what are we doing here?

Greg, a volunteer down in Punta Arenas, has a wonderfully-titled and well-written post called "The Novelty Has Simply Worn Off."

In this situation, I never expected to be an afterthought. At that point, it feels like we're all kind of missing the point of me being here. I came to make kids excited about English, to expose teachers to new ideas of how to teach and to exchange cultural experiences and traditions with my family and community. As we press on through these last weeks, I feel that much of that has been tossed out the window. I'm not the new, exciting person that just showed up one day. I'm just part of the scenery now which certainly represents my cue to find an exit.

I see what he's talking about: I've been part of the routine at INSUCO for a while now. Two things strike me about that:

1. It's inevitable. Novelty is unsustainable by definition.
2. It's a good thing.

The lack of novelty means that everyone has changed and adjusted. My kids are used to me! I'm pretty offbeat even for a North American, so it took some time. We have really good relationships, where they like me (with one conspicuous exception) and know I care about them. I've adapted to them, sure, but I didn't have as far to go, because I have no experience with large groups of 15-year olds, so if they happened to be Chilean, well, whatever.

They, on the other hand, had to adjust to me, who:

• Required them to participate: to talk and stand up and move around.
• Forbade cell phones and eating in class.
• Checked to make sure they understood stuff.
• Took time to make them say things when they had trouble.
• Didn't make them--didn't let them--write anything down.
• Had no compunction about doing silly dances or making chicken noises in class.

That's all completely different from their experience, where they have to shut up and copy stuff down all the time and they get to check out and eat and wander around the room. And Chilean teachers do not, as a rule, make chicken noises.

And I got to be the Non-Parental Adult Who Cares. I tried to see them and accept them for who they are, while I push them to do things they were embarrassed about, and encourage them to act as adult as they can manage.

The WorldTeach orientation set my expectations pretty well. English education here is broken five ways from Sunday, and I had no illusions that I could fix it, fight it, or even teach a whole ton of English. This, for example, is what we've done this semester: 41 words and 4 questions/responses.

What they learned with me won't help them on their standardized test, the SIMCE, which is unfortunately the government's metric for success. Even if they gave the authority to rewrite the school's curriculum--which would include revolutionizing their structure so that students could be grouped by level instead of a random set of 45 kids all having the same classes--I don't know anywhere near enough about ESL/EFL education to know what to do.

I don't know that any of my kids are more motivated about English now; honestly, I doubt it. But they know they can learn at least a little bit of it, and that some random person from far away showed up and cared enough to help them do it, and to me that's the important thing.

*creak*

I'm on the cusp of getting sick, but at least it's familiar: an out-of-balance post-nasal drip from all the sugar and bread and, lately, more alcohol. The interesting new thing is a bit of vertigo from some clogged in the ears. There's a chance I won't get full-on sick; if I could choose what to eat, I could definitely ward it off. But if I could do that, I probably wouldn't have gotten to this state.

The clock is ticking down: 10 days until Anna visits, 3 weeks more of teaching after that, and then I'm back in the U.S. 3 weeks after that.

I've been watching myself--I'm a Buddhist, it's what we do--and it suddenly struck me yesterday or today that I don't actually like the person I am here. It's hard to stay open-hearted when it doesn't seem to matter; it's hard to listen when people don't seem to listen in return, or notice that you're listening to them. And it's even harder for me to do all that when I'm basically out of energy and stumbling through the end of teaching. And while I will continue to proclaim to disbelieving audiences how miserable Anna makes me, the truth is that with her I can completely relax and really easily be, and time spent with her helps me be open and patient with everyone else.

So here, after all these months, I'm sort of a dried-up, more self-protective version of my usual self. My concentration and attention are diminished, though still recognizably mine; my physical responses, for example in aikido, are a little delayed, a little ragged. My body's energy doesn't last: I can't do much exercise except for aikido. Everything about me is working less smoothly than when I came.

Then again, I'm not sure what I expected. I wanted to stress myself with a completely different kind of challenge and experience, far outside my comfort zone, so in retrospect, it's pretty unreasonable to imagine I could live through that with the same level of grace and openness that I have when I arrange my life just the way I like it.

