Teaching Makes you Bipolar

I've always considered myself as one of those girls who usually has her emotions in check. I'm much more likely to try and analyze what I'm feeling rationally. I love my life and am used to being happy every day.

Teaching has thrown a wrench into all of that. My daily mood fluctuates hourly. Up and down like a roller coaster. It's a bizarre experience for me. I have my "good" class in the morning, honors just before lunch which can be good or bad depending on how engaged I can get them and then after they've juiced up on sugar, been outside sweating in PE I get my most "challenging" class. The one that makes me at times want to shout in delight, but mostly has me close to pulling my hair out. I've yet to cry in front of them, yet to cry at all honestly, but it's always a test.

I've turned to music for help. Playing their cds, sometimes mine, is such a motivational tool. Which of course I should have suspected.

I'm not posting very much because I'm working all the time. Really, me, strange I know. And I'm back to traveling on weekends, Seattle to see Josue at the beginning of this month, Phoenix last weekend, Healdsburg last night for a Pirate Prom at Roshambo Winery (man, I love their parties. Grrrrrrr!!!) and next weekend down to Orange County to go to Knott's Berry Farm which becomes Knott's Scary Farm for Halloween. I'm going with the boy (yes, there is a boy in my life now and he kicks ass and likes to travel as much as me) and we're taking his 12 year old nephew and staying with his parents. Yes, I'm meeting the family. No, I'm not scared, really excited actually :)

Is this it? Am I actually returning to grown up status with a responsible job that has a fixed schedule and a salary and a stable relationship?

Strange.

4 years and going strong

Two weekends ago marked the 4th annual gathering of a group of friends. Each year we go to a different city and delight in each others’ company and delicious food prepared by and for each other. So far we’ve seen Seattle, Bend, Oregon, Victoria, BC and now this year, Phoenix, Arizona together. I got a sub, and flew out Thursday night. Friday was spent at the Fairmont’s Willow Stream Spa. It was expensive, I’m not going to lie. But the whole day spent there enjoying the luxury was worth every penny. They have a delightful well, everything. Hot tub (actually that could have been hotter), cold plunge, steam room, dry sauna, room temperature eucalyptus inhalation room and Swiss shower (12 jets set in the wall to spray you from all directions) all for women only. Co-ed outside was a “waterfall treatment pool.” A waist depth pool that was warm with 3 waterfalls of different strengths pouring into it. Stand or kneel under them for a shoulder massage. I could live in one of those. Free muffins in the morning, cookies in the afternoon, iced and hot tea all day. An atrium area that was shaded to relax in, a pool with lounge chairs and trellising. Ah, it was lovely. Everyone should experience spa days at least once a year. We had a slight run in with the food but after I talked with the manager that was taken care of and my pedicure later in the day with a shoulder rub, foot massage and paraffin treatment made me forget all about it. Saturday we hiked Camelback. A short hike at just over a mile but it was straight up. I’m not kidding. It was rough, but rewarding with beautiful views. Then a trip to our favorite spice store Penzey’s. The best part though is having a group of friends who travels to see each other. It was grand. Who knows where we’ll end up next year… San Francisco? Vermont? Atlanta?

SERENITY NOW!

Anyone remember that Seinfeld episode?

Ok, it's been forever since I posted. I know. I've taken a job teaching algebra at a high school in the Mission. I'm also going to school simultaneously to get my teaching credential. And coaching cross country. I sleep very little and spend many hours at schools. But I'm LOVING it. I have so much fun, I love my kids (freshman) and my classes, even the one that's really hard to handle.

Last night, I went out to see the opening night of Serenity, the movie based on the Firefly tv series created by Joss Wheadon. It's so good I'm going to see it again tonight. Loved it. Loved the serires. Thank you, Joss! Even if you haven't seen Firefly, Serenity is still great and I mean great. Yay!!

