Merry Christmas

     Before you think I'm lame for writing a post Christmas morning, let me tell you we've already opened our stockings and played with those items. (I got an environmentally friendly waterbottle, argyle earmuffs, dress socks, and toe warmers for my ski boots.  I love our family's santa.)  Now we're getting breakfast ready (belgian waffles) and getting ready for the day.  In our family, opening presents is not a rushed five-minute free-for-all, it's an hour long Event.  Presents are only opened after breakfast has been eaten and teeth have been brushed (that was torture when we were little).  So I naturally have this little pockt of time to watch my family bustling around the house, admire the sparkling tree, listen to my Japanese Christmas music, and write a quick post.  

     I'd love to write a long post about what Christmas is like in my family and how cold and windy it is in Idaho and how much I love it, but writing a post that long on Christmas morning would most certainly be a waste of my Christmas morning.  So I'll simply leave you with a few pictures of my Christmas Eve transformation.  

    

Oh, and I got a second fondue pot especially for cheese. Those who fondue with me, rejoice!

   

Anyway, back to my transformation.

   

Before

     

    

    After (and keep in mind, these pictures are not the greatest since I took them myself in the mirror):  

      

Nihon ni ikitai

             It was my first day as an ALT at a new school.  I stood in the genkan of the school, eyeing the shoe lockers to see if the school had already set one aside for me.  Meanwhile, excited chuugakusei in thier blue uniforms passed me whispering and occasionally calling out the brave "hallo!" or "Goodo Morning!"  I found the faculty room and was listening to the morning meeting, which they were doing have in English for me, and I thought how wonderful it would be to be at the same school for an entire year.  Instead of coming in for only three months, I would be there from beginning to end, coming back to the same students at the end of every vacation.  It was a warm and happy feeling of expectation.  I was going to be invovled; I'd help clean the school and everything.  

            Of course, it was only a dream.  But I missed Japan for the rest of my dreams and when I woke up this morning.  If I could make it the practical thing to do, I'd be teaching in Japan next year, but most of the schools I've looked at won't take me without at least one more year of experience.  And being an ALT feels like taking a step backward from being a full-time English teacher.  So it looks like I'll be hear for another year.  I guess that's the right decision.  My students are just as kawaii as Japanese students after all.

          I've been leafing through my books of haiku looking for ones that would appeal to my students as we begin our poetry unit.  I'll leave you with one that I found on the front page of Mainichi Shinbun's English website and that reminds me of watching the rain fall from my rooftop in Japan:

          potholed road --

          the puddles of rain

          mixed with stars

          --

Gautam Nadkarni (Mumbai, India)

"A Lotta Livin' to Do"

If one are a hardcore chocolate addict, which I am, one is tempted when baking chocolate chip cookies to not limit the number of chips in the batter to the stingy amount suggested by the hard-fisted recipe.  Grasping the cheefully colored bag of chips, one blithely adds just a few more, and then a few more.  If one is possessed by an adventuresome kitchen spirit, which I am, one may even blithely pour in the whole bag.  No handful of dough could taste better.  Unless of course one were to add the white chocolate chips and the mint chips, too.  Then maybe a few kinds of nuts and some sort of dried fruit like cranberries should be added.  (Not raisins--raisins kill your soul.  That little girl on the raisin box is a witch collecting the souls of raisin eaters to maintain her eternal youth.)  

The problem is that when one tries to roll out the dough it won't stick together.  There just enough of the sticky matrix of paste to hold onto that much excitement.  Like a molecule with too many electrons, the ball of dough will slough off its extra parts until it reaches a comfortable equilibrium, littering the cookie tray and the counter with nuts, berries, and chips.  

This past week has been such a cookie.  There just hasn't been enough paste of normal life functions (sleeping and eating included) to hold together the mixture of experiences.  Massive, 80+ page final projects, plays, concerts, times with friends, school dances and spelling bees, the never ending train of lessons to prepare and teach, and the quicksand of grading.  I haven't slept in the same place two nights in a row the whole week.  

