Cutting Classes

We haven't talked much about our classes in Guanajuato, but I think we may have dropped a hint or two in the last week that we're not entirely satisfied with our experience. For example, you might have noticed that we decided to leave town a week early, even though we're loving the city of Guanajuato itself. Here's the deal:

Our school here, for future reference, is called Academia Falcon. When we arrived there a week ago last Sunday, we were shown to our room and basically left without explanation of where anything (i.e. outdoor lights, water, etc.) was located. We found out pretty quickly that besides being a bit on the dirty side and having a less than comfortable mattress on the bed, the toilet wouldn't flush. We were willing to troop through a lot, but if we're going to stay 3 weeks, we need a flushing toilet. So, we were off to a bad start.

The next day we had our first classes at the school. Academia Falcon is a bit like high school, with a schedule of one-hour classes on a variety of possible subjects. We started off in a class on indigenism in Mexico, which was just an hour-long lecture by a teacher who did not seem all that interested in our existence or presence for her droning presentation. Next we had a grammar class. We had been assigned to the most advanced class available, but we found ourselves learning simple rules about certain pronouns and well ahead of the two other students in class. What's more, we weren't convinced that the teacher actually knew what he was talking about. Our third class of the day was good: a simple conversation class with nice classmates and a good teacher, Catalina. Finally, for our fourth and last hour, we had a class on Mexican history, another lecture class, albeit slightly more interesting than the other.

Primarily because of our frustration with our grammar class, Emily and I decided to rearrange our schedule with the school. We dropped grammar entirely, because they didn't have a gramar class suitable to our level, nor were they able to make any adjustments in order to create one. We also dropped out of the indigenism class in order to facilitate rescheduling, though we weren't sad to see it go. We ended up with another conversation class and a class on Latin American literature, which we had wanted to take in the first place. The second conversation class turned out fine, which was predictable given that it was just the two of us in class talking with the teacher. The literature class not so much. The literature teacher is the sort of teacher who kills class conversation because he can't wrap his mind around thinking that it is not exactly the same as his own. Most frustrating was our second day in the class, during which we discussed a story by Julio Cortázar, an author by whom I've read several stories now. It's too hard to explain without spending a great deal of time describing the story, but by the time I had read and reviewed the story for this particular day, I was convinced, and with solid evidence, that much of the last half of the story had been a dream and that the main character who was dreaming about being on an island had, in the end of the story, died in a plane crash just off the island. I know, it sounds weird, but trust me on this. I had plenty of textual evidence, and the storyline is consistent with the way Cortázar tells stories. What was frustrating was that when I offered my view in class, the teacher made no effort to understand it or to change his overly narrow-minded (and I think incorrect, even if you didn't agree with me that the guy died in the end) view of the story. And instead of fostering a potentially interesting conversation, he killed it and returned to a mundane question he had asked to try to start conversation. I'm not sure I've explained the whole interchange well, but it was very frustrating.

Given our disappointment with our lodging--which we changed the next day but which remained less than ideal (e.g., the two twin beds we pushed together to make it sort of like sharing a bed)--and with the class offerings and with the quality of teaching, we decided to cancel our third and last week of class with Academia Falcon. Instead, we decided, we would have an extra week to make getting home a bit less stressful and to give us time to head out to California to see my family and to pick up our cats before settling in to Tucson before Thanksgiving and the impending beginning of Emily's new job.

This week of classes, for the record, has been a bit better, though it hasn't changed our minds one bit about our decision to cut school short a week. Emily and I are each taking a class aimed at teaching terms useful for our respective professions (and each of us is alone in our class, making it very easy to tailor to our needs and wishes). We're also taking two conversation classes, each with good teachers. And finally we have another literature class, but this time with a teacher, Eva, who knows what she's talking about, who fosters interesting conversation while also making sure we understand what happened in the stories, and who actually seems to enjoy the subject. So, we're still leaving, but at least we're leaving on a less sour note.