29-September-2019, Sunday, 7:52 PM CDT
(Me seeing you, Constant Reader, and quickly turning the corner to avoid your eye.)
"Not so fast!" says you, Constant Reader. "Where have you been the last two weeks?"
There is no excuse. I just neglected to post. All great writers have talent, but the best have discipline as well. I need more discipline as a writer. But it's just so easy to make excuses for ourselves, isn't it?
I can't write today because I'm too tired or because it's too much work or because nobody's going to read it anyway, so what's the point?
Nada de esto, por favor.
It's a classic yet never passable excuse, but the last two weeks have been, you guessed it, busy. And think of it this way--if I'm not blogging, it's probably because I'm out doing Mexican things. Take two weeks ago for example. It was El Quince de Septiembre, the Mexican equivalent of the Fourth of July. I went to watch some students dance in a neighboring pueblo (town). The girls wore long dresses that flowed in waves of blue and pink, the boys all white with colorful ribbons for ties around their neck. It was a dancing show of all ages, from kindergarten to college. Then in another pueblo we screamed then names of famous Mexican patriots during El Grito (The Scream). It was one-thirty by the time I got home. You expected me to blog then?
"'This will be a weekly blog,' you said. 'It's going to be about language teaching and learning,' you said. So what's your excuse for last week?"
Let me think...oh yeah. Last weekend I was in Puebla visiting Fes. Hadn't seen him in nine years. You expected me to blog Sunday night from his house in the city? Ignore my hosts just to satisfy your curiosity?
(Silence from you, Constant Reader, as you mercifully withhold further challenge.)
Ok. Let's just move on to this past week, shall we?
(Obstinate silence continues.)
You'll get over it...but thanks for giving me flak.
There has been a lot of rain this week. It rained all day today. I didn't feel like leaving my room but did anyway, as I accepted an invitation to a birthday party for one of my students; the same student, in fact, to whom I endeavored to explain carnal to, remember? The rain didn't stop us from enjoying some barbacoa (goat), elotes (corn), and pastel (cake) to celebrate his birthday. The set-up was a couple big tarps rigged up just off the road outside Tepexi. Nothing fancy, but it kept us dry. I continue to be welcomed by families here as if I was one of their own.
In class this week we learned numbers, time, and days. There's a fun game called Fizz Buzz that is my go to for numbers. It's akin to Hello, Governor if you're familiar, and you can find out more about it here. To get students interested and motivated to learn how to give and ask for the time, I played Rock Around the Clock and danced around the class for a few minutes. And for days I used one of the most lasting language teaching strategies--listening to music. Students had to fill in the blanks to The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" in hopes of solidifying the days of the week in their memories. I still remember parts of the German song Professor Joerg Meindl played for us at Leb Val. I haven't used German, in earnest, for ten years, but I remember that Peter Fox had twenty kids and a pretty wife in his song "Haus am See". Hopefully the students will remember the days of the week for our second exam, which most will be taking this week.
What else? I've been playing a lot of basketball, and it's been really funny. Learning a new sport is similar to learning a new language. In the beginning, I was not very good. In fact, I was frustratingly bad. But little by little, poco a poco, with consistent practice, desire to learn, and refusal to give up, I began to improve. Now I'm kinda ok at speaking Spanish and playing basketball. I always hold myself to a (sometimes) unreasonably high standard, but it's because I want to be good, I want to be competent and credible. As a lifelong learner, I need to learn how to recognize small gains and believe they are adding up.
The highlight of last week was the welcoming of new students to TEC. They were called Baby Raptors, and we held a sort of orientation for them. I was involved in all sorts of fun games like human train and extreme musical chairs. I tore a hole in my jeans after spinning around an empty bottle several times and diving for an empty chair during this one. We danced to mariachi and ate pozole, threw water balloons at each other and tossed giant dice. Only a month and a half at-site, and I already feel like a member of the community.
And now for the random wrap-up--in half-court basketball here, we don't "take it back" if we rebound a missed shot by the other team, we just put it right back up no matter who shot it, on Thursday my good friend Carmelo, another guy, and I won six straight games to five in a rotation of three teams, at the end of some work days my counterpart Hugo and I stay late and have a bilingual chat, he in English and me in Spanish, the topics get pretty deep--from God to reality and the universe to reincarnation, I'm proud to finally be code-switching (going from one language to another) and can do so easily in my mind and on my phone keyboard lol, I saw my first tarantula the other night at basketball, about the diameter of coffee mug, the other night I sang karaoke which is insanely useful for pronunciation and vocab-building, not to mention super fun, my clothes have been hanging out on the line all day in the rain, and I don't even care hahaha, they'll dry tomorrow.
Ok, friends, Romans, countrymen, that's all for now. Check back next week for--
"Next week? Are you sure?"
Callate, CR. Yes, check back next week for another post, and if it's not here, just be patient with me, ok? It's probably because I'm out trying to be a Mexican somewhere.
Have a good week, America.
No comments:
Post a Comment