Johana's

During yoga on Tuesday, Alma had sent me a message saying we had plans at Johana's for her work at 9 if I wanted to go.  We could talk about it when I got home.  When I went to pay my monthly subscription at yoga, Cristina was uncomfortable and looked pained.  She said she wasn't sure what to do.  Finally she spit it out (that was the Mexican in her trying to be polite and word things the right way, where I would've just come out with it).  She closes for the summer and was considering June 20 as the last day.  However, that was less than a month away, so she wasn't going to do monthly subscriptions anymore.  We would pay by the class.  That's perfectly fine!  I was wondering what the big deal was.  I asked her if she always closed for the summer and she said she did last year (I guess this is just the second year of its being open) but that she may not re-open in the fall.  She doesn't make any money off of it because not enough people come.  Now I could see why she was so pained.  I was just thankful for the timing of my grant and that I'd gotten to benefit from it for most of the year.

I got home and Alma almost looked sick she was so tired.  She was in the den watching tv with Mamá Alma while working on some stuff for school.  I asked her what we were doing and she said she wasn't sure she still wanted to go because she was so tired.  I said that was fine, but then she said, "Well, if you drive, we can still go.  I should go since it's for my boss."  I still didn't really know what was up.

I got my shower (a nice cold one!) and we were off.  We got to Johana's and their PISI (Saturday English classes at Centro de Idiomas) boss Elvira was there.  (It had been her birthday on Saturday.)  There was a 20s-ish guy on the floor.  We all introduced ourselves.  Tadeo was his name.  Turns out he's Graciela(Lenin's new girlfriend)'s ex-boyfriend.  They broke up three months ago after four years.  He obviously had not talked about it at the length Alma had because he needed listening ears.  It was all funny.  Karina showed up shortly and we continued the chit chat until about 11 when the real discussion finally began.  They were meeting (Tadeo left in the middle and I almost wished I had gone with him!) to discuss the upcoming change of Director for the UAS, which is the government owner of the Centro de Idiomas.  That meant change of leadership.  Apparently, everything there is very political, which Alma had told me before.  If you played your cards right (to the people who were in authority positions but shouldn't be), you could get a great schedule.  However, if you made a wrong step, your schedule might look like classes at 8, 12, 3, and 7, so that you couldn't do any other work and had to be back and forth to Centro de Idiomas all day.  Elvira is hoping to be the new director for Centro de Idiomas, but they have to go about it in an underground way.  They discussed friends and foes within Centro de Idiomas and how to rock the vote.

By midnight, my eyes were closing.  Elvira left then, but we stayed to rehash all Tadeo had said (what Karina had missed) and how Alma was feeling (good).  Wednesday was going to be a long day!