District Desperation

Everyone talks about the desperate shortage for math and science teachers. I figured it would be a piece of cake to get a job even if I didn't have a credential. Well, that was a bad assumption, I wasn't getting any interviews for "real" teaching jobs. Now that I've applied and am in a credential program and it's two weeks until school starts I've had three offers for interviews. Two of those are with school districts, Oakland's and San Francisco's. I know Oakland is still looking for 4 high school math teachers and "many" middles school math folks. SFUSD is hiring 6 high school teachers. So looks like by the end of this school year, it's highly likely that I will have both my credential in progress as well as a year of teaching under my belt.

And because of this, I will lead a very rough life this next year. Much preparation, because I don't actually have a syllabus made for what a school year of math will look like, and little sleep in preparing for both schools, the one I teach at and the one I attend. Also, since the semster starts Aug 30 this means no Burning Man for me. Which is tragic only because AJ and Adam old great friends are both flying in for their first visits ever to the playa and I will no longer be able to host them. Sad.

Here I go, again on my own

Traveling down the only road I've ever known.

Alright, so I've traveled down many roads, when confronted with a choice I'll always take the one I haven't tried before. Seems like I keep going back to this going to school thing though. And I'm off again. First day of classes is Monday. Me taking the classes. Heading back to school to get my teaching credential. Hopefully I'll also manage to find a school to hire me while I'm getting my credential. I'm going to interview for a teaching job, but that's in the city and school is 12 miles north west of me, ie even further out of san francisco.

I know it will all work out in the end, I trust in this. But I'm a bit concerned at this point. I'm constantly questioning the decisions, spontaneous choices I make in life. Really, in the end, I want to travel, eat good food, learn new things. Share my knowledge.

I need to write more about Korea, especially the food and drinks I had. But I haven't had time nor desire to do so yet. Been spending all my time at this maching looking at different job postings and financial aid places.

What to do, what to do?

I've been applying for all kinds of math teaching jobs. I've even had a few interviews, though none have led to a job. Seems as though every math teaching position requires a credential. Do I go back to school? Again? Do I spend the money (that I now don't have) again? Do I really want to be a teacher? In being here, teaching every day, 7 hours a day (of the same kids) I do love it. I wake up ready and energized everyday (though, honestly needing a beer or two by the end of the day on Thursday, but hell I made it to Thursday). I don't like teaching English though, this much is for sure. I want to be teaching math. I want my summers to travel. I should just go ahead and do it. Fill out my FAFSA and make sure that I can get government loans to do it. Start applying for math teaching scholarships. Ones that don't lock me into being in the United States so that when I have my credential I can go teach abroad. Wish me luck.

And check again with me in a week, maybe I'll have changed my mind.

Abortions Tickle

There was a girl wearing a shirt that pictured a 1950's looking cartoon of one woman whispering in another's ear. The caption reads "Abortions Tickle." Why do I write about this? An observation on Korean abuses of English? The dicotamy that exists in teaching English and how well does a person ever truly know a second language unless they are raised with it. All day long this girl was getting gasps of horror from the Western teachers, but how do we explain the intrinsicness of why this is so painfully wrong? Do we even bother to try?

Personally, I never actually saw the shirt. If I did though, I would have been hard pressed to think in simple enough English my thoughts conveying why I don't like her shirt.

This is a bit of a struggle I've found even in teaching ESL for a mere two weeks. Already I feel my vocabulary diminshing. I fight against it, I try my best not to "dumb myself down" in front of my kids. But it's hard, I lose sentences when I talk to them. I refer to them as "Emily Teacher's class." I'm giving them a vocab quiz of 15 words tomorrow. All of them we've learned through class room discussions. I'm trying to get them talking as much as possible as that's what I was told my job would be, improving their spoken English fluency. However, us teachers just learned that the parents were told their students would have learned 900 new words by the end of the 3 weeks. If you're keeping county that's 300 words/week or 60/day. Imagine trying to RETAIN 60 new words of a language a day. Um, yeah, right.

Teacher, are you a gangster?

