I Only Live Here

"It's her house, you just happen to live there."

This was the response I received several years ago after battling a silent weekly battle with my first maid.  I felt that my short white socks should be kept in the same drawer with my work-out attire.  I never really wore them at any other time than on runs and trips to the gym so that made perfect sense to me.  The Help, however, felt my socks would rather reside next to my equally white t-shirts, a few drawers away.

She eventually won.

Today I got my first visit from my new maid.  I am convinced there is a maid handbook replete with universal advise for how the employer should be living.

Allow me to take you on tour of my first-day-after discoveries...

Exhibits A & B: I believe a ruler was used.  All items perfectly aligned to the edges and each other?  Check.  Evenly distributed with equal parts space and materials?  Check.  Coasters precision fanned?  Check.

(Why my camera charger and US cell phone need to be on my night stand I can not yet answer.)

Exhibit C: Let the war begin.  I understand needing to clean the glass.  However, dropping the used wine corks down into the vase so that they are all standing upright requires both skill and time.  I tried.  We'll see how long this battle can be kept up; the number of corks will only grow so this could get interesting!

Exhibit D: Well, "Olá!" new potted plant on my kitchen table!  Where did you come from?  I guess my apartment was not as aesthetically pleasing as it should heave been.  My apologies. 

Exhibit E: The other war.  These glass storage containers - coffee, sugar, rice, and oats - were lined up single-file along the back counter wall when I left for work.  Now they are interpreting the ancient pyramids.  What if I don't want to eat oats next?  

Exhibit "pièce de résistance": The Code of the Unadorned Nail.  To quote the International Maid Handbook, "Leave no metal protrusion of the wall naked when you leave the residence.  Any object would be fortunate to have the elevated vantage point of a picture frame or coat hook and should be displayed with pride."


"I don't know why Bananagrams is hanging from my bedroom wall," I will tell future visitors to my apartment, "I only live here."

School House Rock

Following the brief (by no fault other than its own) city tour, I now present to you minha escola:

Upper School computer, math, and science classrooms.
The large pine trees to the left are the school's mascot's namesake: Go Giants!

Hallway outside my classroom.

The front half of my beautifully spacious classroom. 

The back lab half of my classroom.  (Complete with busy little 6th graders!)

The rest of the Upper School campus.

The bottom of campus: picnic area, cafeteria, gymnasium, playing fields...

There are monkeys on campus too.  Little tiny ones.  One of these days I hope to have a camera on hand to catch one in action.  Photos from the tree top canopies don't do the little simians justice.

Small Victories

August 20th marks one month in Brazil and two weeks of middle school under my belt.  This is, in actuality, an enormous victory...but that isn't what this post is about.  Huge victories don't just happen; they are composed of many smaller ones.  Let's celebrate...a little:

• A seventh grader informed me that he told his grandmother that "my science teacher is punk."  (Why this conversation was going down with his old bitty and not some other relative was moot.)  That's all it takes these days: a wrist tattoo and an out of control faux-hawked do.   I'll take it.

• I gave my sixth graders serrated knives on the their first lab activity.  Hashtag: callmecrazy Hashtag: raisingthebar Hashtag: everyoneleftwithtenfingers

• The Korean kids at my school often speak to each other in their native tongue.  Which is why every time I hear them say "hello," I involuntarily laugh a little and half expect this guy (pictured) to show up. (If you have never seen "Arrested Development," never mind.  Also, go watch it.)  It seriously never gets old.

• My sixth grade math-teaching colleague informed me that some of the boys were attempting to spike their hair in class, asking each other, "Do I look like Mr. Stetson?"  Also, thats what they call me.  (Between us, I need a haircut badly; its getting a little out of control up there.  Glad someone's impressed!)

• On the Portuguese-language front, the proper nouns, prepositions, and pronunciations make me bang my head on the table but at least I'm killing the verb conjugations (present and past tenses)!

• Bought wall paint for my apartment, joined a gym, and replaced my watch battery all without using any English!  Full disclosure: there was no Portuguese used either; thank you, español!

And this is why they're called "small victories."

Positive Thinking

Remember back when you were in elementary school and the one true thing you wanted to know more than anything after a teacher assigned any piece of work was...

Does this need to be in complete sentences?

The worst, right?  Welcome to Portuguese.

You can't answer my opening question with a simple "yes."  The verb must be involved in all cases affirmative.  Você se lembra? (Do you remember?) is then answered Sim, me lembro. (Yes, I remember.)

It's like every fourth grader's worst nightmare realized: you must answer in complete sentences FOREVER.

Except for the negative.  Then you can just say no.  

Você gosta?  

Não.

An Alfajore A Day...

Adjusting to a new locale can be difficult.  Finding small pieces of home can make the transition easier. "Home" in this case has more to do with an old favorite and less to do with bygone stomping grounds.

