from

What a funny little word...from. Why do we pronounce it the way we do? Why does it make me think of german mushrooms for no apparent reason? Why is the english r so ugly, and why don't I speak french? This is how I waste Monday afternoons.

Take some every day word, write it down on paper and just look at it. Study it skeptically. Wonder if you are spelling it right. Question its authority. This just happened with from and I.

Oh how I wish I could toss it from my word bank, it's all of the sudden such a stranger to me... but there is no breaking up with from nor any other equally unpleasant preposition of the english language, like toward...

Luckily we've got the dark and sexy under or the soft and subtle with to make up for such an unappealing gathering of four little letters, from.

poop-scooping

Teaching english can be a real bore at times. I can describe it perfectly in a spanish phrase that I am working on incorporating into my spoken slang dictionary.. "que lata!" Literally "what a can!" Commonly known as "what a bore!" or, in modern american renee english, "how lame!"

So yea. Teaching english...que lata. But this happens to everyone...every once in a while one feels discouraged or disenchanted by their contribution to this world, and it is only necessary to remember what they (mothers) say, something along the lines of.. "it doesn't matter what you do, as long as you do it well." It even counts if what you do is professional poop-scooping..

Teaching english is sort of like poop-scooping. The parallels are present in many different forms and on many different levels, but since most of us aren't english teachers here, let's just take it down to its basic core: bad english is like small poop-droppings everywhere. there are many dogs, and they are all out on their walk, their special walk, and they are leaving droppings everywhere. your job is to pick them up and dispose of them. you will perform such tasks, you will correct and sometimes humiliate. then, if you are a really good english teacher/poop-scooper, you will replace the poo with a daisy or something of equally charming aesthetics.

This past week I took on another five hours of private classes [poop-scooping] in a desperate pre bail-out system to avoid a mid-summer financial crisis. As summer work options seem to dwindle in possibilities (okay fine, I haven't been so proactive), I also grow more and more worried about fulfilling my summer plans to "live the life". I want to take living the life to a whole new level, and I think this goal is quite attainable. I believe, if I can achieve three months of 20% work and 80% vacation I will be 90% there. Ya know?

Personal sacrifices are generally of worthy cause, and for this reason I am going to tackle poop-scooping like I never have before. I will give up my sacred Friday afternoons so as to master the skill, and I will feel fulfilled by the sheer excellence of my hard work! The poop droppings will slowly dwindle in numbers...it will be fun and it will fund the most kick-ass summer since the last summer, cause let's be real, they're all always so kick-ass. And hail to positive attitudes, they shall prevail yet again!

P.S. For the record: I still can remain in bed until 1 p.m. on Fridays if fancied.

pilar+cochinillo

Cochinillo, or suckling pig, is one of the only baby animals that I don't feel bad about eating. Little Wilbur, you're so cute I could just eat you right up.

Also it should be noted that Little Wilbur still has his baby teeth!! So cute!

Christmas 2010

(pulling from the archives of the time the camera went on an extended vacation to Zaragoza and I was unable to finish the holiday photo redux)

HAHAHA

I generally work with the 1st and 2nd graders at school, but thanks to the wonderful theatre club I get a good dose of prepubescent 5th and 6th graders for one hour a week.

Like many of my frivolous ideas, I sort of regret starting up the theatre club. In the first place, 30 kids signed up, which is far more than I bargained for. Thank God for two other assistants who so generously offered their help. Nonetheless, it's possibly the most stressful hour of my whole week, and I always leave with sore vocal chords. The kids struggle with a lot of the activities I prepare, and when they don't struggle, they are bored.

But, they still come back every week. We've got about an 80% return rate, and I have to admit that I'm amazed. Entertaining them for the brief hour we are together is like playing a monkey puppet tied to 5,000 strings.

So yea...this week I am putting aside the improvisation games (so difficult) and the reader's theatre (so boring), and picking up KARAOKE. I know karaoke isn't really theatre per say, but I don't care. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and we gotta get creative here.