I've had my favorite moment thus far in teaching Korean kids. Today I was asked if I'm a gangster! Apparently the majority of people with tattoos are also in the mafia here. It was great fun talking about it with my students. I have new students now, my kids left as their program was only one week and I took over a junior's level class for a teacher who had a family emergency and needed to leave. It works perfectly as he'll return the day I have to head back to Seoul for my flight home.

Pancakes!

I taught my kids how to make pancakse today and also how to say fractions by showing them the recipe. We couldn't find any baking powder so I just left it out, but added in bits of chocolate. They were a hit, "Teacher, delicious!" I heard over and over. Then I gave them a word search, without the words, and they worked in groups and were spelling and pronouncing the hard letters (r and l). What a great day! And lunch had raw veggies and seaweed/cucumber soup. Yum, finally healthy food! Although the kids were really confused, "Teacher, no bap (rice)?" And of course, I don't want to tell the girls that eating the rice will make me fat, so I just tell them that I'm not used to it for every meal, which is of course true.

Ooh, and on the topic of food last night we had chop chey, potato starch noodle. Delicious!

English Camp

Here I am with my kids. I'm the head in the sand. We took them to the beach yesterday. Yep, we're walking distance from the East Sea (call it the Sea of Japan and you might get kicked).

My experiences here have ranged from pleasant to nightmare-ish. I was led to believe my kids knew written and general spoken English and that I would be here to help them with they're spoken English as in school they are usually taught by Koreans. However, I've got a few kids who speak no English. Which would be fine if they all didn't, but I've got some who have a working knowledge of the language. I think it's frustrating across the board. Beyond that they aren't interested in lessons, they only want to play games. They don't work well in groups and one is especially disruptive. Ah, young adults. Really, what this has done has firmed up my suspicion that I want to work with older kids. Mine here are between 9-12 years old.

Oh, but I think I witnessed first flirtings today, one of my girls hit a boy! Normally, the two sexes avoid contact like the plague.

Signs, signs everywhere NEON signs

First impressions of Korea:

- In the bathroom in the airport they have "etiquette bells" which of course I had to press. It makes fake flushing noises.

- Going into Seoul from Incheon (where the International airport is) all you see is neon. Arriving into the small town of Sokcho where the camp is, population 90,000 all you see is neon.

- My first meal was in the airport waiting for Matthew, I got a hot pot of veggies and tofu. By hot pot, they mean a very hot stone pot that keeps the food boiling, literally for minutes, and there by way to hot to eat for many, many minutes. It came with a side of minature brined shrimp.

The Time Traveler's Wife

Joy went on and on about this book. Chris lent it to me on Thursday to take on my flight. I connected through Vancouver (which actually ended up being over night so I got to see both Linda and Martin!) and was finished before I even boarded the plane for Seoul.

This is such a moving, deeply romantic, well written book. I'm so sad that it's over, I can't stop thinking about the characters. As the title suggests it's about a time traveler and his wife. That's all I'm going to say about it. Read it.

Quandry

I never got confirmation from Matthew this morning that he caught his flight from Chicago to San Francisco and then from SF to Seoul. I'm in Incheon Airport waiting on him. I at least know that he tried to make it to the airport this morning, I presume he managed to rescue his passport, complete with Korean visa from the post office this morning.

The problem is, that if he didn't make the flight, then I'm spending 2.5 hours at the airport when I could be traveling up towards Sokcho. We'll see what happens.

I'm thrilled to be here. I've never felt more secure in a random travel deciscion than this. I'm excited to be working with kids, helping share my quirkyness in a way that helps them learn spoken English complete with all it's idoms and figures of speech.

I'm still waiting to hear back about teaching jobs I interviewed for before I left. The last was with Unity High School a bad ass charter school that I would love to work at. I went in and taught a quick twenty minute lesson on factoring trinomials and the kids were left to evaluate me. I also interviewed at Maybeck HS for a part time job that would most likely require me to work another job (bookstore?) but would be a great start for me to get some experience. I also sent in my application to Project Pipeline which is a teaching while earning your credential program which provides the training on weekends spread out over two years and is considerably cheaper than any University credential program I've found.

