regalitos

The Ministry of Education sends every English Opens Doors volunteer a box full of school supplies. Last year, the boxes arrived pretty close to the end of the year, which was less useful, and much like our stipends, we were told not to count on them. But mine came last week! I finally opened it, and unlike many colleagues, mine hadn't already been opened and raided. (I already bought a bunch of supplies in Santiago, because of the uncertainty, and in fact I needed them.)

• 3 rolls Scotch tape
• 2 rolls brown packing tape
• 4 quality blue ball-point pens
• 1 white-out pen (these things are awesome)
• 3 packs skinny markers
• 4 sharpened pencils
• 1 rubber eraser
• 2 stab-bind folders
• 1 large graph-lined notebook
• 12 whiteboard markers (3 each black, blue, green, and red)
• 2 little packs of staples (no stapler)
• 2 pairs of scissors
• 2 large gluesticks
• 2 sizable bottles of glue
• pack of colored paper, roughly a meter square

Kind of a random collection of stuff. What should I do with the staples? Why do I need two pairs of scissors?

days off are for food

For my day-off excursion, I went into Viña del Mar again today; I meant to go into Limache, but that got rescheduled for tomorrow evening. In Viña I figured I'd go to McDonald's and successfully get a burger this time, and maybe hit up Starbucks and see if they might relieve the inevitable disappointment of Chilean espresso.

(Chilean establishments tend to let the espresso machine run a good 45-60 seconds, instead of 28-30. I think the theory might be "more is better," but what you get is espresso that is both watery and very bitter. The technique is bad enough that I can't tell anything about the quality of the beans. It's very sad.)

Instead, I tried out the allegedly Mexican restaurant across the street from Starbucks (which is, in turn, a few doors across the corner from McDonald's). It was tasty enough in its way, but it was bland, not Mexican in any way except for the presence of an okay guacamole. I don't know if this is Mexican food the way Chileans like it, similar to how much American Chinese food is severely altered for the American palate, or if someone just decided to open a Mexican restaurant without bothering to buy a cookbook or even ask Wikipedia what spices and ingredients might be involved.

I have to say, I will resume my ranting about Starbucks when I get home, but two months in Chile gives me a new perspective of where they stand on the quality scale. And here, they're not killing local businesses; they're remote, lonely outposts of American culinary imperialism, which is nowhere near as successful as our other imperialisms. In Latin America, a coffee shop that does not serve Nescafe is going against a pretty powerful stream, living in a principled state of rebellion, or at least in a built-up tourist town.

I looked at dress shirts in the department store. They're comparably priced to home, maybe a bit more expensive. However, they're all Chilean-sized, which means the sleeves are all 33/34, and basically no 34/35. A 33/34 sort of fits me, mostly, kinda, though it feels a little tight; 34/35 doesn't look tailored or anything, but it's more comfortable. But honestly, 4 little retail islands with hundreds of dress shirts, all with sleeves 32/33 or 33/34. I'm not that tall.

Oscar, head of the household and sub-director at my school, finally understood my (extremely sparse) teaching schedule tonight. He said, "Ésto, no me queda", which comes out as "I'm really not okay with this." I told him I've told several people the school can give me 26 classroom hours instead of the 8 I've got, but no one was understanding or listening and I finally gave up and figured I'd come back to it later. I'm not sure he understood that I told people, or that it matters particularly. I'm not sure they understand how opaque the operation of the school is for me: how little I understand in rapid conversations, or how little information anyone on the staff ever thinks to try to communicate to me.

Anna is coming to visit! At the end of the month. It's a big adventure for her, getting herself across continents and then from the airport to the bus station and then to Valparaíso. And then I get to kiss her, which I'm pretty sure will be awesome, and then I can show her some of the Land of Sugar, Salt, and Mayonnaise, all things she doesn't like.

As an added bonus, coming off Wednesday's good teaching day, I'm not dreading class tomorrow at all! It's the little things that make such a difference.

daily life

I live with Steve, another WorldTeach volunteer, in Valparaíso, Chile. We live on Cerro ("hill") Rocuant, in Barrio ("neighborhood") O'Higgins. (Bernardo O'Higgins is the great hero of Chilean independence.)

