Meet the Children: Part Four and Probably the last

I think this should be the last post in the Meet the Children series and therefore probably one of the last posts while I am in Mexico. Because honestly, beyond the children I don't really have too much of a life.

 


Romina is new to ILP, she only joined the program about two or three weeks ago, but I am glad that she came along. This little girl has more sass that just about anyone and even though she refuses to speak English even though she is pretty capable, I still like her. She also has this maniacal little laugh that shouldn't be able to come from such a small little body. She is adorable.

 


Maria (left) is a super sweet, but super quiet little girl. I haven't gotten to see her personality very much because she is so shy, but every now and then she will surprise me by running up to me and giving me a hug. She also really likes to act like a cat. Kinda weird, but also kinda cute. Carolina (right) moves on and off the nice list frequently and quickly. She has this adorable little voice, and can be sweet sometimes, but she also can be a little stinker. She refuses to pay attention and gets mad when you try to get her to focus and speak English. We all have mixed feelings about Carol.

 



Oh Luis Angel, what can I say about him. He may possibly be one of the most dramatic and flamboyant people I have ever met. Most of the time I love him, but he knows how to get on my nerves faster than almost anyone. His favorite movie is 50 Shades of Grey, and he asks us daily if we have seen it, and then is horrified every  time we answer no. He once had a full on melt down when someone killed a snail, because "snails are the very beautiful creatures". There is definitely never a dull moment when Luis Angel is in the room.

I wish I had a better picture of Fatima because she grows on me more and more each day. But she is a little more reserved and shy than a lot of the kids, so she doesn't jump at the opportunity to get her picture taken. She gets sassier each and every day and gets so fed up with all the crap the boys in her class try to pull. It is hilarious to see her faces. Luis Angel is one of her best friends, which I think is good, because she is much calmer and less prone to random acts of drama.

Juan Pablo is pretty adorable, and always looks snazzy as heck, but he may or may not be one of the banes of my existence. He never listens, refuses to sit still, fights with anyone sitting next to him, and asks if he can go home constantly. On the plus side, his pronunciation is basically accentless and his hair is always perfectly gelled and quaffed. 

Natalia (left) is so stinking cute. I think that she is going to grow up to be gorgeous. She may not be the best speaker, but she is always willing to help out and try to keep the other kids in line. Cumorah (middle) is also probably going to grow up to be gorgeous because let's face it, most of these children are prettier than I can ever hope to be, haha. Cumorah loves to speak Spanish with anyone around her, and doesn't get too happy when we try to make her stop. But she is also sweet and gives some of the sweetest hugs. And then there is Ana (right), sweet little Ana. If anyone ever gets hurt she is the first to run over and make sure they are okay. She loves to kiss the teachers on the cheek while she gives us big hugs. But make Ana made, and it will not be a good day for you.

I love Juan Angel. He is a quite little kid who doesn't really participate in class, but when you do get him to talk he just has the cutest little personality. He almost got pulled out of the program, but thankfully he didn't. Whenever a parent comes in to check out how ILP works, Juan Angel will always look at me, smile, and then walk over to them and say, "Hello. How are you?'" and then walk back to join the lesson. It melts my heart every time he does that. 

Abish is Cumorah's older sister, and for the longest time, we couldn't tell them apart. One of the teachers still can't tell them apart actually. Abish is one of the kids that I haven't gotten to know too well, but I still love her. She came up to me today and gave me a hug and wouldn't let me go for about three minutes when I had to leave to do something for class. It was really sweet and I loved it.

 



Sometimes I want to punch David in the face, but other times I like him a lot. For the first month or two, he and I did not get along at all. But then one day, I had a stern talk with him about his attitude and how he was kinda violent and ever since then, things have been a whole lot better between us. One time he threw a paper airplane and it landed in my mouth. It was a miracle and probably one of my favorite moments from Mexico.



Well, there you have it. Those are all of my kids (hopefully). I don't think I forgot any, but then again I might have because there are over 40 of them which is a lot. I love each and every one of them and they are going to make leaving Mexico so hard. I will miss their funny quirks and playing and talking with them. I will miss when I am having a bad day and they are the only things that can cheer me up. They are awesome, and I am so glad that I got to be their teacher for these four months.