But, with the exception of one last quick assignment to turn in, the university has no hold over me anymore.  I turned in my last project.  I'm not sure I can fully grasp the reality of that statement.  My last project, at least for a few years.  No more marking of time by the number of finals weeks I've survived (12).  I'm going to go home, drink a clear class of water with no additives and see if I can find a plain shortbread cookie.  Although I will still technically remain enrolled until I graduate in April, I am no longer a student.  After about 18 years of school, of marking age by year in school, of setting goals based on school, of being partially defined by school and my performance in it, I am finally free.  I'm creating a new identify.  I'm not a student, defined by my experiences as one, though they have molded my past.  I am a teacher.  I've gained a new level, reached a new stage in life, become an adult, become the enemy, whatever you would like to call it.  

I am no longer a practicing student, the religion I've espoused my entire life.  Am I lost or am I found?  I don't really know.  But from here on I will be making up my own recipes, taking my own lumps, whether they be chocolate or raisins, and washing my own dishes afterward.  

Hello world.  It's nice to finally meet you.  Let's get to know each other better, ok?

Anger Issues

I had a close friend that used to get so angry and frustrated with people that he could barely speak.  He felt every moment of idiocy and thoughtless disrespect like a personal wound.  We used to talk about it, and I would shrug and say that they were imperfect people with good intentions who mess up a lot.  But now that I think about I wonder which one of actually had more respect for the people around us.  My friend, who thought that they were jerks that were being hypocritical, or me, benevolently considered them idiots from whom I shouldn't expect much.  He at least believed in them enough to be angry with them for failing to live their potentials.  I just gave up on them as faulty, flawed, and hopeless.

Now I find myself often adopting a similar attitutde toward my students sometimes.  I don't ever really get angry at them.  Sometimes that's because I'm a fairly laid back person who doesn't take discipline problems personally, but often its because I treat them like three year olds.  I don't expect them to be able to control themselves.  So instead of teaching behavior lessons I tend to just stop behavior.  Instead of teaching them to police their own behavior, I'm doing it for them.  Instead of teaching them not to bring distracting items to class, I'm just taking them away.  

So I guess I need to work on getting angrier and expecting better of my students.  

Untitled

I wanted to write a blog today. I wanted to write a good one that would make my friends feel closer to me and my posts more looked forward to by my readers and me more...popular. But as I reached for my mouse I realized I had nothing to say. No moving words, no great profound thoughts. I could do another montage of random thoughts about how I like my new earrings, the new whole grain poptarts, and my new favorite teaching funny, but I don't feel like philosophizing about myself today. I just feel like being her.

But I really should post, because I finally bothered to learn how to post pictures. I've always been too lazy to learn. It took me all of ten seconds. We'll pretend my old-fashioned text-only blog was that way because I was stragically waiting, figuring that the longer I waited, the easier they'd make it for me.

So here I am, left with increased ability to express myself through pictures, the urge to express something, and no real thought yearning to be expressed. So I typed "expression" into Getty Images, hoping to find something that would say what I didn't know i wanted to. It gave me thousands of pictures that all said all sorts of things, but nothing that "expressed" anything to me. So I typed in "beauty" and got a large assortment of beautiful people and some scenery. This got me closer. I opened a picture of a tree in a new tab, then typed in "green." After a moment and a smile I added "wind."

Now I was getting closer.  





That aching feeling of wordless expression, like something is passing directly in and out of my heart without words, is one that belongs to green, wind, trees, and the stillness of thought when we close our eyes and feel the world around us.

So I added "leaves."  Now there were only 54 results.  

So I kept looking, searching places I knew they would hide pictures of windy stillnesses and sunny shadows, greens and reds flashing accross the screen as I "thumbed" through the virutal pages.   I never found the perfect picture.  So instead I'll leave you with two poems.

Trees--Joyce Kilmer

I THINK that I shall never see  
A poem lovely as a tree.  
  
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest  
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;  
  
A tree that looks at God all day, 5
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;  
  
A tree that may in summer wear  
A nest of robins in her hair;  
  
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;  
Who intimately lives with rain. 10
  
Poems are made by fools like me,  
But only God can make a tree.

 

e.e. cummings
 
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)