Appropriate Language

When teaching English as a Second Language, I have to watch my speech pretty carefully. Students who don’t yet fluently speak a foreign language can follow your speech only if you use simple words and sentences. This type of speech is called “appropriate language” here at the Blue School.

It’s not easy; you’d be surprised at how often you use complex sentences in your speech (Can you identify the dependent clause which makes that last sentence complex?).

What do you want me do to? LEAVE? Then they'll keep
 being wrong!

Even harder for me is keeping my mouth shut when I disagree. Dad always used to say “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it at all.” He still says it, actually, but when I learned the word “constructive” I figured that I’d found a loophole.

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So for a while there, I was pretty sure I was being helpful when I told my teachers they were doing it wrong and here was why. And by “for a while there” I mean now and forever always.

My quote today is from Shakespeare’s King Lear. At the end of the tragedy, when the body-count is higher than the number of goals Lionel Messi could score against a team of 8-year-olds, Edgar stammers out that people ought to “speak what [they] feel, not what [they] ought to say.”

As much as I love the advice, I think I better to listen to Dad on this one.

Walking Trees and Divine Waters

I have now been in Spain longer than I have been in any foreign country. Every other trip I’ve taken overseas—Austria, Guatemala, Japan, China—has been exactly two weeks long. In celebration, I visited the Alhambra this weekend.

The Alhambra, like the Hagia Sophia, braids Christian and Muslim influence into a single thread. Both cultures have had their way with the Alhambra: built first by the Muslims, and tampered with by the Christians (it’s a theme around here). Charles V’s palace, probably the largest and most intrusive of the Christian additions, is neat, clean, and grand in a comfortable sort of way. But it was the palaces of the Arabic kings that startled me with their unique beauty.

“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake.  Love.  Think. Speak.  Be walking trees.  Be talking beasts.  Be divine waters.”

When Aslan says these words, he breathes life into Narnia. That’s how the Alhambra feels. I could see this place as the origin of life, with its ebullient fountains and gardens made of the greenest greens you could think of.

Even the famous lamppost of Narnia exists here in Granada in the form of hanging lanterns above the narrow streets. Aladdin-style horseshoe-doors dominate the façades and tessellations cover the walls of all the important buildings, making the Arabic influence outstanding.

Teaching is Learning

As I figure out what I’m going to do with my English major, I can’t help but feel like Harry Potter did on his first day at Hogwarts. (I apologize for the multiple Sorcerer’s Stone references in back-to-back posts.) Who hasn’t felt as Harry did after hearing the Sorting Hat’s song, that he didn’t have any of the school’s lauded qualities? For me, I wonder what job I could possibly belong in.

Recently I came to a conclusion that might help me figure that out, a conclusion I have been avoiding for years:

I like teaching.

Yeah, yeah, I know, mom and dad. You could have told me forever ago.

Yesterday was my first ESL teaching experience, and for my beginner reading class, I designed a 45-minute lesson on the topic of orchestral music (okay, you can all stop rolling your eyes now). My students are volunteers, mostly retirees who want to learn English and stay sharp. I was jittery all morning, but once I got in front of the class and started explaining the day’s topic, I started to enjoy myself.

My students ate up my talk of bassoons and symphonies and Mozart’s twenty children. I, in turn, was energized by their obvious enthusiasm and eagerness to please:

Bubbly Andrés and his happy smile when he told me that he, too, liked classical music; struggling Nati telling me how she thought modern music could be beautiful; Isabel’s quiet assertion that the song felt “white” to her; pixie Pilar correctly identifying a clarinet; and Mario’s content concentration on his quiz question.

I know no one else is surprised (teaching is in my blood, after all), but this has been a pleasant discovery for me.

I sleep in the top left bunk!

Humiliations Galore

God likes to keep me humble.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed success in orchestra, in soccer, and in school. My violin teacher says one of my worst problems as a player is learning the notes too quickly because then I don’t take the time to play the notes in tune. Many things come easily to me.

But you really can’t be good at everything.

