My First Day of School: Mexican School

My First Day of School:

School in Mexico:

A woman I'd never met before led me to a classroom full of seventeen uniformed Mexican students, all about seventeen years old. The uniforms were dark blue polos with school logos and sewed on names, last name first. Of course, those don't help, because here everyone has a nickname. A woman came in and fairly well the first thing she did was to have me come to the front of the class and introduce myself, which I was pleased to do. Then she began writing on the board a list of theories regarding the origin of the planet. We all wrote down sentences about each of them, which she dictated to us. I didn't care so much and couldn't understand some words, so I paraphrased.

After what seemed like a very short time, class was over and after a short discussion with some students nearby, a couple of kids (Tigre and Alde) took me upstairs to a classroom about half the size of the previous, with only five students. Here another woman, whom I had seen before, somewhere, entered and lectured about Sociology for a while and then had small talk for a longer time, it seemed. We took dictation in this class as well.

After, I stayed in the same classroom for music class. The other options in this period are, as far as I can tell, painting and cheerleading. Many more students entered for music, many not in any uniform, and one in full dress uniform. We began with the teacher, a man now, writing about two measures of music on the board. I got a sheet of staff paper from a boy I never saw again, and copied it down, without understanding what we were supposed to do with it. Then the teacher took the guitar players (they teach guitar, recorder, and singing, though there are no lessons) into one half of the room and I tried to explain movable Do to Ruben (called Bola, because he's pudgy). In Mexico and I believe in other Latin countries, they use fixed Do, and sing si instead of ti. Because they use fixed Do, they call the notes by their solfege syllables and nothing else. I learned how to talk about notes and sharps and flats but no one understood what a key signature was, and only one boy (a guitar player who kept playing In the Hall of The Mountain King and The Doors songs) knew who to read music and play it. The rest just knew solfege. After a while, the teacher brought a guitar player girl over to the rest of us, and had her play guitar while he sung us a song to learn by rote. It was a pretty good folk song about love.

We returned to our original classroom downstairs for lunch, and mostly just talked there for a while. Only a few people were eating, and I didn't either, until one of the kids said to me, "Aren't you going to get something to eat?" (in spanish, though) and I went alone to the cafeteria to inquire after vegetarian food. By the time I'd found out I'd be fending for myself, the kids who had sent me arrived in the cafeteria too, which I found odd. A kind, bold girl named Dalid gave me an apple, and I had that with melon for lunch, back in the classroom.

The architecture of the school is the best of any school for really only one reason. It is all orange, first of all, and the classes are fairly small, only holding a little over 20 students comfortably. The cafeteria, by the way, is not really a cafeteria. It is little bigger than the classrooms and has only 3 tables. There is a counter and a small kitchen (meaning a stove and sink), and a few racks of things like candy bars and ice cream (served in bags, which you puncture and suck) and fruit and chips. They serve only meat sandwiches from the stove. The really good thing about the architecture, though, is that it opens up in the middle, so the stairs and the way from the class rooms to the cafe is open to the sky and fresh air and sun. The steps were wet from morning rain today. The hallways recieve fresh air as well, through that courtyard. If anyone is worrying, there is air conditioning in every room, and my hands were cold in class this afternoon. The heat isn't an issue.

After we ate, we had English class, which was a farce for me. I like the kids in this class, though, and it's good for me to translate backwards what they're doing and to listen to their teacher's heavy accent and occasional mistakes. (The third day of classes, Dalid and Bola and Deyanira asked me if I laughed when I heard poor English and silly mistakes. I do, and that day in English they kept looking at me during class and I had to stifle giggles). After English, a kind woman named Diana came and sat at the desk for a while and we talked. Mostly she talked to and about me, and she had me come up and introduce myself again, though the students I believe were the same. Eventually she did dictate to us a page about the origins of Algebra in the Middle East. Then we put the desks in a circle and everyone introduced themselves to me and they asked questions.

