Classes are over, finals are graded and in the computer, and I'm keeping the same classroom next year (first time in three years!) so I don't have to pack everything up to move.
Monday's a half-day for teachers. We have faculty meeting, then time to work on whatever we need to. Me, I have one last kiddo coming in Monday to take a final and then I get to do all my filing and tidying up. My office has some great bookcases in it, but they're filled with old French and Spanish materials. (Hey - Spanish! It just occurred to me that I should borrow a workbook or dictionary to get ready for Peru! Handy!) I'm going to box those up and claim the shelves for all of my books. Bwah, ha, ha.
I'm looking forward to Monday - I can get up at 5:45 instead of 4:45; I can wear jeans; and I get time to crank up my music, kick off my shoes, and get organized. Putting things in alphabetical order makes me happy, you know?
Today's actually a half-day, too. They finally figured out what a waste of time it was to have kids go to all their classes the last day when they took half of their finals the day before. (I usually just pull out my stash of board games to keep them occupied for the 90 minute sessions.) John, Tiffany, and I are getting out of here soon. I'm going to celebrate the shortened day/start of summer by taking myself out to lunch and then to Tattered Cover to look for guidebooks for Peru. An excellent way to spend the afternoon, if I say so myself.
With just a half-day tomorrow to go, the end is so close. I administered two finals today AND I graded and recorded them in record time. I just have one final left to go tomorrow, then the usual end-of-the-year wrap-up business at the teacher work day on Monday. But I'm having a hard time believing it.
As eagerly as I look forward to it, it doesn't feel like summer is here. I'm guessing that this might have something to do with it:
Yup. Snow. It started just before noon and was still going strong when we left school around 3:30. The drive home was actually a little perilous, since it was accumulating and freezing.
The backstage area was an absolute mess when I started here.
This year we've tackled a lot of it. We've sorted through the flats to toss out the torn and the broken. We found hammers and paintbrushes in all sorts of unimaginable places and relocated them to a newly-designated tool closet. We've converted my office backstage into a dressing/current-show-storage room. We broke apart the more dangerous pieces of scenery, salvaged the screws and found a storage place for good scrap wood. We reorganized the big pieces of scenery backstage to make the area navigable and safe. We even took a stand against the wrestling team storing their giant (GIANT) wrestling mats backstage and moved the mats to the wrestling room at the other end of the building.
This week was the granddaddy, the peak, the Everest of the clean-up. This week we tackled the costume shop.
The costume shop is a narrow room at the top of a shaky set of stairs backstage. Due to some ... supervisional issues from the teacher before me, I was only granted a key to that room when I swore that no students would be allowed up there unless I was standing in the room with them.
And so I put off that room until we had cleaned up everything else. With the other projects I could make several hot-spot-small-group assignments to a class and then migrate from place to place to supervise, assist, and answer questions. The costume shop was not large enough for an entire class, though, and I was not about to leave 20 kids down below alone while I supervised one group upstairs.
I knew I would be staying after for Grad Night yesterday, so I put out an invitation to both my drama classes that anyone who was willing to come help clean up the costume shop would be more than welcome.
We started with 8 kids. We finished with 2. (Not because the other 6 were buried under giant piles of fabric or anything - they just had to go home.) But by golly, we cleaned it. When we started, we had to shove shoulder-to-door to get into the room because so much stuff was piled on the floor. And now the junk is gone, the remainder is either hung or boxed and all is labeled. (In fact, we filled 1.5 of the school's dumpsters with junk from that room.)
As great as that feels (and, believe me, it feels great), I am especially proud that there are teenagers in the world who would gladly spend four hours cleaning out a dusty, musty, disgusting room simply because I asked for help.
Last night was Grad Night, an apparently long-standing tradition at MTHS. The seniors and the teachers get together for an evening of dinner, a slideshow, and general end-of-the-year emotional stuff, including awards presented by the seniors to the teachers who are present (about half the staff). Most of them were joke awards, but they're all quite congenial. It's a fun way to glimpse how the students perceive the adults.
My award is pictured above. The student who presented it said to the crowd, "If you've ever been in a play or musical, you know that although this teacher is a very loveable person, if you do something wrong, she'll call you on it and make you work until you do it right." It provoked much laughter, including from me, as I went up to get a certificate and a little gold trophy. And so I am the proud recipient of "The Caged Tiger Award."
This morning, with the little trophy twinkling on my desk, I mentioned going to Grad Night to my Humanities class.
"Did you cry?" they asked.
"No," I replied.
"I heard everyone cried," they said.
"I'm not really a crier," I said.
And I'm not. As do all teachers, I've said good-bye to hundreds, probably even thousands of students by now. It's part of the job. You get to know them, you do what you can for them, then you both move on. I think of former students often and wonder how they are. Some individuals and some groups stand out still, and there are some student-memories (and one particular DPJH dvd) that are very dear to my heart. But good-byes are said annually and I prefer to stay in control of my emotions. I've become very good at not crying.
I like that this group of students respects me enough to see me as a fierce director. I've worked with a lot of them in the last two years, and this is a fantastic class as a whole. There are kindred spirits in the bunch, and I will miss many of them next year. But I'm not going to cry over my little trophy or over pictures of them as second graders, especially since I'll be seeing them all again for graduation on Sunday. Grad Night will probably fade to the general blur of yet another last week of another school year.
