during the course. This included things like not freaking out all the time and watching the sunrise over the ocean. We also decided that we missed our students and began stalking them after class and making them come hang out with us. Some of them are now close friends.

Our friendship soon bore some pretty amazing gifts. First Irma took a few of us snorkeling in a cenote (basically a cave with water in it. Wikipedia informs me that it is actually a type of freshwater-filled limestone sinkhole). The next day Guadalupe invited us to have beach and fish where she works about half an hour from Playa. I sware it was the most amazing meal I have ever had. I ate three whole fish by myself. They just kept putting fish in front of me. I think I could have eaten five.

With all major travel plans being constantly pushed back by indecision, five of us set off to Tulum with a three person tent (oh, yeah, the tent was also broken). Tulum is about an hour south of Playa and is absolutely beautiful. I volunteered to sleep outside of the tent (though that is more of an inevitability when you travel with four girls) and was rewarded with some amazing stars and a lot of being really cold. Also, in case you were wondering, sleeping on sand is not nearly as comfortable as one might think. I am doing it again tomorrow night for some reason, though. After the threat of rain pushed us off the beach, we walked over to the Mayan ruins of Tulum. The city was built on the cliffs overlooking the sea which creates a pretty spectacular effect.

I have plans! Well, I have plans for the next four days at least. I am going back to Tulum tomorrow for snorkeling, fishing, and fish partying. From there I will head back to Playa for a couple of days, and then Karen, Irene, and I will be flying to Mexico City on Saturday. I hope to spend parts of the next couple of weeks in Mexico City, Cuernavaca, some city that I can't remember the name of, and Puebla. This is the point where things may get a little nutty. At this point I am hoping that I will have a better of idea of how long I would like to travel and when or maybe where I would like to teach. I plan on passing out resumes along the way, and if I really become attached to one place, I may just stay there. If I have had no such revelations, however, the tentative plan will be to pass through Queretaro and then take a long bus to check out Monterrey. From there I hear that there is this town called Austin that isn't too far away that might be a pretty cool place to be for New Year's.

This is all just speculation, though it is a pretty feasible plan. Returning to Austin will certainly not mean the end of my adventures, but it will let me relax, think about what I really want to do, and get rid of all the crap that I brought with me that I don't want to lug around anymore. There are any number of directions I could go from here, most involving the purchase of a proper backpacking backpack and going to see volcanoes and monkeys. One of my favorite scenarios involves driving my car back to central Mexico, though that would be much better if I had some company. Takers? Mexico? Donations? Good times for all.

Freedom

My course is basically over. I have taught my nine lessons and turned everything in, though I do still have class tomorrow. My drive to work right away has been steadily diminishing, and my plans tend to change from minute to minute. The plan of the moment involves staying in Playa del Carmen for about a week and then going to Guatemala for a few weeks. Then I hope to meet Goldberg, Scott, and Beth in Belize for a bit and to go to Honduras for a little while after that. I would like to travel some here in Mexico as well. Really, I want to go everywhere and see everything. That seems like a good goal. Maybe I will find a job along the way.

Teaching has been great. I feel like I just go up there and talk to my students for an hour. I don't really get nervous at all, which seems a little strange to me. For our last teaching practice, we had the option of basing our lesson on authentic material, so I found an article and did a lesson about the bat colony under the Congress Avenue bridge in Austin. The bats actually migrate from Mexico, so it was a good connection.

Planning for teaching is not so great. It takes forever and it is exhausting. The CELTA course also has a very specific way that you are supposed to write up your lesson plans, and this can be very frustrating at times. I am relieved to be done with that. I am trying to convince my friend Irene to get a CELTA tattoo. Seems like a good idea.

My favorite tacos of the moment are from the taco bus (pictured). I have no idea what the place is really called, but I would still call it the taco bus even if I did.

Tonight is the last teaching practice, so everyone will finally be done. I really want to see what everyone is like when they are not under such extreme pressure. This course just looms over you, even when you are on the beach. It's difficult to even enjoy your margarita. I am just now beginning to feel like a real person again, and many of the others have expressed the same sentiment. Rumor has it that there is actually a beach a few blocks from here, so hopefully my next post will include some pictures of la playa.

Tortas Galacticas y Tacos Locos

I have a new system for ordering food here. Basically, I have taken to always just ordering the menu item that sounds the most hilarious to me without reading what it is. I must recommend the Torta Galactica (pictured at breakfast with Barbara (pictured) and Caroline) over the Taco Loco. This can only end well. I have also recently discovered that 10-peso tacos are closer to my residence and are easily two and a half times better than 4-peso tacos. Someone was marveling that there was no Taco Bell. I can't imagine why anyone would ever set foot in a Taco Bell here.