Our "host parents" are Oscar, the sub-director of my school, and Ximena, a Spanish teacher there. They're educated and urbane and not terribly traditional in most ways, so we don't experience most of the stuff we learned about as possibilities in a Chilean family: overprotectiveness or lack of privacy. We call them "Oscar" and "Ximena" instead of "Mom" and "Dad" (as many of our colleagues do with their families) because that's more of the relationship we have.

Aurora is Ximena's mother, lives here and helps with keeping house. I assume she goes out and plays poker or something when we're not looking, she's pretty active.

Ignacio is Oscar's son, age 13, who lives with us full-time. He's pretty quiet and plays a lot of video games, but has relaxed around us more over time.

Jaime is Ximena's older son, a very tall and athletic 17, who comes for weekends or half-weeks.

Álvaro is Ximena's younger son, age 11, quirky and charming. He loves to say "Hello, Chris,"and I think that's the only English he knows.

Three very odd dogs: El Duque, La Princesa, and La Chiquitita. Like everyone else's dogs, they're there to bark at people who walk past the house. They don't like dry food, so Oscar actually "cooks" something for them every night, which is vegetable trimmings and human-food leftovers and wheat flour and I don't know what else, simmered. Sometimes it smells good. Sometimes it looks and smells like that soup made out of human body parts in James Earl Jones's evil serpent temple in Conan the Barbarian.

We're down to three cats (they found a home for a kitten): La Sacha, Comepoco ("eats little," seemingly the parent), and Comenunca ("eats never," the kitten). They're all outside cats, but would very much like to be inside cats, so they find their way in through slightly open windows, or they lie in wait by the front door and run past on their way in. I'm allergic and so is Jaime, so they're not allowed in, but they're incredibly friendly, and they understand that once inside, they will be removed. They always let themselves be evicted, with no scratching or struggle, just a stream of resigned, reluctant meows.

In the mornings we have breakfast, which is tea or coffee, and bread. Steve and I usually eat at the dining room table, because that's where they put out stuff for us, and I guess it's expected; I'm not really sure what's up with that. Dinner happens at random times between 7 and 8:30 PM, and that is also usually just me and Steve, at the dining room table. Oscar and Ximena eat in the kitchen as part of their couples-chatting time, and Ignacio eats in the kitchen, in front of the computer, at the dining room table--who knows. Occasionally Oscar and Ximena join us at the dining room table, especially for lunches on weekends, which seem to be the family times. I think this is probably representative of an educated, two-working-parent blended family in Chile.

I have very few classes right now, which I'll try to remedy now that I've kind of got my bearings a bit. I have time for 40 minutes of morning zazen every day except Wednesday, when I have class at 8ish and I go down the hill with the family at 7:15. Right now I have Thursdays free, which is pretty great. Thursdays or weekends, I go eat something nice, and have some espresso, and read Don Quixote or write blog entries, run errands.

At different times I miss Anna and J and aikido and my sangha and good coffee, but it's a life. I like it.

I think I'm a teacher now

I had my first good teaching day! Here's what happened.

Yesterday, I ended up with 45-minute classes instead of 90 minutes. My co-teacher and I met and talked about needs and concerns, and decided that next week we could try 60-minute classes (which I'm far more comfortable with), and we'd just consider Monday a awkward, strange mistake in the past. Yesterday's classes were okay.

I busted out the Curso Competition chart: if a class section behaves well, they get star for the week. At the end of the semester, the section with the most stars gets a "surprise". (To be determined: I'm thinking a party with cake, Heather is thinking cookies.) The class gets one warning, where I write "CLASS" on the board if they're in peril of losing the week's star. Monday's G section were bad this week, but I also forgot to tell them about the chart, so I'll offer that if they can do 4 straight good weeks, I'll give them the extra star so they can catch up.

This chart turns out to be the secret sauce. Chilean kids are competitive by default; even when you don't set something up as a competition, they really want to be first. I've been running a matching exercise this week and I've almost gotten knocked over a few times by pairs of kids running at me to show they're done. The Curso Competition combines their natural worldview with positive reinforcement, so the class polices itself: if you can get their peers to tell them to shut the hell up, instead of you, that's way better.