However.
There are those moments that stand out, those times that you can point to and say "This. This is why I keep teaching. This is why I'll come back next year and do all of this again." What I will remember from this week is one of my boys - my Macduff, my Jack Worthing, my Schroeder - coming into my room on the second day of his summer break, hiding something green behind his back.
We were in the middle of check-in, and he crossed to me ignoring the chorus of happy hellos from the juniors and sophomores who were left behind with me.
"I wanted to give you something," he said. Then he held out a feathered and beaded and beglittered mask.
I exclaimed with delight when I saw it, as did the other students. "Try it on!" they called, and I did. I promised it would go on the wall next to my desk where the masks I collect from my travels hang. Then I hugged that tall, tall boy.
Then, later, when I was alone in my classroom, I opened the card he had given me too.
And I read it.
And I started to tear up, just a little.
Then I tucked away the card somewhere safe, and got ready for my next class.
Finally, FINALLY, Jason and I have decided where we're going this summer.
Drumroll please...
We're going to Peru!
This place.
After months (MONTHS) of discussions of where-to-go, let's-be-practical, how-about-here? -ness, tonight we actually bought plane tickets, thereby ensuring some sort of civil war or llama uprising in the next two months.
As you may recall, we were going to be good travelers and stay domestic (i.e. North America) this summer in hopes of going to Europe for Kristkinglemarts in December and St. Petersburg next summer.
But then Jason told me last night that he just can't make the December trip happen with his work schedule. My heart was bruised (oh! how I miss Germany at Christmas time!), especially since I really don't know anyone else who would/could make that trip with me. And while I certainly don't mind traveling on my own, that particular trip was meant to be shared.
Not going to Europe this winter does open up some financial possibilities, though. And so we started poking around Kayak again.
And then we spotted round-trip tickets to Peru for $501.
"Peru...?"
"...Peru!"
We immediately started researching different travel sites, reading out loud to each other the various facts and opinions and suggestions.
"We can go on a four-day trek through the jungle and camp out!" "Oh. That sounds... fun."
and
"We can volunteer in a classroom with kids for an afternoon, singing songs and teaching English!" "Oh. That sounds... fun."
(Betcha can't guess to whom each suggestion belongs!)
Within an hour, we had convinced ourselves that Peru was it. Finally we were excited, not just content but excited, about our plans.
And then we went back to book the tickets. The $501 was still listed, but it was impossible to find on the booking page. Darn you, Kayak! Darn you and your travel-teasing ways!
We searched and searched watching the prices climb higher and higher. Really, it was bizarre. I've never seen plane tickets change like that over such a small chunk of time. Within two hours of our original search, Peru was pulling up at $950 or more with 9-hour layovers in the middle of the night in Bogota or El Salvador Not the best itineraries.
Frustrated and dismayed, we called the search off for the night with promises to reconvene soon, maybe Peru, but probably our domestic roadtrip plans to confirm instead.
But the bug had bitten - I was feeling that excellent nervous-excited tremor about Peru that I hadn't felt about any of our many, many other trip ideas. I had spent Friday at a faculty party having this conversation over and over again:
"So, where are you going this summer?"
"I'm going to go live in DC for six weeks."
"Oh. You're not going overseas?"
"Not this summer." (with visible disappointment) "Oh. Well, that'll be fun, too."
I hated it! I'm spoiled, dang it! I want to go somewhere with great possibilities for great stories. I want to accomplish something travel-wise this summer. I want adventure and novelty and foreign-language mishaps.
So when I wrapped up work at a reasonable hour today I hopped on itasoftware.com to see what they could offer. When I found a really reasonable itinerary for under $900, I emailed Jason.
A flurry of emails and several refreshings of the search screen later, we had our tickets to Peru.
Peru!
Now there's all sorts of accomplishment to be had - a new continent! Heck, a new hemisphere! And, best of all, now I have something new to research!
Man, I love researching a new destination.
(Say, who's got two index fingers and a place to go this summer?)
It was about halfway through the pre-show rigamarole that I suddenly realized what I was wearing.
I've been on the path for a while, but Friday night I truly became a drama teacher.
I also demonstrated my true bloggerness, since my first thought was that I needed to get a photo of my outfit to show you what I mean. Five different kids were looking for me at that moment, though, so I have no photo evidence to show you.
Well, I do have this:
E.K. Hornbeck snagged me after the show to take a picture "Asian style!" in the dressing room. But it hardly shows what I'm talking about, and I can't let such a momentous transition in my life go unnoticed. So I drew you a picture of what I was wearing:
See what I mean? I swear all I'm missing is one more flowing layer, and I actually had intended to grab a black and red silk scarf that morning.
Additionally, I've taken students on field trips to do two theater facility tours, two acting workshops, and to see eight different theater productions.
I'm not tired of theater yet, but I am certainly ready to be just an audience member for a while.
(This is just for me - I'm constantly looking for where I left this quote, so I'm putting it here.)
(It's a good one, though, isn't it?)
