(Nearly) dos meses!

Hola!

Wow, I can't believe two months is nearly up! I leave Mexico in a week, and I am stunned at how fast time has moved. I don't remember my first two months in Denmark moving this fast. When I was in sixth grade, I told my science teacher at the end of the year "I can't believe how fast this year has gone!" He told me that as I get older, it'll only move faster. I haven't forgotten that sentiment (though it's not like it was particularly insightful or deep) and there seems to be some truth to it.

In the last four-ish weeks that I haven't blogged, I have, amongst other things:

1. Taught English to university students (and been observed twice)
2. Been to San Miguel de Allende and Dolores Hidalgo 
3. Chopped a good three inches off of my hair 
4. Accidentally said that I had an intimate love for mangoes 
5. Lost the running water in our host house for two days due to petty construction workers 
6. Asked for a second lunch 

As we can see, it's been eventful! 

To start off, I suppose I should elaborate on the reason why I am here, which is to teach English. I have been working with a cooperating teacher for the last three weeks in two university classrooms at the Universidad Autonóma de Querétaro. I have taught two lessons that I created from scratch (both were for classroom observations) and assisted my cooperating teacher in the rest of her lessons. I found teaching university students to be much more enjoyable than teaching in an informal classroom setting, because I get to use metalinguistic terminology. Metalinguistic terminology, simply put, is using the linguistic terminology for grammar concepts. Instead of contextualizing grammar points, and embedding it in activities, I get to explicitly state "this is an adjective" or "this is the present progressive tense of ________________." Both of my professors have observed and stated that "grammar is my happy place." 

Just a couple weeks ago, my host mom took my roommate and I and two other friends from our TESOL program to San Miguel de Allende and Dolores Hidalgo. San Miguel de Allende is packed with American ex-pats who have retired to Mexico. It is such a beautiful town. We went to Starbucks (I didn't buy anything) but it smelled great. There are of course cafes here, but the smell of coffee is so strong in Starbucks, and it smelt like home. After touring through San Miguel de Allende, we drove to Dolores Hidalgo. I tried avocado ice cream, and I loved it! It has chunks of avocado which added texture, and the ice cream itself tasted like sweet cream. 

We got a little bit lost on the way to and from Dolores Hidalgo, which just added to the adventure. When you're a foreigner, you never really know where you are. You rely on others to help you. When those "others" are just as lost as you are, it just makes the whole experience that much more confusing. Add "embracing everything" to that, and embracing the fact that absolutely nobody knows where they are makes "being lost in a foreign country" that much more interesting. Will we ever make it home? Why are we parked? Where is this highway going? Up to our imagination! 

That Thursday, my host mom told us at lunch "my friend is coming over tonight, and she is doing my hair!" Then, she asked my roommate and I if we wanted our hair done. I did not understand most of what she said, and I really just got that she was getting her hair done. That night, at around 9:30 PM, she came up to our bedroom and asked us again, "do you want your hair done." I asked her "when" and she said "now." So, at 10:00 at night, I found myself in a very spontaneous turn of events sitting in the kitchen, getting my hair chopped to make me look like a 1900's flapper girl.

While I was getting my hair cut, my host mom gave me some mango slices for dinner. I told her "me amo mango." I then found out that "amor" is actually used to express intimate love for someone, and that I totally should have said "muchisimo gusto mango." Or something like that - I'm still trying to work this whole "speaking Spanish" thing out. 

As I have written before, my host house has been under construction. They have since finished, but two weeks ago, they were nearing the end. One night, I woke up at 3 AM to drills, hammers, and loud music. My host mom told them to quiet down. And they didn't. So she cut their power on her electrical breaker, and at three in the morning, they (the construction workers) found themselves in the dark, with no music. 

And three days later, I was brushing my teeth, and I found that the water wasn't running. So I told my host mom. That night, the water still wasn't on, so we couldn't shower. The water was out all of Sunday too, so Sunday night, we showered by pouring buckets of water over our head. Monday morning, the water was still out. Amber and I went to class, and sometime between when we left for class and came back that afternoon, the water came back on. I asked my host mom why it ever went out, and she told me - you will never believe this - that they turned our running water off for two days because she turned their electricity off at 3 AM. So, for two days, we were without running water because some construction workers next door were petty. 

That was two weeks ago (thankfully) and we have indeed had running water since then. Today, however, I went to a cafe to debrief with my professor about my second teaching observation. It was 4 PM and I hadn't eaten since breakfast, so I ordered lunch and a coffee. And then I got home, and my host mom started speaking Spanish to me. I caught a few things, like the word lunch. And she was gesturing toward my roommate. I thought she was trying to tell me that they hadn't eaten lunch, and then I figured out that they had already eaten while I was out. Then, I tried saying "that's fine! That's fine!" Through that whole exchange, I also thought I'd communicated to her that I'd already eaten through a series of saying "sí" and "oh!" Smile and nod, y'know? No. I then walked into my room, and started talking to my roommate. And all of a sudden from downstairs, we hear "lunch!" being called at us. And my roommate goes "I already ate." And that is when I knew that I was eating a second lunch. 

Ladies and gentlemen, language barriers are both pain and glory. 

On a more serious note, the last two classes I am taking here are pass/fail. The pass is dependent on me passing (one of two) of my teaching observations. I passed my first teaching observation last week with an 80%, but it was important that I passed my observation today as well. I am very happy to say that after much lesson planning, I passed my second observation with a 93%, and am now (basically) TESOL certified. 

This summer was grueling, and I'm not even sure I want to be a teacher anymore. To leave Mexico with what I set out for though - a TESOL certificate - is very relieving, and I am so happy to have accomplished that (with a whole hell of a lot of help from others). Though this certificate is designated for teaching English abroad, it was good for so much else as well. I developed a love for grammar (who thought they'd ever hear that) and nuances and intricacies behind language.

I learned through this certification program that I would love to explore linguistic research after this summer, and in fact, I am VERY excited that I get to do that! I am TA'ing in my current professors linguistics class next quarter, and we have agreed to put together a research project together. The ultimate goal (though of course tentative) is to take it to the AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguistics) conference in March of 2019! 

For now though, I am nearly done, and I am (basically) a certified English teacher. 

Cheers to my last week in Mexico.