gold, frankenstein, and myrrh

Three weeks of Christmas projects, Christmas stories, and intense practice for the Christmas pageant have ended. Most of the PCS staff left this morning to head to the US. Soon I will also be leaving, but my flight isn't until tomorrow morning. Early. Way too early. It leaves at 7:50am from Mexico City. Calculating backwards - let's see, international flights require passengers to arrive 3 hours ahead. 4:50am. The bus ride from Puebla to Mexico City takes 2 hours. That means I have to be on the 3am bus from here. My poor roommate is dropping me off at the bus station. Hopefully she'll go back to sleep afterwards. I'm not going to bother going to bed tonight.

All that aside, the past three weeks went very well. We had more than enough Christmas projects to fill the time, and then this last week all the kids had practice for the pageant that they were in Thursday. By the way, did you know that the wise men brought gold, Frankenstein, and myrrh to the baby Jesus? So says one of my students anyway. Do you think the wise men invited Frankie, or did he force his way along with them?

That in itself was a story. The pageant started at 6:30. I went over to the school at 6 to get a ride over, but no one came. I tried calling some people's cell phones, but no one answered. By 6:30, the school's cleaning ladies had arrived, and they called a cab for me, but when the cab came, the driver didn't know where the church was and neither did I. I tried more cell phones with no results. They ladies called another cab, but just when it arrived, one of the PCS teachers also drove up. He'd been sent to find me. Unfortunately, the cab driver demanded payment for the call, even though I didn't ride over to the church with him.

On Friday the parents of my students came with Christmas food for lunch. Not all of them could be there, but it was nice to have the ones that could come.

Now I've finished my lesson plans for the first week of school - Jan 2008! and I'm all packed. Ten more hours til I have to be at the bus station.