Basketball, Coffee, and Colts

Two posts in two days? Damn, I'm on fire. I couldn't ask for a better end to a fantastic week (let's, for arguments sake, assume that Sunday is the end of the week, since Monday always sucks huge elephant balls).

We had our second game today, and hot damn, we won, 59-48. Only five players showed for an 11am game (I'm sure Saturday night hangovers killed half the team). Therefore, even though I'm so out of shape I feel like a 54 year-old chain smoker with emphysema and one more jelly donut away from cardiac arrest, I went the whole 40 minutes. Two hard fouls, a scuffed up left shin, a hobbled left knee that's led to seven consumed aspirin, and 12 points later, my shirt was so soaked with sweat, I literally RANG IT OUT in the bathroom sink. I wish this was an over exaggeration, but unfortunately, it isn't. The combination of massive amounts of exercise, the massive Satan fart heat of Mexico, and a gym that must double as a place to cremate bodies (ie - hot as hell) led to my shirt being wetter than...well, let's try to keep it PG for this evening. I love this basketball league. Love it. Those of you who know me know what basketball means to me, and to be able to play against really good competition and meet new people and show off my massive skill set (insert laugh here) has really made me so very, very happy.

Since my arrival, my choice hangout has been a quaint coffee shop near my house called Gloria Jean's. I literally am there every night, usually grading papers. I visit so frequently, I know every employee by name, they know my real name and many other aliases (ranging from "Rayn" to "Juan" to "Juanito" to one cheeky fellow who put my name on the receipt as "O'Bryan".), and I've held substanial conversations with each one of them. In other words, I'm a regular. And going there, I've really learned a lot of Spanish. Because I stay late and there are rarely other customers past 9pm, I have conversations with the employees for an hour almost every night. This alone has bumped my level of Spanish from "Yo hablo un muy poquito espanol," to "Yo hablo un poquito espanol." I feel comfortable enough now to speak to anyone in Spanish. It's fantastic. But anyways, the place really reminds me of the little coffee shops in Boulder, Colorado, my future home. Come visit me. I'll take you out for a cup.

Tonight, being that the Colts/Cardinals game was on national TV, it was on in most of the restaurants in Monterrey. I went to the Chili's near my house and watched. And what makes the perfect weekend more perfect? The Colts beating the living hell out of the Cardinals, 31-10, in case you happen to miss the score or don't care. I enjoyed a few Jack Daniels and Cokes and just realxed. And mis amigas favoritos came, too, which is always enjoyable. Fantastic, fantastic Sunday.

It's so nice to finally really enjoy being here. Even when things start to get boring or something should really get me down, it doesn't like it used to. I've taken the road of blissful ignorance, disregarding the things that don't go so well and truly enjoying each little thing that comes my way. I still don't know a ton of people. I'm not going out and drinking and partying like I used to. But, in a way, it's really nice. I figure pushing myself to really squeeze every ounce of happiness out of each experience can only serve me better in the long run. And plus, who wants to be fucking miserable all the time (oops - there goes the PG blog). Until next time...

You Better Get Ready for War...

The last week has been hectic, in a serene sense. It's like one of those slow motion war scenes where people are being blown to bits, blood is splattered on the lens and you can see people screaming and dying and crying out, but they cut the sound and set it to some nice, soft, classical score. That's kind of how I would describe the last week.

One of the teachers at the school was fired. Why...who knows? Another teacher rarely shows up. And there is apparently no such thing as a substitute teacher in Mexico, or at least not that I'm aware of. Our coordinator was gone two days on business, and my roomate was, sadly, at home Monday through Wednesday for his grandfather's funeral. Needless to say, the war metaphor is sufficiently adequate in this situation.

On top of that, every night for the last two weeks, I've spent my every waking, non-school hour correcting 35 essays written in broken, garbled English. And while the actual stories were, for the most part, intriguing and ultimately fantastic, the path there (grammar, spelling, punctuation - those little things) were like a path littered with landmines and shrapnel. But, I meticulously corrected each first draft, just as I did in my short stint at Rushville High, treating each paper with the same care as the last. And now, they are all finished, and final drafts have been turned in, and the results are astonishing. It's another small moral victory in an otherwise cataclysmic battle.

