Back to Mexico City

On Tuesday night, we flew from Monterrey back to Mexico City, arriving at the hotel at about 11:15 p.m. The next morning we met Pedro, our cab driver, at 6:15 a.m. I am a morning person, but manoman, that was hard. We arrived near the school early enough to go to Vips, which though owned by Wal-Mart, was one of my favorite breakfast spots--bottomless cups of coffee, papaya with yoghurt and granola, fresh-squeezed orange-nopal juice. Yum.

On Wednesday and Friday, I was at Tomas Moro School in Mexico City, at two branches. I've already had some great e-mails from the kids at this school--hello, everybody!

I really enjoyed this school. The teachers and students were friendly and welcoming. The setting at the Maguey branch reminded me of cabins in the mountains. The buildings fit beautifully into the natural environment--the line between indoors and outdoors seemed almost porous, as I've mentioned before, so very unlike the hermetically sealed US schools.

Notice the open doors of these classrooms:

At the branch in Maguey, I told stories to preschool up to high school students. The level of English was high, as was the level of enjoyment. Alberto was able to get some good pictures of the listeners on that Wednesday:

I didn't bring all the puppets out for all the classes. Mavis made an appearance for a few, though. Notice that I'm wearing my fleece vest and a scarf, and many of the kids are bundled up. It was lovely to be almost outdoors, but chilly! I'm not sure many buildings in Mexico City are heated.

On Friday, my last show was at the other branch of Tomas Moro. We arrived there without getting caught in traffic. In a city of 26 million, that's truly a miracle.

I told stories at that branch to the high school kids in the gym. Not a large group, and I wasn't sure they were with me in the beginning, but by the end of the show, the students were on my side. They had excellent questions, such as "what's the difference between acting and storytelling?" and "If I wanted to be a storyteller, how would I begin?" I might have to write some blog posts answering those as best I can!