June, 1975 - With New York City deep in budget crisis, Deborah, a spirited young teacher of English as a Second Language, receives her third pink slip in two years. Her strongest ties to New York were cut when cancer claimed her mother, uncle and aunt. With no prospect of work, she takes off for the glorious Mexican beach she had stumbled upon three years earlier. At that time, the only trace of human intrusion near the beach was a wooden bridge with a hand-lettered sign reading, "CAN-CUN." During Deborah's second trip to Mexico, hilarious experiences follow harrowing ones. Once she reaches Cancún, it it's not long before everyone is calling her maestra. What begins with a class for four becomes a school for more than four hundred students, and her life expands to embrace an international circle of teachers and friends, an island, a husband and son, a sailboat, sharks and muchas aventuras.