“When you step into the light to do the show, play your role with everything you've got. Invest every tear, every laugh, everything beautiful and ugly from your lives. Do you show and live your lives with humanity, because whatever you do, it changes someone's life forever."
(It may have been that the whole class was slaphappy after doing a show last night, but this quote from our discussion of what musicals we should do next year too good to simply use as my Gmail status.)
Kate: "We should combine Chicago, Rent, and Sweeney Todd for the musical next year! We can be barbers who murder their husbands with AIDS!"
My 2nd period Humanities class is drawing to a close, but I can't bring myself to grade the stack of papers next to me. In fact, it's taking most of my willpower to not curl up on the carpet in the middle of this computer lab and give in to sleep.
No worries about my teaching, though. My students are hard at work. They're writing biographies of artists of the 19th century right now and posting them to the class blog. And they're listening to the techno version of Grieg's Peer Gynt, thanks to one student. He had been whistling Peter and the Wolf until his neighbors begged him to stop. So he switched to Peer Gynt.
I can't blame him for the earworms - they just took the classical musical listening test. Which, if I have time tomorrow, I'm going to try again to figure out how to post that test online so you guys can try it, too.
The Adv. Drama class performance #1 was last night (hence the tiredness). A lot of forces combined against me to make doing the show difficult, but, as always, Dionysus prevailed and the kids pulled it off.
Kind of.
We'll call last night a dress rehearsal. Tonight they'll be good.
I got a sneak peak at my schedule for next year. Nothing's set in stone, of course - even as I walk into the building on the first day of school I halfway expect a new schedule of classes. But still, there are some highlights:
- They actually listened to me when I asked if they could please not schedule drama classes at the same time as the band class. Jesse's got a lot of percussionists, and it's really hard to rehearse on stage when they're wailing it out Stomp-style in the backstage shop.
- No English classes again! This is the one that I'm keeping my hopes the lowest on. I loved (LOVED) not teaching English this year and I'm glad that my drama enrollment's up enough for them to decide that I'm more needed for electives than English.
- Humanities is still on the list. I keep expecting this class to get cut, since it's not the most popular elective. The counselor assured me that not next year but the year after that she can arrange for all the students who are in AP World History to be concurrently enrolled in Humanities (a marvelous idea all around). I was surprised that my gut reaction to that news was something close to panic at the thought of being here for that long. But that's a subject for another entry.
I'll just be glad to be able to use and improve my Humanities curriculum for another year, since I have put at least a hundred hours into it. Plus, there's all kinds of new things to add to it. Like this!
How great is that? The second week of my class involves a virtual visit to the Lascaux caves. Now I can supplement that by introducing my wee ones to the wonders of Werner Herzog.
(A Werner side note - Is hearing one's own heartbeat such a big deal? When we were in Phra Den's cave at the beach wat in Thailand, Phra Bart repeatedly commented on how thrilled he was that it was quiet enough to hear his own heartbeat. The other meditation students nodded with similar reverence and awe. I was just baffled - I can hear my own heartbeat anytime I'm in a relatively quiet place if I listen for it. Even right now, I can hear it when I pause in my typing. Is that really so unusual?)
The Intro. to Drama class play wrapped up just fine. The parents enjoyed it Thursday night and the entire middle school came over on Friday for a matinee performance. They were a rambunctious and reactive audience, in a good way, thankfully. They laughed at all the parts which I had assured my students were indeed funny. My students approached me with trepidation afterwards because they had skipped five pages ahead at one point (right over a key blocking sequence that set up the entire ending of the show), only to be pulled back to that part later by the senior I had filling in for one of the missing narrators prompted them to do so (how she came to be onstage is a whole different story).
"Did we do okay?" they asked.
"You did great!" I exclaimed.
"But we skipped..." they trail off, imagining me docking their final exam scores for their mistake.
"And the audience didn't have a clue. You kept going and they didn't even know that anything was wrong! That's exactly what you're supposed to do."
They collectively sighed in relief and then got to work cleaning up the lettuce and shaving cream before they missed their buses.
We'll do a better post-mortem on Monday in class. This group is so very novice that they need that assistance in processing this past week a lot more than usual. And then, as usual, we'll strike everything, set things up for the next play, and then celebrate the glory that is us.
I thought about coming out to Salt Lake for the weekend. My parents were up there to meet the new family members and I was struck by a sudden strong missing-my-SLC-friends-ness that had me looking for last minute plane fare deals. By the time I had cleaned up the show Friday and was heading down the mountain, though, I had a rotten headache and a strong urge to do things that required very little planning or stress.
Instead, I went to the temple Friday night and treated myself to a trip to Rumbi's, one of my favorite SLC restaurants (yup, there is indeed a Rumbi's here in Denver, but it's very much out of my way).
Rachel came over Saturday morning with a sick-but-getting-better Jack and we had a day of sister-like fun. We went shopping (Rachel got some very cute dresses), went out to lunch at Panera's, went to Fancy Tiger to ooh and ah over their new fabrics, got frozen yogurt at a new favorite place, ate pizza and watched the new episode of Who at Brian's, and wrapped up the day by watching the first part of the miniseries of Battlestar Galactica back at Rachel's.