I will, as Anna puts it, "re-inflate" when I get back to the U.S., and open up into someone different than I was before.

hitting the wall

I'm feeling less emotionally volatile, but with that comes the clarity that I am out of people-energy. Since I got here 7 months ago, I have been on-on-on go-go-go pretty much nonstop. First I was engaging with my fellow WorldTeach volunteers, then my students and host family and teachers...and that hasn't really let up. Nowhere do I have the kind of space to recharge that I have at home, because at home even my work (software development) provides me with a lot of quiet time.

Now I have that feeling that I used to get after helping to host my first 6-hour cocktail party at my old house in Oakland: I'm done, I need a break, I have nothing left. Pushing too much farther will be on borrowed energy.

Marcela is out for the week with tonsillitis, so there's a sub named Llorca. So far this week I've asked her to take 3 classes, out of mental fatigue and not having a good lesson ready, and leaving early for a school-related funeral today. It's not a big deal for her because taking the entire class is what she was expecting, and in fact I think it screws things up for both of us when I take half the class: Marcela plans lessons for a smaller group, and understands that I can't take the kids for 70 minutes. So I think I will actually ask her about it, with an eye toward my not teaching the rest of the week.

Then, too, it's time to give the kids a test, which is at least a 3-week project--more strategies for stumbling through the end of my teaching time.

the week so far

Anna made it home safe, with a long list of non-catastrophic travel mishaps. This was all easier with her here.

You can tell you're settled in Chile when the Mandarin teacher at school (who's Chinese) can no longer understand your Spanish because of your Chilean accent.

1-B today decided to reach into territory normally occupied by 1-G, with a similar but seemingly spontaneous refusal to do the choral repetition when I said anything. Still burned out from 1-G yesterday, I stopped and sat for a minute, and we talked briefly. Unlike 1-G, they were able to communicate that they're bored with the routine, and to the extent they listened to what I said, they were surprised to learn that the exercises I'm willing to try with them are severely limited by their behavior.

Teenagers are idiots.

I said I'd try and do something else, and they said they'd behave for it, and we got at least a little bit done with the lesson I had. I was incredibly happy to see 1-C afterward, which is virtually trouble-free. They also learn so fast and so well that I can hold the reins pretty loose with them, which feels nice. I gave them candy at the end of class just to say "Thank you" for being awesome.

(Of course, that led to them begging for another piece, which I refused, but Sonia G. actually offered to buy some, which was just sort of weird. It's a kind of candy called Frugele, and it is incredibly delicious, but it's shocking how it reduces students to begging like starving street urchins.)

There's a teacher protest on Thursday! I was pretty pleased with myself for being able to pick that out of the union president's speech before confirming it with my friend Sara. Classes stop at 10am so the teachers can go protest in the street, which means I don't have any classes. I'll go skulk around downtown and take pictures from a safe distance and try to avoid getting hit with water cannons.

Another day.

roundup

Anna countdown: 3 days.

There was a partial student stoppage today, of just the third-years, followed by the fourth-years. I'm not entirely sure what it was about, because I didn't have the patience to try and communicate with people, but at the very least, there's a teacher they really don't like, and they barricaded themselves inside a classroom to say so. There is also an all-day student protest tomorrow, which is nice since I get to both not get up early, and not teach, neither of which I'm a big fan of this week. I do need a haircut, and a replacement phone, since mine disappeared on the trip home this afternoon.

I went and saw Inception on Sunday. Several of my friends have raved about it, and I wanted to see it before someone spoiled the ending (which is perfectly reasonable to do maybe 4 weeks after theatrical release). It is a fine film, and I recommend it: good acting, good script (mostly), stunning special effects. It's a realized original vision, I guess, and engrossing. I found the lack-of-resolution ending to be unsurprising. I don't think it's a super-shiny amazing thing, but maybe if I were into "let's think about levels of reality" philosophical wankery, rather than a "sit down, shut up, watch your breath, reality will become apparent" spiritual practice, I might find it more compelling.

