The wonders of Talcum Powder August 28, 2007

This has to be a short one because it’s after midnight and I’m still working on this ridiculous assignment that’s due tomorrow, plus I have to give an hour long lesson tomorrow and I still haven’t written the lesson plan, although thank goodness I have the plan in my head. But I really couldn’t help myself because this is a subject of such great importance.

Those of you who have lived in extremely humid climates might understand what I’m about to say. And if you’d prefer to skip the details and meet us at the next paragraph, I won’t be offended. But for the rest of you, think about what it’s like when the weather is always hot and always humid. First off, when it’s really hot, you sweat a lot. Second, when it’s really humid, you never quite dry off. So there you would sit, covered in sweat and never drying off. Now this isn’t a terrible thing in and of itself. Kind of like a sauna or something, right? Okay, but now imagine that you go for days and weeks together without ever really drying off. Also, imagine that there are parts of your body that constantly rub together. This could be your inner thigh, the space between your fingers right down there at the base, anywhere that often makes contact with another part of your body thousands of times every day. Now, I have to admit I had never really thought about how often these body parts rubbed against each other until now. The first time it was brought to my attention was during the first week I was here. I started getting an awful rash from walking. It was getting bad, to the point where I was walking like a cowboy fresh off his horse, but I didn’t have anyone whose advice I could ask (Um, excuse me. You work at this hostel, right? So, um, could you tell me what you do when you get bad rashes on your inner thighs? No? Okay, well, thanks anyway). I decided that everyone must have a problem like this at some point in their life here in Playa, so I went to the local grocery store to see what the locals were doing about it. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for at this point. Gauze? An ointment? And that’s when I found it: the entire aisle of talcum powder. Fifty different scents, sizes, brands. Somehow it had completely escaped my attention up to that point. I don’t think I’d ever really thought much about talcum powder before in my life. Well, after smelling each of the hundreds of bottles, I finally found one that didn’t stink too awfully, and happily it was able to work its wonder and my problem was cleared up in less than a day. It was really miraculous how quickly it worked. I even stopped using it after a couple of days and things have been fine ever since. Well, until a couple of days ago. Maybe it’s the excessive washing of my hands, I’m not sure, but that webby part between my fingers started to itch a couple of days ago. I wasn’t really conscious of it at first, but then I’d catch myself sitting with my fingers spread wide and waving my hands through the air, trying to get some fresh air in there and dry out the skin. It kept getting worse, though. I wasn’t even really sure what the problem was at first. Then, unpacking all my things after the hurricane I ran across my bottle of talcum powder. Aha! It’s not athlete’s finger, it’s just jungle rot! Sprinkled a little bit of talc on my fingers and immediately felt the relief. Ahhh. It’s maybe a day since I’ve started using the talc. It helps a lot, but it’s fairly temporary relief, so I’ve been bringing my bottle along with me everywhere. Now everytime I wash my hands, after I eat, after too much writing, whenever the jungle rot seems like it’s about to take over again, I sprinkle a little talc and things are instantly better. Oh talcum powder, is there nothing you can’t do?

And for those of you who are already familiar with jungle rot and chose to skip that last paragraph, here’s a little something for you: I bought the talc at a supermarket called San Francisco de Assisi. Yes, there’s a major supermarket chain around here named after St. Francis of Assisi. Makes me smile every time I see it. What more can you ask for?

And Bill, I hope this is what you had in mind when you said you enjoyed living vicariously through the blog : )

Totally Fine August 21, 2007

We had a great party here last night.  Everyone was sequestered, so we gathered in the kitchen with drinks and snacks and chess and cards and a guitar.  The wind got kind of strong, especially between 3 and 5 in the morning, and the windows and doors were shaking a little bit, there was a fairly quiet howl, and there was a lot of rain blowing through the building (the semi open courtyard).  Our lights went out a few times, but never for very long.  I haven’t been out yet this morning, but things inside here are fine.  The palappa is fine, the windows are fine, and things look fine through the window.  I’ll take pictures later today.

Last Minute Photos August 20, 2007

I just added a few more photos to my Pre Hurricane Dean photo set over at Flickr. Click here to see them all.

