Fulbright Mid-year Conference

January 20th - 22nd was a mid-year conference for the Fulbright teachers in Mexico and their families.  The conference was held in Mexico City, and we drove there.

Scenes of Mexico from the car!

There are nine teachers in Mexico with the Fulbright program.  They are pictured here with several of the Fulbright administrators and a library guide at the Benjamin Franklin Library at the US Embassy.  There is only one other middle school teacher in the group, one is at an elementary school, one is at a high school, and the others are at universities.  Two are teaching in Mexico City, one in Tijuana, one in Culiacan, two in Pachuca, and one in Hidalgo.  Karl is the only one in Puebla.

Back row:  Maggie, Shennandoah, Tim, Benjamin Franklin, Nick, Hillary, Kelly

Middle row:  Library guide, Kristin, Fabiola, Nikki, Gretchen

Front row:  A mentor teacher from Culican, Sharon, and Karl

Elena, Chris, Alice, Joseph, Chiara, Stephen, and Daniel

There are three other teachers who have their kids with them, but one family with three kids didn't arrive until Thursday afternoon so they wouldn't miss as much school (the Mom was there the entire time, and Dad brought the kids).  We invited the two kids who were there Wednesday evening to hang out with us while the parents were in meetings.  Chris is 12, and Alice is 8.  Here is our group in front of a fun statue.  We were wandering around waiting for the museums to open.

The Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum and a wax museum were near our hotel.  We visited the  Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum, first.  It would have been more interesting if we could have understood Spanish, but it was still fun.

Here Stephen is standing next to a wax figure of the tallest man, Robert Pershing Wadlow, who was 8ft 11 inches.  

We went to the wax museum later, and really enjoyed it. The only things we had to read were the names of the figures, which included Barak Obama, George Bush, Felipe Caldaron, Michael Jackson, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, other artists,  Miguel Hidalgo and other revolutionaries, Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Lord of the Rings characters, Tom Hanks and a ton of other actors, and a ton of other people.  There was a gruesome scary section and a fun maze with mirrors.

Waiting for the teachers to finish meetings so we can all go to lunch.

Joseph and Alice waiting.

We all took a chartered bus to a really nice restaurant downtown.

At lunch we were joined by the other three children.  Their Dad and I walked with the kids to see the Cathedral while the Fulbrighters met with SEP (Department of Education).  Someone asked us if all the kids were ours - ten kids!!  

The Cathedral in Mexico City

The Cathedral was a drop off location for donations for Haiti.  In addition to all this water, there were piles of diapers, rice, beans, sugar, etc.

Inside the Cathedral

Mexico City was built on a huge lake bed which was dredged and drained.  Because of the underground water, you can feel buildings shaking all the time.  This pendulum hangs in the Cathedral, showing how much the building has moved and sunk over time.  The streets flood every time it rains because the ground is too saturated to drain.  It's kind of crazy.

On Friday we went to the Dolores Olmeda Museum.  For the kids, the most interesting part of this museum were the peacocks, and the hairless dogs seen here.  The one with it's nose in the air is a statue, and the other two are real dogs.  They are called Xoloitzcuintli, and they are native to Mexico.  They were domesticated by the Aztecs and used for both food and as pets. 

These dogs are the real thing.  It was hard to tell them apart from the statue.

The peacocks were all over.  This tree had half a dozen in it at least.

Lunch on a fun boat ride that we all took on Xochimilco.

 Xochimilco, the last of what used to be a giant lake in the Mexico City basin.

The conference was a lot of fun.  The teachers enjoyed comparing stories, and the kids were really happy to be able to spend time with other kids who spoke English and who were going through the same kinds of things as them.