This is when I begin to feel comfortable here with these kids. By the way, for those who have never tried it, it's much more difficult than normal to remember people's names when they're all foreign and give you first their full Latin name (usually first middle last last) and then all of the nicknames you can call them, none of which mean anything to you. Anyway, I assume none of them will care, because they're incredibly nice people. They took an interest in me all day and asked similar questions, like "Do you drink?" I refused that one enough in the morning that I started to worry I was closing off all my social opportunities, though that of course wasn't at all true. Other common questions are "Why Mexico?" and "What do you like to do?" and "Do you like futbol (soccer)?" But in the afternoon that time, things got more in depth, and I had to tell them about my schooling in the US, and about Interlochen, and about the "culture" in Cass City, and about the impressions people have of Mexico in the US.

I think I also established connections with several people through music and ideas and such. One girl, Alde, likes Interpol and the Strokes, and that guitar player, Carlos, was playing the Doors all the time. Dalid at one point asked me if I was a hippie, and they also made me take my hair out of its ponytail prison (imposed on the advice of my YEO). Alde also asked me if I liked hippie things, and at first I was cautious, because I was afraid she wanted to know if I smoked marijuana, but no, she was talking about Chiapas! She said there are a lot of hippies in Chiapas, and that her and Fanny and maybe others are going there in June or went last June or something. I told them then that the Zapatistas were the only destination in Mexico I knew about and wanted to see. We talked about them for a while and everyone seemed fairly positive, much more so than my host family has been. That is, at least, my host parents. My brothers don't seem to know or care much about them.

After our circle, we moved the desks back and talked a bit more, and the teacher left us alone to talk further (another break, this time). I believe then we had Philosophy, which is taught by the Director and owner of the school (private schools have owners), who was the sort of man who likes to accomplish things. Unlike all the previous classes, he spoke quickly, tolerated no talking (the classes were never silent before) and never slowed down to make dictation. I couldn't understand a word he said, but I believe they were talking about Copernicus and Galileo and maybe Newton. I'm not sure why they were talking about these men in a Philosophy class directly, but things may clear up in the future. Regarding the dictation practice, I assumed it was because we have no textbooks. I believe my host mother told me they would arrive later, or something like that. At the end of the class the director addressed me, asking where I was from, etc, and he made a comment about my hair but didn't say I had to cut it. The other teachers had been making scissor motions at me all day, but my host brother said that when I talked to the director, who is his personal friend, he would say I didn't have to. Anyway, when he made that comment about my hair, all the girls yelled "Noooooo!!" to convince him not to make me cut it. They'd been telling me how "bonita" it was all day.

We had another class but my host brother Erick (who attended the school for three years himself) didn't know the schedule and came to pick me up an hour early, so that is how my first day of school ended.

Appended bit (appendix?) regarding my second day of school:

On the way to school this time I was more awake because I'd been having trouble falling asleep lately, and was woken up several times during the night by the tremendous thunderstorm that happened all night, and because of my scary dream. Thus, I saw this time what I hadn't seen the first time, which is the sunrise. It was completely stunning and of the softest, fuzziest colors of pink and yellow. In school, we ascended to the upper smaller classroom again halfway through Communication. In the stairs on the way up, you can hear birdsong and feel the sun (or rain). In that classroom you can hear roosters rousting from their roasting roosts. I can't resist an opportunity for alliteration, but it's fairly novel for me to hear roosters, especially in school.

But the best part was the little green ant I found on my arm. I was not so much paying attention to the teacher at this point, because I couldn't understand what she was saying, though I wanted to because I thought she was talking about something interesting. Communication isn't like speech like I thought it was, but is actually a fairly in-depth seeming study of human and animal communication and language and signs and mass media and propaganda and such. Anyway, I was not paying attention and trying not to let her notice that, and watching this little green ant scurry his way through the forest of my arm hairs and up my hand to my finger tips. I couldn't feel him at all, he was so small.

At one point he got onto my notebook and I picked him up again and he got blown back onto my arm by the fan. The teacher came over to me (in a classroom of five students) and was giving me looks, or so I thought, and I put my arm down to my side and lost my ant friend. I think I want to write a short story about this from the ant's perspective. I am afraid it will end up sounding like one of those magic schoolbus sort of fun science explanations of human skin though. There are far too many of those in the world today.