The winds are starting to pick up. The state mandated seclusion has begun (everyone has to be inside somewhere or they get arrested). We have some high level state and city officials staying with us tonight; I guess this really is one of the nicest and safest places in the city to be. I’m going to go stay in the room of a friend of mine so that someone can have my room. Hopefully they don’t eat all my food! The weather is still okay, though. Just some wind and some waves on the beach (which is pretty rare). I even saw someone windsurfing a couple of hours ago. Que loco. Spirits are high here, though, as we’re expecting to only get hit tropical storm strength winds. I’ll take pictures of our hurricane party tonight and hopefully post them in a couple of days.

Here we go… August 20, 2007

We’ve come back from class and are all safely inside the Residencia. We’re having a last meeting (we’ve been having update meetings every morning and evening) at 4 pm and then we’ll be continuing to bag up our things and tape up our rooms. It’s amusing to me that they’re having us tape our windows. Many windows in town are taped as well. More are boarded or shuttered, but I’m surprised by how many are taped. I was pretty sure (and still am) that taping did nothing. They’ve said that they expect a lot of water will seep into everyone’s room, so I’m bagging up all my books and this computer and my clothes and putting them on the top shelf of a protected cabinet in my room. Let’s hope my computer makes it through safely!

Luckily for us, this morning’s path is still holding, so we should be a good 100 km north of the centre of the storm. I’m very thankful that this will be just a minor blip for us and not devastating. I just checked the radar and it looks as if there’s a storm band heading our way right now, so I’m going to hit post and take a shower before our electricity is cut. I have every expectation that we’ll be very safe here, but it is still possible that I won’t have power for a day or two afterwards. Catch you on the flip side.

Looking good for us August 20, 2007

This morning, it looks likely that Dean is heading south towards Belize and Chetumal.  This is a good thing for Playa; we might completely miss the hurricane strength winds and instead get the arms.  Which I think is more exciting, because, well, not only do you not get hit by hurricane force winds, but you get the crazy fast moving intense thunderstorms followed by relative calm and you can actually look out the window at how fast the clouds are moving.  There’s something about the really fast moving clouds on the outer edges of hurricanes that I just love.  There’s electricity in the air; it almost tingles.  The air is fresh, the wind is cool.

We’re carrying on here in a fairly normal fashion.  All the CELTA students are going to class this morning.  I’m not sure what we’ll be doing.  Mornings are usually when we have English students and either practice teaching them or observe someone else teaching them.  This morning we were meant to watch one of our experienced tutors teaching them.  But I’m pretty sure we won’t have any students.  A lot of them have gone to Merida.  The one that I know has stayed is the chief editor for the Quintanarooense, the local newspaper, so I’m sure he’s pretty busy.  A classmate of mine took him out to breakfast the other day (as a thank you for some help he gave her) and while they were in the restaurant, the governor of Quintana Roo and the mayor of Playa came in, so he had to go get what he could from them.  So I’m not sure what we’ll be doing today.  All I know is that we have to go to class.  They’re also saying we will have class tomorrow morning.  We’ll see about that.  Maybe since the storm is at night we’ll be able to sleep and then go to class?  Personally I think they’re being optimistic, but I suppose it depends greatly on how much of the storm we actually do get.

This afternoon, after class, I’m bagging up all my electronics and clothes and books and then moving to a second floor room.

Some photos August 19, 2007

Click here for some photos of Playa del Carmen taken just a few minutes ago (as well as a couple taken last night).

As you know, Hurricane Dean is meant to hit the Yucatan sometime tomorrow night. Preparation in Playa is really good. The government closely monitors things to make sure that most tourists are evacuated, all the beach front hotels are shut down, and the supermarkets have plenty of food and water and they aren’t price gouging.

