Sunglasses Always Fit

There are few feelings that compare to making it to the end of the school year. There’s something magic about the moment when you’ve tracked down all the obscure admin people you need to sign off on a long list of mundane “must complete” tasks so that you can finally walk out the doors of your campus and announce, as I said to a favorite colleague, “two middle fingers to the sky and byyyyyeeeee.”

As kids, as students, I know we felt a similar elation, but as teachers, it’s amplified – especially if you’ve had a really tough year. As teachers, we are contractually obligated to spend ten months with a random mix of hooligans, and teach them things they aren’t necessarily inclined to learn, and be nice about it. It is tough, my dudes.

I’ve had a wild year that I’m glad is over. I get six weeks at home to eat mom’s food and hold a chunk a hunk of baby love. There have been moments, good and bad, to remember. And before the California sun and local IPAs completely bake it out of me, I want to record a few. 

This year I . . . 

• Lived on $1100USD a month as a volunteer teacher, without a work visa. Every few months we’d give our passports to some guy? He took them to Mexico? And bought stamps? We don’t know. But I’m in a developing country where kids usually drop out of school before sixth grade, at a small campus on a volcanic lake in the mountains, serving mostly kids on scholarship.

• Had a kid pull a very realistic gun on me that took me sideways emotionally for days.
• Battled cockroaches and spiders the size of your face. 
• Found a giant slug worm thing in my toilet that was alive and for several minutes I thought it had come out of me.
• Discovered that my doctor was the father of a set of twins in my class and he saw ALL of me and gave me shots in the butt for allergies, which I still don’t understand. My sinuses aren’t in my pants. 

• Took government mandated pills to deworm myself every six months.
• Could not drink water from the tap, and had very stressed out showers. 
• Could not flush toilet paper – we collect it in trash cans to throw away.

• Felt dizzying excitement every time I went somewhere with paper towels, or drinkable ice. Had an emotional reaction to Walmart and McDonalds and Starbucks.
•  For the first time in my life, was referred to as tall and skinny.
•  Relearned how to be fluent in Spanish after over a decade off. Even conducted all my parent-teacher conferences in Spanish!

•  Finally made it to El Salvador, on Thanksgiving weekend. All Central American countries have now been visited!
•  Was accused of having an affair with a 60 year old coworker because of some very innocent text messages I sent about basketball that his girlfriend read through when she stole his phone.
•  Got to treat many of my students to their first “movie” experience by showing a pirated version of a book we read on the class projector.
•  Also got to treat many of them to their first “McDonald’s experience” by recreating the McFlurry as a class reward. The closest Mickey D’s is over two hours away, so many in our village have never been.
•  Lived in a town of 15,000 with one-ish reliable stoplight.
•  Got bangs!
•  Taught myself how to make corn tortillas, cornbread, and pupusas by hand. 
•  (re)Started my Masters.

•  Participated in a school-mandated Guatemalan pride  parade where my students were in a dance that was called “Los Negritos” and the English translation they wanted us to say at the assembly was . . . not great.
•  Dressed up as a “Zom-Bee” for our school Halloween fundraiser – first time I’d gotten to celebrate Halloween in years since I’ve been at Christian schools forever. 
•  Consoled two students who have dads that work in the United States as gardeners and they are worried they will be rounded up by ICE and never heard from again. 
• Have been more sick than ever in my life. Learned how to do a Neti pot and an at-home enema. Went days without eating at a time. The school bathroom is an outhouse and dengue is rampant and. Yeah. We been through it.

• Could not get a bank account because I am not a Guatemalan citizen! So I got paid in cash, and each month would dole out my expected expenses into envelopes and had a strict week by week budget I never respected. Much to no one’s surprise, I quit the gym to start my Master’s and drink more wine. I also quit Amazon anything, Netflix, Spotify, and all but one credit card. I am crazy, but I am free. 
•  Lived with an abusive and insane Trumper landlord (Guatemalan! But walked to the US and lived there for 20 years and then came back here, or something like that, I try to not engage) and her abusive Vietnam-vet PTSD husband (old white guy from San Francisco!) who said really harassing things to all of us and we got to hear them scream at each other all the live long day.
• Woke up at 2:30am to climb a volcano and the guide canceled on us after we’d already battled several gags of dogs and walked to the boat dock waiting for the boat to take us to the van to take us to the hike to take us the volcano.

• Heard more fireworks than I ever will before or after in my life. Guatemalans just like the sound, there is rarely an accompanying light show, and they go off at all hours. They also like to throw them at foreigners, so . . . enjoy that.
• Through the incredible generosity of my family and friends, fundraised over $1700 USD worth of school supplies (and aforementioned McFlurries!) to supplement my classroom with gifts that absolutely floored my students (and me!). 
• Had to navigate all my health issues, get through my fear of injections and blood draws, because I am objectively allergic to all things about Guatemala and my workplace, AND THEN needed to get progressive glasses at 41! Imagine the stress and fun of the optometrist in a second language. “Uno, no, Dos! No, Uno!” and I won nothing except an expensive prescription, after shouting “Uno!” so many times. 

• Taught with the least amount of curriculum, support, administration, discipline parameters, resources, and technology I’ve had in sixteen years of teaching. But OH I know those kids learned from me. And I feel really good about what I was able to do. 
• Met up with a traveling friend, Steve, I had first met in 2008 in Belize, but have since seen in Vietnam. He was on Lake Atitlan for a week, and we were a boat ride away from the hostel where he gave me the nickname “Brownie” after an ill-fated night with a special dessert that made me think I was dying. We got to watch the sunset together and walk the streets and lament the role that technology has taken in travel culture. We made the world big and small again. 

•  Almost died by motorcycle several times.
• Joined an all-male volleyball team and wow. Boys can really ruin a good time. But I LOVED being thought of as tall.
•  Through the power of common confusion and bonded trauma, made some great friends and drafted a language of support and understanding as we navigate the sweet and challenging innocence of teaching in Guatemala.

There is more, to be sure. There is always the unedited version of these memories, or the ones I don’t want my family or future employers to read. But those require a down-payment of a margarita and endless chips and salsa and does Chevy’s still operate? Suddenly a chunk of tortilla dough and a Shirley Temple sounds like it could get me through these times.

Hey friends – thanks. Thank you. Thanks for listening. Cheers to the memories and the moments and the idea that things get better.

Something same same but different – this is the blog I wrote after about two weeks in Guatemala. And this is why I write – to record feelings and ideas and experiences, because they are not facts, but they are important.