Eat, Sleep, Teach

It's not as exciting as Eat, Pray, Love but then again I am not a middle aged woman. Eat, Sleep, Teach has become my mantra for the last little bit but it is starting to bore the shit out of me. Do not get me wrong, I have 5 hours a day to create better lesson plans and hone my skills as an ESL teacher but I work split shifts every day and that gets old pretty quickly.

I have 36 days left in this contract counting tomorrow. I give a mid term exam next Wednesday and then have a 4 day long weekend. I give a final exam on August 11th and there is a good bye BBQ on Friday the 12th and there are 5 weekends (10 days). That totals 15 days which means I have 21 teaching days left or 105 classes remaining. May dragged a bit and June flew by and we are crushing July. How does this "time flying" happen without much regard? Routine. Routine. Routine.

I like Paulo Coelho. I have read The Alchemist, Like the Flowing River and The Witch of Portobello all of which I enjoyed. I do find him a bit over the top religious and preachy at times but I always take that with a grain of salt. Anyways his quote above being one of my favorites smacked me right in the face this week. Routine is lethal. Don't get me wrong, I am not 25 or 30 years into a career that I had and am just "putting in time" so I can retire.

Catedral de Tehuacán

First I am working and living a very easy lifestyle of my choosing right now in Mexico. Tehuacán is not the life of the fiesta but then again neither am I but I wake up every day living and working in Mexico and that is a good start to the day for me. Second I have been asked to stay for a second semester so I must be doing something right. I like this option for a few reasons. It is an easy school to work at with limited pressure. I can continue to enhance and grow my teaching skills and build my resume for my next job. I like the school and the people involved. I get free accommodation in a pretty nice house and the only worry I really have aside from school is laundry and groceries. Now lets put that into perspective. I dropped of my large bag of laundry at the "Lavanderia" this morning at 10:00 am and it weighted about 4 kilos. I picked it up at 4:30 and I was charged 27 pesos or  $1.87. At the local market I can fill my day pack with enough fresh fruit and veggies to last the week and I might pay $3.00 depending on if I get avocado's or strawberries which are the expensive produce here for whatever reason.

As I am developing new skills and now winding down and "killing precious time" I realized this week when I was internally ranting about routine that my routine consists of exactly 3 months, then I am doing something new. I can choose to stay in Mexico which is really growing on me or I can jump on the big bird and head to Asia and let the cards lay where they fall. What I do have coming up and what I desperately need is a road trip. A jump on a bus to Puebla and hang out kind of road trip.
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Puebla is a UNESCO World Heritage city, It has over 375 churches, amazing neighborhoods, fantastic views of the very active Volcano Popocatepetl and also gives me quick access to the ruins at Teotehuacan. I always loves me some Mayan ruins.

This post is not really about anything but a quick realization of where I am and what I am doing, plus I have not written anything in a while. I am really trying to avoid creating a "daily diary" situation but fu** it and who cares. I like to write and will write about whatever I want to. Maybe tomorrow I will write about the value of Gummi Bears in emerging market economies.