Today, there was an odd mixture of activity on the streets. Well, on the tourist street, at least. Most things north of Quinta Avenida are closed already; I think some people have left to stay with family in Merida, so shopowners either aren’t here or don’t have the staff to be open, not to mention that there aren’t nearly as many shoppers around. But down on Quinta and the side streets around there, there’s a strange mixture. First there are the work crews who are out taking down everything that might possibly move: awnings, light fixtures, signs (many street signs near the beach have been taken down), thatch. Many shops are in the process of moving everything off the floor and cutting and putting up plywood. There are all of these USian or European shop owners standing around monitoring the progress. This is interesting to me because I hadn’t thought about who owned all the shops, restaurants, and hotels on the beach. They’re all staffed by Mexicans (and the occasional beach bum student from Argentina) but all of the owners appear to have a first language other than Spanish. Then, there are some stores and restaurants that are open as if nothing is out of the ordinary. They are still filled with tourists and the staff are still dressed in the often-ridiculous “native costumes” that the white owners require them to wear. There are definitely fewer tourists than there were three or four days ago, but there are still way more than I would have expected. I’m not really sure where they are going to be or what they are going to do. Looking at them I don’t know if they’re even aware of what’s going on. But surely all the hotels have notices in them, probably both in English and Spanish? I haven’t seen many tourists at all in the grocery stores. The few I’ve seen have had carts full of beer and limes (I mean full; probably 250 cans of beer and 30 limes) and a bag or two of crisps and possibly a two liter bottle of strawberry soda. No water, no tuna or bread, no batteries. Not even wet wipes.

The really different thing today were the sounds. Usually you hear either “traditional” Mexican music or Europop and the shopkeepers and restaurateurs are heckling you to buy a hammock, try their food, or get your hair braided. When you walk down Quinta, someone calls out at you every ten or fifteen feet. But today sounds different. The music is modern Mexican pop, because the workers want to listen to what they actually like while they work in the heat on a Sunday. Most of the shopkeepers are silent or chatting quietly to their friends. Only one person called out to me today and it stood out so much because the rest of the street seems so quiet. And it is quiet. I don’t know if there’s actually less noise because there are a number of people and radios and cars still out there. I think maybe the noise isn’t traveling as well; perhaps the atmosphere is absorbing it? Well, quiet except for the omnipresent sound of hammering. Wherever I walked today, there was hammering. A constant banging.

I’m going to try and write something again tomorrow before the electricity is cut. We’re predicting it’s going to go off by 5 pm (-5 UCT) and at that point I won’t have internet anymore. Leave a comment if you come by here and either want to wish me well or have some question to ask about pre, during or post Dean. I’ll be your personal man on the spot journalist.

Hurricane Dean: The Run-up August 18, 2007

So, there’s this Hurricane. His name is Dean. Right now he’s devastating Jamaica. But, all the computer models currently show him heading straight towards me. He’s due on Monday night or early Tuesday morning (why do they always seem to hit in the middle of the night? haven’t they ever heard of sociable visiting hours?). The governor of Quintana Roo (my state) has declared a State of Emergency. It’s funny how the scenes in town right now are exactly the same as they would be Florida. There’s no bread or canned tuna on the grocery store shelves. People are buying shopping carts full of bottled water. There’s no plywood or flashlights to be had anywhere in Playa. The Mexican military is in town, walking through the streets and making sure everything is in order. Shops and restaurants are starting to close and there’s plywood going up over windows. There are a lot of building sites and half built buildings in Playa, and there are more workers on these today on Saturday than I’ve ever seen before. There are whole teams of construction workers scouring every site: taking down scaffolding, breaking down work stations, cleaning up every bit of debris they can.

Personally, our school has decided to close for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They have tried to evacuate many of the Spanish students, and the rest they are moving into the Residence (there are people sleeping all over the place). If we get a direct hit, the military will impose a strict 24 hour curfew where no one is allowed outside at all. So we’ll all be hanging out in the Residence for a day or two. None of the CELTA students are leaving. We were actually told to stay because we’ll still have class, just here in the Residence instead of at the school. We even still have our assignments due on Monday evening. I hope we get a little leniency on the neatness of our assignments: I doubt I’ll be able to find an open internet cafe to print mine out so they’re going to have to deal with handwritten on notebook paper.

