Five Year Anniversary

I got an email today from Iowa State, congratulating me on my five-year anniversary of graduating from college.  The passage of time is an interesting thing, and this little note put me in a meditative mood.  In the five years since graduating from Iowa State:

• I started my first full-time job as a "Clerk II" at Iowa State University's benefits office.
• I worked as a field manager at Iowa PIRG, knocking on doors, asking people for money, and training other people to knock on doors and ask for money.
• I completed a survive-being-kidnapped-by-terrorists training.
• I moved to China.
• I negotiated two teaching contracts in a foreign country.
• I taught over 800 students over the course of three semesters.
• I learned Chinese.
• I got two tattooes.
• I met the love of my life and I married that man.
• I moved across China on a train.
• I worked as a waitress in a South Jersey dinner.
• I worked in the marketing department of a small glass manufacturer.
• I drove across the southwest all the way up to New Jersey with all my earthly belongings in the back of a red VW bug.
• I got a job teaching Job Readiness and ESL at an awesome organization with awesome people, where I discovered that I could love teaching and I could love ESL and I could love loving the poor.

So I'm simultaneously thinking:
"Five years already?" as if it was only yesterday I was hanging out at Welch Ave Station
and
"Only five years?" since it seems that I've reinvented myself an infinite number of times since December 8, 2007.

Classic Rock

Classic Rock is where my love of rock in all its forms comes from. I've been thinking of a list of songs that best represent Classic Rock and here it is. Not all of these are my favorite song from said group but I think all of them are a great way to introduce someone to Classic Rock. Do you agree with this list? What would you add or subtract? What would be on your list?

"Dream On" by Aerosmith on Aerosmith, 1973

"Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin on IV, 1971

"Carry on Wayward Son" by Kansas on Leftoverture, 1976

"Shooting Star" by Bad Company on Straight Shooter, 1975

"I've Seen All Good People" by Yes on The Yes Album, 1971

"Life's Been Good" by Joe Walsh on But Seriously, Folks..., 1978

"Hey You" by Pink Floyd on The Wall, 1979

"Hotel California" by The Eagles on Hotel California, 1977

"Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream on Disreali Gears, 1967

"Free Bird" by Lyndyrd Skynyrd on (pronounced leh-nerd skin-nerd), 1973

"More Than a Feeling" by Boston on Boston, 1976

"American Woman" by The Guess Who on American Woman, 1970

"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen on A Night at the Opera, 1975

"Hey Jude" by The Beatles, (Released only as a single and later on the compilation vinyl titled Hey Jude) 1968

"The Logical Song" by Supertramp on Breakfast in America, 1979

"Break on Through (to the Other Side)" by The Doors on The Doors, 1967

"Horse With No Name" by America on America, 1971

"Good Vibrations" by The Beach Boys on Smiley Smile, 1966

"Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones on Let it Bleed, 1969

"Back in Black" by AC/DC on Back in Black, 1980

Anger and Skepticism

One of the first Sundays we attended Mercy Hill, Phil Henry talked about how to relate to a non-Christian community.  I've been warned a thousand times not to treat non-Christians as projects or problems-to-be-solved...people don't really appreciated being treated as anything other than people.  That morning, Phil was reiterating the same warning, saying, "Everyone has something to teach you.  Don't assume that just because you're a Christian that you can't learn to be a better person from someone who's not."  It was a refreshing thought, attractive to me as we transitioned into this new church expression.

I've learned a lot about being a better person this week, stretched in ways I'm not normally stretched.  I've been covering classes for a co-worker on vacation this week.  The class is called, "Job Search and Placement Assistance" and it's designed for people who are on General Assistance through the NJ Board of Social Services.  (This means they are unemployed and receive food stamps and medicaid.)  The students in this class as seasoned veterans of "The System" used to being barked at, disappointed, denied, ignored, judged--rightly or wrongly.  They exhibit varying levels of educational achievement, scoring between a 2nd grade and 12th grade reading level on academic assessments.  Some didn't make it past the ninth grade.  Some served this country in foreign wars.  Others have been in and out of prison for aggression, resisting arrest, possession, theft, and more serious crimes.  It's a rough and tumble crowd for sure.

And then, there's little old me: age twenty-six, five-foot-four, in flats and a cardigan.  I'm supposed to teach them?