Each Friday night, at least for the last two Friday nights, a group of teachers from the school have been meeting for dinner and drinks. Last Saturday (as Friday didn't pan out), we met at Las Alitas, a sports bar type place (think Applebee's with less crap on the walls). This past Friday, we met at Sierra Madre Brewery, a very nice, very lively restaurant with their own brewery. We originally had eight people that grew to fifteen by the end of the meal. It was fantastic. Despite some of the struggles at school, many of the students and especially my fellow co-workers make the job very enjoyable. Many of the elementary teachers, the secondary teachers, the art teacher, the PE teacher, the librarian, and the cafeteria lady are all stupendous individuals. Sitting around, enjoying a relaxing meal, laughing, sharing stories, doing impressions, and really getting to know each other outside of the school walls is something that I will really cherish from my time here. It's the respite, a little R&R away from the trenches.

The best thing that has happened is I finally, finally, finally stopped feeling sick. The nozzle in my nose stopped running like a drunk waterfall and my sleep habits have improved (I actually go to bed at a reasonable hour. What has happened to me?) And so I started lifting and boxing for an hour each day, in addition to running. But the best part - I joined the school's basketball league. Several of the teachers and a few parents are in a weekend basketball league. I stayed after school each night this week to practice, and to be able to play the sport that I love more than anything again has really, really made me giddy. We had our first game today, which, mother fu****, we lost, 61-58. The teams that play in the league are no slouches. We have two former college players and a semi-professional player on our team, and we still lost. I played about a quarter. It felt good...real good. I had five points, including a nothing but a sizzling net three-pointer. Mi amiga Ashley took some pictures:

The first picture would be the sweet lay-up I made, courtesy of a nice assist. The second picture would be my three-pointer in mid-air. As you can see, my form is hot as shit. Alright, so not really, but damn it feels good to be a gangsta. And the view from the gym ain't half bad either. When's the last time you played in a gym on the side of a mountain?

Today, I went with a student of mine and his father to a Monterrey Rayados game, the local professional soccer team. It was incredible. We sat up high, but when the venue (Estadio Tecnologico) is "only" 40,000 seats, any seat is good. It's was incredible to see just how big the field really is. It's twenty yards wider than an American football field and a 120 yards long. And live soccer is actually very exciting, even if the pace seems slow. The fans are crazy. It makes professional sports fans in the US look pathetic. Really pathetic. It reminds me more of a crazy high school or college game, with dancing and cheers and screaming and instruments and all that jazz. And Rayados beat Puebla, 2-1. Very, very cool experience.

Alright, another ball game in 11 hours, and so I must go. But I will return tomorrow with another update on some other very cool happenings and so forth.

Everybody's Working for the Weekend So That They Can't Do Anything Fun, Ye-ah!

So those aren't exactly the lyrics to what stands as THE anthem of shitty work weeks and the immense amount of fun that SHOULD follow on those two wonderful days known as Saturday and Sunday (and Friday night, while we're at it). But the last few weekends have been less than sensational (with a few notable exceptions). Being a school teacher is hard, it isn't worth the money, and you only do it because you have an enrmously large heart, like me (insert sarcastic response at your screen here). And so it stands to reason that school teachers, more than business men or lawyers or doctors, deserve to spend Friday night through mid-Sunday in a state of toxic inebriation. And for the first weekend, I did. (This weekend has been discussed in a previous blog, the one in which there is a picture of me looking to seduce a taco as if it were Elisha Cuthbert and Mila Kunis rolled into one.) I work diligently every weekday, teaching as if Jesus H. Christ himself is coming back to save my filthy soul, and every night I peek towards the weekend with eager anticipation, waiting, hoping, wishing...

And every weekend it seems, something happens. Something completely and utterly unbelieveable at the wrong moment, the wrong time. Let's take this weekend for example.

Friday early evening - While taking a deep nap to prepare for the weekend ahead, two friends enter my home, scream for me, decide I'm not there, and leave. And since I didn't own a phone, I spent the rest of my night sitting in my home, staring at the wall. Okay, not really. I played guitar.