I’ve always wanted to learn to speak a foreign language fluently. I love to study linguistics and I actually enjoy the hard slog of learning vocabulary and grammar. But despite 6 ½ years of Japanese classes, I never became proficient. And my Spanish is rudimentary at best, my accent appalling.

It humbles me.

Don’t misunderstand me; I am very bad at a great many things. Science, for instance. Computers, for another. Buying jeans, playing baseball, and not quoting movies while others are watching them for the first time are all weaknesses of mine.

But quite frankly, I don’t care too much about being bad at any of those things. I know they’re valuable skills, but I’ve never wanted them enough to work for them. However, languages are something at which I want to excel.

As many nerd girls my age do, I identify with Hermione Granger, the muggle-born smarty-pants from the Harry Potter books. Rowling writes:

“Chess was the only thing Hermione ever lost at, something Harry and Ron thought was very good for her.”

It is good for me to be humbled, but it’s not enjoyable.

People lock these onto the bridge connecting Sevilla to Triana, the neighborhood in which I live. There wasn't always a bridge, so it used to be a big deal, this separation. Now, it's just a tradition and every year the government sends someone over with a pair of bolt-cutters and they get rid of them.

Phrasal Verbs and Turning Worlds

The world never does stop, not for joy, not for sorrow.

I love this line from Gary Schmidt’s Straw into Gold because not only is it true, but it feels true. Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” But when you’re sitting at your desk, aimlessly doodling a couple of cool-looking triangles on your geometry test instead of the answers you were supposed to know, your imagination doesn’t feel all that important. Knowledge nearly always feels imminently more important.

But not only does time keep slinking forward, but it nearly always feels as though it is. That’s how life is for me here. It slows in the mornings during our 4-hour grammar review sessions and flies when I’m seeing the city in the afternoons. My novio made a trip up to Sevilla yesterday and we went to see the Alcazar (the old palace near the Giralda with an amazing garden and beautiful Islamic decorating and architecture).

Homework for my TEFL class reached an alarming rate just the afternoon, the day before my departure to Grenada and the famous Alhambra. Consequently, I’m going to keep this short as the time slips through the leaves on the orange trees of San Jacinto.

I have found great joy here, strolling around Sevilla with my classmates, with my novio, and even by myself. But I think I can feel God slowing turning the world in his fingers and even as I enjoy the moment, I look forward to (a phrasal prepositional verb if there ever was one!) whatever’s coming next.

This is where I spend roughly 7 hours every day. 

Una Giralda

If you look on the right sidebar of this page, there will be quite a few pictures running on a slideshow, many of which show views from the Giralda of the connecting Cathedral of Seville.

Like so many religious buildings around this part of the world, the Seville Cathedral was originally a mosque, and the Giralda tower (named for the weathervane on top called a giraldillo) was its minaret. The cathedral itself is the largest Gothic cathedral and third largest church in the world.

First the Cathedral, and then the Girald and both are the kind of places that makes you “not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two.” So, so tall, and the best part? There aren’t any stairs; it’s a ramp to the top, winding around the square core of the tower. The ramp is wide enough for two mounted guards to pass one another on horseback. And the windows at every turn offer beautiful overlooks of the city and cathedral.

Afterwards, I got home to my housemates: two Spaniards, two Irish, two Belgians, and two other Americans. And I ate an enormous baguette which costs only 35 euros. It was a good day.

And sorry the pictures aren't bigger. That is my newest blogging challenge.

Stop Thinking

I had forgotten what it was like to be told to sit down and shut up by a teacher. But I remember now why I stopped volunteering information in class somewhere around sixth grade. They don’t use those exact words, of course, but their dismissive, totalitarianism answer does the trick well enough. Stop thinking and listen.

That is the first lesson of school: Teachers have agenda. They have answers, too, but those are all tied up in what the teacher thinks is more important.

I recognize the need for an agenda. The teacher knows what needs to be taught, and they can’t be chasing every little white rabbit that pops into one of their thirty students’ minds. Unfortunately, we learn by chasing the little white rabbits.

This, from Fahrenheit 451 sums up school pretty well:

“It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and at the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not.”

I wholeheartedly agree with Bradbury. I love to learn, yet a hated school. I think most of us do. But the system is not set up for us to learn. It is set up for us to listen.