But there are some truths I've been reminded of this week and some I am discovering for the first time:

• Addressing someone by name makes all the difference in breaking down barriers against "the system."
• While K-12 teachers have implicit authority over their students, adult educators must get permission from their students to be an authority.  You have to be credible both as an expert and as someone capable of handling authority with grace and justice, and you have to give full disclosure of intent.
• Four hours is just way to long to make anyone sit and listen to someone else talk, no matter how old they are.
• If my students stonewall me, lash out at me, don't laugh at my jokes, or talk about me during break, it's not because they don't like me: it's because they have so much anger and so much skepticism that from the time class begins and the time class ends, I've become the target--not the reason--for that anger and skepticism.
• Although their anger and skepticism come from real events and relationships that caused real hurt, they will not succeed until they recognize that choosing to be angry and skeptical are greater barriers than the original hurts.

This last point is one I need to recite to myself often.  Five-foot-four me, though unassuming at first glance, is a hurricane-woman, and none of my students were expecting that.  While my fierceness allows me to establish myself as an authority in a classroom such as this one, there is for sure some anger and skepticism in other areas of my life that are a greater barrier than the original hurts.

As the week went by, I saw some of the students soften, realizing that I am not the right target for their anger, that I am trustworthy and genuine, credible.  And I must learn, from them, to soften also.

Send-offs and Farewells

Up until a few months ago, the island of Malta and I were completely unaware of each other in this mutual bliss that was far more commonplace before the age of the internet. But now, me and Malta have a mutual friend in Raquel, who today departed for a 13 month dual master's program. Yesterday, I spent the day in DC enjoying lunch with an eclectic group of individuals that only Raquel has a knack for gathering, then driving through and around the city as she made some last minute preparations.

Before I left for DC, when Michael and I were talking about the financial and logistical implications of traveling through the mid-Atlantic states, Michael said to me, "Whoa. You won't see Raquel for a whole year." I laughed. I met Raquel when I was 14 and she has since been among my dearest friends. But within the last twelve years of our friendship, we've spanned up to twelve timezones and, between the two of us, relocated across state lines seven times. We've only lived in the same town for about two and a half of those twelve years. So when he said, "Whoa. You won't see Raquel for a whole year," I laughed. "I've done it before, " I responded.

I have, since returning to the United States, felt more of the bitter part of the bittersweet truth that the more you see the world, the more isolated you become. I have great friends everywhere--except wherever I currently find myself. It's the trick to being the new guy, the sojourner, the foreigner. I have been wondering, these last 26 months, if it's really worth it, if the intensity of new experiences is a fair trade off for the comfort of long-term intimacy.

But yesterday, as I followed left-right-stay-in-this-lane-go-around-the-square driving directions between stories about such-and-such-in-recent-days and the-waiter-at-the-restaurant and down-that-street-is-where-I-used-to-live, I felt more that sweet part of the bittersweet that means that it is possible to maintain that long-term intimacy across state lines and timezones and oceans and continents. I want to believe it's not only possible but feasible. And in Raquel, it's easy for me to believe that it is.

So me and Malta are becoming pleasantly acquainted, now seated together as part of that eclectic group of individuals only Raquel has a knack for gathering.

Vocations

Vocations, apparently, are not just jobs, trades, or careers. They're something akin to callings, occupational raison d'etres. Yesterday, my mom told me about a nurse practitioner friend who passes out at the sight of blood. "It just isn't her vocation," my mom explained.

I joked with my mother earlier this week that I could have been a surgeon. This, of course, isn't true for two significant reasons, (1) I hate biology and (2) I hate school. So surgery--and medicine overall--"just isn't my vocation." And if not that, then what?

Americans, you know, like to get to know people by asking them, "What do you do?" Other cultures start with questions like, "Where are you from?" or "Where do you live?" or "Tell me about your family" But Americans like to ask about vocation. Because being a CPA or a JD or a Historian or a Math Teacher matter, not only because of the prestige it may or may not carry, but because we believe it's a key to understanding a person's sense of self.

But like my mom's nurse practitioner friend, I wonder how many of us find our vocations. And how many, like those several hundred thousand people on hold every week filing their first unemployment claim, don't.

Irene

Irene may be scary and fierce and a force to be reckoned with, but God's name alone is exalted and Irene is only doing His bidding. Lord, make me as obedient as she is!

See Psalm 148:7-13

The American Life

I grew up a latch-key kid. I remember reading something in fifth or sixth grade about "latch-key kids" being this phenomenon that was further evidence of our society falling apart. Everyday for a couple of years after I read that article, as I pulled my key from my backpack and let myself into my empty house, I thought, "I am what's wrong with America." But what could I do? My parents needed to work. And America would have judged them, too, if they'd chosen to stay home instead. There's no winning.