(¡I have acquired a guitar. A wonderful, wonderful person had one just lying around that they never used. So I took it, tuned it, and made sweet, sweet, sweaty music with it. And it is fantastic and sounds wonderful and makes me so happy that it pretty much has wiped away all my problems. Okay, not really, but you know! [I love having a Spanish keyboard because I can make upside down exclamation points and you can't {unless you live in Mexico}¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡])

Saturday afternoon - So at the repeated behest of said guitar giver, I broke down and went all 16 year old giggly girl and bought a phone. Like, totally. So, I'm like at the mall, minding my own business, just buying a phone, when - WHAM-fucking-O! Mexico went all loco on me again. The pain radiating from my body doubled me over, brought tears to my face, and sweat beads to my face that were the same size as those that probably roll down the crack of this man's ass. It was intense, to say the least. And, God bless the wonderful lady at Telcel who was trying to show me all the function's of the phone and what not, but I had to be a dick. I rolled my ass into a cab and went back (for the second time in three weeks) to the emergency room. Long story short (again), they took tests this time and I have an infection. Not some contagious hubabalu, mind you, but some kind of infection. And so they put me on medication that costs 130 pesos a pill (about 9.00 US). Per pill! But these pills would give an elephant difficulty in swallowing and when I take them, it's like taking drugs, but less WOOOO and more UHHHH. Heavily, heavily sedated. So nice.

But anyways, plans for the evening were ruined by this fact (as well as the fact my wonderful guide and said guitar giver were in a car wreck and although they are very thankfully fine, their car and my usual ride was mangled like a stroller under a garbage truck).

However, I was able to get out last night and see The Ugly Truth, with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler (I know, not my choice). But it was actually pretty good, and made better by the fact that it wasn't all PG-13 chick flicked. It was rather raunchy. In fact, half the theatre were guys (albeit probably dragged their against their will). And Gerard Butler is the man. He basically played the exact same character from 300, but instead of slaying mutated elephants and tranvestite, hermo-war lords, he slayed the ladies. A lot of ladies.

I also ate once again at Tacos Laredo, which is delicious food at a reasonable price. The campechana is delicious. And my previously mentioned plan to mutilate my tongue to the point I can eat fire and not blink must be working, because I had to ADD more spicy sauce last night. Oh my God...I'm becoming a Mexo-Gringo.

And before I go, what tops off my weekend? Oh, that's right. My computer finally keeled over. After six years of co-existence, she's finally pushing up the daisies. She has tripped the light fantastic. She is an ex-computer. So sad. I wanted to make a beautiful Power Point montage of our life together, with maybe some Amazing Grace in the background, but I don't have Power Point, because it's on my dead computer. Yeah, so, anyways. I can use a computer at school, but that is limited use (except for this long entry I'm writing).

And finally, for those of you who do not know my good friend Seth Elder, he is a Fulbright Scholar in Macedonia that I went to school with for four years. He is winding down his stay there and has started to reminisce on his time there. His journal is of incredible quality, fervent in its humor and poignancy. And he's in a really cool fucking place. Check it out: http://sethelder.blogspot.com/

Get Back To Where You Once Belonged

I'm back. It has been awhile, I know. As you start to truly adjust to the point you wake up one morning, look at the enormously beautiful mountains behind your home, and say, "Damn, those mountains suck. I live in a bowl," you know you're truly HERE. And while so much has happened in the last two weeks, so much has not happened. I know that may be blowing your mind, like some kind of trans-mutated, 60's experimental drug revolution thingy, but it's the truth. Before, when I was writing blogs like they were Harry Potter books, each time I left my house was an event, like going to prom or a sixth birthday party. There were cameras, bug-eyes, cheesy smiles, and the constant fear of urinating in your pants (I can't ever find a bathroom here when I need one).

But now, it's plain. Just...plain.

And I don't mean that in a bad way, at all. In fact, I feel terribly at home now. Before, I sat around the house on the Internet, visiting the same seven websites in a never-ceasing rotation, like constantly opening the refrigerator and freezer doors when you're hungry, hoping something good pops up you didn't see before. And when I went out, it was for a purpose. A truly great purpose, full of excitement and adventure, like visiting Soriana or buying a Coke - noble necessities.

