Trip to Aregua!

mmmm.... Vacacion!!

So, we're on break for another month and while I've had some time to reflect and rest, and do some planning, I have another few weeks of good work to do yet before I am ready for the kids to come back next semester. It amazes me how exhausting this job is, not in the physical sense entirely, but also very much in a mental/psychological one. I am finding that I had forgotten what it felt like to regularly get 8 hours of sleep a night and wake without stress. It is a beautiful thing.

First impressions, retrospectively... All those beautiful lessons we learned in ed classes about structuring units and using various forms of evaluation throughout... whoah... novel idea. I feel like I'm learning them like a middle schooler learns bagpipes... yeah... I watched braveheart... I know what it's supposed to sound like... but holy cow... what are those ghastly honks and screeches... Still... I trust that even those honks and screeches become music in time. The struggle ensuing from my coached efforts to plan for next semester's classes with still 5 weeks of vacation ahead of me has been interesting. I simultaneously feel the excitement of creating something I know I'll be glad to have later (no sarcasm here... I really do feel it), and exasperating disdain towards the monotony of the task (less the hotfoot of imminent purpose) and fear under the self-given accusation of futility. This struggle is part of my buisiness in this cocoon however, and I prayerfully step forwards, hoping that tomorrow can be both more enjoyable and more productive than was yesterday.

I finally got around to making a flute yesterday. Makes me happy. I'll have to post video of my canopy-level porch and hammock where I read and play music in the evenings. Mmmmm.... It's a beautiful thing. Sounds like some resort or something somewhere... it's not exactly that... but it's nice. You'll see.

I bought a wok. boo yah. Cooking excursions just got that much more exciting. On today's menu... fried noodles... with ginger chicken, green peppers and onions in a peanut-orange sauce... it... was... amazing... here's to google searches in a connected world. Dan (English teacher) and I discovered a great chinese grocery-esque store near the mercado here in town.

It's been a blessing hearing from those of you at home via skype these past few days. I'm usually connected, so even if I'm not there, feel free to drop a line. In one of those conversations, it came up that very few of you have my mailing addy so... here it is:

Regular ole' city mail

Hans Burkholder
c/o Asuncion Christian Academy
Casilla 1562 - C.P. 1209
Asuncion - Paraguay

Courier (Faster and Safer, but pricey on my end)

Asuncion Christian Academy
Attn: Hans Burkholder
7331 Nw 35th St.
Suite MC 30063
Miami FL 33122

Use the courier if you want to send something particularly valuable, perishable, or both
Otherwise, just use the normal one.

... or just ask me and I'll advise.

Peace, love, and petals,

-That Hans

Orchids, and the apt. main floor.

More to come...

The Zen of Rotten Worms...

So... I must relate a story... which will forever be linked with my first-year teaching experiences. We were doing a unit on worms this past month, and I though it would be a fantastic experience for the kids to get inside of one, so I obtained a small packet of fishing worms. How to kill them though... Live bugs, you would gas... but live worms? I opted for drowning them... I figured, they come up when it rains because they need to still be able to breath through their skin. Even so, they usually die all over the sidewalks.... so... drowning should work... I put the worms in a small tub of water, and as an afterthought, added a splash of ethyl alcohol, just for good measure... The next day, the worms were dead as I had hoped... slimy at worst, and with an ambient odor of alcoholic worm poo. I was well pleased.

We began the lab 7th period, but explaining things, and observing the external structures took the whole period. (Cest la vi... when each class only gets 50 min) No big deal, thought I, we can just stash the dissection mats in the fridge in the back of the prep room. It wasn't running, but I'd seen that it was still unplugged from break. I had some detainees for an hour that day, so I put them to cleaning out the fridge and plugging it in. I came back to a well cleaned, humming fridge, full of neatly organized worm-dissections-on-hold. Perfect.