From The Mouths of Babes

When you work with little kids, you are bound to hear some pretty interesting things. But when you work with kids who have only a small grasp on the English language, interesting things are the norm. These children say the funnies things sometimes, I am going to share some of my favorite quotes from the children. If you want to get the full effect you need to imagine them being said in heavy little Hispanic accents.


-We came back to school today after a weeks vacation. Luis Angel went to San Francisco so we were asking him what he ate there because we have been missing American food. We asked him if he had a hamburger and he said yes. Then we asked him if he liked it...
                     "No Teacher, I didn't like it. I went to the bathroom... It was a very ugly activity".

-The school we teach at has a soccer team, and four of our boys play on the team. They had a game one day so we went with one of the boy's mom and little sister (who we also teach). While we were at the game, they were trying to teach us the school cheer, but it was very quickly sung in Spanish so all we were able to imitate was "Ra, Ra, Ra". The little girl we were with (who is my favorite child) looks over at us and says...
                    "Maybe if you sang better they would actually win".


-This next exchange might be one of my favorite conversations ever. The kids were at recess and we were just about to start class. Adamary, Danna and David run up to me...
                    Adamary: Teacher Kendall! Danna and David just kissed on the mouth!
          
                   Danna: It was an accident!

                   Me: David, was sit really an accident?

                   David: Yes Teacher. 

                   Me: But did you like it?

                   David: (nods his head) Yes.

                   Danna: (proceeds to start kicking David furiously.)


-On my first or second week, I made my first child cry. And not just a few little tears, he was fully on displaying waterworks. He was terrified of me and wouldn't let me near him. I was worried and sad because I thought I was going to be in so much trouble and I didn't mean to make him cry. I almost started crying myself. Isaac comes up to me and says... (note: preocuparse means 'to worry' in Spanish).
                   "No preoccupation Teacher. It's okay. No preoccupation".


-Isaac was being a stinker one day and I told him that if he didn't start paying attention and being good that he was going to lose his next turn in the game we were playing. Isaac likes to be a little over the top sometimes and so he gets down on his knees and starts pleading with me...
                   "NOOOOOO. Please, just one more opportunation to be good".


-The kids seem to think that adding '-ation' on to Spanish words automatically makes them English words. One day Max wanted to ask us a question... (note: pregunta is question in Spanish)
                    "Teacher, I have a preguntation".



-Angy, one of our three year olds, is basically unintelligible when she speaks. And she has the raspiest little voice that is one of my favorite things ever. She asked to go to the bathroom a lot, and this is what I hear...
                        "Mnandjo fanodufashn fnaoupdofhasf pee pee?"


-I was asking the kids what their favorite colors were. Most of them were just saying one color. Then it gets to Sebas and he starts naming like five colors. In the middle of Sebastian's color rant, Jorge jumps in...
                     "...And two hours later..."


-Yuli had been gone for a couple days so when we were going over the spelling words she was a little confused about what the words meant. Luis Angel being the good friend that he is, offered her his sage words of advice...
                     "You no here, it no my problem".


-Most of the times Adamary and I get along pretty well. She is one of my favorites to talk to. But sometimes I do something to make her mad and she says things that I don't think she fully understands the meaning of... (if you don't like bad language feel free to skip over this one)
                     "Teacher Kendall is a bitch".

-Luis Angels favorite movie is 50 Shade of Grey. Why anyone would let their nine year old son watch a movie that is clearly meant for mature adults is beyond me. But regardless of the reason, he loves the movie and asks all of the teachers all the time if we have seen it yet...
                      "You no see the 50 Shades o Grey movie!?!?! What is up?"


-One of my biggest regrets in regards to teaching is teaching the kids how to use the phrase 'just kidding'. They had a hay day with it for a while. Most of the kids would just say things like 'I want you to go back to United States' or 'You are very ugly', shortly followed by 'just kidding!'. But Lorelei takes things farther...
                      "Teachers, my grandma died...  ...  ...  ...  ... JUST KIDDING!"


