Let me do my best to describe my life here:
I can see the ocean from my bedroom window. From the roof you get a full view of the mountains that encircle us in this hilly town. There is also a dog on the roof. Her name is Lassie. Lassie is awful. Imagine a giant white rat that pees itself every time it sees you. This is Lassie. She ate holes in my Treasure Island, FL, shirt.
I spend a lot of time reading. I am reading more and more about that vast, endless continent that sits some 375 odd miles to the east of me. I often find myself staring at the map on the wall and dreaming about it and its sweet promises of beauty and adventure and danger. And I find myself thinking more and more about all of its overwhelming problems.
Teaching is a struggle. I often think about this: which is more important, to teach these kids English or to be a good role-model, to give them a face to put with the obscure images of America they are forming in their heads? I am doing my best to accomplish both. We’ve been told to teach here is like teaching in the inner-city in U.S., except that, here, you do not speak the same language as the students. Out of my five classes, two are consistently ‘well behaved.’ The other three are not. To step into the classroom is to be prepared for everything to go wrong. I’ve grown accustomed to hearing, “Mr. Slezak, I love you,” and “Mr. Slezak, hoje bo é bonito,” (today you are handsome) and “Ami ka ta fazi nada” (I am not going to do any work). I’ve had a student tell me that she was going to send her mother to school to hit me (this was said playfully). I’ve caught a student preparing to cheat on the test in the class after mine and had him tell me, “You can’t tell my history teacher about this. I like fighting,” (this was not said playfully).
But I enjoy teaching, and I am learning more about it every time I set foot in the classroom.
The language is a struggle. Some days I feel like I’ve got a good handle on it, and other days I feel like a child.
The people here are incredibly kind for the most part. The town is pretty, quiet. It feels like a tiny European village. Sometimes, now that it is the dry season, I wake up and find it so foggy that I can’t see the ocean or the mountains. They call this bruhma-seca, or dry fog. It is the sands from the Sahara desert blowing through the island. I would have never believed it without seeing it.
Overall, I am enjoying my life here. On Saturdays, after classes, sometimes my roommate Nelson and I go for a hike to a small town that we have never been to before. It is a good way to get out and to see students outside of school, in their home towns. We often pass them on these hikes as they are working–fetching water from the well and carrying it back home on their heads–or as they are playing–usually soccer. These hikes often lead to some sort of small adventure. We met people, talk, and more often than not, are offered a drink. These hikes have given me some of my favorite memories here so far, and I also feel that they are important in that they show the students we run into that we are not just their foreign language teachers from America, we are people that are making an effort to get out and see their county and get to know their culture. And it’s in these moments that I realize that even though life here can be very stressful at times, and even though I sometimes do get homesick, there is nothing that I would rather be doing with my life right now.