So this is—verbatim—what my teacher told me today

·         You could do that, but don’t. Keep it simple.

      ·         Don’t try to use anything you’ve learned before, or in the past.

      ·         Don’t worry about learning more when one is all you need.

      ·         On your homework and the test, just copy what I’ve put on the board, don’t try to come up with something on your own.

Oh, and this is where my novio works. His escuela, if you will. Sort of see why he didn't post pictures of it earlier. Not really all that photogenic, is it?

A Few of my Favourite Things

After 7-hours of class every day last week, my classmates and I were ready for the weekend. We all met up for beers after class got out and toasted our survival. Not really a beer fan myself, but it was relaxing to sit along the riverfront in one of the many bars/cafés that lines Calle Betis. (The bars are cafes in the afternoon, and only turn into bars at night. Around three in the morning, they become clubs.)

But the best part of the weekend was visiting Huelva, the current home of my novio. He has lived there for roughly three months and failed to upload even one picture of his new home or work. For me, it was fun to finally see the place. And it was a dream to visit the beach and walk down the Atlantic shoreline, collecting shells and catching up on lost time.

Because it was such a lovely time, I made a list of a few of my favourite things that I saw in Huelva:

Soccer. This was the first time I’ve ever been surrounded by those who avidly watch, understand, and appreciate the sport I love. It’s an amazing feeling.

Chocolate Cake. We went to a brilliant café called “Vive la Chocolate” (yeah. exactly) in Huelva whose cake reminded me of how good the world is.

Public Transportation. Bus there. Bus back. Bus to the ocean, bus back. Easy, simple, on time.

Parallel Parking. It’s beautiful when done with the precision of a life-long European. An art.

Siesta. Andrew said the reason there weren’t many people at the beach was because it was siesta. On a Sunday, which is a whole day of siesta.

Warm. There is sun and it is lovely.

A Rationalization

In case you can't tell from my posts or don’t know me well enough, I’m a worrier. I like to worry. I have to worry, otherwise I worry that I’m forgetting something important. If it’s not money (how can I afford to try those tapas tonight or to take the bus to the ocean or to go to the top of the Giralda?), it’s something else (will we make the bus? Are we using our time well enough? Are we having fun yet?!?).

However, as Uncle Screwtape reminds us, “man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon as his chattels.” And, as another Wise man once said, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”

I like the way our language shapes how we think about things. There is an embedded metaphor in the way English-speakers talk about time as if it were money: you spend, waste, and borrow time. Is it worth your while? Budget your time profitably. We even say it outright: “Time is money.”

But neither one is mine: time or money. They are gifts and I will spend them as best I can. Responsibility will undoubtedly be an element in my decisions, but so too will be my impetuousness (the part of me that has a fondness for purple shoes). Hopefully. something like a balance will result.

So long, and thanks for playing “Rationalize that Eurotrip!” with me.


P.S. I did go to the beach today.

A Moment of Mortification

“But I like the inconveniences.”

"We don’t.  We prefer to do things comfortably.”

 “But I don’t want comfort.  I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness.  I want sin.”

"In fact, you're claiming the right to be unhappy."

"All right, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

In their defense, the public toilets here really aren't that bad. When compared to the squatters of China and Japan, they are paragons of convenient peeing. Consequently, I can forgive the Spanish toilets their annoying lack of cleanliness and toilet paper, if only because of its gracious, throne-like nature.

But forgiveness does not imply contentment, which is why I am always grateful for the toilet at my school which not only allows me to sit while relieving waste, but also provides oodles of toilet paper for my drying pleasure. The good stuff, too.

I would like to be clear: my embarrassment is not the fault of the Spanish toilet, and especially not this particular toilet. My embarrassment is the fault of my skirt, which hangs at exactly the height of the toilet bowl, my distraction due to a certain time of the month (the bane of my traveling experiences), and an inconveniently small bladder.

 All of this to say, I spent every minute of my break-time yesterday in the bathroom scrubbing an indelicate stain out of my (blessedly) black skirt and drying it in the hand-dryer. Oh bother.