I returned from Mexico City late afternoon on Saturday - to our home DSL line being down (it was fixed tonight - aaaaahhhhhhhhh). Suffice it to say - surviving the weekend without internet was a bit of a challenge for me.
The training week was phenomenal. Deaf Ed in Mexico is sort of like where it was in the US in oh, say, 1970 or so. There are virtually NO signing programs, except for one - which is a bilingual (Mexican SL and written Spanish) program - know that bilingual programs are progressive in the US yet. In 1990, a woman - a speech teacher - frustrated with the poor outcomes of her students and having heard a number of stories about the success of signing bilingual programs for deaf students - traveled to Gallaudet University to learn all she could about it. She went home and convinced the board of trustees of the school she worked at (and oral program) to set up a small pilot program for six students - a bilingual program. Today, the whole school (Instituto Pedagogico Para Problemas del Lenguagje, IAP)is now a K-6 bilingual deaf ed program - the only one of its kind in Mexico, and one of a few on the North American continent. One of the things they do is run an annual week-long training session for teachers from all over Mexico - on bilingual deaf education. Their goals are not that teachers return to their communities with plans to implement their own deaf ed programs (as that's an unrealistic hope), but that little seeds of change will be planted - and bit by bit, deaf education will improve in Mexico. Talk about a single agent of change - the woman who started it all was running the training session - she knocks my socks off.
The week was incredibly busy. There were six faculty, I was one of only two who was not fluent in Spanish. Very few of the 270 teachers at the training session were fluent in English. I was at a distinct disadvantage relying on interpreters - it worked, but I really wished that Spanish had been on my list of fluent languages. We started the day with breakfast together (most of the six faculty were staying at the same hotel) at 7:30, and were wisked off to the training center at 8:15. Five of us each gave a plenary talk on one of the days - that happened from about 9 til 10:30. From 11-1pm, we broke up into 6 groups - each taking a group of 50 teachers and running a workshop with them through the whole week. We broke from 1-2 for lunch, and then we repeated the workshop for a different group of 50 teachers. At 4:15, we had the option of attending small hand-on workshops - I would have loved to join the "Beginning Mexican Sign Language" group but I was zonked. Then, we were all taken to dinner, and deposited back at our hotel around 9 pm. Lather, rinse, repeat each day during the week.
The teachers were great. I probably learned as much as they did. I would love to be invited back in the future.
The most entertaining moment probably happened Friday night. I had an early plane to catch to get home, and had a 5 am wake up call to make the cab to the airport. Since the week had been so busy, I had not seen much of the city - so I jumped at the chance to join a group of folks heading out to dance. I figured "How late could they stay out - surely I'll get a few hours of sleep." Not so much. Apparently, dancing on weekend nights in Mexico City involves dancing from approximately 11 pm til between 4 or 5 am. I was dropped off back at the hote at 4:20...at which point I made the person who had invited me stay up til 5 am and my wake-up call. She got to go to bed at that point. I believe she slept til noon.
I was SO zonked that I boarded the plane (I was one of the last to board, although not the last) and never even noticed that my seat neighbor had sat down next to me until I woke up a bit half way through the flight. I was out cold.
I got home late Saturday afternoon, and spent much of Sunday (I'm 43! Happy Late Birthday to me!) sheparding the kids around to a series of kiddo birthday parties. Yes, I spent a serious chunk of my birthday afternoon at Chuck E Cheese's - one of the gates of parenting hell I'm sure. The kids love it, but it sure is loud. I did get to the bookstore and bought a serious start of a collection of Mexican food cook books. Tonight was an experiment in Mole sauce - the chocolate/chili version. It wasn't finished in time for dinner tonight (recipes that require about 80 ingrediants and numerous cooking steps just don't finish in time for an evening meal when one works all day), but we'll enjoy it tomorrow. This recipe is similar to the one I made - there are simpler versions, which I think I will be trying next time.
All in all, I'm happy to be home, and I think that the next few months will be less frenzied. There has been much traveling in the last few months - next up is the Gay Games, but the whole family is traveling for that!