-I was asking where David was one day and Jorge gives me his version of where he is...
                     "Maybe he in the bathroom with no toilet paper?"




It is safe to say that the kids keep me highly entertained the majority of the time. They say funny things all the time and I wish that I had a video recording all the time so that I could capture all of those moments. As it is, I remember only about a quarter, if even that, of what they say. The examples above are just some of my favorite treasures that I here from them.

Also, I come home in 24 days!

Meet the Children: Part 3

And now for the third installment in our favorite series- Meet the Children.

Valeria and Sarai were really hard for me to tell apart at the beginning, but not any more. Valeria is cute, but she is a little punk who refuses to do anything that we ask her to do. She's not one of me least favorites, but she definitely doesn't crack the top 25% either. I think people bully her a little bit which is why she acts out, so I try to have more love for her. Sarai loves me which makes me love her. She is a bit of a punk too, but at least she hugs me while being punkish.

 

Mauro (the little one) and Gael (the not so little one) are related, but I'm not sure exactly how. I am guessing cousins or something. But regardless of their familiarity, they have one major thing in common: their speaking level. That's right, Gael, an 8 year old, speaks the same amount of English as 3 year old Mauro. I think Mauro is a cute kid, but I am not too taken with him because he can't be unattended for more than a second or he will mortally injure himself. And Gael drives me up the wall, I don't think I would be wrong in saying he is one of my least favorite children.

Christian and Fabian hate pictures. Literally this is the best picture I have of either one of them. Christian and Fabian are probably the two kids who dislike the teachers the most. Never have they wanted to hug us or talk to us outside of class time. Actually we threaten Fabian with hugs. If he is being bad we tell him we are going to hug him, and you can bet your butt he straightens up real fast. 

Try telling me that Enrique (left) does not look exactly like the ogres from Ella Enchanted, and I will call you a liar. He even has the signature butt crack going most of the time. Enrique wants to grow up to be a luchador and I can see that completely. And then we have Gustavo. Oh Gustavo, what a perfect child. He isn't the best speaker and sometimes he gets a little distracted with Valeria, but just look at that face. He is just a compact little person with sweet little personality, and we all love Gus (pronounced goose).

Sebass (Sebastian) is the most perfectly round child I have ever come in contact with. I think of him as a baby bird because one time we were reading a story and it had  picture of a round little bird and Jorge pointed out that it looked exactly like Sebass, and he was right. So now I just see a tiny bird when I look at his round little face.

 


If I could only choose one child to steal and bring back to America, it would be Lunah. This little seven year old is super smart with a good amount of sass, and she is basically  every thing I want my future child to be. In fact, I have decided that she is going to marry my little brother Kason because that way she can be in my life forever. We all decided spirit animal children for each other, and I got lucky enough to have Lunah chosen as mine.

Baby Jota

Since I made a post for Maddie, it is only fair that Jamie gets one too.

Name: Jamie [Lou] Anderson

Years: 18

Hails From: St. John's, AZ

Likes: Easton, soccer, peanut butter, punching kids in the face, and Easton

Dislikes: Disorganization, spiders in her bed, Estetica Unisex (aka the lizard in our kitchen), and Jorge

Special Talents: Making herself look pregnant, singing like an angel, making pillow cases, and having really nice hands

Sucks at: Keeping her cool around lizards, not threatening the children with physical violence, sharing bed posts, and being as beautiful as Maddie

Maryline Walter

One of my roommates wanted a post all to herself. So I decided to give it to her, because I am bored and have nothing better to do right now.

Name: Maddie Walter

Age: 18

Hails from: Columbus, OH

Likes: Pigs, Trivia Crack, Reeses Puff cereal, and me obviously

Dislikes: Mexican doctors, food poisoning, and me obviously

Special Talents: Making the world's ugliest faces, singing terrible duets, and being more beautiful than me

Sucks At: Being healthy, looking her age, and disciplining children

One Half

Today officially marks the halfway point of my Mexican adventure! It is crazy to think about because in a lot of ways I feel like I just got here and that I still have so much I need to do. But on the other hand I feel like I have been here for a small eternity and that it is high time I get back to the States. It is funny how time can play tricks on you like that- and by funny I mean it is actually unfair that it has the power to do that.