There's no winning, because being a latch-key kid means coming home to an empty house. It means getting dinner started and too many hours of television. I watched a lot of superhero cartoons as a kid. One guy who's got a special talent no one else has, all alone in his secret identity, but just ambitious enough, just irreverent enough to dare to do something bigger than anyone would ever give him credit for.

I don't think I ever really stopped being a latch-key kid. I moved out of my parents house just before my seventeenth birthday, lived with my brother and sister-in-law. Learned to ride the city bus to school, learned to cut through people's yards in order to come home for lunch. And then college, and then being single in a city of 10 million people in South-Central China. I don't think it as often as I did when I was 12 years old, but every now and again, I wonder, "Am I still what's wrong with America?"

I still find myself coming home to an empty house. Michael's workday is just beginning as mine is ending. He comes home just as I am drifting asleep. I wondered today, if our family ever includes children, if they'll ever read about themselves in magazines, and wonder, "Am I what's wrong with America?"

More Travel Poems

The hottest summer, they said,
in 30 years, they said.
We got on a plane and flew south;
I huddled next to you,
wrapped up in my corduroy blazer,
cursing the AC in the airport and on the plane.
The moment we landed, we dashed out to the Texan sun
letting the hot air welcome us with its warm embrace.
And while those around us cursed the weather,
We relished our homecoming to warmer climes.



I am wondering whether this is a fair exchange
This globetrotting lifestyle:
eyes filled with images of far-flung places
feet dusty and worn from many miles.
I am wondering if all this beauty
was really worth all this wandering,
if being there is worth not being here.
The problem, I think, is that with each new locale
there's also new people,
people with eyes full of images of places I have yet to go
and with feet dusty and worn from the miles their lives have traveled along.
The problem is that everywhere I am,
there is a multitude of these people somewhere else.

Hugs

Today, I met with one of my participants for our last day of Job Readiness Training. On Friday, we met to work on interview questions and through her broken English and my over-enunciated so-called care-taker speech we worked out some answers that she could give to questions like, "Tell me about yourself" and "Why should we hire you?" On Monday morning, she went to her interview at a resort in Atlantic City for a housekeeping position. Monday afternoon, her case manager told me she'd been offered the job and we had a small celebration in the hallway in front of her office, her on her way to another meeting, me on my way to my office via the copier.

So this afternoon, my participant came in for our last day of Job Readiness Training and as she got herself settled at the worktable in my office, I said, "Congratulations! I heard you got the job!" She looked up at me and sprung from her chair and hugged me around my midsection. She was all smiles and in that moment, it didn't matter about language barriers or provider-participant boundaries because she was happy and I'd had the opportunity to play a small part in that happiness.

Twenty years from now, I don't know if that girl will remember today; more likely than not, it will fade into a tangle of days labeled "first days in New Jersey" or "first few years in the US" or "just out of high school", but I think I will remember. Or at least, I'd like to.

Cookies

A couple weekends ago, we had four teen and pre-teen girls come over and help us make cookies for our new neighbors. We were looking for ways to meet our new neighbors, to begin getting to know them and to begin sharing a bit of our lives with them.

We had a great time with the girls making cookies and decorating goodie bags. We decided to make cookies only for the apartments in our building. As it turns out, there are 24 apartments in each building, and we are the seventh and final building. That means that there are 168 apartments here! We made sugar cookies from the Real Simple December 2009 issue and some devil's food cake chocolate chip cookies from one of the girls' recipes. We also got some Hershey's Kisses and Reese's peanut butter cups to fill the bags. Michael worked on printing business cards with our contact information on them.

We went out on the following Sunday afternoon to give the cookies to our neighbors. The first two doors we knocked on had no response, but we were welcomed warmly at the third door. We chatted with our neighbor there for a fifteen minutes or so before we moved on to our other neighbors. Most doors stayed closed, and we left our little bags on the doorstep, hoping they'd find them soon. Of the people we met, most of them talked to us from cracked front doors or behind screen doors, suspicious until we explained we were neighbors just saying hello. Even then, people seemed confused--one girl asked if she should pay for the cookies.

There's still another 6 buildings worth of people we haven't met. I'm feeling a little bit the way I did my first week in XZ, unsure how to connect with people. We might need to make a lot more cookies...

