Living With a Conscience

I've been living with a conscience for about a year now.

Its name is Jaime, and it sucks.

I prefer to choose a few of my own causes and make believe that other travesties and human rights violations don't exist so that I have time to get on Facebook and Buzzfeed and read disreputable "news" stories.

It's kind of like saying, "I'm okay with pillaging so long as you promise no raping." Or, "I mean, in this case, I think the guy deserved to be feathered but certainly not tarred. Or, "How dare you loiter while I'm trespassing!?"

Next to me, Jaime is taking notes from Democracy Now and imploring me to watch a documentary with him about the United States' involvement with The Killing Fields in Cambodia at 11 o'clock at night.

Jaime's against bad things, so he doesn't support bad things. I'm against bad things, too, but sometimes I need stuff or YOLO. 

I was telling my coworkers that Jaime is really upset that all the produce at Costco is from Mexico, so he doesn't want us to buy it even though we spent $50 on a membership. Another teacher who studied abroad in Alicante for a semester chimed in that yeah, Spaniards really hate Mexicans.

Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

I had to explain to her that my husband isn't a racist, but he is concerned about exploited laborers in Mexico meaning, I guess, that he loves Mexicans.

I just love guacamole made with avocados bought cheaper in bulk.

I never went shopping in Barcelona, and if I did, I went to second hand markets. Therefore, the most appropriate work clothes I had were hot pants, skirts missing one or more buttons and torn jeans. Mom and I ran to J.C. Penney during a super sale the week before my first day, and I got an entire work wardrobe for under $50. The manic high I got from "robbing" J.C. Penney quickly wore off in the car, as I thought about Jaime's disappointment and the lives of the men, women and children who made the clothing for far less than I paid for my super deals. I look really good, but I feel really bad.

We just bought Jaime some shirts and shoes at a thrift store, and he was just giddy about them the whole way home. See what a guilt-free conscience can do? He looks sorta good but feels awesome.

But I think the thing that hurts the most is when he disses my girl, Obama. He isn't some ignorant, racist redneck who doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. He has lots of clues about what he's talking about, and it's because he doesn't refuse to read foreign printed articles criticizing the behavior and *gasp* politics of the man who has the worst job on Earth...like I do. 

Living with someone who has such a strong moral compass really does make me want to be a better person no matter how much I complain about it.

It also helps me to ignore him when he says nonsensical things like, "Comparisons are hateful," and "Spain has much higher safety standards than the U.S.," and "Society is very accepting of fat women, but is really tough on overweight men."

Because we could all stand to be a little more Jaime and a little less Walmart, Gap, Apple and Monsanto.

Fuck these guys and not in the good way.

Here's some light reading:

http://www.laborrights.org/in-the-news/14-worst-corporate-evildoers

http://www.globalexchange.org/corporateHRviolators

Higher Ground (Teachers Keep On Teachin')

I love my job because each day scholars in the school of life trust me, their sensei, to connect with them on a spiritual and mental level at a small point on their endless journey to enlightenment.

I'm just kidding.

I love the sound of my own voice. That's why I'm a teacher.

My new job is like my old job in that I teach English. However, my new students are like my old students in no way at all.

My old students kept entire hoofed legs on their kitchen counters, drank beer all day and wiped their butts with toilet paper.

My new students don't eat pork or drink alcohol, but they do wipe their butts with their hands.

I love this. I think it's great. My preferred spice of life is interacting with different people from different cultures all the live long day. Why? I have no idea.

What I do know is that 24 people depend on my help to get to Level 3 of a 7 level program. I also know that 23 of those people are from Saudi Arabia, and 2 of those people are women. We'll get to the 1 person who's unaccounted for.

I want to start by saying that I adore my students before I shred them. I value them for who they are and where they come from. They teach me an awful lot more than I teach them.

And here we go...

What in the fuck is going on in Saudi Arabia right now? I tried to prepare myself, but egads, guys. E...gads.

I'm not arrogant enough to think that I can compete with twenty-five years of being told it's this way when I think it's that way, but I am arrogant enough to think that I can prepare these adults for a bachelor's or master's program in the United States despite the fact that they're not giving much to work with.

For starters, I've warned them not to cover their male friends or new acquaintances with kisses...especially on the nose. They just wouldn't believe me despite my threats of public humiliation or much worse. We role played, I professed my love for the kiss in spite of my culture, we hypotheticaled ourselves silly until I said, "It would be like if I had a problem with my right hand, so I went to shake your left hand instead of your right" (ensuing pandemonium).

And no, I cannot just change your grade. I know that I can, like, open the gradebook and erase a grade, and like, put a better grade there, but like really I can't. This is considered a serious question.

The phone goes in your bag or in my hand. It does not go in your pocket. No, it doesn't go in your other pocket, and it sure as hell doesn't go in your face when I'm lecturing. It goes in your asshole. 

Dating. I don't want to talk to you about it either, but this chapter is on dating because the ESL gods hate me. Yes, I have ex-boyfriends. Yes, that's okay in my culture. I'm serious! No, you don't have to marry the first person you go on a date with freaking thankfully. You can date more than one person at a time if you want to. I know dating is forbidden. You don't have to do it, but I did notice that you cut all the pictures of women out of our book. Gross. 

I hate that I have to sit across from a grown man for forty minutes with unbroken eye contact because he can't not cheat or write on the tables.

I also hate that I have to say everything ten times (this is not an exaggeration), and they still do the exact opposite of what I say. 

But what I hate the most is that during an I agree/disagree exercise, they all looked straight at my face and told me that yes of course men are smarter than women. The only person who disagreed was the one person who is a woman and VIETNAMESE in the class. She also has by far the best grade, though her vagina makes her the dumbest person in the room (except for me cause she's Asian).

My job is really hard, and that's okay because I need a hard job to keep my mind from imploding.

But my job is really easy when I forget my lunch and multiple students bring me theirs. It's also really easy when I bring the most unpopular guy in class a week old cookie from the teachers' workroom for his birthday and catch him taking a picture of it on his phone. It's easy when they remember my own birthday and sing to me. And it's really, really easy when we make each other laugh, as we do every day.

So, I'll teach a woman in a burqa even though I really want to see her face, and I'll teach a man who thinks I'm inferior to him. I'll even do it in a green snake skin skirt wearing heels and a v-neck blouse while constantly tucking my uncovered hair behind my ears. Because if they can come sit and listen to a godless slut all day, this godless slut can at least listen to them.

Not so much here...

or here...

but riiiiiiight here.