But a month has passed and the excited, first-time feeling has exited stage left, replaced by that same feeling, that same word, that I use to describe Rushville and used (much to my mother's chagrin) to describe DePauw.

Home.

Yeah, it's true. When I think of home, I think of our broke ass house that's too far away from anything, that white, cold tile floor and the plain, empty bedroom I sleep in. What I mean to say, by all of this, is that my lack of pictures and blogs and consistent excitement now is the same reason I don't take pictures of my house or my dorm room or my college campus. Because I'm here and this is where I call home now. (And for those of you who misinterpret everything I say, I mean this is a good thing and I like it here a lot and you smell like funky toe jam).

Enough of that sappy shit, though. There are some rather bodacious things that have happened in the last week and a half:

• Umm...school started! I've sat down to write about school a few times recently, but each time I delete it and figure I'll start it later. I'll have a hard time describing school this year, a very difficult time, which is why even though it constitutes 75% of what I do during my waking hours, I'll rarely write about it, suffice it to say this - it is nearly 180 degrees of the way things are where I have taught before. There is no copy machine, few supplies, etc. It is sparse, to say the least. And the discipline problems are extremely unique compared to the plethora of problems I've dealt with before. But despite some early year struggles, I really enjoy being here. The kids are all really cool, and when your "clientel" are easy to work with, it makes any job enjoyable. I also had to sort-of decorate my classroom (the teachers switch classrooms, not the students). Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

• It has rained here - constantly - for the last week. And while it provides a cool view of the mountains, it sucks. Things here flood quickly, like the bathroom after your father stops it up with one of those dumps of epic proportion.
• I have recently added to my Meixcan DVD collection with the purchase of Sueno de Fuga. You may know it by the name The Shawshank Redemption. Of course, I still lack a working DVD player and my own personal copy of Rescatando al soldado Ryan, you know, just in case someone is saying, "Oh jeez, I really like you and want to send you a cool gift that would make you love me forever." Just saying...
• I bought a dumbbell set, a punching bag, and boxing gloves. It is fantastic. In the month I have been here, I've lost almost 12 pounds and look like an emaciated Albino (my apologies to all those Albinos reading this). So very soon, buff/hot Ryan is gonna be walking around Monterrey like "WhatWhat"?
• Speaking of buff/hot Ryan - I bought new clothes last night. Dress clothes. You know, since I don't have my uniform yet. Two pairs of classic gray pants from Aldo Conti (which by the way, they tailor for you), two very swanky dress shirts that of course are tinted blue with sexy patterns, topped off by a pair of classy Florsheim black dress shoes, since my Wal-Mart pair of shit kickers lasted approximately one week before a giant hole appeared in the toe. Let's just say I'm the best looking teacher named Mr. Ryan at school (apologies to the other Mr. Ryan...you are a gorgeous man in your own right sir).
• I've been eating at so many taco places I can't keep them straight (and that's probably because they're all called "Los blahblahblah". I think I even ate at a place called Los Anus, but the food tasted like crap anyways. And instead of just eating the tacos, I'm going for the full experience, which means singing (not singing, like "la la la la", but singing, like burning off) all the tastebuds from my tongue via various salsas and spices. I have had a guide with me at these various locales to prepare my food the "authentic" way (and to also make me eat shit they know is going to be gross simply for the satisfaction of watching me cringe). This guide has also helped me out in various other ways, such as kindly telling the stylist how to cut my hair, commenting on what clothes I should buy, and how I should go about my daily routine. And I appreciate all of it...except the hair cut. No, I'm kidding. I look like a straight pimp.
• Finally, I was asked recently about things I miss from home. And then I thought about it. And it was kind of a funny list (at least I thought it was), so I will reproduce it here:

1. the Park Restaurant coffee
2. Quizno's
3. my guitar
4. country drives
5. Bourbon Whiskey
   
6. kettle cooked barbecue potato chips
7. Beefaroni
8. 2% milk
9. Mr. Freshie's donuts at 4am
10. Goodwill/Kohl's
    

I thought that was a pretty good list. I'm going to try to write more frequently. Starting school has just been a huge hassle and very time consuming. See you on the flip side.