The Bill Please

Procedure for buying lunch at the cafeteria:

1) Yell "COMPRA" (you buy) as loud as you can until a certain kid named Chicho comes over.
2) Throw your wallet at him and say you want the usual.
3) Chicho comes back 5 minutes later with the food.
4) Get your wallet back with the change in it, minus a "tip" for Chicho.
5) Argue that he took too big of a tip.

Chicho runs his own little waitering business during lunch time. If you have a few extra pesos you don't need to stand in the long line for food, he does it for you! I have studied his technique extensively and it seems he is either buddies with the guy that gives out food or he gives him a cut of his profits, either way he somehow manages to cut to the front of the line and have his order waiting for him to pick up. He brings your food to where you are sitting. As a rule Mexicans aren't very good at mental math so there is always a lot of arguments over how much change someone should get. The fact that he doesn't have a price for his services, instead he just takes what he thinks is fair, makes for many vague accusations of him taking too much. I help figure out who gets what change almost everyday. The reason that Chicho goes through all of this is so that he can buy a chocolate bar with his lunch.

Mathematics

This class has the one teacher that the students actually listen to. I'm not sure why but when he walks into the classroom everyone stops assaulting the fans with balls of paper and sits down to do their work. This teacher also eats lunch in the cafeteria with the kids (I don't know where the others go, the teachers lounge is not very nice) and he plays tennis against any one that wants to. Somehow this gives him an unquestioned command over everyone. His teaching abilities aren't anything special, he just explains how to do something then relies on the smart kids that probably already knew how to explain it to everyone else. Over all the math here is more advanced than at home but I think they reached this level by skipping the basics (multiplication timestables, addition/subtraction in your head, long division). All the students use calculators even for the simplest of computations. The end of the year exam didn't allow calculators, no problem for me, but all of the other kids panicked. Every 2 months we have a math test that requires a practice test first. We have these at home and the teacher prints out a class set of the practice test and hands them out, no big deal. Here the teacher gets 5 people's emails and between those 5 people they have to get everyone else's emails. This creates an email tree that gets everyone the practice test in digital form, it is then up to the students to get their own test printed individually on their own time and bring it to school the next day. Most people (including me) do not have a printer in their home here so they have to drive to a printing/computer business to have it done. I have done this 4 times so far and each time it isn't even emailed to me until about 9 at night. Then my mom ad I have to go through the almost hour long ordeal of running out to the printing place in the dark. I think it's quite possible that there isn't a printer in this school.

Science Class

At some point near the beginning of the year the science teacher left the school (before I came to Mexico). A new teacher was brought in and was treated like a substitute teacher, because that was what she was. So far it could be any Canadian school but the difference is that the lack of respect for the teacher never went away. So when I joined the class about 5 months after the first science teacher I was told to never do a single thing she said. At first I thought they were just trying to get me in trouble as a joke, but I soon realized that if you just pretended to not know that she was there and not make eye contact. Science class mainly consists of everyone walking around the class, playing games and talking, while the teacher tries to teach, yells at everyone for not listening and then gives up and messes around on her laptop. To a certain extent this is what it is like in all classes but our science class is the best. Once a week we all put on our lab coats (except for me because I never got around to buying one), and go downstairs for an experiment in the lab. The lab coats are not for safety, no one ever even wears protective goggles and so far this year we haven't dealt with anything more dangerous than vinegar. My educated guess is that the coats are purely for looks. Every kid has their name embroidered on the chest pocket. The lab experiments mainly consist of combining household things inorder to have sciency things happen. One day we did the writing with lemon juice to make invisible ink thing, another day we did catching the gas from vinegar and baking soda in a balloon. None of them are to prove a scientific hypothesis or to demonstrate a chemical reaction, they are just to make something cool happen. The science happening before your eyes is never explained, you are just supposed to learn that baking soda and vinegar make gas, not why they make gas, not what the gas is, just that it happens. Also these "experiments" are all designed to be a lot like cooking, with measurements like "a pinch" or "a few drops." I think that lab classes are just entertainment.

This Reminded Me of Something...

In the spirit of Mexican schooling I have decided to copy out of a book today:

"The educational scheme or course established by Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and put straws up one another's backs until Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch-rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling--that is to say, it had it once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt fell into a state of coma; arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskillfully cut off the chump end of something), more illegibly printed than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with iron mold and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the course was usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory students."