Like I hinted at, I sort of dread the theatre club, I know, I know, I really am my own worst enemy. But hey, it has its rewarding moments. The fact that the kids come back every week makes me feel pretty good in and of itself, and the truth is that we share a lot of laughs sometimes, despite the fact that things rarely ever go as planned. However, all that aside, just now making a list of "appropriate" songs for tomorrow, I experienced my greatest pleasure born out of this whole situation: I finally watched Justin Bieber in action. This is what I just now saw, I have seen the light!:

digital slavery

A little over a year ago, I wrote this in response to a Julio Cortázar essay about the little devils we call watches. I still hold my stance: my Skagen is tattered and worn and I love it just as much as I did when my sister gave it to me.

A friend suggested that Cortázar's literature be updated to the times. Who's a slave to watches these days? We've come a long way. My first thought was to write Cortázar requesting the change, but since he died some 25 years ago, I had to take the mission upon myself. Here you are:

Consider this: it is your twelfth birthday and your parents buy you your first cellphone. Yes, that's what we've come to. Twelve year olds running around with cellphones, their lives so incredibly jam-packed with activity that a landline is just not adequate.

When they present you with your first cellphone, it is not just a device for making phone calls that they are gifting you...your new companion, best friend, friend of all friends...nokia, blackberry, iphone 4 with a bejeweled plastic cover because nobody has a cellphone of such caliber without the candy...text messages, photos, music, internet, everything you ever needed in one little digital device...freedom, independence, popularity...

No no...when they present you with a cellphone they are actually giving you--they don't know it, and it's.so.terrible that your dumb worried parents don't know it--they are gifting you a new, vulnerable piece of yourself, of your soon-to-be slavehood, ahem, I mean adulthood, you are coming-of-age and this is how the 21st century deals with that.

They are gifting you a massive responsibility of taking care in your usage of minutes and messages and battery power, a fear of losing or breaking the thing, a paranoia caused by the feeling of being attainable at any moment of any hour of the day, a dependence that can sometimes lead to withdrawals...you will truckle to your new friend for the rest of your existence on this earth because there is no going back...

You don't realize any of this..you are incredibly excited because you are 12 years old and it's all you ever wanted in life, nothing could make you happier, not even a banana split on a Friday afternoon because you are an adult now not a kid and banana splits are so 11 years old, you just cringe at the embarrassment that would flourish inside you, to sit at the bar of Dairy Queen with your treat, because someone might call you on your cellphone and then what? You tell them you are eating a banana split at Dairy Queen with your mom? GOD.

They are not giving you a cellphone for your birthday, they are taking your digital virginity.

:)

verde que te quiero verde

I heard this song on the radio yesterday, but missed who was singing it. I then proceeded to spend over an hour looking for it online, but this was the closest I found. It's a shorter version of the lengthy poem by Federico García Lorca, this video entitles it Verde que te quiero verde but it's really called Romance Sonámbulo from his book Romancero Gitano, a book composed of 18 poems about the gitano, or gypsy, lifestyle. In Lorca's poetry, the color green signifies death, and I read once that it is the most common color that appears in his work. In this poem, the protagonist is fatally injured, "sleep-walking" in a daze during his last few hours of life as he makes his way to find his young gypsy girlfriend. However, upon his arrival, it is she who he finds dead.

just one thing

I promised I would stop complaining, I know it grows, but I just have to get this off my chest:

I want to kill the woman who did this to me.

I want her babies to be born bald and remain this way forever, and if by chance they escape this curse, I want them to suffer from a chronic case of head lice.

I want her fat pudgy fingers to slip into a an electric blender, and I want them to become a mangled bloodied mess of skin and bones, so that they may never hold a pair of scissors again.

I didn't realize that I could be so upset over hair. But godDAMNIT I want to kill the woman who did this to me. That's all.