Sofia Somewhere

The other morning, I looked out the window of my room, and a got a view of the house across the street hanging up their laundry. I spent some time taking in my surroundings; the simple houses in the community, some made with cinder blocks, and the rest with just metal sheets; the children playing on the street and the laughter that carries; the taxis beeping their horns waiting for passengers; the several tortillerias making fresh tortillas . La Esperanza is a simple community, unfortunately sandwiched between rivaling gangs. Throughout my time here, I have been exposed to hearing about family members of my students get shot, people I know being extorted, and different stories about the hardships of the community. Violence aside, I’ve also had to deal with cultural differences, the way people go about doing things, the seeming lack of efficiency, disorganization, chaos, and other little things. But despite all that, I’ve also been exposed to the beauty of the life and the will of the ...

In a blink, final exams were taken, classrooms packed up, and the school year has come to an end. There’s been a lot going on, leaving me no time to process my thoughts until now. I’ll get to that in a bit, but first, some last few events at the end of the school year. A — what seemed like a last minute — event that we attended was an Expoferia . The schools in the sector were each tasked to do an expo of events that happened at the school throughout the year. Aside from recreating posters and information of certain events (e.g. Science and Math Week, International Corn Day), we also had to come up with some sort of activity for the students to do while they visited our booths.  On October 1st was possibly one of the students’ favorite days in the entire year: Día del Niño or Children’s Day. Throughout the year they have Mother's Day, Father's Day, Teacher's Day, etc. where they are always tasked with making gifts and doing performances. On this day, th...