The next morning was cool and pleasant when I opened the refrigerator door... to be met by a wave of air as hot as the previous afternoon, though far, far fouler. ::shudder:: If imaginations could bring bile to the back of your throat... I would hold some hope of you being able to share that moment with me... but... just... be grateful. Gag. Apparently the fridge hadn't been working for some eons. The possibility of this reality had passed through my mind... but my optimism had ushered it on through without buying anything.

So... when 7th period rolled around again... I was still debating whether or not to scrap the project... but I decided the experience was still worth something... even if it was a bit more of a trial than it otherwise would have been. I warned the class of the situation when they came in... but assured them that it was just becasue the worms had been sitting in poopy water for two days. I acknowledged that the smell would be overpowering at first, but that they would get used to it. In reality... the worms were definitely rotting.

We brought out the worms... and the class emptied, gagging into the quad. After some further assurance, I managed to coax/herd/prod everyone back into the classroom. After the initial desperate scrabble to fashion crude gas-masks out of paper towels and packing tape, everyone muscled up to the task. I was very impressed and pleased. The worms were in various stages of degradation... the majority were still dissectible. Beyond some slime, you could cut individual tissue layers, and identify most of the major organs. Some though... particularly the smaller ones... ::shudder:: just a squggley line of rotten flesh on a little blue mat. No hope whatsoever for those.


Fortunately we had an excellent series of photos of a professionally dissected earthworms projected on the wall... so if there was any question in a lab group concerning the identity of a little blob of rotting slime in a particular region of the worm... the totally grossed out lab partner could be of some service, venturing some hopeful identification based on the more intact specimen in the photo.

I eggagerate here very little. The smell was so bad that students from other classes were coming into the room after school, just to watch, and test their grit against the titanic odor.


I laugh about it now... but it was the kind of smell that got into your nose and stayed there for a day. UGH. Some of the kids were really into it though... less than a half-dozen, but the others participated admirably. I was very proud of them.

Log that one in the books... Hey Hans... remember that time you had your first biology class dissect rotting fermented worms? ::shudder::

The curious thing is... I think they did BETTER work as a result of knowing that they were walking into adversity. So much of the time... they just float in, expecting to have to do as little as necessary to appease the powers that be... If I could get them to study all the time like they were cutting open rotten worms... man.

Maybe I should just bring in a soupy bucket of them and leave them at the back of the room for a few weeks... and see how things go.

:)

Physics, fish, soccer

This evening finds me tired, though rested, gratefully looking forward at the latter two thirds of a three day weekend.

Today Jon and I went out driving with a Paraguayan friend who teaches here. We are planning a fish fry/cookout tomorrow night and so Elder (the friend) drove us ~30 minutes to the place he usually buys his raw fish. We went to a small fish market in the town where he grew up. When we pulled out, a handfull of middle-aged ladies walked up to the car compelling us to buy fish from them. Elder talked with the salesladies, while Jon and I were free to poke around the market. There were fish of all types there... from meter long lunkers to oddly shaped catfish like none I'd ever seen. One in particular was fascinating. It was definitely a catfish of some kind, but had broad, black and white stripes, and an exxageratedly long and flat head. Elder says he's going to take us fishing on the river sometime. I would love to hook something like that. The tone of the place was pitch-perfect. The posture and shuffle of the fish-ladies rung of the integrity of the experience. They weren't actors in some movie, type cast to be believable... they were home. This was their place, and they fit it. Their husbands' worn wooden boats moored just behind the stand weren't there for effect. They were there from bringing the morning fish in for sale... yet they had effect... a free gift of the real. Beside the fish market was a small restaurant with outdoor dining, where a live band was playing Paraguayan music. I watched them from a distance, and would have loved to sit in a chair there for a few hours, but I thought our freshly bought "El Dorado" would've complained from the back of the car... I thought it best to get it home and into the fridge, so I didn't say anything to Elder.