I am still enjoying teaching, but I am also still so tired of being buried in nothing but this course that I still cannot stand to write about it. I will reflect on that once it is over. (Just to give you an idea of how intense this is, there have been 12 class days so far, and I have already taught seven times. It's like going to school and teaching school at the same time while writing all of your lessons from scratch somewhere in between. One of the trainees actually withdrew from the course ten minutes before a class yesterday. It is crazy. OK, I have to stop or my head will explode.) The picture is not the jungle, but rather is the courtyard at the school.

If it doesn't stop being sunny when I'm in class and then rainy during my breaks, I am going to break something.

I bought a guitar the other day for 690 pesos (less than $70 US). It is cheap, came in a big plastic bag, has several minor visible blemishes, and sounds beautiful. It is pretty much the only thing keeping me sane right now.

It would appear that I have some connections through the school that may land me a job pretty quickly. I am waiting to get more information, but there are positions available at the International House (the organization through which I am taking this course) in Monterrey and Queretaro. They want 1-year contracts, which is a bit intimidating, but there is the bonus that if you work for them for a year, it is possible to transfer to Europe. This is huge, because it is nearly impossible for Americans to work leagally in Europe. I do like the idea of being in Spain a year from now... More to come on this front.

I promise these will be more interesting at some point. That point will probably be in about two weeks when my life becomes interesting again instead of consisting solely of me getting the CELTA teaching method pounded forcefully into my cranium for twelve hours a day. Hasta luego.

Week Sauce

Hola amigos. I am getting certified to teach English as a second language in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. This blog appears both on my facebook profile and at http://doublericenobeans.blogspot.com/, so if you want to leave comments that you don't want my parents and extended family to read, you should probably leave them on facebook. I'll try to post fairly regularly. This was my first week:

I would have settled for a hut on the beach, but the student residence here isn't too shabby. Between the A/C, cable TV, wireless internet, free water (purificada), a mini-fridge, and my own bathroom, I'm not exactly living rough.

I arrived in Playa late Wednesday afternoon and went out to dinner with a few of the other trainees from my program. We ate Mayan food at a pretty touristy place. It was decent at best and was probably twice as expensive as any meal I will eat on the rest of my trip. We recently found a place down the street called Billy the Kid's that sells nothing but tacos for four pesos (less than 40 cents) apiece and is open 24 hours. I could have gotten at least forty tacos for what that Mayan food cost. Forty! The dropoff in the price of everything with each block you walk away from the beach is astounding.

A few days into my trip, I got my first visitor. My Israeli friend Shiri, who I know from working at summer camp in California, had been traveling for a few months and was coming through Playa on the tail end of her trip. My best day thus far was spent laying on the beach with her and her friends Roni and Nir. Later we enjoyed an authentic Mexican feast expertly prepared by three Israelis and a Texan. I hadn't been gone long enough to really miss much about home, but it was still nice to see a familiar face. Along those lines, I recently reconnected with and old friend from Greene Family Camp. Blake is teaching English in China and has a well-written blog about it at http://fareastcoastbias.blogspot.com/. Also, my friend Ori is working at a biosphere (I have no idea.) outside of Tulum, and he will likely come up to Playa at some point. If anyone else wants to come down, I will treat you to some delicious four-peso tacos.

My days now are not nearly as relaxing. My course began on Monday, and the first few days have been pretty intense. I have already taught twice, and I teach again on Friday. The reality of what I was doing here really hit me as I moved 24 desks into a room which is smaller than my room at the residence before the first class. We are never sure how many students will show up on a given night, and new faces come and go from night to night. The classes are free since they are taught by trainees, and many of the students could not afford the class otherwise. They are eager to learn, however, and are quite a change from dealing with spoiled little Jewish kids. Perhaps the most powerful moment thus far was when I helped to carry Carlos, a student who has lost both of his legs, up three flights of stairs in his wheelchair so that he could attend my class. The first word I taught my students was "Howdy" and the second was "Yall." I will write more about teaching later. I can't even think about it right now. I haven't seen the beach in three days, and it is killing me.

The group of trainees has an interesting mix of people. As always, I am the random kid from Texas that talks about Texas constantly. Thus far I have been made fun of for being from Texas, talking about Texas, talking about Jewish summer camp, and not eating salad (it is my last stand against growing up). One of my students sympathized with me about the Houston Oilers moving to Tennessee. None of the trainees care about football, but they will learn. There are twelve trainees in our group. Most are fairly close to my age. A couple are quite a bit older. Three are married (two to each other), and there is a niece and an aunt from Australia. The married couple spent the last year in Honduras but last lived in Dallas. We all get along quite well, and the group as a whole is pretty fun.

Hopefully that wasn't too long. I know my mom will read every word. I hope you all are well. Leave a comment and I will eat a taco for you.