-Great Expectations- Charles Dickens

P.E. Stands for Partial Exertion

2 days a week I Have gym class. Everyone wears their special gym uniform made of light fabrics. I love these days simply because the uniform involves shorts instead of the usual jeans in 35 degrees. At home we wear special clothes for gym too, but we only wear them for gym class, not all day as is the case here. In Canada we even have showers, you can shower and put on clean clothing so you smell/feel good for the next class. Unfortunately, here, they don't seem to understand the purpose of having different clothes for gym. You have to wear the same sweaty uniform all day, and people sweat a LOT in the blistering sun. Some days when we go downstairs and outside for P.E. we do some stretching and a walking lap around the tennis court but mostly the guys run for the soccer ball on the field. Boys and girls do gym separately, the guys are left to themselves to make teams and play soccer. The girls play tennis if it isn't particularly hot that day (maybe once a month?) or just sit in one of the shade tents and talk. Luckily only a few of the guys actually run during soccer so I'm not expected to work too hard. It is still much too hot to even play lazy soccer. When the block is over we go back to our classroom and turn all of the fans on full but the Spanish teacher always turns them off when she comes in and complains about how cold it is. I'm not sure whats wrong with her.

Swear Your Soul

Every Monday we have a "flag ceremony" that involves a large amount of saluting, looking orderly and pretty, chanting and patriotism. Instead of first block everyone is herded out onto the soccer field and creates a blob around the outside of the 18 yard box. The teachers move through the crowd and in about 15 minutes manage to form each class into two lines of girls and two lines of boys, from shortest to tallest. They play a really bad recording (for a couple months the speakers were broken and this part was silent) of some sort of army drumming and a group of 8 kids march in formation in a pattern around sort of a figure 8. Everyone salutes with their forearm horizontally across their chest. Next comes singing the national anthem, another tremendously bad recording. I sort of hum along or sing "Oh Canada," sometimes I sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. To the best of my knowledge most other kids are doing something like me, everyone makes noise, no one sings the song. For the third part you hold your right hand straight out from your body. The Directora (sort of like a pricipal but way more powerful and scary) reads out an oath to either the flag, country or government. I'm not sure which one it is but you are swearing allegiance to something. I usually mumble this as well because I'm not 100% sure what they are saying. The class with the highest average grade for the last week gets the task of reading out a bunch of mixed up points ranging from school anouncments to happy birthdays to historical happenings on the next few days. When this is over the marching with the flag is redone, in reverse and everyone salutes on their chest. At this point each class is dismissed one by one. throughout the whole thing some teachers circulate through the ranks and tell random kids to tuck their shirt in tighter, stand straighter, stay looking ahead, put more energy into their salutes etc...

When you go back to class there is still 20 minutes left but the teacher doesn't even try to make anyone do anything.

I Can't Write Much Tonight Because...

I can't write anything much right now because my school starts at the ungodly hour of 7:30 and I need to sleep. There are some schools here that start before 6:00 so I guess I can't complain. Normally I would be able to handle getting up early by catching up on sleep on the weekends, but this time of year it gets so hot that the only time I can ride my bike is from 6:00-8:00 in the morning. A few days ago a girl was actually asleep in class, not just resting her eyes or laying her head on her desk, not faking, 100% legitimately asleep. Of course the teacher didn't notice/care.

Spicy Enough For Ya?!?!?!?!

Most of the food sold in the cafeteria would either be illegal to sell in a Canadian school or be found disgusting by any non Mexican. As a main course you can have a torta, a sandwich where the bun is soaked in the grease from the cooked meat before it is made, some chicken nuggets made of who knows what part of a chicken, a plate of nachos covered in delicious month old cheez-wizz, quesadillas that might actually be good except that they stick a slice of slimey ham in each one or a hamburger. The hamburger is made with not a meat patty but with a lovely slice of Mexico's trademarked slimey ham. You could attribute this to them hearing the American (I know its's German but they think it's American) word HAMburger and putting the ham in but the word for ham in Spanish is "jamon." I am still trying to understand this. There is one other thing they consider a meal, the one thing I haven't been able to bring myself to try, a bag of Doritos cut open down the side, cruched to dust with cheez-wizz, corn kernals, lime juice, cream and of course a whole lot of chili of varying types. For a drink you can have Tonicol (a cola a lot like coke), iced tea, jamaica or horchata. The latter two are uniquely Mexican concoctions of ground up bits of various plants mixed with water, I guess iced tea is too. In the desert section (a lot of people treat this as main course section) you can have donuts, slices of cake, slices of pie and conchas. Conchas are just a bread bun with some weird dry icing on top. There is also a impulse candy buy section by the cash register where they try to get you for some halls or gum. I still don't understand why people don't bring their own lunch.

