Working Vacation

Going on vacation to another country is an exciting adventure, even more so when it where your heritage comes from. During the winter of 2009 my mother felt that I needed to explore my background more. She took me to her hometown of Chapultepec. This is a very small village that is part of the town of Tlalchapa in the state of Guerrero. Since it was winter break I had no intentions of finding school to be involved until one day a teacher from the village approached me. He explained that he had heard of my arrival form the United States and wanted to see how I would interact with native students. I refused since he was a 5^th grade teacher and I was significantly older than them. The next day he made me the same offer, this time with the prep school in the neighboring town. I accepted his offer.

Being an American student all my life I expected school to be quiet similar and had confidence in my involvement. I was widely astounded on how the students treated me. They teased and laughed at me whenever I said something incorrectly. After that first day I felt like quitting the agreement, but then I realized that this was nothing new for it is common within the United States. If a foreign student shows up many students would do the same. I decided to take this chance and make it a more personal experience. During my first week it seemed that the students had an endless ambush on my speaking skills since I had learned English moderately faster than Spanish. Still I was able to surpass even the most intellectual student in most math and science. One of my final thoughts for the first week were “The way people are treated in school is not part of the country, but very similar throughout most places.