The guitar player, Carlos, talked to me about music for a while today and he invited me to play with their band. I am to meet them tomorrow at the birthday party. The kind of music people always ask me about is Metallica and their cohorts, and older stuff like Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden and Aerosmith and whatever. Carlos likes the Doors and Pink Floyd and The Beattles and such though. I am curious as to why the only modern music they know is Latin, but that older American and British stuff is popular. Is it because they didn't have rock band equipment in Latin America until recently?

My classes from yesterday and today, collected, to give ideas about the curriculum:

The planets (physical science?)
Sociology
Music
Lunch
English
Computer Science (about programming language and algorithms and such) (2 hrs)
Philosophy (about physics, apparently)

The planets again
Communication (2 hrs)
Anthropology (they call native Americans, like Plains Indians and Seminoles and such, "Pieles Rojas," which means Redskins)
Lunch
Literature
"Culture" (we learned about Japan)
Computer Science (2 hrs)

The computer science teacher is the nice woman named Diana, the only teacher's name I know, and today we did little again but talk. She had written a sentence or two on the board but few copied it down. Today our serious conversations were as thus: First, they asked me about the presidential candidates and I ended up trying to explain Anarchism in Spanish and doing a really poor job of it. Then, the teacher asked me why I didn't believe in God. I threw it back at her, to buy time, and the students got a kick out of that because she stalled as well. She got her answer, though, and I ended up trying and failing again to explain my belief that divinity is imposed on the world by human beliefs and perceptions, and that that was not a justification for the existence of God, while trying to make clear that I believed in magic. This is confusing in English, and I may have run into a knot in my philosophy. Things are tough all over, says Mr. Guza.

Then I had to tell them how I felt on 9/11, and they were fairly sympathetic to this one. I talked about how many people the US killed every day, and that I didn't condone or support terrorists but certainly understand how they felt the need to do something. Carlos, the other atheist in the class, asked if I was a pacifist. I said no, but that I didn't support wars, as tools of government and business control. Overall, explaining these things and arguing about them is a lot harder in a foregin tongue, and my classmates and teacher sympathize more with revolutionary politics than with atheism.

Third day of School:

A surprising relief for me. I brought my Zune to show a few kids my music tastes, and when I gave it to Alde, she pointed out practically all of my favoritest bands as groups she knows and enjoys. Things like Interpol, The Mars Volta, Muse, Of Montreal, The Raconteurs, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Sonic Youth, The White Stripes, Bjork, Cornelius, Death From Above 1979, The Doors, The Flaming Lips, the Gorillaz, and Grandaddy. Mew is her favorite. To all of you who know these bands, is this not remarkable? Had you expected it? I hadn't.

We discussed this in painting class. The students brought in black and white pictures and taped them to posterboard and cut out the picture, so the picture showed in relief. We are going to "paint them onto a wall and listen to rock music." I drew a picture of a dog in a pilgrim hat and with human teeth. His name is Pancho Juanito, el Perro. There are a lot of animals here, and a lot wild starving dogs. And cats.

A funny bit for any of you who appreciate the old "City Name Sports Team" bit: The polo uniform shirts we wear on at least Wednesday and Friday have the name last to first, the school logo, and underneath, a word. Divided approximately evenly, some say Bulldogs, and some say "Mascots." They are different classes of students, or something. I don't really understand. But it's funny.

In English today, I told the teacher "Ungenerous" isn't a word. Do you think it is? Wiktionary says so, defined as "Not generous." Also, Mexicans can't say "Unreliable," or "Middle." In Spanish, they frequently use diminutives, much more so than in English. For example, Kitty is the diminutive of Cat. Anyway, we played Bingo in English class today, and the game was clearly fairly dated, because the pictures and words we had were things like "Apache" "Brave" "Small Boat" "Gentleman," etc. But still, I laughed out loud when the teacher, completely unassuming, held up a card and said "Blackie." Same with "Cock." The latter is just normal language comedy, but Blackie could lead to awkward situations, I think, if they ever have an opportunity to use English.

Love,
Adam