Anyway. After a week of teaching, I have a better sense of how to present material, how to move around the classroom and keep them working, and how to respond to the flow of the class. I'm also remembering my Performance Mode of years past (now new and improved by actually being at ease in the world), and the kids buy into it. Seriously, I've spent 5 hours doing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and the Hokey-Pokey this week. Some of them take some time, but I keep looking at them periodically and they warm up to it, and then usually start enjoying themselves. I think they respond really well to my smiling lack of shame and the fact I care about them.

And then they learn stuff! I teach stuff and they learn it! And if they're not learning it, I slow down and they learn less stuff, but they still learn it. It's amazing.

There was one girl who couldn't remember "ears". I modeled the difference between just sitting there saying "ears," and actually grabbing your ears when you say "ears," so she started grabbing her ears just like I was (it gets the whole physicality kinetic memory mumble mumble engaged). Then, when they were leaving, I was doing a "ticket-to-leave," blocking the door until they identified a body part or its name from the card I drew. I happened to pull the picture of ears for her, and she looked frustrated for a moment, grabbed her ear and then said, "Ah! Ears!" and smiled before leaving at top speed. It was awesome.

Maybe I'm over a hump, maybe not. I still have to plan for 60-minute classes next week. But I think I know what successful teaching feels like now! Sweet.

another martial arts excursion: ninjutsu

I went to the ninjutsu class at the Y tonight! Like aikido, ninjutsu is a modern Japanese martial art, and coming from the mainline Japanese tradition, they're sort of cousins, and I've wanted to try it out for a while.

The modern Japanese arts are generally focused on budo, the development of the person and the use of martial arts for protection instead of warfare. One of the many unusual things about aikido is extending that protection, if possible, to the person who attacked you, who is probably suffering themselves quite a bit. Or, if you can't protect them while still protecting everyone else, hurt them if you need to. It's a sliding scale. You do what you can.

Other martial arts are typically in the "they attacked you, go ahead and maim or kill them" camp. Aikido explores all the many possibilities in between "avoid a fight entirely" and "destroy another human being." I can't generalize about ninjutsu, really, but here are the things I noticed about how this guy was teaching this class:

1. He was demonstrating a lot very advanced variations interspersed with the basic forms, even though the students were only doing the relatively basic forms.
2. He switched techniques very quickly, leaving students very little time to actually practice a given technique.
3. He inflicts a conspicuous amount of pain on the people he's demonstrating on (I qualified for this about midway through class). He's "taking care of them" in the sense that they (we) are not injured beyond some bumps, so I don't think it's a self-gratification thing. I mentioned it to an experienced student afterward, who said "Sure, if he didn't, it wouldn't be true." So I think they actually think the pain is necessary for effective training.
   

I think his and my conceptions of "budo" diverge in subtle but important ways.

He was obviously a lot easier on me than with his experienced students, but I have no desire for the kind of training they're getting, and I'm pretty sure I won't go back, even though it was a fun and interesting way to exercise for 2 hours.

The instructor also trained at the Iwama dojo I hated, so I think he's unaware of the possibilities for what aikido can be: a relatively small set of basic techniques, with infinite variations and embellishments. At one point he had one of his guys show how he could roll out of an aikido pin; I was thinking, "Yannow, I couldn't see if you did it right, but I have about 15 different ways to solve that problem." He encouraged the students to finish off techniques by using the weight of their bodies on someone else's body--say they're on the ground, if you put your knee on their face and lean in, it'll hurt a lot--something we refer to often at Aikido West, but which is obvious enough, and outside the primary goals of our training, that we don't bother going into detail.

There was some of the fabled ninjutsu sneakiness. At one point he took the lit incense stick off the altar, walked around and used it to poke people who weren't paying attention to their surroundings (which was everyone--Cyndy does the same thing with foam pool noodles), and then used it as a weapon/distraction in a technique, to point out that "you don't need big things; sometimes small things work". But a lot of it was grabbing fingers, and variations on stepping on someone's foot and pushing them. Those are excellent things to know, but kind of...shallow, when I'm used to a lot of intuitive and attentional training about connection and conflict resolution. Don't even get me started about the metaphysical worldview this guy referenced.

