Kicked Out From "The American Dream" (Part 1)

I never thought that my job as an English teacher would actually help me develop the Dreamdayproject in any way, but last night, just before falling asleep, I remembered something that had happened previously at school that same day and suddenly a new idea for the Dreamdayproject came to me.

The students in the school where I work all come from very different backgrounds. Last week for example I met a man who was working at the prison in Puebla. Ever since I saw the movie Escape from Alcatraz (1979 with Clint Eastwood) as a young girl, I have been fascinated with prisons. (I wonder how that is connected to my claustrophobia but never mind) Anyway, since the chapter we were supposed to discuss that day was about jobs and job interviews, I took the chance to ask this man everything I could think of regarding his job. He got to practice his English and we both left class happy and content I think...

Yesterday I was teaching a class with six students, which is usually the maximum number of students in a class at Ingles Individual. There was a new student sitting next to me and he kept talking to me while I tried to focus on another student doing a pronunciation exercise as well as correcting papers from the other students. At first I was not paying much attention to what he was saying, but as he started telling me how he had just come back to Puebla after living as an illegal immigrant in the US for over 10 years, I started to forget those papers that I was supposed to correct.

He told me that he had been caught by the police three times and that the third time he was kicked out of the country. Now he is not allowed to return to the US for atleast four years he told me.

"I was living the American dream" he said.

"I had everything, and I was even about to get married to a white girl, but then I got caught..."

The class was over far too soon and when walking out of the classroom I just knew I had to talk to this man again. I wanted to interview him, talk to him about what it was like to be an illegal immigrant in the US, how it felt to be back in Mexico after 10 years. And a thousand other questions.

I was thinking about him just before I was falling asleep last night. I was imagining what it was like living with constant fear of being caught by the police. What it was like to live a life which could be taken away from you in a second. And I kept hearing his voice over and over;

"- I was living the American dream."

I thought about the phrase and about the way he said it and suddenly I realized what I had to do next.