Tiramisu

I don't remember the first time I ever ate tiramisu, but I know that whenever that was, I transcended. My fork had brought to my tongue the very essence of what heaven must be: a thing that cannot be described save that it is complete and utter joy.

I was born a lot closer to the equator than to tiramisu. And there's joy near the equator, too, for sure: fresh tortillas, refried beans, and plantains. But our foods are not delicate foods with subtle flavors. They are bold like the hot sun, the high mountains, and the wide desert. At a very young age, I learned how to slice plantains, how to mold tortilla dough in my hands, how to work a spoon around a frying pan to get the beans thick and heavy. In my country, we eat with our hands, licking our fingers, cleaning our plates with the last piece of a tortilla.

Tiramisu is not this kind of food. It is delicate, it is refined. It is a dessert served chilled in stemmed glassware, eaten with a tiny fork or spoon. It is the clinking of silver on glass and soft opera music filling the space between tables in fashionable restaurants. And so for me, tiramisu has always been enchanting and ethereal, something so other, a foil to my brashness and audacity.

It is this foreignness that makes tiramisu so transcendent, I suppose. It is the moment in which my body, my person, my self slows down and not with greedy hands in my bowl but with conservative little spoonfuls that I contemplate the joys of being. But this "joy" was always at the hands of someone other. My hands, so rehearsed in the Honduran kitchen, could not be the delicate hands that with gentle affection layer lady fingers and marscarpone cheese. Or so I believed, all these years since that first divine taste of glory.

But I have found, at last, the truest Epicurean joy, not in eating tiramisu, but in making it. My body, my person, my self slows down with whisk and egg whites, lady fingers dipped one by one in chilled coffee, cocoa powder carefully dusted over those dainty layers. In its subtle persistence, Tiramisu, I have discovered, is bold in its own right.

Stephen Krashen and Rosetta Stone

I've been an ESL teacher since March 2008, so I'm now beginning my fourth year (really!? how did this happen!?) in this not-so-glamorous career. Not coincidentally, it's been four years since I graduated from Iowa State; I'm now working on my fifth. And in all the time that I've been in Linguistics and ESL, I've not really ever spent very much time studying second language acquisition. I mean, not really. I studied language documentation in college, and I had a weekend class in Virginia and another weekend training in Sam and Joan's apartment one hot summer in Wuhan. I tried a lot of different things while I was teaching in China and I've tried some different things with the families I tutor here in the US. And sometimes it works, and sometimes I'm rather unprepared. I mostly operate on my understand of how language works and equipping people to understand language, more than actually guiding them through any acquisition process.

And I have been, in all this time, fairly biased against Rosetta Stone. I have discouraged a great number of people from buying it, even though I have never (before today) used it. I believed Rosetta Stone was more Skinner-style Behaviorism, only cuter with its colorful pictures and voice-recognition software. But this last week, at work, I spent some time reading the Rosetta Stone manuals (and Rosetta Stone Manager manuals--which is actually, potentially a really cool tool...) and totally buying in to their "Dynamic Immersion (tm)" marketing scheme. I almost believed it, chided myself for being so judgmental, they do believe in natural language, so much so that they trademarked a phrase to describe it!

And then today, I had the opportunity to "enroll" myself as a student in Rosetta Stone. And I have decided it is, essentially, a really interactive, never-ending worksheet with no instructions. It is the best worksheet I have ever had the privilege of filling out. It talks to me, it has colorful pictures, it listens to me, it asks smart questions that guide my learning, and best of all, it tells me when I'm wrong. Immediate feedback is a pretty powerful tool when it comes to teaching. But it is, in the end, a worksheet. It gives a series of examples then asks a series of questions. Maybe it's not Behaviorism, but I can't imagine it's natural language acquisition.

I ordered a book by Stephen Krashen last week. Amazon tells me it will arrive between Mar 18 and April 4. I don't know much about Stephen Krashen, except that he used to teach at USC, and that a really smart lady I used to know studied with him and really believed him. And everything I know about ESL, I learned from her. I have a feeling that Stephen Krashen (back in 1981 when the book was published) will have a thing or two to say about Rosetta Stone.

It's not all bad news, though, guys. Language is hard to learn, as much as we wish that wasn't true. It takes a baby brain 2-4 years to start even figuring the the thing out. And our old, post-pubescent brains just aren't wired for these kinds of complex pattern-recognition problems. We, over time, learn to see what we've learned we need to see. So if we're going to learn language, we need things that will show us what we might not see, and Rosetta Stone will certainly do it better than moving to Italy or China and doing the non-trademarked version of "dynamic immersion". So I take it back. Go ahead and buy Rosetta Stone and use it and grow and learn. It's better than holding out for the yet-to-come perfect language learning program.