Bottom line: Brazil has alfajores.  They may not be springing from the shadows at every turn like Gotham muggers, as they do in Argentina, but I can find them when I need one.

Usually Tuesdays and Thursdays after Portuguese class the necessity hits...

Out of My Element

I taught some of my students the "awkward turtle" today.  I felt, after three days, it was time.
It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with me surviving a year teaching the younger end of middle school.

For the uninitiated, you put both of your hands out in front of you, one in front of the other, fingers together, thumbs outstretched to the sides and wriggling.  (Some prefer their "turtles" upside down.  Others like turkeys, but now we're getting ahead of ourselves.)

I did this after a 7th grade girl, looking for a way to convey "things in general" used the portuguese word bainha.  In Spanish this slang would be translated as vaina and is pronounced "vye-nah."  The portuguese pronunciation keeps the starting v sound, but adds a syllable, then simaltaneously emphasizes and changes the i into a long e.  Let's just say that I wasn't the only one in class who thought this 13-year-old was suddenly speaking of female genitalia.

Enter the awkward turtle.  I'm going to need it.

6th and 7th grade has to be the strangest time of life.  "Hormones with legs," an ex-colleague of mine once said.  "Fly them all to the moon and bring them back when they hit high school" was the way my mother put it.  Both are accurate.

Somehow this school year I've got to teach them the generals of the life sciences.  Appropriately enough I have to introduce chemistry; I've already got a giant periodic table hanging in the front of the classroom.  I'm going to need to review a bit, but even I know that hormones are far to complex to appear anywhere on there.

(There are also the two health classes but I'm going to pretend they don't exist at the moment.  I may lay awake all night if I think about those too much.)

Nevertheless, overall it has been a good first week.  While my career up to this point has been breaking ninth graders of middle school habits, I see some bright spots ahead:

• Sixth graders ask an impossible number of questions - no, it doesn't matter if you buy the 100 page versus the 120 page notebook - but they are still enthusiastic about participating and I have never had this many hands raised at one time before, even if I had been asking something painfully obvious like "who has a head?"
• Seventh graders are weird.  They look weird.  They act weird.  They laugh at weird things.  They have no idea why they are laughing at those weird things yet know on some level their laugh has to be more over-the-top than the person who laughed before them, even though they both seem to be aware that both laughs are contrived and yet they don't know why or how to stop.  At the very least, my dumbest jokes are hysterical.
• Both groups are still terrified of the beast known as "tardy."  Yesterday I had nearly the entirety of my first period class in their seats...with fifteen minutes yet for the bell would ring.  This is in direct opposition to the seniors whose lockers are located outside my classroom.  The visual juxtaposition of the seasoned veterans cooly strolling from here to there, internalized clocks set to arrive at their destination just as the bell chimes, with the scurrying rookies, overloaded with giant backpacks, papers haphazardly flying away, weaving in and out of the upper-classmen as if they were mere traffic cones in an obstacle course, kills me on a daily basis.

Regardless, pending all day with this age group is surreal; it's both familiar and foreign.  Like going to your regular grocery store at two o'clock in the afternoon on a random Tuesday.  It's the same store, just that now it is also doubling as some sort of senior citizen social club and there are significantly more stockers and less cashiers.  And is it brighter too?  It seems brighter.

I was more nervous beginning this school year than I was my first year teaching.  Or student teaching, actually.  My principal came into my room within the first five minutes of the first period on the first day.  And then he sat down and watched.  The worst.  

But I'll survive.  I've got my awkward turtle.  

Sites Seen

I'm going to be head-over-heels busy this year so fortunately/unfortunately my new city has little to offer in terms of true tourist draws.

Bem-vindo á Campinas!
Notice the churrascaria at the bottom?  Brazilians love their meat!

Jockey Club building.
It is located in the Centro district near some popular night spots and
a plaza with a statue in honor of Carlos Gomes, a famous opera
composer from the 1800's and native son to the city.
Also, it is blue.

The Municipal Market: a good place to get fresh produce, meats, and
other possibly off-the-back-of-a-truck consumer items.

Officially known as Parque Portugal, most residents
call it Taquaral, after the lake at the center.  This is a
good-sized park, which I have adopted as my main
running area.  Nice wide dirt paths around the lake,
coupled with good lighting at night and lots of
fellow runners, makes this a great place to work out.
There are also swan paddle boats (seen pictured at
the lower left) as well as caged peacocks and herds
 of loose feral cats (not pictured).

And that basically concludes the city tour!   There are several sites of interest a short drive outside Campinas, but there is a clear reason the city appears no where in the most recent edition of The Lonely Planet: Brazil.

Regardless, I am living in one of the more interesting and vibrant neighborhoods, full of boutiques, cafés, bakeries, markets, restaurants - Japanese, Argentine, Italian, German - and parks, so having an interesting social life is within walking distance at all times.

Stay tuned...