Coin Spinnin'

One of my favourite time wasting games is coin spinning. There are two teams one person each and it is played sitting on the floor. One team serves by holding a coin vertical on the floor with one hand and flicking it with the other to make it spin like a top. The other team has to flick it to keep it going, teams take turns doing one flick each. If the coin stops spinning and it is your fault (either you didn't flick it fast enough or your flick made it fall) the other guy doesn't score a point, he gets to hurt you. The loser has to place his fist on the floor, like he has just punched it, and let the other person slide the coin flat across the floor at his knuckles. This really hurts if the other person is good at it. I have seen people get bleeding knuckles after playing for awhile. Usually once you lose two or three times in a row, your flicking is at such a disadvantage due to your hand exploding with pain that you might as well just give up at that point. Of course, you are only allowed to give up when you have just won a round and instead of shooting it at your opponents knuckles you forfeit.

One day a couple guys had been playing this for about half an hour in science class and quite a large crowd had gathered because it was a good match. The teacher was talking the whole time and eventually noticed that not a single person was even pretending to pay attention. She came over and tried to step on the coin to stop the game but stepped on one of the player's hands reaching for it. The teacher tryed to say that she would get them in trouble with the Prefecta for playing in class but they just said that she stepped on one of their hands and they would get her in trouble, no one ended up saying anything.

If there is no toilet paper in the stall (as usual), you are supposed to yell for help from the janitor

This School Could Employ Its Own Army Barber...

Looks are very important in Mexico. With schools that means that both the buildings and people there have to look pretty. Part of looking pretty is looking uniform. Part of looking the same is having the same haircut. So essentially what I'm saying is that haircuts are very important.

Every couple weeks the Prefecta (ranked one step below principal) comes around to each class to check on peoples hair. Girls just have to keep it looking reasonably clean and they do this without the Prefecta's nagging. On the other hand, guys have to pass a test from her that usually depends on her mood. Each boy gets a rough grab at the back of their head to test the length. If she decides it is too long, you get told to cut it and she writes your name down in her little notebook of secrets.

One day we were in gym class playing soccer on the field. The Prefecta comes out on the third floor balcony on the building and watches us for while. After about 5 minutes she roars, "JOSE FERNANDEZ, COME HERE!" Jose, a boy in my class, went running into the building. It was very impressive, even though I had no idea what was going on. For the next few classes he wasn't there. Eventually he showed up, with his hair cut! After asking some questions I found out that if you don't get your hair cut within 2 days of the Prefecta telling you to, the school will phone your mom or dad and make them come and get you, doesn't matter if they are busy or at work, they MUST come. You have to leave school with your parent, get your hair cut and return. It is unacceptable to wait until after school that day.

While the Teacher's Away, the Mice Will Play

Like many Mexican students in my class, one of my favourite pastimes during school hours is throwing things at the 4 fans that are running all day on the classroom ceiling. Of course this is strictly (unlike most of the rules here) forbidden, so it must only take place very secretly while the teacher is there or in the few golden moments each day that there is no supervision in the classroom. In Canada it is illegal for the teacher to leave the class unattended and maybe it is here too. These chances usually occur right after lunch or between classes if the teacher doesn't show up on time. Today we were waiting for a teacher and some guys casually started throwing paper balls at the fans, if you do it right they get hit by the blades and fired out in random directions. In about 30 seconds this escalated into throwing plastic pens and half full water bottles. The pens explode if its done right and the bottles give a very satisfying "WHACK." Soon my friend grabbed a huge piece of rolled up paper (2x4 feet) and launched it like a spear. It got caught by a fan blade right in the middle and doubled over, spinning with the fan. At this point the guy watching the door yelled that the teacher was coming, we all threw what ever was left in our hands and dove for our desks, screaming and laughing our heads off. The paper spear got fired out of the fan and just had time to get out of sight as the door was opened. The teacher walked in scowling and snatched a piece of paper slowly floating towards the ground. Of course there was no hard evidence so nothing happened.

Maybe a Cat Had Just Passed Through

There was a hairball by my desk today. It started out as a ball of lint but grew as the day went on. It picked up hairs one by one. Hairs that were so big I couldn't believe that I hadn't noticed them on their own on the floor. Once it reached a certain size the wind from the fans was able to move it, back and forth across the class. It had traveled its journey 3 times and on the fourth crossing it started heading straight for me. As it came closer I saw that it was about 3 inches in diameter, loosely packed and trailing behind it was a almost 50cm long tail of nasty nastyness. Hairs, candy wrappers, someone's gum, all headed for me. I started to panic so I lifted my legs and it passed harmlessly under my chair. For the rest of the day it grew and and got blown about. I wonder if it will still be there tomorrow.