When I got here I started watching True Blood, which I hadn't gotten around to, and after seeing seasons 2 and 3, I just watched season 1. The characters are incredibly annoying at that stage, but it's nice that they grew out of it. Its civil rights analogies--vampires have just revealed themselves to humanity, and there's a debate about giving them equal rights--wears pretty thin in several spots. For the most part, vampires in the show are, in fact, evil; and while I'm a big fan of equal rights for all, I do think there's a sound moral case for discriminating against your predators.

I've been reading more of the case law around the Prop 8 trial, including the proponents' Motion for Stay Pending Appeal (link has PDF and brief commentary), which is interesting reading. On the one hand, Prop 8's proponents have shown themselves incapable of honesty (since just saying "I think gays are dirty and should be second-class citizens" is no longer a viable argument); on the other, they seem to cite some reasonable possibilities that they have standing to appeal, and there is a nationwide body of court decisions around same-sex marriage that Judge Walker sidestepped in his decision. He seemed to argue from first principles, which is great and all, but not how the system works. I think this has now reached my level of legal ignorance, so I'll just give The Onion the last word.

Good thing Anna will be here soon.

what is it that changes?

Isn't it funny? The lengths we'll go to, the adventures and challenges we'll launch ourselves into, because we think we'll magically discover something different. But when I got here, and I started meeting those challenges, I discovered I was just me, doing something different. As the book says, the only Zen you find at the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring with you. We meet the events of each moment with exactly the person we were the moment before.

Then, through doing something different, the definition of "me" changes. We discover we can respond differently, some of our abilities grow, others shorten, others just change.

Specifics?

Every culture has its acceptable social lies: we say "I love your sweater" and "Thanks for stopping by" when we think "You paid money for that?" and "I didn't need to see you again, ever." Chile's map of social dishonesty is different from ours: they'll be honest and say "You're gaining weight," but something like "Sure, I'll do that this week" might be honest or might be a way of saying "No."

No matter where you are, you only create a lot of suffering by assuming people are jerking you around, even if it feels that way.

I don't know that I'm more patient or tolerant or anything (especially these days, when I'm fried on the experience). I guess I must be? I have a broader and deeper knowledge of the world and its people. It feels a little like Outward Bound did, where yes, things were hard, and yes, I went past what I thought my limits were...but I did it in a way that was pretty much what I expected. Is it really a limit when it's just something you've never tried? When have I tried something I thought I would actually fail at? Or genuinely scared of?

I think I'm being selective about my memory here. Teaching was terrifying, and there's still an aversion, trying to protect myself from its rawness and exposure. There's still that crisis moment when my kids walking through the door, and no matter how I feel about being here, or whether the day's lesson is any good, there are students in my classroom and it's time to step up and teach as best I can, and I do.

It's possible I'm judging myself with a habitually over-high standard, to minimize myself.

down, up

Yesterday was a Teacher Failure Day. Monday was the last day for doing the previous lesson, but I didn't have anything effective put together to move on to: I wanted to do "Family," and I had a big family tree poster, some ideas about using the Simpsons for some of the words, and some questions I wanted to teach the kids. But it turned out to be too abstract and too incoherent for the circumstances, and it ground to a halt, maybe 15 minutes into 1-B's one-hour class.

I'd also stayed up late preparing, so I wasn't rested, and was generally cranky. When I took a minute to stare off into space, one of the girls said quietly to another, "Is he angry?" and the other responded, "He looks sad." Which I was.

So I gave up. I sat on my table with my legs swinging back and forth.

"I'm sorry, guys. This lesson isn't working. I'm kind of disorganized right now. I've been having a bad month. It's hard to be living in a different culture, really far from my friends and communities."

They asked me if I missed my girlfriend (yes), if she was beautiful (yes), and we pretty much just chatted for the hour. Jorge even asked me questions in English as best he could--Jorge, who's a nice kid, but sometimes disruptive enough to be one of the three kids I've ever booted out of the classroom. But except for constantly telling him to shut up, I treat him like everyone else and we have a friendly relationship.