I’ve been watching Dean approach for a few days now, so I’ve been expecting this. I also have seen hurricane prep before, and I have a good idea what it’s like during and after. But most of my classmates are British. When they first heard there was a storm coming, they were pretty excited. Then, when they told us to go buy bottled water and nonperishable food staples and take extra cash out of the ATM and maybe get some wetwipes because not only will we not have power to run our a/c or fans, we also won’t have running water and won’t be able to take showers or even wash our hands, then they started getting kind of freaked out and thinking that maybe this wasn’t going to be so much fun after all. I really don’t understand how, what with the major news of Katrina a couple of years ago plus the odd devastating hurricane that breaks into the English news media, they thought that they would be fun or exciting, or somehow at least not unpleasant and slightly difficult. I’m kind of glad I’m around because I’ve been able to give people tips like “Go to a Florida hurricane preparedness website; you’ll get lots of good English language info on what you need to do/buy,” or “Try the Weather Underground. They have really good up-to-date hurricane coverage.”

Anyway, wish us luck down here. I’ll be contactable for a couple more days but they’ll probably shut down the power sometime Monday afternoon, so don’t freak out if you can’t reach me. We’ll all be fine, just without our internet and cell phones.

Tulum: Beach Paradise August 18, 2007

Last weekend, my friend Dan came through town. We had a great time hanging out with all my fellow students on Friday night at the Residence. Everyone brought snacks and beer and we put on music. It was a nice change from the stress of the work week.

The next day, Dan and I got up semi-early and caught a colectivo (an air conditioned 12 seater van that people usually take for shorter distances – anything under a few hours. our ride from playa to tulum, 1 hour, cost us 25 pesos or US$2.50) down to Tulum. When Dan had been living in Chetumal, he had come up to Tulum on his spring break for a beach vacation. It’s an absolutely beautiful stretch of beach that is way less developed than Playa. It’s been known for a few years now as a backpacker’s paradise, a smallish beach resort type town that has cheap restaurants in town, cheap places to stay on the beach, and is relatively unspoiled. There was this one little place Dan always stayed in, right on the beach, that has rustic cabanas. So, when we got into Tulum we caught a taxi out to the beach to find a place to stay. The taxi dropped us off at the wrong place, the one next door, but we asked there anyway because they also had rustic cabanas. They kind of laughed at us. They had nothing, they were not going to have anything, and if we hadn’t made a reservation months ago, we were not staying there. So, we walked to the next place, the place he had originally had in mind. We ask if there’s a cabana with beds. They also laugh, but do offer that there are still a couple of places in the dormitorio. We say “no thanks” and head to the next place. They also have cabanas, but they are a little less rustic and way more out of our price range. Dan tries to sweet talk them into giving us a break (he used to teach the owner’s kid), but the guy at the desk wasn’t budging. So we walk back to the place with the dormitorio. By this time, I’m exhausted. I was still getting over my cold, had been having severe, um, how do you say it, gastric distress? for a few days, and had been walking around in the mid day sun for an hour with my bag trying to find a place to sleep for the night. I had absolutely no energy (it’s amazing how much the aforementioned “distress” completely drains you – it totally stripped me of all energy). Anyway, so the guy takes our money and leads us to the dormitorio.

I’ve heard the word dormitorio before, and generally that means kind of a big room with bunk beds, like you’d find in a hostel. I’d stayed in two dormitorios in Playa already. They have bunk beds, lockers, perhaps even a room with a toilet. They are usually spartan, in various stages of cleanliness, but generally I’m quite happy. So that’s what I’m expecting.