I have a new favorite student. His name is Isaac. I gave him a shared post in one of my "Meet the children" posts, but he now deserves a mention all of his own.

This kid is definitely one of the good ones. He is super high energy, but he also cares so much about being good for the teachers. I had a talk with him a couple of weeks ago about how he needed to pay more attention and listen to the teachers, and ever since then he has been trying to hard to be a perfect little angel for us. And he has been living up to that. Every day after class he will come up to us and ask, "I was being good today teachers?" The answer is always yes.  Today he wasn't paying super close attention to me so I reminded him of rule number five which is "eyes on teacher" and he was felt so bad that he literally did not take his eyes off of me for the next 20 minutes. Other kids were running around telling stories and being crazy and Isaac didn't even glance at them, because he wanted to make sure that he was following all the rules and being good. Not many other nine year old would do that. I want to take him home and keep him forever. But I can't. Because that would be kidnapping. And kidnapping is kind of against the law.

Things have definitely been getting better here in Pachuca. I have stopped wanting to go home and now I am dreading leaving these kids. Even though they are wild and crazy, they have blessed my life a lot and I am really grateful that I get to teach them and play with them and love them. None of it has really been easy, but I am seeing more and more every day that it was definitely worth it. 

2 months, 1 week

If you were to ask me what I feel about Mexico and this whole experience right now, I am not sure what I would say.

A part of me loves it here. I am glad that I am getting to experience something totally new and I know that the second I get back to the States I am going to want to come right back her and see my kids again. But another part of me would be totally fine if they were to send me home tomorrow. I don't want to quit, but if I was told to go home, I would.

It has just been a rough couple of weeks in regards to teaching. Everything is so disorganized, and no one seems to know how to help us fix it. Some of the older kids complained to their parents that they weren't getting tickets like the younger kids were, so we got yelled at and were told that we needed to change the entire way we were teaching the older kids.

It is better now that we have settled into the new routine and gotten used to things, but for a while it was 100% stress 100% of the time.

I sometimes wonder if I am even doing anything worthwhile. Half the time the kids refuse to speak English and just run around and fight while screaming Spanish. I try to get control of them, but when you have eight kids staging a mutiny against one teacher, there isn't always a whole lot I can do. But then one of the kids will say or do something sweet and I am reminded of the reason I wanted to do this thing in the first place.

Granted, I got called crazy, bad and mean about twenty times before this, but hey, you take what you can get with these kids. 

Meet the Children: Part 2

Here are a few more of the kiddos.

Mayte and Alex, aren't they cute? Mayte is Danna's little sister, and Alex is the adorable brother of the adorable Angy. I think that all the girls have a slight crush on Alex, and he basks in the attention of their love. He is a punk, that is for sure and he loves to fight with anyone withing a two centimeter radius, but we all love him anyway. Mayte is just a cute little girl, and when she isn't around Alex, she is a decent student as well.

Lorelei is an interesting little girl. She craves attention even more than most of the kids, which is definitely saying something. Because she wants attention so badly she acts out 98% of the time. But she is sweet, and when you catch her during that other 2%, she doesn't drive you totally crazy. I feel bad because a lot of the other kids can be mean and tease her, but sometimes she is completely nutso. We also are all pretty convinced that she has a crush on Bryan.

Andreh is a geographical genius. He has basically all the countries in the world memorized and he is only eight or nine years old. He can also tell you which flag belongs to which country, it is pretty dang amazing. I mean I am 20 and there is no way I am ever going to be able to that. He also wears glasses that are constantly falling off of his face, which I find completely fitting to his entire personality.

Abi and Andres are siblings and I love them both quite a bit. We actually live in a little apartment that is under their house so every morning we get to hear their little voices speaking in the cutest Spanish ever as they are getting ready to leave for school. One day Andres even tried to help us carry in our 20 Liter water jug. He failed obviously, but it was so cute of him to try. Abi is just the sweetest little thing ever and her voice is high and adorable, plus she gives some of the best hugs.