Rachel has been talking for a while about getting me to watch that show (she's also trying to get me to watch Star Wars, which might finally happen this summer.) (Did you know that I've only seen one of the Star Wars movies? It's yet another fascinating thing about me!), but she also cautioned me that it's pretty depressing and that it makes for serious geek cred. I trust her recommendations, though, since theothergeekyTVshows she's introduced me to make up the majority of my favorite things to watch. (Given my same pattern of then introducing said TV show to you, Jason, you should expect me to coax you into continuing the Battlestar Galactica this summer.) I happen to enjoy both geek cred and a good show, so I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.
Today, Sunday, I did very little. I read a book, washed my dishes from the week, did a slew of laundry, and I cleaned out my refrigerator, reducing the contents to little more than salsa, lettuce, a few apples, and six eggs. Because I've been off omelets since my time at the monastery, I'll have to hie me to a grocery store in the near future.
I also gave in to the temptation Rachel laid for me yesterday. She told me about this. I did my own research, thought it over all day, then decided that not having to scoop cat litter was indeed worth $260 to me. Plus, I love my cat and I do feel guilty whenever I abandon her. The least I can do is get her a 1960's-version-of-the-future-looking gadget that guarantees her a clean bathroom, right?
I will only be abandoning her once more this school year, I think. I'll be up at MT for the last half of this week for the Advanced Drama class play, Inherit the Wind. I do love that play. It's got some marvelous speeches in it, and I get all sentimental since it was the very first play I was ever a part of (Mrs. Blair - a speaking part as a freshman!). We'll see how it goes - as of Friday, none of the leads were memorized yet. I'm also curious to see how the community receives it. MT is pretty conservative.
No matter what, though, in five days I'll be done with plays for the school year. I'm definitely ready for that.
You can watch a more complete talk by Sir Ken Robinson at a TED conference here. I've seen it before, too, but it's well worth multiple viewings. It includes ideas such as:
You probably stayed benignly away from things at school, things you liked, on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you won't be a musician. Don't do art, you won't be an artist. Benign advice now profoundly mistaken.
Which, incidently is exactly the philosophy that led to my current superintendent cutting classes like Home Ec. from my school. He discovered that only a few students went on to graduate in Home Ec. in college and concluded that the classes were therefore a waste of time and money.
- I drove through snow to get to work this morning.
- It's the last week of April.
- A cloud settled in on the school during first period, which meant the view out my windows was completely and totally white.
- It was kind of awesome.
- After some shopping and cabinet-rummaging, my backseat currently holds two rubber chickens, a 6' long piece of pipe insulation, batteries, a bejeweled plastic goblet, a sewing kit, and four pie tins.
- My second-to-last play of the year is Thursday and Friday this week.
- I am so very, very ready to be done with plays for the year.
- Today was Senior Ditch Day.
- I pointed out to the seniors in my Adv. Drama class last week that I would be a lot less ticked at them if they ditched for a day if they had their lines memorized.
- Especially since, you know, the play's in a week.
- The seniors were all missing today. So were half the sophomores.
- Grr.
- For Easter, Rachel, Ben, Brian, Jack, and I had a potluck dinner (Ham! Deviled Eggs! Various Side Dishes! Strawberries!) and watched the new Who.
- I like Who. A lot.
- I also like peanut butter M&M eggs.
- Remember that obtuse blog post from two weeks ago that I never explained?
- There system panel for all of the fire alarms in my building is located in a closet on my patio.
- Occasionally, it starts beeping one really loud beep every six seconds.
- It likes to start doing this sometime between 11:00 PM - 4:30 AM.
- My HOA won't give me a key to the closet because I'm not supposed to have access to the fire panel despite the fact that my water heater is located in the same closet.
- I've gotten really good at jimmying the door lock since I moved in.
- As far as I can tell, no one hears the beeping but me. The fire department certainly never respond to it and the HOA swears they can't fix it because it's never going off when they check it.
- I pointed out that's because they keep checking it during business hours and this fire panel is running on Tokyo time.
- ANYWAY, it went off again two weeks ago. Each night I broke in, hit the silence button, and called and called and called person after person to try to get someone to help me.
- Finally, I found someone at the HOA who seemed to care (I think the three messages I left on her voicemail in the middle of the night while standing in the closet itself so they could fully appreciate the loudness of the BEEEEE helped).
- She gave the fire company the approval to turn off the beeping.
- They came out during that obtuse blog entry.
- It hasn't beeped since then!
- Yay!
- Saturday morning I woke up at 4:30 when I heard a loud "BEEEE".
- I flounced out of bed (oh yes, I flounced) in a murderous-albeit-sleepy rage and went to the kitchen to get the trusty knife I use to jimmy the lock.
- Then I heard it again: BEEEE.
- But it sounded a little different. It was louder in the kitchen. That's not how that works.
- I waited clutching my knife, my cat-like muscles poised, for the next beep.
- Of course, when I say cat-like, I mean hypothetical cat-like since my resident cat's muscles were occupied with butting her head against my leg in an attempt to get scratc-
- BEEEE.
- Ah. It's my carbon monoxide detector.
- I took out the batteries and waited.
