First impressions of working at Greengates School in Mexico City:
Mexico city, 22 million people, you can pretty much get what you want here…but not everything. Some of our British luxuries are definitely missed; galaxy chocolate (mmmm), Johnson’s 5.5 shower gel, PG tips (luckily that’s an easy one to transport and we have 600 tea bags in the cupboard), basil, ready made pasta sauces.. it’s not quite the tv dinner London lifestyle I’m used to.
Moving straight to an international school doesn’t really throw you into the culture either. I speak English every day, and all my friends are English. Shockingly, through laziness, I don’t make much effort with the Mexicans at work and have in total 3 Mexican friends all of whom are from privileged backgrounds and speak fluent English.
Apart from the new country and the new job, here in Mexico City we have to get used to the altitude. You really do notice it, light-headedness, out of breath at the first hint of a hill, and some very strange effects on cooking. Firstly potatoes don’t mash and take much much longer; secondly, according to my colleague Richard it seriously affects “toad in the hole” batter. The poor lad promised it to us for dinner, (one of his specialities, he says), but has so far totted up 7 failed attempts. He tried varying the amounts, the type of flour, the length of time, but to no avail. As with many things here it is simply blamed on the altitude and accepted.
One thing we soon noticed, after the jet lag and dizziness wore off, is how far away we are from the centre of town. We are one page away from the edge of the A-Z, the Mexico City equivalent of Hounslow in West London. We do appreciate the stunning views over the city from the nearby hill, but there is a serious lack of entertainment out here. Actually, let me put the “stunning” views into perspective. On a good day when there's wind blowing the smog away we can see the hills the other side of the city, on a bad day we can see a yellow mist blocking our view of buildings only 3km’s away. I am assured that once a year, on very special occasions only, it is possible to see the 2nd and 3rd highest mountains in Mexico from our hill. These two volcanoes lie the other side of the city, less than 30 km away! All in all that’s not very good visibility.