Growing Up

Lately, I've been feeling waves of adulthood overcoming me. This afternoon, as I drove down Landis Ave, I thought to myself, "I own this car. I own something that costs a couple thousand dollars and I am 100% responsible for it's welfare." Okay, so not 100% since Michael deals with the car stuff, but if it breaks down or I get into an accident that's on grown-up me and grown-up Michael.

And yesterday at the Doctor's, she and I talked about my cholesterol. I have never had a conversation about my cholesterol before.

And today, I interviewed for another position (long story; I probably won't get it and I'm okay with that) and as said thank you and good bye to my interviewers, I thought about how freaked out I would have been about that this time last year. It was a phone interview over a conference line with a panel of three interviewers. EEEK! But I was okay today, confident in my own skin, unafraid to ask questions and make comments. I don't think I impressed them very well, but I'm okay with that. They might not think much about living in China for two years or planning a year's worth of advertising for a glass manufacturer, but I'm impressed. And I'm impressed that their impression of me doesn't much affect me.

I walked back out to my car to go back to my office (I'd come home for lunch and the interview), and thought to myself, "This is grown up Elena. I like it."

A New Job for Elena

On Monday, I received an offer letter from an organization called PathStone, in reference to the position I had interviewed for two weeks before. And on Monday, I resigned my job at Worldwide Glass Resources, Inc., and I accepted the position at PathStone. I will be an Adult Education Instructor, working with migrant farm workers on ESL, GED, and job readiness training.

Very exciting stuff.

I start March 1.

Trouble, They Say, Comes in Threes

First, the fridge died. I came home to bloody meat, unfrozen frozen pizzas, and warm milk. So Michael called the landlord who said,

Landlord: I can't come until morning.
Michael: Oh. Well, what should we do with the food.
Landlord: Well, it's cold outside. Just put it outside.
Michael: Oh. Um...Okay...

So Michael went to Walmart and bought some Styrofoam coolers and fit what he could in them and put the rest of it on the chairs on the porch. We had frozen pizza for dinner, so Michael went back outside to get it. When he came in, I said:

Me: I just had a thought--can that stuff stay out there overnight? I mean, what about animals and stuff?
Michael: Oh, yeah, we need to figure something out. Let me start the pizza and then I'll deal with the rest of the stuff.

So he started the pizza and went back outside to find a bag of beef cubes (for stew) torn open and pieces of meat and blood on our welcome mat and on the porch! So, we put all the food in the car overnight, and Michael took it with him to work the next morning. The landlord did come the next morning, and we came home to a new fridge that afternoon.

That same day, though, the toilet was beginning to behave the way a person on his or her deathbed might: weak, making strange noises, coughing up things from deep inside... When the landlord came to deal with the fridge, he also brought a plumber with him to check on the toilet. They snaked it and didn't find anything, so the landlord told us just to keep an eye on it. A few days later, we hosted Bible Study at our house and moments before the first knock at the door, the toilet threw up all over the bathroom floor. Thankfully, there was any solid waste involved in the situation, but it didn't exactly make for an atmosphere to receive guests. Michael called the landlord the next morning,

Michael: The toilet overflowed last night.
Landlord: Ugggggghhhh.

He came and inspected it the next day, but told Michael he thought it was fine and to just keep watching it.

One day, shortly after the fridge incident but before the toilet/Bible Study incident, I went to Walmart to do some grocery shopping. I wandered around, taking my time, looking at things I didn't need and picking out some things I don't usually buy. After a while, I proceeded to check out, and the girl at the register scanned all my items and pronounced my total. I reached into my bad to get my wallet and fish out my debit card, except that my debit card was no where to be found. It was, as I instantly recalled, inside my little notebook that I had taken out of my purse to call the real estate agent. So, embarrassed, I asked the girl to cancel my order, I called Michael to bring me my card, and I sat in the Subway inside Walmart waiting for Michael. I am, apparently, not the first Walmart customer to pull such a stunt. When Michael arrived with my card, the girl scanned the canceled receipt and we paid and walked away with our purchases without having to un-bag or re-scan them.

Two out three good endings is not bad if you ask me. Though I'm okay with not having many more troubles.