"... running from the migra..."

It never gets boring here at my school. It is an elementary school, but nearly every day there are kids that hang out here who are from the middle school and some even from the high school. these two boys are always here when the little kids get out, and one of them always has some kind of musical instrument. last friday it was a drum. monday it was a guitar. he was playing, and the other guy was "freestyle" rapping, i guess that is what you would call it. anyway i was listening to his lyrics and they made me laugh. one of his lines was something to do with "running from the migra." which reminds me i still have to tell about the new third grader, jj.

a few weeks ago, jj was a new student in mrs. k's third grade class. this class is transitional bilingual, which means that these are the kids who have been taught in spanish for first and second grade who are now being taught in english, with spanish support. jj does not speak more than three words of english. his second day at school, they had a sub in their class who does not speak more than three words of spanish. i am with this class the last period of the day. since mrs. k hadn't left any specific instruction as to what I was supposed to do, i sat and helped JJ and N, another boy who doesn't speak much english, with their math work. since JJ was a new student whom i didn't know very well, i was asking him some general questions. where are you from? ixtapa. how long have you been here? two weeks. do you have any brothers or sisters? i have a baby brother. (mind you, this conversation took place in spanish). then he goes on to tell me, my little brother has papers but i don't. i was a little astonished and thought, you shouldn't be telling me this. then we sit down to do math and he tells me about how he and his mother and brother crossed the desert. i said, oh yeah? did you go in a car or take a bus? and he says, no we walked. even more astonished, i try not to let the surprize show on my face. oh, how far was it? and he said, about 200 miles. then he just keeps talking about running from the "migra" and how they had to hide from them, about how they camped under an overpass with no tent and just the stuff they had... i said it before and i'll say it again, things here hardly ever get boring. and JJ is such a sweet kid - the ones that come straight from mexico are so much nicer than the ones who were raised here. the other day, i was leaving that class and he said to me, adios maestra, que le vaya bien...

let's just hope these nice kids don't get mixed in with the mean kids - today at recess this group of boys came up to me twice saying JJ and some other boy were fighting. and N told me that M was calling JJ bad words in english. so i explained that we needed to "encontrar maneras buenas, PACIFICAS, de jugar... it's not respectful to call someone bad names in spanish or in english!" and that goddamn slide. i have to watch it so that nobody goes down backwards, or that they don't go two at a time or climb up the outside of it. they should just remove the whole damn thing - these kids don't get how to use it. ha ha, one day everyone gets to school and the slide is gone - hahahaha.

and now we try to find a cheap place to stay in london - i should have caved and bought my ticket for X airline as opposed to Y, and had the hotel included. maybe i'll find a hostel or someone at m's dorm will have a vacancy in their room. or i could just stay with my dad and pay the difference. that would be the convenient thing to do. but it doesn't really matter - it's london. all i'll need is outerwear, regular clothes and one going-out shirt. i'm not as high-maintenance as everyone believes.