We walk through this maze of falling down huts. They are circular, made of sticks that have been latched together with no mortar, and have a palm frond thatch roof. Most of the huts have serious holes in either the walls or the roof or both. Some approach the look of a shanty, with random pieces of scrap metal or plastic slapped up somewhere to patch a hole. They’re all quite small, and barely tall enough for a person to stand up inside. Then we get to a slightly bigger, perhaps slightly taller one. This hut also happens to be slightly shabbier, with more patchwork building material than most, and also more gaping holes in walls and roof than most. We duck inside through the opening in one of the walls (where more sticks were missing than in other parts of the wall) and come into a small space with a central support beam and one cross beam running from that to the walls (imagine one beam holding up the roof and another beam forming a T about 3/4 of the way up). There are about ten hammocks slung from the center of this cross beam to the outside walls. I collapse on the sand (there is no floor) and take a long chug of Pedialyte. Then I get a real chance to look around. There are no beds. There are no lockers. There is nothing but a circular hut with no floor and one central beam with a cross beam and ten hammocks. The guy leaves us behind and I ask Dan, so, where are we meant to sleep? Well, thank goodness for small blessings, Dan has his family sized hammock with him. It’s actually quite a nice hammock: hand woven in the Mayan tradition with soft thread and a fine yet breathable weave, much nicer than any of the other ten hammocks in the hut. So, he strings up his hammock while I finish my Pedialyte. We decide to leave our bags in the reception hut, which at least is guarded or locked most of the day, and then walk down to the beach.

This is where it gets good. Our hut is probably five metres from the beach. And this is not just any beach. Fine, white sand, some shade to be had in clusters of palm trees, beautiful greenish blue water, and hardly anyone else (well, at least compared to Playa). We lay out under some palm trees to read and nap on and off for a few hours. Bliss. We see these intense black clouds coming down the beach, so we run to put our books and towels inside and then run back out to take a walk down the beach. It starts to rain, but it’s slightly cool so it feels really refreshing. There’s no thunder, so we wade out into the ocean. The water is warmer than I expected, certainly warmer than the rain. The water on this coast is usually pretty calm, but the storm has created a few small waves, so we’re able to float in the water with the waves gently rocking us while a cool rain falls on our faces. We both agree that this moment alone makes our Tulum trip a success. The rain continues to get harder and harder, to a point where it starts to sting, and then there’s some lightning and thunder, so we get out of the water and walk back to our hut.

It doesn’t rain too much in Playa. Not really regularly at least. Certainly not like it does in Florida during the summer. So I wasn’t immediately thinking of rain when I saw the condition of our hut. But now, escaping from the torrential downpour to “inside” our hut, I realise that holes in the walls and ceiling aren’t necessarily just cosmetic defects. We meet a couple of our other dormitorio residents, a nice young German couple on summer break from university, and they’re huddling in a corner, trying to stay out of the cold rain. They’ve been there for awhile, so at least they were able to get most of their stuff out of the way of the rain. Their hammocks were right under one of the holes and all of their stuff was in the hammock (so that it was off the ground), so it could have been pretty bad for them. But they got it in time. Even though Dan and I had got one of the last open places in the dormitorio, somehow the roof above it was quite sound, so we were okay. We all wait in the hut for an hour or two, waiting for the rain to pass. Dan and I are hoping to get some dry clothes and head into town for dinner. Finally it does, and we go into town and have a wonderful dinner of antijitos where he introduces me to the salbute. Hopefully I’ll write more about antijitos later on; I’m kind of obsessed with them at the moment, but I think they deserve their own dedicated blog post.

But getting back to the important part. We get back to the hut. Dan decides to sleep on the beach for a while, so I curl up into the hammock. The sand fleas get too bad for him, so he comes back in and we both try and sleep in the hammock for awhile. Then it starts to rain. Our hammock is fine. We both get some drops, which does admittedly make it hard to sleep, but these poor German kids are really getting rained on and this Irish girl the next hammock over starts loudly complaining about how she wants her money back. The German kids move and huddle in a corner for awhile. Eventually the rain stops, but now the mosquitoes are bad. I’m doing alright (although I was in a tank top and they kept stinging me through the bottom of the hammock which is somehow many times more annoying than if they sting your arms or legs), but Dan is having a really hard time of it. He goes back to the beach for awhile, eventually coming back when it’s too cold. It is quite chilly by this point so we huddle together for body heat and await morning. The surprising thing is that I actually slept some that night. I even slept in til 9:30.

We go lay on the beach for a few more hours, have some lunch, he finds a pretty little bracelet for his girl back home, and then I hop a colectivo back to Playa and he gets the ADO bus to Chetumal. When I got to Playa, I promptly took a four hour nap.