Gil and Naomi are another one of our brother sister duos, and Gil is extremely protective over his little sister. It is really cute, but also a little obnoxious, because if Naomi starts to cry (which she is extremely prone to do over absolutely nothing), Gil cannot be kept focused until he knows she is okay. Fun story about Naomi, she pooped her pants or almost pooped her pants for three days in a row. That was a fun week.

I am extremely proud that I have this picture, because Jorge (the one on the right that is not Andreh) is about as anti-pictures and anti-everything as they come. Everyday for about a week he would ask me to play on my phone after class and I would always say he could, but only if he would take a picture with me, which I knew was the one thing he would not do. But one day I guess I wore him down because I got this out of it. I really really did not like Jorge for the whole first month; I thought he was a sore loser and a little brat. But in the past week or so, I am starting to like him more and more, and I think he is starting to hate me a little bit less too.

And that is enough for now I think, but here is one more video that makes me laugh.

Meet the Children

I realize that even though my whole life basically revolves around these kids that I teach, I haven't really introduced them yet. So lets try to fix that.

Meet Emiliano and Carlos. They are probably two of the naughtiest kids that we teach, but I also have soft spots in my heart for both of them. When they come up and hug me or say, "But Teach..." when I get mad at them or make them do something they don't want to do, I can't help but smile and love them even though they are horrible.

Adamary and Danna. These two girls are the best of friends, and definitely act like it. If you make Danna mad, you better believe Adamary is going to hate you (for about a day) for whatever it was you did, and vice versa. They can be so sweet and nice, but you better watch your back if you get on their bad sides.

These three boys. Max (front), Daniel (barely visible but he will get his own picture so don't even worry), and Isaac are probably some of my favorites. For the first week I got them mixed up all the time. Max and Daniel are brothers, and except for their size, they are basically identical. And Isaac and Max just look similar to me. These boys are so high energy and they are all in the same class so when I teach them I want to cry half the time, but the other half I am just loving my life.

I told you Daniel would get his own picture. Look at that face. This kid is my ugly-face-in-pictures soul mate. No one can pull a face like he can. He also just has the fuzziest hair and is so strange that you can't help but love the kid. He is terrible at doing what I ask and speaking English, but I don't even care, because he is one of my faves.

Older Emiliano thinks that he is too cool for school and basically everything else. The other teachers think he is a punk and don't like him very much, but for some reason I do. I can't explain why because he gets on my nerves all the time, but I do. Also, his hands and feet are bigger than mine and he is eight years old. I don't know what to feel about that.

 


Look at her. Look at that face. Angy is probably the cutest child I have ever seen. She is a monster and basically doesn't speak a single word of English, but she is three, and adorable, so what does that matter? She has this little raspy voice and her face just lights up when you say her name and I seriously love her.

Yuli is just a sweetheart. She is probably one of the only kids that hasn't said to me "Teacher Kendall no is good" or "Teacher Kendall crazy" or any other number of the wonderfully terrible things the kids love to say to us teachers. She is in the class with Max, Daniel, Isaac and Bryan (I will get to him in a minute). As I have mentioned, those boys are crazy. Whenever one of them goes off on a rant, Yuli just gets this face that says every negative thing a girl has ever though about how insane boys can be. I love it, and I love her.

Bryan, Bryan, Bryan... what can I say about Bryan. Well, if you read my last post, that is what I can say about Bryan, haha. But really, this kid is so funny and crazy, just look at the selfie he took of himself. There is never a dull moment with Bryan around.

Those are only a few of the kids I teach, there are about 45 kids in total, and I am not going to devote a picture to each and everyone of them right now. Maybe later, but for now it is too much work. I really do love each one of the kids, even the ones who make me want to cry more often than not. And I think they like me too, most of the time anyway. Mexico has been a great experience so far and I know that I am going to miss these kids and this experience like crazy when they make me leave and go back to the States. But I am going to enjoy it all while I can.

P.S. Please enjoy this video of me teaching two kids a very crucial phrase in English.