-
-
-
- Silence.
- I went back to sleep.
- There has not been any beeping since. Happily, I also have not died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
- Yay!
- P.S. Summer vacation starts one month from today. Not that I'm counting or anything.
So... I have this blog entry that I don't want to share with the whole world. I certainly don't mind sharing it with you, dear family/friends/former students, just not with Random Stranger McGee.
My probably-overcomplicated-as-I-am-sure-Ben-will-prove-by-suggesting-a-far-better-choice-within-seconds-of-reading-this solution was to make a seperate blog that's private.
If you don't mind a little extra work to read an entry, just let me know - send me an email (chitarita at yahoo) or leave a comment (as long as I have your email address). I'll send you an invite.
Sorry about the hassle, though. You'll see why when you click over. And I promise I'll keep posting here per usual.
A couple of months ago Jason and I were discussing possible summer travel plans. Sometime after ruling out Morocco but before Canada came up Jason said, "Why don't you come out here?"
"What?" I asked.
"Come to DC; you can stay with me. You can go to museums or read or whatever you want during the day and we can do things together on the weekends."
How could I possibly turn that down? We batted around dates for a while inbetween saying things like "Ooh! Harry Potter! We can go see that together!" or "I went to another restaurant we should try when you get out here," or "We should sign up for this!" We knew we wanted to do a roadtrip somewhere sometime since Jason deserves a vacation, too. Between Jason moving to a new apartment, Craig coming out to Colorado in July, and other things we both want to do, the length of my stay both fluctuated and grew.
When we finally established a rough timeline I pulled up some possible flight itineraries. And then I found one that worked. And then I saw the "Length of Trip: 42 Days" part. And then I canceled the sale.
42 days is a really long time. I mean, we've known each other for 12 years, we've visited each other and traveled together a lot in that time and I know we get along really well.
But still! 42 days!
I sent another email to Jason to make sure he really was up for having a roommate for that long (He is!), then I squished my fears of being the guest who incredibly overstays her welcome and took the plunge: I bought my plane ticket last night.
I'm really excited. I love having specific travels in my future. Now when high schoolers are whining at me I silently remind myself that I get to live in DC for six weeks this summer and read and go to museums and do whatever I want.
I have two plays left to go this year, and I spent 4th period today teaching my Intro. to Drama class the dance for the song at the end of their show.
I including the hay in the dance, so there was that natural stage of them freaking out over it. To their surprise, though, they learned it and they'll be great as long as no one falls off the stage.
The song, though, won't get out of my head. The lyrics ("Dead, dead, poor Hamlet's dead!/Vengeance had to happen/with chicken as a weapon...") are sung to "Hail, Hail the Gang's All Here!" That would be this song:
Or, as I know it:
(The tune starts at 00:42)
I share this with the hopes that, like me, you
1) spend the day humming that tune
and
2) watch the whole "Pirates" clip anyway just so you can see Kevin and Rex lunging forward in leather pants and open shirts.
One of my monk friends, Phra Sanjoy (pictured here with Phra Bart), sent me a link this morning to this article. To my surprise, I'm quoted in it! Well, kind of. Despite some inaccuracies (There were actually three Buddhist volunteers working there with me, and "each day one of the cooks delivers breakfast, lunch, and dinner" my foot!), it was fun to read about the program and to see pictures of my student monks.
As you can see below, my spring break got off to a wonderful start. For the second half of my week off, I headed down to Grand Junction to visit my family.
There were, technically, two reasons for the trip: 1) Saturday was my mom's birthday and 2) Barry Laga and my parents were playing in the high school's annual community knowledge bowl and I wanted to play, too.
Andy came down from Salt Lake for the weekend for the same two reasons and, much to all of our delight, Rachel decided at the last minute to bring Jack down for the weekend, too.
It was simply grand to get to hang out with my family all weekend. I even got a bonus day! I was about 40 minutes into my drive back to Denver on Sunday when I passed a sign announcing that I-70 was closed due to a spring blizzard. So, I turned around, called in for a sub, did what I could online for my school to-do list, and enjoyed an extra day at home.
The weekend wasn't anything exciting, but it is pretty awesome that my family got to be together and that we all genuinely like being together. Rachel posted some pictures of the weekend here, if you'd like to see.
I survived the field trip and the Speech banquet this week, which means next week I have nothing, NOTHING, after school! I'm only teaching! That's it! Can you imagine?
I spent this, my first Saturday off, doing light work - I washed and vacuumed my car, scrubbed down my bathroom, went grocery shopping (at Sunflower so I could get some good produce), made a home-version of Chipotle's steak salad (with this dressing), and now I'm watching Inception while finally getting around to blogging about my spring break (yes, I've seen it before. But I've been on a Joseph Gordon-Levitt kick after watching a lot of 3rd Rock from the Sun on Netflix lately as well as this video about how they filmed the hotel hallway fight scene).
So! Spring Break.
I flew to Seattle Thursday night. The flight was smooth and, thanks to a certain app I got for the trip, it passed quickly.
Emily met me at the airport and began what was to be a string of surprises for the weekend - she had booked us a room at a lovely hotel downtown! I tell you what, her husband is pretty spiffy. Ben was taking the kids for the day on Friday so Emily and I could play in the city. And sleep in. We mustn't forget the sleeping in.
