Mi Familia

Just so you know, I don’t have time to write all this stuff in my journal, so I’m using this blog to keep record of my comings and goings in this country.  Hence the boring post from yesterday about other teachers that you probably don’t care about.  I care about them, so I need to blog about them to remember them when I’m 70 years old, okay?  Keep that in mind for the rest of my blogging days.

Mis hermanos y yo.

So!  On the very first day of the fabulous month of May, I met mi familia.  Let me introduce you.

Elvira (sounds like Elbeeda) is family member number one.  She is 24 years old.  She is my connection to the world.  She drives me everywhere I need to go, she takes me with her when she goes somewhere awesome (like the Mercado), she shows me the ins and outs of surviving in this place (like hand-washing your clothes), and she speaks English fairly well.  We still have a major communication barrier, and there is a lot of Spanish/English dictionary involved, but really, she’s pretty good.  She’s always happy, always willing to help, and always patient with me, as I’m not the best Mexican there ever was.

Her sister, Eloisa, lives here as well.  I don’t know how old Eloisa is.  I would guess between 30 and 40, which I know is a huge range, but I am terrible with guessing the age of Mexican adults.  She speaks absolutely NO English.  Except she can say the word “teacher.”  But seriously that is it.  It’s crazy.  Thus, our communication is strictly in Spanish and it is so awesome!  We had a full on conversation in which I told her all about my family at home, and she told me about hers, and shared pictures and everything.  It was really one of the coolest conversations I have had since being here.  100% Spanish, no lie.  She is very funny, always making jokes and things.  I like her.

She has two lovely niños.  Miguel (or Miguelito, since his padre has the same name) is 10 and I freakin love him.  He is so funny!  He is Brady’s Mexican clone, I swear.  He is always joking around and turning random things into guitars, and when he laughs, he wrinkles his nose, which I LOVE (Brady wrinkles his nose, too), and he speaks slow, easy Spanish for me so I can understand!  And if I can’t understand, he will act it out until I do.  I usually walk away from the conversation very enlightened.  He will tell me full on stories, acting half of it out and talking at turtle pace.  I love it!  And today he danced like Michael Jackson, hat and everything, and It. Was. Awesome.  Just like Brady.  I’m not lying:  Miguel = White version of Brady.  So I practically feel like I’m living at home around this kid!

The other one is Jorge and he is 6.  He is a cutie.  At first he would kind of avoid me, but now he’s warmed up to me, and he talks to me a lot.  He’s not as good at acting things out and talking slow, so half the time I just have to pretend I know what he is saying.  Everyday, when I come from lunch he waits for me to finish and then he comes up to me and says, “Qieres jugar?”  I say yes, and then we go into the other room and play videogames until I have to go back to school and teach my evening students.  It’s adorable.

The father of these children/husband of Eloisa also lives here, but he is a bus driver, so he is only home from like 12 or 1 a.m. until like 4 a.m. for 25 days of the month, and then he has 5 days off.  And those five days for this month were the same days we teachers had vacation, so I was gone for most of them.  Thus, I don’t know him very well at all. 

Then there is another sister of Elvira and Eloisa, but I can never remember her name.  It starts with an E.  She is probably around the same age as Eloisa, but I really don’t know.  And far as I can tell, she doesn’t have a husband or kids or anything.  I don’t know.  She speaks English as well, but I don’t see her very often, so we don’t really need to communicate.  She’s nice, though, so that’s good.

The mother of these three lovely women lives downstairs, I think.  As you can tell, there’s a lot of guessing going on, because no one speaks English – besides Elvira.  Anyway, she is so nice to me, always smiling and kindly touching my arm and making sure I’m okay, and telling me that anything that is theirs is mine.  You know, the whole “Mi casa es su casa” thing.  That’s her.

And then there's me, the girl who sleeps in the room upstairs, and eats all the cereal.  Around here I am known as "Breet" or "Breetn" or "La Gringa."  It's a hard name.  But that's nothing new because I can't even pronounce it in America.

I think that's everyone!  The rest of the extended fam lives on this same street, or on the street that’s 2 minutes away.  It’s awesome.