With 1-C, I warned them ahead of time that I thought the lesson might not work, because it didn't do enough to get them talking and using the material I was teaching. 1-C is remarkably calm and focused, so they stuck with it a lot longer, but ultimately I ran up against the lack of a way to get them talking, so it ground to a halt again. This time I did some impromptu stuff with the kids who were talking to me: Sonia, one of the rockstars ("I don't study, I just pay attention") asked how to say trasero in English. It means "butt," but we have enough different words for that that I felt an example was in order.

Now they know what "I like big butts and I cannot lie" means. That felt nicely subversive.

Luckily I just had 1-B and 1-C, and they're relatively focused and not super-spastic, but in order to prevent a repeat today, with 1-G and 1-H who are chatty at best, I decided to just switch gears and do "Weather." It's more or less the same as the "Moods" I did at the beginning of the year: a question ("What's the weather like?"), and then a bunch of vocabulary words they can use for an answer (sunny, cloudy, rainy, etc.). Basically, a lesson I'd already taught, but with different material. I made little flashcards like I did for body parts.

It went great! I wasn't pushing myself as a teacher, and I had a plan for what activities to do, so I could relax. We did lots of repetition in lots of different ways. They learned stuff. Everyone wins. As a bonus, the English Workshop kids didn't show up, sparing me an awkward 45 minutes.

What's dawning on me is that right now I'm an Okay teacher. If I wanted to, with training and practice, I would probably be an Excellent teacher, but right now, I'm pretty sure I'm just middle-of-the-pack.

What I do really, really well is my relationships with the kids. They know that I like them, care about them, and relate to them as individuals. Even if they're a problem for classroom management, I'll stop the group repetition to help them pronounce something right, and I make sure they take their turns practicing. One of the most disruptive, Bruno from 1-G, on Monday came up to me after a particularly push-and-pull class where I almost booted him, smiled, nodded, and shook my hand (and has done it in the hallway a few times since).

That seems worthwhile.

happy Monday

The funny thing about feeling sort of burned out (being hopefully at the bottom of whatever adjustment curve you're looking at) is that I have more patience and less attachment to outcomes in the classroom. The activity isn't working? Well, that's fine, let me sit on my table for a second and think about what to do next. 1-G is being themselves to the best of their ability? That's fine, I'll just keep writing names on the board, and they'll learn whatever they can under the circumstances.

It could be better, I guess. I'm taking up precious class time with learning their names at the beginning, which is entirely worthwhile, even if I only remember for the duration of the class, because it helps me with classroom management and personal connection. And I've been taking up time with a review game, and a little bit to make a thank-you video for the people in Massachusetts who donated school supplies. But those don't feel like bad things. Teaching takes both me and the students, and while I feel like other teachers could do better under the circumstances, this is what I've got right now.

teaching, learning, failing

This week has seen a lot of failed lessons, but not in a bad way. It's good for me to remember the kind of quiet that falls over a classroom where students have no idea what's going on. The advantage of being in a sort of low burnout period is that I'm feeling extremely mellow and communicative about classroom flow. To the kids who were bugging me today, I said in Spanish, "Look, I'm telling you to be quiet, and you're not. Today I have no patience," and then promptly put them a couple notches closer to being kicked out of class. Easy-peasy.

I've been doing a names exercise at the beginning too, and it's really nice to know their names, even if I only remember for that class. I also have lots of time to use up, both with Marcela's randomizing the class length, and the not-quite-good lesson I'm working on.

I'm trying to do "Family" stuff with them, and while they have no problem with "Do you have any brothers or sisters?", even being able to say something like "I have three brothers and five sisters," the failure comes with questions about a family tree like "Who is Rosa's wife?". The possessive is screwing them up, notwithstanding that they "learned" it in Marcela's class. In every class I take a shot at explaining it, watched them drift off the way they do when Marcela explains things, then punt and move on to the quiz game for reviewing last semester's stuff. I'll have a stab at figuring out an interactive way to do it.