We first went to a Cheesecake Factory near the airport so Emily could get some dinner and I could get some cheesecake. After we checked into the hotel, we ate cheesecake in bed while flipping between HGTV and the Food Network. Most excellent. I fell asleep sometime around 1:30 AM, thus setting the precedent for the trip.
We woke up around 10:00 the next morning to a gorgeous day outside. Behold:
We discussed options like going to see Jane Eyre or hitting the art museum again, but ultimately decided that we didn't want to be pinned down by a schedule. Instead we headed for Pike Place Market for our favorite breakfast:
Gyros from Mr. D's!
Delicious. Also, please note the daffodils on the roof of the market. As I told Emily, I wanted to go to the market specifically to be jealous of the flowers. And I was. Sigh.
We browsed and wandered and ate the most delicious cheese curds which we artistically arranged in a photo for you in front of pussy willow branches:
until it was time to head up to Mt. Vernon. We relived Ben of the kiddos and went to Bellingham to wander along the coast. Caitlyn and Logan climbed rocks and hunted for crabs and provided all kinds of entertainment.
We got dinner, frozen yogurt, and even had time to swing by Trader Joe's before they closed. Man, I wish we could have Trader Joe's in Colorado!
After we put the kids to bed, Emily and I stayed up late again talking despite Emily's tantalizing reminders that we were heading off on our next adventure early the next morning.
And, in fact, we did! Ben and the kids dropped us off at the train station where Emily and I took the Amtrak to Vancouver!
Emily had booked us into yet another fantastic hotel and, to add to her duplicity, she had already exchanged money so we wouldn't need to go to a bank. (Really, the weekend could be tallied by the battle over who got to pay for what. Emily was both devious ((pre-paid hotel rooms, train tickets, etc)) and downright aggressive ((such as when she threatened to knock me down, tell the cashier my credit card was a fraud, and cause a scene when I tried to pay for both of our purchases at H&M)). I managed to pay for a few meals, mostly by making arrangements with the waitresses while Emily was in the bathroom. It was extraordinarily generous of her and also made for some fun arguments.)
We dropped off our luggage at the hotel and headed out on the town. Our first stop was lunch, which we got at a Greek place in a mall.
(Are you sensing a theme here?)
We visited a most excellent bookstore called Chapters (the Canadian version of Borders, I assume?) and a chocolate cafe that Ben had discovered on a previous trip called Mink. Oh, it was delicious. Emily and I shared two fondue sets - one with fruit:
and one with s'mores:
(The oranges dipped in dark chocolate were my favorite.)
We then went back to the hotel and changed for a play. Emily had gotten tickets to a production of Shaw's The Philanderer! After an erroneous cab ride we got to the theater about an hour before the show. We walked around a bit before finding a pan-Asian restaurant to eat at. We just ordered a bunch of appetizers, including a green papaya salad like the one I learned to make in Thailand. Yum!
The show was very well done. The set and costumes were excellent and the script was quite interesting. A lot of talk about the point and purpose of marriage and Ibsen. The director's notes in the program described how there is actually an unpublished fourth act that she used in cutting this production's script together. I looked up the original script when we got back to the hotel and found with a cursory read that her cutting changed the ending and the characterizations significantly. I've got it on my iPad for future reading - there are many quotable lines and I'm curious to reread it to see what else she changed.
Congratulating ourselves on staying awake through the whole thing (thanks, in part, to the reviving powers of gummy bears), we left the theater to discover not a taxi cab in sight. Hmm. While we were wondering how to get back to the hotel, a bus pulled up to a nearby stop. Noting that it's destination was listed as "Downtown", I pulled Emily aboard. Adventure!
Actually, it wasn't that adventurous. The bus' normal route was altered due to a movie filming, so we followed the driver's instructions and changed buses a few stops in. The second bus took us within a few blocks of the hotel. The sad part about when everything works out smoothly is that I lack exciting travel stories. Hoping on an unknown bus in the outskirts of a foreign city late at night really should have produced more excitement, don't you think?
We went to a CVS-type of store to get some of the food items Ben had requested as well as nail polish remover so we could use the nail polish we got at H&M ealier. We stopped by the side of the hotel where the movie was being filmed and watched a taxi cab race up and down the street. Then we went back to our hotel room and painted our toenails blue while watching The Two Towers in bed. We fell asleep sometime around 2:00 AM and slept well into the next morning.
Since our train didn't leave until late afternoon, we still had a few hours in Canada despite our late rising. We talked about doing some of the touristy things, but decided ultimately we just wanted to wander around the city. After a stop at Urbanfare for a European-style breakfast (bread, fruit, yogurt, cheese, and a lot of reminiscing of the breakfasts we ate when we backpacked it), we walked to Gastown and Chinatown. Here are some pictures of the day:
A quote at Urbanfare that reminded me of my dad
The excellent weather holds
The steam-powered clock in Gastown
The maple leaf is everywhere!
Chinatown!
And then in Chinatown we found the prize of the trip:
A Japanese dollar store!