Who knows what this life holds for me? I'm waiting patiently to see what manifests and as always, just going with the flow.

Egads!!!

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by my life and my own spontinatity. I have returned from Atlanta feeling sorry for my mom who is still entertaining and housing two of her sisters and two of said sister's kids. She and my dad will get their lives back on Saturday.

I've been studying for the Math CSET. I was in an internet cafe today along with three other people who were studying as well. One is a math teacher who's taking the Geometry heavy test (subtest II) again because he failed the first time by three points. I'm taking subtests I and II tomorrow. Am I ready? I've never been good at studying. I've done more than usual this time, but I'm sure the statistics and "foundations" of algebra will still throw me.

And in the midst of all this I've had an interview at a private school for an Algebra II teacher position (went well, fingers crossed) and bought a plane ticket to Korea! Egads. I leave on the 21st, less than a week. I'll be gone until August 10th, spending the time their teaching English, which of course, I've never done before. Sometimes, I amaze myself with my hutzpah.

Family

My mom is one of 10. Her side of the family has gathered from my grandmother's 80th birthday. We had 40-some people at my mom's house yesterday. A motley crew of aunts, uncles (14), cousins (12), spouses of cousins (3), 1st cousins once removed (1), great aunts and uncles (3), and of course my parents and sister were along as well. Yowza. If I ever get married, I think I'll be eloping. Actually, it's been great to see everyone, but we don't really have so much to talk about as we're very different. Most of the cousins that are here are 10 years old or under. The older ones are all married and live in either Ohio or Buffalo, NY. And as we all know, I'm an introvert, I don't handle large groups of people well.

The tattoo hasn't even been that big of a deal and it's been revealed that one of my mom's sisters has a couple as well. The one who also just bought a new Mustang, midlife crisis anyone? The hardest part has been explaining to everyone what it is I do, or don't as it may be. Thankfully, I've had the CSET to study for, so every day I leave for a couple of hours to brush up on my math. Like right now... hmm, maybe I should get back to that, because really, does anyone remember off the top of their head vector math? Multiplying vectors by matrices? Yeah, neither do I.

God and Cafes

I've been searching for cafes with free wifi. Yesterday I was at Cambridge Coffee in a booming strip mall district in Alpharetta, Georgia. However, their wifi was spotty at best. Today, I'm right down the street at a Port City Java spitting distance from my folks' house. When you're in Georgia you use words like folks apparently. Today's wireless is everything it should be, strong and clear. The similarities in the two places are that both include tables of people talking about god. Yesterday was a women's group trusting in god to make their marriages better. Today it's a father and two sons, one named Roman. He's lecturing them about what god will do or take away from you. And I quote the father, "If you see a homeless person lying on the street and you don't give them money what does this mean? It means that one day god might take away all your money." He asks the kids questions, when the younger one resonds with elaborate stories the father continually says, "now, don't get carried away." Right, because god doesn't like you to have an imagination either.

Now I know I'm coming across as all high and mighty. No, I don't have kids. I have no idea how I will teach them about what I think is right and wrong. Sure, I think the 10 commandments are a good set of rules, but I'm not going to present them as these things that "god said to moses." This man is continually using scare tactics on 10 and 12 year old kids. Ugh.

Life Goals

On my flight to Austin yesterday, I started writing. I'm in a place where I'm constantly analyzing mylife, where it is, where it's going. Who I am, who I want to be. I started a list, I like to list.

Life goals:

work with math
use my brain
live sustainably
work for the greater good
have a big permaculture yard with a small earthen built house
travel (even more)
learn to spin wool
have a partner in crime
teach more summer camp
share food from my garden
learn to be an organic farmer
take time to live
learn more about wine

How to do this? What to do? I like the idea of teaching in public schools. Of being part of the solution. We clearly have a lack of math and science teachers. I love math. I want to share this love of math, of being geeky with kids. I want to share my experiences throughout the world with them. Though I learned about other countries in my history classes, it wasn't until I traveled to them that they became tangible something outside of the paper. I want to take kids abroad. How can I do this? Where do I start?