Tulum: Pictures August 18, 2007

Click here for my pictures from Tulum.

I’ve sold out August 9, 2007

Well, here I am, typing this from my room at the residence.  It’s incredibly plush.  I have my own room, my own desk, my own bedside table, my own closet, a mini fridge, my own bathroom, my own cable tv, wireless internet, and air conditioning.  Oh my gosh, it’s so nice.  It’s quite close to the school, I have a place to put my stuff and to study, I’m able to work from my room, and all the other students live here, so we can work on our lesson plans over dinner.  I moved in on Sunday evening.  Lots of things happened on Saturday and Sunday to make me think this was a good idea.  I think the main thing was that I tried studying all day on Saturday and Sunday, doing the precourse activities and brushing up on my grammar, but I didn’t have space to do it in.  I couldn’t bring my computer out (who takes a computer into a hostel common room?), wouldn’t have had internet if I did so I had to spend a bunch of money on internet cafes.  When I tried working in the common room, I had to deal with the heat, the constant distraction, the tv and loud music that always seemed to be on.  I had a really hard time concentrating.  Then Friday and Saturday night there were these two Norwegian girls in my room who would come in at 4 in the morning, turn on the lights, talk loudly, then wake up at 7 in the morning and do the same.  Then they’d nap at the strangest times.  So anyway, it just seemed like, if I wanted to take this course seriously and be in the best position to do well, hey, I’ll only do this once in my life, I might as well do it well.  So, what I’m trying to say is, yes, I sold out, yes, I became one of ‘them’.  And boy, am I happy.

So, what are these classes that I’ve been working so hard on?  Well, we meet every day from 10:15 to 7.  In the morning, we team teach a two hour lesson.  In the early afternoon we talk more generally about teaching strategy, and then from 4 – 7 (after lunch, which apparently happens from 3-4 here) we talk about how the teaching went and we plan for the next day’s morning class.  We’re teaching adults in Playa del Carmen who signed up for a free month of English classes.  They didn’t know til the second day that it was going to be team taught, and we’ve never explicitly told them that we’re trainees.  I imagine most of them have figured it out by now, but it was interesting the first day to see them trying to figure out why there were six teachers for eight students.  We have the classes in the mornings because most of them work as bartenders or waiters or shop staff, so most of them work in the evening.  Playa’s economy is really heavily based on tourism.  The tourists come from all over, but almost all of them either speak Spanish or English as a first language, or speak English as a second language, so English is really important.  It’s nice that they have a real desire to learn to speak, because that makes it easier to teach.  It’s nice to have motivated students.  They speak up and always do the activities and the only “behavior” problems are late arrivals – which I’ve heard are pretty much standard all across Mexico, so we take it as just part of the game and try to deal with it instead of being upset by it – and mobile phones.  For some reason, if someone’s phone rings they apparently feel like they have to answer it.  They’ll sit in their seat and answer it while the teacher is talking.  It still really surprises me everytime they do it.  But if you come up to them and quietly say, “I’m sorry, there’s no mobile phones in class,” they say Oh, I’m so sorry! and seem genuine and turn the phone off.  I really think they just don’t automatically know that mobile phones shouldn’t be used in class.  So there’s no real problems, just slight misunderstandings.  Which is really nice.  I like teaching adults.

The other teachers are great.  There are nine of us total, all women, ranging from 23 to 48, but I’d still say I’m median age because there are a number of us who are 23 or 24.  We have two teaching groups.  I’m doing beginners right now in our group of five, the other group of four is doing intermediate.  We’ll switch halfway through.  I’ve taught two lessons so far, one yesterday of 20 minutes and one today of 40 minutes.  We have to really seriously plan for each one.  We basically script out everything we’re going to do, everything we’re going to say, what movements we’ll make.  So a 40 minute takes a lot of time to plan.  But both lessons I’ve done have gone really well, I think mostly because I’ve done really good plans.  When we’re planning the course tutors walk us through every aspect of what we should do and what will work well so that when it actually comes to teaching, as long as you follow what you’ve planned, you’re pretty much assured the lesson will come out well.  Both times I think the students have learned something valuable, really understood it, and gotten good practice at using and saying it.  I hope that the skills they’re teaching us will become more intuitive so that I won’t have to think about all these things as much when I have my own class.  Right now I have to keep a lot of things in mind, but I think the more I do it (I have seven more lessons) the more some of it will become second nature.