Oh, man. We spent a long time in there. They had bento-box tools:
weird candy (but not the instant-sushi, Andy and Ben. I looked for it, I promise!),
and a whole wall of chopsticks!
We took the Skytrain back to the center of the business district in search of poutine. Although many of the restaurants we passed advertised it, we had been told that the best poutine in Vancouver was to be found here:
The interior was quite promising with a long list of possible dips and rings for holding your cone of fries:
but we were there on a mission. Poutine, I learned, is French fries topped with cheese curds covered in gravy. Behold:
It is a food that could only come from a country that is a) cold and b) alcohol-friendly. As gross as it sounds, though, poutine is pretty dang good. Behold:
although it does make you feel like this:
Keeping up our healthy dining, we walked back to Mink and got ourselves one last chocolate treat before getting back on the train to the States.
The train follows the coast and, since we were traveling at sunset, it was a stellar view (including three bald eagle sightings! And a spring factory!):
Ben and the kids met us at the train station and we grownups stayed up very late again talking.
After Caitlyn got off to school and Logan got back from pre-school, Emily, Logan, and I drove to LaConner.
We saw the fields of daffodils:
Got a healthy lunch from a cute bakery:
Went to a fun bookstore and tried to stay out of the cold ocean wind:
Monday night we all ate pizza and watched Despicable Me together (I hadn't seen it so Logan and Caitlyn were very nice about not quoting the whole thing until after it was over). Since it was my last night, Emily and I went to bed at the very reasonable hour of 3:00 AM.
Caitlyn and Logan came along with us to the airport the next day, so we got lunch at a Rainforest Cafe. Well, Emily and I had lunch. The kids spent the time more like this:
Which was fun. Really, the whole weekend was fantastic and I couldn't be more lucky to have a friends like the Walls. Thank you, Emily, for a delightful (and delicious!) start to Spring Break!
I came home this evening to discover an elongated FedEx box on my front porch. I opened it and discovered a limited-edition lithograph called "Party Animal".
I have absolutely no idea who sent it or why. It's definitely addressed to me; my name's even listed as "customer" on the Certificate of Authenticity.
Are you a blog reader, O Gift-Giver of mystery? Will you please identify yourself so I can thank you properly for this fun print that made my week?
I will tell you about my break, I promise. However, my dreams of a relaxed post-speech-post-musical schedule are on hold again thanks to the field trip (23 kids to DCTC for a tour, workshop, and to see As You Like It) tomorrow and the Speech Banquet on Friday.
Soon. Soon, soon, soon! Soon I will work less and blog more!
Setting: House o' Wall, home to Emily, Ben, Caitlyn (6), and Logan (4). Specifically, Caitlyn's bedroom. I am asleep in a remarkably pink bed. In the early-morning darkness I hear heavy breathing hovering in front of my face.
I think: Hmm... no whiskers poking my cheek. It can't be Nash.
I open my eyes and see Caitlyn's nose about two inches from my nose. When she sees my eyes open, she grins. I'm silent. She's silent. We stare at each other for a few minutes.
Emily's voice from her bedroom: Caitlyn! Leave Manda alone!
Caitlyn scurries away. I go back to sleep.
Later, I am up and in the bathroom brushing my teeth. The door opens a crack.
Logan: Manda?
Me: (through the minty foam) Yeth?
The door opens further, just enough to let in a box of cereal, which Logan tips towards the countertop.
Logan: I brought you breakfast, Manda.
Emily's voice from her bedroom: Logan ! Leave Manda alone!
Logan scurries away.
Later, I am in the bathroom getting ready for the day. I hear a plaintive scratching at the bathroom door.
Emily: (From the other side of the door, mischievously) Manda?
Ben's voice from their bedroom: Emily! Leave Manda alone!
The House of Wall is indeed a fantastic place to be. Thanks for the great weekend, Em!
Emily and I have run away to Canada. We are eating a great deal of chocolate, we have blue toenails, and Emily has promised some sort of exotic cuisine called "poutine".
It was a sunny 60 degrees up in Mountain Town today. Crazy high winds, but they were spring-scented blusters.
I deposited a whole bunch of money into the drama account this morning and discovered that we are not only in the black post-show, but we turned a very tidy profit.
My top priority with said profit is more lights for the auditorium (we currently have 6 working lights. 6! 6=pathetic).
I got to tell my 3rd period class that they earned enough funds for their field trip, AND
I got to tell them that the MT police want to stage a fake car crash to raise awareness of drunk driving the week of prom and they want my students to play the victims (which means blood and bruises and other stage makeup goodness!).
I had a yummy pomegranate seed and goat cheese salad from Whole Foods for lunch (thanks, Mom and Dad!).
I took my 4th period class to the auditorium for a concert by a military brass band from San Diego. They were excellent in terms of music, funniness, and looking good in uniforms. It made me really want to go to New Orleans again (Just warning you, Jason).
I left right after school let out (!!!) and packed up the condo to go home for the first time in over a week.
I get to sleep in my very own bed for three straight nights!
I actually had the time and energy to file my taxes tonight, and thanks to my not paying my 2009 tithing until after January 1 last year, I'm getting a very nice tax return this year (TurboTax said my charitable contributions were unusually high for someone of my income. No kidding - between tithing and my tax-deductible Thailand trip, I bet they are!).