At some point, when he was demonstrating on me, he was digging into the muscles in my arm, which hurt, but not nearly enough to make me lose my grip; and then later as he was doing something else that left me squished with some joint locked up and a wooden knife in my back; I noticed that I didn't think he could take me in a fight. That's a very male thought, possibly delusional, and not one I was expecting about a martial arts teacher, but in that entire class, I didn't see anything I felt like I couldn't successfully respond to with the skills I have. More than that, I felt...fiercer.

It's a moot point, anyway: if he attacked me, I bet I could outrun him.

adjustment

When I told people I would be teaching English in Chile, they always asked, "Have you ever taught before?". I'd say, "No. I might suck! We'll see."

Yesterday, I realized that I said that, but wasn't actually letting myself believe it. I've been holding myself to a standard of what kind of teacher I think I should be, how I think the class should run, what kinds of lessons I think I should be able to plan, what I think I should be able to do with the kids.

Notice the word "think" in there? That's a sign that whatever you're talking about is crap, pure mental fantasy that has no right interfering in your direct experience of moment-by-moment reality. Normally we don't even get that far. We concretize (or, in wankier language, "reify") our thoughts to the point where we think they're real. We don't say "the kinds of lessons I think I should be able to plan." We just say "I should be," and we don't notice that it's just an idea we're holding onto in our minds.

So last night I started lowering my standards, reducing my expectations, for myself as a teacher. My class will suck sometimes. I'll have awkward pauses. Some number of kids won't get it and I won't sufficiently check their understanding, or I won't have some brilliant creative flash that makes it happen for them. And that is genuinely and truly okay, in a way I didn't accept 48 hours ago. I'm letting go.

Letting go is how we end our suffering. And it's coming in handy right now, as I was just told today that in fact my classes are going to be 90 minutes, not 45. Not only that, but without damaging relationships, there's no way to change it for tomorrow. So I have, at least, two 90-minute classes. With a 45-minute lesson plan that's already difficult enough for me to create and execute.

No wonder I'm doing this now. Ten years ago I didn't have the training to keep calm when my world is kinda nuts and pushing all my buttons.

a long night's asado

[asado basically means "grilled", and an asado is a Chilean-style barbecue.]

Bennett's host mom was having an asado for her 50th birthday. At the last minute I decided to go. He lives in Catapilco, which is sort of near Zapallar, maybe, but we didn't really know. He's also not one for detailed communication, so our directions were something like "Take the micro toward La Ligua, get off at La Laguna, do something else, and then get off where there's two fruit stands." What actually happened:

1. Steve and I meet Heather in Viña.
2. After some debate about where this might land us and at what time of day, we get on the micro for La Ligua and ride for well over an hour.
   
3. In Ventanas, where Leigh Ann and Jeremy live, the micro stops. As I'm looking out the window, I realize I'm looking at Bennett, Leigh Ann, and Jeremy all jogging to get on our micro. This helps our confidence considerably, since we're going to Bennett's house.
4. We all get off at La Laguna and wait for the direct micro to Catapilco.
5. When it comes, Brandy and Carol are already on it.
   

We probably reinforced any stereotypes that the gringos all know each other.

Corrie was already at Bennett's house, and I felt a little weird about throwing a horde of gringos at his mom's birthday party. We rivaled the family for size: 10 of us, maybe 17 of them. I think it was Brandy who reminded us that while it was a big reunion for us, it was Rudy's birthday and we should keep that in mind.

I finally had chorripan! This is just grilled chorizo on a certain kind of roll, with optional toppings; the chorizo with the salty bread here somehow makes it unthinkably delicious. Then a bunch of other food, and then we discovered the difficulty in going to a party at a tiny house with a lot of people out in the country where you can't go home: Chileans very casually stay up incredibly late, and if you want to separate yourself from the party early, you're probably out of luck. I dozed a bit sitting upright outside on the patio, then around 2 AM I crawled onto Bennett's bed with a few other people, and then finally around 4:30 or so, the family started thinking about clearing out places for people to sleep. They were all down by 5 AM, and I slept a fine sleep until 8:30 or so. By 9, Heather and Leigh Ann and I were on our way out to the micro stop, and I reached Valparaiso around 11.

I can't take too many more of that kind of weekend, unfortunately.