The Wire

So, I started to do one of the things I promised myself I wouldn't do: watch The Wire.
I wasn't going to watch, because I didn't want it to color my perceptions of Baltimore before I even got here. Like New Haven, Baltimore has a reputation. More so than New Haven, Baltimore's seems deserved. It's something of a standing joke, apparently, that New Haven talks a good game (of having a seedy reputation) but it's really a walk in the park compared to Baltimore. So far, my observations line up with that theory. There is a ton of theft, lots of muggings, car thefts, everything. It seems like a solid 60-75% of students have been the victim of a crime while they've been here. Like Yale, JHU takes security seriously, and we have a huge security force of mostly former BPD officers, as well as a hired security company and the BPD. It's pretty intense; my landlady keeps talking about how the slumlords who live two blocks away bring in riff-raff to the area (and she's not kidding or exaggerating). Almost every night, you see BPD helicopters. I thought they were news or traffic helicopters, or maybe taking people to the hospital. Turns out they use searchlights and go street by street looking for the bad guys.
Anyway, maybe watching The Wire still isn't a good idea. I think it's making me jumpy!

I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed

My gym just wrapped up a summer fitness auction promotion. Basically, for the past month or so, you could rack up gym dollars by doing gym-related things, like going to the gym and group fitness classes, or by buying gym-related products, like personal training sessions, tanning, massages, memberships, etc. Being a practical marketing promotion, you got a lot more "money" from buying stuff than from working out.


The big auction is tomorrow night, so they released the money totals today. Guess who came in third place, just $4 behind second place? And without buying a single gym-related product?

Yup. Me! I have so much free time, thanks to lack of take home work and other extracurriculars to keep me busy, that I'm hitting up TurboKick, Ab Lab, Pilates, and Cardio Kickbox several times a week. It's kind of sad that I have nothing better to do, but my guns are near what they were at my DM-ing peak, and if I stretch and flex and kinda squint, I almost have abs!

I was gonna skip tomorrow's auction, but now I'm going because I feel like I stand a chance to win a prize. There's a casino night beforehand. Should I sit on my winnings in hopes of winning a small prize, or should I try to multiply/risk my winnings on the blackjack tables and go for the grand prize trip to Vegas?

China

Hello World, from Hong Kong!

3 things:

1. We are in Hong Kong for just a couple more days, and then we all split to our respective schools. Chris is going to Changsha, spicy-food central! Annie is going to Xiuning, rural rural rural (and poor).


2. There are apparently shops that sell bread in the shape of different types of butts.


3. Last night we ate pigeon heads.


For realsies...
Chris and I both teach middle schoolers (American high school freshmen), and last week, we taught a practice lesson together. Let's just say... it was a learning experience. Things didn't exactly go the way we planned. We asked our "students" (aka our fellow Fellows) to act like 14-year-old, beginning English speakers. As a result, we had to work with unexpected discipline issues or timely questions. For example, when we asked the "students" to read their sentences aloud, a girl raised her hand and asked, "uh-lowed, like permission?" So we had to stop our lesson to explain the difference between aloud and allowed--an important distinction, but multiplied by 20... not so good for productivity.

We received pretty good feedback for our intentions and what we did accomplish. We showed "Lifted," the Pixar short (which preceded Wall-e) about two aliens trying to abduct a farmer. Our lesson was about the effectiveness of non-verbal communication. I talked a little about sign language, and Chris talked about Paul Eckman's finding of the six universal emotions (Psych 110 flashback!). Our last activity was supposed to be basically scenes from a hat, and the students had to act out the scenes without dialogue. It would have been fun, but we ran out of time! C'est la vie.

We send our love! Expect posts about our new lives after we get settled into the next two years!

Love,
Chris and Annie

Homeward bound...and pics of me as a surfer dude!

Well, sort of. Still no action shots of me catching a sick open-face wave, then cruising down the barrel while flippin' under the lip like there's no tomorrow as it breaks right on my tail. That would be gnarly, dude. But I did get my (really cute and chill and I-totally-developed-a-crush-on-her-in-the-hour-she-was-there*) substitute surfing instructor to snap some glamor shots of me with the board.

*Note to the teachers: unless you're teaching surfing, it's probably not best to show up to class in a bikini. Your students will love you, but not necessarily for the right reasons...






Also note the length of the surfboard...they call it a LONGboard for a reason.
Hope that (temporarily) satisfies the requests for surfer pics, and I'll keep working on the sick nasty stunt surfer photos:-)


In other news, I'm flying back to the East Coast on Saturday! I spend one week at home, then begins the two-week epic road trip from NJ to Cali. (OK, maybe not as EPIC with all caps as Carly and Monica's, but still far more epic than any road trip I've done.) And I just booked plane tickets for The Game! I won't be getting to the Have until after midnight that Friday night though, so you all better plan on merrily carousing well into the night...

Much '09 <3 all around,
Andrew

Annie and I are Yiqi

"Yiqi" means together.

It is fun times.

We also taught together today. It was special. I'll tell more after a night of sleep and an Annie by my side.

Also, we move to my schools in less than a week. Psyched!

-cy

I'm Pretty Sure...

...that Ned and I live a block from a gay black biker bar. It's hard to tell since it's in a crappy building with boarded up windows and a unassuming black door with a very faded "Open after 4pm, ID required" once printed on it. I mean, who would put a gay black biker bar sandwiched between an auto repair garage and a black dance club called "Lux Lounge?"

I guess there's really only one way to find out (*finger on nose*).

Names

My students do not know my name, and I am not doing much better. Top contenders of the last few days:
"Miss Always" (OK, fair)
"Miss Hallway" (never heard that before)
"Hey music teacher lady!" (hey now.)
"Mr. Alway" (my personal favorite)

Meanwhile, I have 450 names to learn and I'm not making much progress. 450 is a lot of kids! I think I pretty much win the "oooh I have soooo many students" game, all the time. The sheer number of sweet (ish) innocent (ish) little (ish) children is complicated by the fact that they have extremely unusual names, Mississippi accents, and squeaky little voices. Also sometimes they lisp. And they mumble. Is it any wonder, then, that I can't tell Quadarrius from Quintarrius?

Still, though, life is good. I have been, variously:

• amazed that at least 60% of my fifth and sixth graders could identify a recording as B.B. King (who was born right down the road in Indianola, you see)
• appalled that no one in a fourth grade class could recognize the national anthem
• quite pleased when those same fourth graders COULD in fact recognize it today, retaining the knowledge that I taught them last week
• surprised that, when I put on the recording I was going to use to work with my fifth graders on clapping a steady beat, they spontaneously began clapping on beats 2 and 4, with no prompting from me. Seeing my surprised look: "Oh, Miss, we be clappin' like that in church!" Aaaaah. Awesome!
  

Also, today was an especially good day because I did not have to mop up urine (which I did yesterday, with my foot and some paper towels, whilst continuing to explain what a composer was AND comforting the crying source of said urine, all at the same time. Let no one say that teachers don't have to multitask). My life is silly.