Training in Deigh Effeigh (D.F. or Mexico City but you have to say the letters in Spanish)

Long ass week. I had been training in Mexico City, well if you want to call it that. I have been teaching for two and a half months now but they finally decided to send me to training… for new teachers. Now, it wouldn’t be that bad and I didn’t mind going but it was pointless… for me. There were 4 of us, and me and another dude have been teaching. For the other two new teachers it was effective and I would have loved to do it in my first week as well. But it was terrible.

I would have taken pictures but I didn’t want to have too many things of value incase of an incident on the metro (Mexico Cities Subway) or something. Although I had a driver there in the mornings, I needed to take mass transportation back to Toluca. I was very hesitant at first but after I did it the first day (my driver was there on the first day to basically hold my hand through the process to get me to the bus station). Just a couple blocks away from the center where we were at (La Zona Rosa, known for gays) was the Metro station. Tickets were 2 pesos. It was the first time I had ever been on a subway before outside of an airport. It was pretty cool, I had no problems taking it. It was clean and there was always somebody trying to sell something like burnt CD’s (they would play the CD as they were talking about it) and just about anything else you can think of, very entertaining. And on the bus they always showed a movie, although the last two days were dubbed (not subtitled) in Spanish. I got to read a lot though thanks to Heidi sending me a good book (the 5 people you meet in heaven by Mitch Album). I was able to get off the bus fairly close to our house and got a cheap cab from there.

Yesterday morning I left earlier because I had to see our lawyer (Wall Street) about me leaving the country. My tourist Visa expired on the 22nd, if I was to just renew it or extend it, it would have negated everything I did in the process of getting my FM3 (Work Visa) so I had to do some special stuff and gat a temporary visa that will allow me to leave and return without affecting my FM3. It took forever but I finally got what I needed.


The Training:

First of all there was no structure, time table, anything, and most of the classes were canceled (not too much of a problem because that is how it is). But we spent more time talking with each other in the social room than actually doing things for the training. AND they gave us two hour lunches which were completely ridiculous when we could just get it over with and leave early.

There was one thing that I did manage to get out of it, that was follow ups. It is when we look at a printout of the students profile and we can see if they are on track or what not and talk to then to see what they need to do. I was familiar with the forms before but the process of what to tell the students was reinforced and that was OK. So that was 1 hour that was useful out of 3 days traveling to Mexico City leaving at 8:30am and getting home 12 hours later. The training was from 10-6.

A very cool thing was meeting the other teachers. We clicked very well and that was fun, also because we were all from different places.

Florence – She is 22 and from France and she has been teaching French in a school in Liverpool, England. She came to Mexico 3 weeks ago to live with her boyfriend. It was interesting because her accent was British with a hint of French because she learned English in England.

Craig – He is 28 and From Scotland, West Scotland where they have extremely hard Scottish accents. He sounded almost identical to Groundskeeper Willie on the Simpsons. He had been teaching a month longer than I have in another center in Mexico City. He was really tall with long black greased back hair. We got along great.

Braum – Not sure his age, maybe mid 20’s, from the Holland, and yes his last name was Vander something! He was super tall! E was going to be teaching in a center near Veracruz. He just got to Mexico like the weekend before and was staying in a hotel.

We had a lot of time to get to know each other watching TV in the social room and our two hour lunches. We talked a lot about our respective country’s stereotypes and had lots of laughs. We talked about the dirty French, cheap Dutch, obnoxious Scottish, and lazy Americans. We also talked a lot about traveling and our experiences and what not, it was very cool. Because of this is why I was somewhat glad to go. I meet a lot of new people.

I did manage to get out of the last day, today. But I will be going back to work as normal, 4-9. We are going out tonight because my buddy Omar is leaving to go home next week.

I am bustin’ up to MI tomorrow morning! We went shopping the other day and I got my usual trip home things, a 3L bottle of Tequila and a carton of cigarettes (only like $16 bucks!)

We’ll see what’s up.