I also finally cracked the code to be able to order more garments online. I am excited about this because I don't want to do my laundry right now. Forget washing clothes! Buy new ones instead!
And, finally, I got this enticing packing list from Emily in anticipation of my visit:
Passport, shoes for getting wet, shoes for attempting to keep dry, a jacket that can withstand the elements, something to wear that says I am both classy and up for adventure, and a kerchief (I will provide the hobo stick)
Who wouldn't want to go on a trip with that kind of packing list? I ask you!
The end of my first official day off in a long while is drawing to a close. I'm up at the condo still - my family stayed up here too last night after seeing the show, and we enjoyed a lazy morning together. By the time Rachel, Ben, Jack, Mom, and Dad bundled off to their respective homes, I decided I would rather stay up here and watch Downton Abbey rather than pack up tonight and drive down the mountain. And so I did.
The show went very well. The cast, crew, and audience were all quite happy with it, and we played to a virtually sold-out house all three nights (260 seats, if you're wondering). The students celebrated by giving Rachel, Jesse, Melody, Ann, and me bouquets and then getting into a massive glitter fight backstage using the "Suppertime" plates I mentioned earlier this week.
The Adv. Drama class also found success in selling concessions as a fundraiser for a field trip in a few weeks. We needed to raise $400 to pay for the bus, and they managed to earn over $500. Of course, they also broke the school's popcorn machine, so we'll see how much of that money they get to keep. :)
I'm having a hard time shutting off the note-taking part of my brain. It's been a week of work dreams and I keep thinking there's more props to make or sets to paint or things I need to remind the actors about. I do have two more shows to go this year, so that should help with the withdrawal symptoms.
"You have too much free time," a student commented today when I showed them the Beethoven t-shirt I drew last night.
"Actually, I don't have any," I replied, "I've been working almost non-stop for the last month."
Sadly, that's not really an exaggeration. It was while I was kneeling alone in the auditorium at 7:30 tonight duct-taping the bus back together in anticipation of tomorrow's show that I got to thinking again about how much I've been working, not just this past month, but since the school year began.
The thing is, it's just not good for me. This kind of schedule is not healthy physically, emotionally, socially, spiritually, on any kind of level.
However, it is my job.
It's a pickle I'm not tackling yet. I need to get through show week first. Then I'll think about it.
I spent my Sunday evening covering plastic plates with the herpes of crafts.
I spent my Saturday painting the set. Well, really I spent it instructing and supervising a dozen teenagers while they painted the set. But still, long workday.
Tomorrow I'll post quarter grades, draw a cartoon Beethoven on a t-shirt, make a miniature keyboard, print programs, teach three classes, conduct a 4-hour rehearsal, supervise the lunchroom, and glitterfy another 15 plates.
One more week. Just one more week.
P.S. Dear Mom and Dad - The condo may be a bit sparklier than how you remember it.
"One of the dirty little secrets of education is that outside of athletic coaches and performing arts teachers, it is very hard to determine really effective (a more realistic standard than excellence) teaching."
I've restarted this blog entry six or seven times so far and I still can't figure out how to articulate the issues this presents.
Like how effectiveness is constantly measured by competition and therefore creates a hierarchy of people instead of allowing for the radical notion that multiple people may qualify as effective/excellent.
Or how competition such a big part of public schools, which perpetuates the idea that "winning" means besting other people rather than measuring your own growth and personal achievements against yourself.
I wonder what the author meant when he said my teaching effectiveness is not hard to determine because I teach performing arts. Do the public performances my students put on really fully demonstrate my performance as a teacher? Is he/she calling for similar public displays of mathematical, geographical, scientific, or historical learning? And what happens when the judges sitting in my audience watching their children speak Shakespeare and sing Schultz by and large have minimal to no knowledge or experience with theater prior to that performance?
It's why I hate Speech. I hate watching my students be judged and base their self-worth on the opinions of people who have absolutely no knowledge of what they're judging. It's a horribly flawed program and I hate that so much pressure is put on the students and on me to win when that "winning" comes through the opinions of biased, uninformed, complete and total lay people.
The parents who praise me and my teaching rarely do so because their child comes away with such great knowledge of theater. (Ironically, given the absence of their voices in this whole dialogue, it is the students who consistently praise me for how much they learn about whatever subject area I'm teaching them) The parents praise my teaching because of the growth in their child's self-worth, social awareness, leadership abilities, social aptitude, confidence in their ability to achieve and learn, and, quite simply, because sometimes my class is the reason that kid gets up in the morning.
None of which, by the way, is listed in the state or national curricula for my courses.
I agree that the salary-based-rewards given to teachers based on Master's degrees and years of experience (i.e. loyalty to a school district) do not equate to rewarding the more effective teachers. I agree that teachers should be compensated based on effectiveness if a fair measure of teacher effectiveness can be found. I really do appreciate that this author acknowledged the existence of teachers in subject areas outside of the core curricula. I just hope that a reform comes to teacher pay that allows for the fact that very few subjects covered in schools can accurately be measured by traditional tests.