As far as the nationality of the trainees, we have a good mix.  There are two Mexican women, one who is a grandmother (perhaps she’s actually in her 50s?  I don’t know her age) and has been teaching for twenty years.  I’m not completely sure why she’s doing this course.  Her teaching methods aren’t great, but she seems really proud of them and won’t change to do things the way we’re supposed to do them.  But she’s the anomaly.  The other Mexican girl is really awesome and went to university in London and has a great accent and sounds really natural.  I think she’d like to open her own language school some day; she’d be really great at that.  Then there are three of us USians: one girl from Oregon, one from all over Florida (who spent some of her childhood in Land O’ Lakes not five miles from where I grew up), and myself.  They both speak Spanish fluently and have Mexican boyfriends.  Then there are four English women.  Two of them are about thirty, one of them is 22 or 23, and then there’s one woman who is in her 40s and used to be an editor at the Independent of London.  Her husband is a high school history teacher and they have an 8 year old son.  They all live in the residence with us (as a teacher, the husband has summer holidays) and are kind of like a surrogate family to the rest of us.  It’s very nice to live with a family instead of with a bunch of drunk backpackers who are traveling around wreaking havoc.

I still don’t know where I’m going to end up.  I still think I’d like to live in Mexico.  I’ve talked to more people about Costa Rica and, while I think it’d be nice to travel there, I’m not sure it’s where I want to live.  I’ve heard the climate is a lot better in other parts of Mexico and I definitely want to improve my Spanish.  Right now I’m thinking heavily about Guadalajara, but I think it’s going to depend a lot on what kind of offers I get and from where.  My main concerns are (1) safety – how safe will it be to live there and walk around by myself and take the taxis? (2) not too big – I don’t want to spend two hours on the bus or in taxis every day trying to get to and from my school and the businesses I’m teaching English in (3) salary – how far will my salary go in that city (4) quality of school – will I have much support?  will I have way too many contact hours?  oh, and (5) climate.  I don’t think I could stand to live in a place like this for very long.  I don’t mind some heat sometime, but I hear it doesn’t really cool off all that much during the winter here.  I need to at least have a couple of months where I can wear pants and proper shoes and shirts that have sleeves and not be constantly coated in sweat.  So let me know if you know anything that meets those criteria.  Oh, and obviously someplace that has a job for me.

I’m pretty excited about my upcoming weekend.   My friend Dan from university is coming down to visit!  He worked for a couple of years in a town a few hours south of here, but to get from the airport in Cancun (where all the cheap flights go) down to Chetumal he has to come through Playa, so he’s decided to take a couple of nights and hang out with me.  We’re thinking about doing some day trips, maybe inland to some ruins or, well, really, I don’t know.  I’m hoping he has some good ideas.  What a treat for me, though.

I should get going.  I’ve had a pretty bad cold for a couple of days now and I promised my tutors I’d get to bed early tonight.  I don’t have to teach tomorrow so I’ve spent the evening spacing out and watching tv and generally being lazy and unproductive.  It’s felt great.  I’m hoping that sleeping lots and drinking lots of water etc will help to clear it up.  One of the tutors offered to call me a doctor today, but I don’t know what they’d do except to tell me to get lots of rest and drink lots of water.  I’m positive it’s not bacterial and I think a lot of people get sick when they first move somewhere new – new viruses going around, kind of like going into a kindergarten classroom.  I also checked to make sure it wasn’t malaria or dengue and none of the main symptoms are there for either so I’m really not too worried about it.  Especially since malaria and dengue aren’t really common in this part of Mexico.  But wish me luck for a speedy recovery.  Having a cold and a slight fever when it’s 36 degrees outside really sucks.