I believe that the threat of hairball related injuries and deaths in Mexican schools is constantly on the rise and should therefore be taken into consideration. A Mexican hairball's natural habitat is in small, smooth floored, well ventilated enclosures. Their main source of sustenance are the hair snippings from Mexican school girls grooming their split ends during a particularly boring class. I think that these unique natural wonders of Mexico should not be exterminated, but rather to be relocated by a school janitor to a nearby garbage can where they can be properly cared for.

Code Blue Security Breach

In this entire country there is a sort of paranoia about anything that could ever possible harm you in any way. My school is considered one of the "better" ones because it has a large fence around it. I don't know if it is to keep the kids off of the "dangerous" street (the only cars on it are going to the school) or to keep the multitude of kidnappers just waiting for a chance to grab a high school student out. Anyways there is a big fence, a gate with a gatekeeper and 2 or 3 guards on the outside of the fence walking around all day. There is just one small problem with all of this security; the fence only goes around the front half of the school. Maybe they are planning on building the rest later or it could truly be just for looks. The guards spend most of their time throwing tennis, volley, soccer and basket balls back into the enclosure. All in all I hope that there aren't masses of kidnappers waiting around the outside of the fence.

The Chaos Ensues

We arrived at the school and my mom left. A teacher was going to take me to my class, but before even saying hello, she made me tuck in my shirt. The first thing I noticed as I entered the class was the noise. About 20 about of the 30 people there were talking and yelling. I wasn't sure if the yelling was anything in particular (my Spanish isn't that good) but many of them were screaming at the top of their lungs. I figured that it would die down when class started but I was wrong. The teacher stood in front of the class and started saying something, at the same time I'm pretty sure the sound level went up. Not a single kid in the room seemed to even notice that the teacher was there. After about 10 minutes she seemed to give up and just wrote a number on the board. I soon found out that that number was a page number in the textbook and that our task for the class was to copy that page into our book. Not to answer questions, not to research something, just to copy a page out of the textbook word for word. I managed to complete this just as the next class started. I went through the day copying a few pages in each class and participating in the chorus of booing every 20 minutes or so. No one really "boo's" it's more of a collective "oohing" in a very deep voice but it has close to the same meaning as an English "boo." This blaring hubbub is roared for for reasons. Whenever someone says something and everyone else happens to be silent for that second, when someone back talks the teacher, when the teacher thinks of a clever response to the back talking kid, when the kid thinks of a clever comeback to the comeback or whenever either the teacher or the kid can't think of a response quickly enough. Some teachers are very smooth and can beat any student verbally, others try to get their clever thoughts out but just end up stuttering and sometimes the teacher will think of something to say but will have paused too long since the student's last remark and the timing will be off. Either of the latter two will result in a communal booing or oohing from the class. I usually miss the original comment that starts the trading of remarks but can understand what happens from then on.

How I Ended Up Here

Back in December my family began the long process of adopting a child, my baby sister। One of the requirements is that we must live in Mexico for a year with her। Within a month we had chosen Mazatlan, Sinaloa as our home and rented a house. I am 14, in 9th grade in Canada which is 3rd of Secundaria here. My plan was to be going to school within a week of arriving but a week quickly turned to a month. We slowly found out about about more and more schools that we would have to investigate and each one wanted a huge stack of paperwork just to get a maybe on being allowed in. Some of the worst wanted my birth certificate, my parent's marriage certificate, original copies of my grade records all the way back to grade 2 and a signed certificate of approval from my Canadian principal. Eventually we settled on a school about a kilometer and a half from our house. My 10 year old brother Rob and I had to get at least 86% on a test for math, makes sense, but they also wanted us to take a test for our English skills. We are not from French Canada. During the tests the director of the school was sitting right across her desk from me. I found 12 mistakes on the math test that I could point out to her, everything from impossible questions to missing decimals. At one point she called one of the math teachers while he was teaching a class to ask him if I was right, turns out I was. Anyways, they seemed happy enough with our results but decided that that was the time to tell us that Rob's grade was already full to the legal limit. He ended up going to a different school. My grade wasn't full so I got passed on to the step of awaiting approval from the owner of the school. I have no idea why this is relevent, he is just a businessman that makes money off of the inscription fees but he has it so that every new student has to get a special stamp on their documents from him. Another week passed and I got the okay, so I bought a uniform and started Tuesday. By this time I couldn't stand sitting around the house anymore and was overjoyed to get something to do 5 days a week.


Click Here for a blog with more details about my tropical adventures earlier this Winter, it covers up until the time that Rob, my mom and I returned to Canada for awhile