On a related note, Oscar asked today if I had time to work with some remedial students from another English teacher, who haven't had any English and as a result are doing even worse than the rest of the class. I said:

"I might have time, yeah. The thing is, the problem with English instruction here is that it's not tailored to the level of the students, so in terms of actually using the language, a student with no English is at roughly the same level as a student with two or four years of English. The stuff that I teach, or to be honest, that I know how to teach, is basic and doesn't really mesh with the school's material."

Oscar nodded, but we agreed we can look at the materials and see if I could be helpful.

This would put me in the fascinating position of teaching Chilean students how to succeed in Chilean English classes, which is completely different from teaching them English. I'd be helping them attain the same mechanistic lack of usage that their peers have. I'm on the fence: in the sense it would help them in school, it would be good for them. For me, I think it might be a little painful.

back to school

I'm glad I only had two classes, and that curso B is pretty cool and curso C is awesome, because boy, did I not want to be there today. I didn't do a stellar lesson plan, Marcela sent the kids down 15 minutes early--

"I can't take them for an hour and fifteen minutes."

"I know, but I need to start my class. Just send them back."

"So I can just send them back early when I'm done?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, I can do that, but that's different from what we were doing last time. You have to tell me." [This is a recurring theme with us.]

--I've got a cold, and pretty much all day I've been thinking, "Wow, four months would have been plenty. Was eight months really necessary?". I'm also considering whether now is really the time to do a practice period at Tassajara: it looks good on paper, because it's rare to have a 3-month period where I'm not working and I don't have an apartment to take care of. But Anna and I have already been apart several months, and have a few months yet to go, and I'm feeling the strain of being away from her and all my other relationships and communities. Tassajara has the additional strain of being Internet-silent; we'd be communicating by writing letters.

When I started sitting zazen a few years ago, I finally settled on sitting for 40 minutes, which I describe as "ten minutes past 'comfortable'." After 30 minutes, I can start to feel a little twitchy, but also my mind runs itself out of energy, like an exhausted fish caught on a line. It's tempting to get up and stop sitting then, especially if there was any kind of emotional upwelling in the first 30 minutes. But the last 10 minutes there's just peace and quiet, and that turns out to be the most important part.

So I'll see how the rest of the school year goes. If I don't go to Tassajara now, it'll probably be a few years before I have another chance; but relationships in the here and now are more important than theories and stories about the future.

vacation plans

I've been talking about going to Easter Island, but it didn't feel really urgent, and now there aren't flights available. So, I will do that another time, and that makes my winter break a lot more flexible. Since I'll already be down in Chillán for our mid-service workshop/chill-out, maybe I'll go to one or two other places, despite weather that looks a little colder than here, but also wetter, with things resembling snow.

It's definitely time for a break, as I'm pretty regularly cranky now. I'm gaining some weight, and feeling the lack of exercise, as I've struggled to try and do anything with aikido, or go running, or really do anything with any regularity. My imbalanced diet is catching up to me (hence the weight gain), with lots of bread and avocado and milk. Granted, the milk is powdered, which is another post, and I only use it with instant coffee, which I could go without, but it's one of several unhealthy tonics that help me manage my moods, in the absence of doing aikido. It's all very complicated.

Anyway, for the past couple weeks, eight months has sounded like a very long time, for all the volunteers. I'm in the minority in the group, who already has roots set down someplace, and then when I get back, I'm still planning on doing the 3-month winter practice period at Tassajara, starting in January. So, while it's incredibly unhelpful for me to look at it that way, I'm still 9 months away from re-starting life with Anna and J and the dojo and the sangha. I'm hoping the economy has a job for me somewhere. It should! I'm smart and I can do really complicated things that not many people can do!

end of term

Chile lost to Brazil, which everyone expected, though I think people were hoping for better than 3-0. The U.S. lost to Ghana 2-1, which my students try to make fun of me for, and they again have trouble interpreting when I say the U.S. team played really badly.