Then of course there's the food and sustainable living. Is this something that will just become part of my existance, something that's a day to day, or is this something I should work at as well. I need to start volunteering with the places that didn't hire me. Get experience, be part of their organizations.

How I do it...

An annonymous commenter (why are you scared of me knowing who you are?) asked how I live my life, am I independently wealthy? Trust fund baby? Living off credit cards? Nope, none of the above. When I graduated from Rice, I had a high paying job for 18 months and I saved almost every penny. I've been really fortunate as I don't have any school debt. My parents put me through school, something I probably don't thank them for enough. I put myself through culinary school with my savings. It is very important for me to live debt free. I use my credit card (how else would one buy plane tickets over the internet??) but pay it off every month. I live a simple life, my biggest expenses are food and travel, though right now as we're still searching for a new housemate, rent is ranking really high up there. My car is paid off. And last Christmas my grandparents gave each of their grandkids a sizeable chunk of change which I immediately put into the bank. So I've been catering some to supplement and living off my savings. The time for all this non-work though is ending. By August, I want to be working full time and saving money again, so that I can continue to travel. The what's, how's and why's of my life are still being worked out, but that will follow in my next post.

Blog Chainletter

I hate chain letters. With a passion. Typically I throw them out, even if they are from good friends. However, this one is easy enough. But I'm not passing it on. It doesn't even ask me to, so prehaps it's not a chain letter. More of a questionaire, so here goes.

1. Total number of cookbooks I’ve owned: I'm not at home, so I can't give an accurate count. And since it has the past tense, I'm sure I'll forget some that I've given away. I'd say the number is around 20 or so.

2. Last cookbook(s) I bought: Blue Ball Book of Preserving.

3. Last cookbook I read: Part of the Fog City Diner cookbook. Love the restaurant, think I'd love the book.


4. Five cookbooks that mean a lot to me:
a. Lebanese Cooking - reminds me of my grandmother.
b. Stop and Smell the Rosemary: It always makes me think of my dear friend Rebecca. Plus the pictures are beautiful and the recipes are always a success.
c. Enchanted Broccoli Forest: my first introduction to vegetarian cooking and hippy living.
d. American Pie: another book I was introduced to by Rebecca. I love Peter Reinhart, his passion for food and willingness to try pizza throughout the world inspires me to do something similar.
e. Baking with Julia: yay, Julia!

5. Which 5 people would you most like to see fill this out in their blog? I must admit, I rarely read other peoples' blogs religiously. The only one I really do is Linda's and she's already done this.

Ok, done. Linda, I hope you're happy ;)

Job Perks

No, I don't have "real" job yet. The second interview (which I was told was just a formality) for the Global Footprint job, that I wasn't really all that excited about, got cancelled on me as I flew home from Vegas. Such is life. I just keep keep on keepin' on. I've been sending out more resumes and actually have an interview tomorrow with Making Waves a non-profit that supplements education and life in general in one of the statistically poorest areas of the East Bay, Richmond. I'd be teaching high school math, Geometery, Algebra and Calculus, oh my! And it's a program that I find fascinating. More about it after the interview though.

In the meantime, I haven't just been sitting at home eating bon bons. I've been working with Stir Catering, mostly doing front of the house (carrying trays of food, serving drinks, setting up buffets) stuff and I'm loving it. Being the natural flirt that I am, the people interaction is fun. On Monday and Tuesday I was at Lawrence Berkeley Labs where there was a conference being held on Dark Matter. There, I met some mathematical modeling people and sent a resume off today. Who knows what may come of it, but it was a neat connection. I also came home that night with two flank steaks and 4 chicken legs. Yesterday, we were at the SF MOMA doing food for a New Zealand wine tasting event. From that I came home with 8 bottles of wine! Which was as much as I could carry to the BART station. If only I'd driven!