This week I will have taught exactly one class, which was Tuesday: Monday was a holiday, the first class yesterday was finishing up giving my test, and for the rest of the week, they'll be taking Marcela's test, except for one class tomorrow which has to finish my test. Next week is the week before winter vacation, so I'm guessing concentration won't be high.

It's just as well. I am crabby and irritable from trying to get any kind of aikido training going, and I can use the vacation. The weekend of the 10th I'll be down in

Termas de Chillán with the WorldTeach gang, and then to Easter Island for a couple days, and then to Mendoza, Argentina, to drink coffee and eat steak. (I hear it's pretty, too. And cheap. Did I mention the steak?) The final weekend of break I'll be in Santiago, doing an aikido seminar and drinking with the July WorldTeach volunteers after telling them whatever plausible lies I can think of about the place they've committed to for four months.

• "Yeah, I shake a recluse spider out of my shoes about twice a week."
• "We haven't had a 7.0 earthquake since...what, Monday? Pretty rare."
• "Just be careful about what you say. Chilean host families often expect volunteers to marry their eldest eligible child."

For some reason, I was never on the list to do Admissions tours in college, either.

cranky

The aversion is back this week; partly, the switch to 60-minute classes has upset what little groove I developed last week. Lots of stress and tension floating around, enough that I skipped breakfast this morning and didn't drink tea with the teachers, much to everyone's shock. I think it's a common Chilean belief that if you don't have enough refined flour and tea in your diet (minimum RDA: twice per day) you'll get sick.

Besides being unhappy and very much not wanting to do the thing I'm here doing for the next six months, the other difficulty is that Chileans are incredibly sociable, and under stress I get even more introverted. I get more irritable, and not wanting to either dump that on other people or take energy talking to them, I stop wanting to talk to them, especially here where so few people look past the language barrier to try and listen for the person on the other side. So I find myself in the teacher's lounge, surrounded by people who want to chat (often at me rather than with me, though they mean well) with no space for my emotions. If I latch onto that (or anything), I can get more cranky, but I'm usually pretty good at not doing that.

I may be revising my history, but I think I was feeling okay until curso G yesterday. Maybe they're my primary teachers while I'm here.

a better day. sort of.

I discovered that most of my crankiness comes from leaving Anna, just as we're moving in together and getting into the swing of things. There's other stuff, of course: I have a lot of packing to do (I hate packing); I have to buy a lot of clothes (I really hate buying clothes). It feels exactly like there is a tremendous amount of stuff to do, and by the time it's all done, I'm lugging some bags to South America to spend 9 months doing something that scares me, in an unknown place in a foreign country, under unknown circumstances.

I feel like that last part, at least, is appropriate to the situation.

Bullet points from the day:

• Explosion of ants entering the house to get away from the rain. They were wiped up, smooshed, or removed outside.
• Getting a portable storage unit into my driveway, so we can juggle my and Anna's stuff during packing and moving. The storage unit only rolls in a straight line, and is almost exactly the width of the driveway, so I got to lever it with a 2x4 to move it side-to-side as needed. This amounted to leg presses of many hundreds of pounds, so my legs and hands are sore, but I got to be both clever and manly, so that was fine.
  
• My Mac had a stretch of being unusable today, because the battery and my remaining A/C adapter died at the same time. (The previous A/C adapter did some combination of melting and fraying and would no longer adapt A/C.) I didn't need a trip to the Apple Store on top of everything else, but they gave me a free adapter because of the melting, and I got out for the mere $130 of a new battery.

I think I hadn't realized how much I rely on the Mac throughout the day, and a few hours of trying to work with the Asus netbook I bought makes me think it's worth the extra money to buy a "cheap" refurbished MacBook and bring that instead. Windows gives me the rage, and the whole reason I switched to Mac was because I was tired of the constant tinkering needed to make Linux do what I wanted. (The tinkering isn't always necessary. As with so many things, as a computer user I am very particular and maybe a bit difficult.)

At any rate, Anna took good care of me all day, and the rain stopped for a bit while I got to lift something heavy, and then we had some lovely dinner and did aikido. And that's a fine way to end any day.