We drove then around his town a bit, as he waved and honked to cousins and friends who animatedly gestured towards him as we passed. We met his dad and mom. He said his entire family lived there in that town. He is dating an American girl. I asked him if he would ever come back to live. He said no. It made me a bit sad inside. I thought the place was beautiful.
From there we went to a park nearby where another friend of ours from the school named Victor (also Paraguayan) was playing soccer with a group of friends. They were crazy good. I watched them play with fascination beyond the game. This place felt so different than the soccer fields I've seen in the states. The guys playing it wore mismatched jerseys. Victor's was from ACA. I think he coached our team last year. He fit there. He was good too. But it wasn't the players, or their garb, or the field, or the ball, or the surroundings that held me back so fascinated... it was everything at once. It was like the negative of a moment of fascination... rather than the game being in focus, the peripheral jumped out, and the presence of the action seemed taken for granted. I tried to explain the moment to Jon and Elder... but didn't quite find the words... The game felt like... an old hat that you've been wearing for years... when you put it on. It's been on your head so much that you don't think of it as being a hat... it just goes on your head, and it feels like it has a thousand times, but only feels that way because of the other 999 times that you've worn it, and you wonder if it might feel the same way about sliding onto your head as you do about putting it there. I watched that ball kick up little clouds of dust from bare spots in the field worn through by cleats and feets of semi-pros and tweens alike, and then puff again off the shin of some agile footballer. And this soccer ball was different to. It didn't have lines. They'd been worn of months ago, at least, maybe years. I'm pretty sure they had worn the seams off of it too (but it never slowed enough for me to know for sure) leaving just a dusty white orb spinning through space, tying together everything it touched, in some mystical romance of right-ness. And I think these guys are happy playing soccer. Matter of fact... I'm fairly certain of it. I wonder what we have in the states like that... I'm sure we have things. But... it does me good to get third-person perspective on the beauty of it. It's hard to see a picture when you're in it.

The photo above and right: I'm not in this one. These are some of my students working on a physics lab. I'm discovering labs to be much much better than lecturing... but I think there's a balance in there somewhere. This lab was really effective after a solid week of seemingly worthless lecturing. I really don't know how to teach physics, no matter how much I love the subject. It'll take some time, I think. Church tomorrow. Gotta sleep.

Into the flow

Wow. I can't believe I've been here nearly 4 weeks already. Amazing.
Teaching is going well, but I must say I am learning by leaps and bounds. Not that my lessons are improving by leaps and bounds... but they are improving as I am frequently making new mistakes it seems. Nothing catastrophic... just things like... feeling out the difference in relationships between different classes, and learning how to approach the ones that I am afraid of with more courage, and learning what it means to "stand in my honest condition" in each one... something I was challenged to by Parker Palmer. I keep wanting to be a "good teacher" but the harder I try, the more I realize that playing the role of a "good teacher" only drives my students farther from quality learning experiences. This isn't a new realization for me, but I am struggling with it intimately right now... learning my opponent, if you will. Rolling fears and insecurities around in my mouth, until I really understand their taste, and trying to find practical disciplines that will deal with them effectively.

My access to resources here is good, but my confidence in accessing them is somewhat less, as my Spanish is limited. The stuff is there, all around me in the cities, and the net, but my lessons have been slightly more traditional than the ones I worked on for student teaching. Pray that I would not limit my horizons in creating these learning experiences for the kids. My goal was to have labs frequently, but I've only managed a few so far, as the planning and setup aspect of lab work is considerably more than a regular class. Also, classes are only 40 min. long, so a full-blown lab is difficult to manage.
The kids are absolutely fantastic though. I am THOROUGHLY enjoying getting to know them.

I sat this evening with the new student teacher who just got in from Indiana sipping Yerba Mate and munching on Chipas (a crispy Paraguayan cheese-bread snack) and it really hit me how incredible this place is. I lifted up two paths to God before coming here, one for a job at JFH Middle in Broadway that I thought was a perfect fit, and this one which I wanted, but seemed like such an ethereal possibility in a faraway place... Both were good options... The VA job I applied for in good time, and e-mailed the principal, but heard not so much as a peep from. This one worked out despite a number of footfalls and uncertainty. So... the gravitation that brought me here rather than Home... I believe to be the hand of God... and here... I am seeing how incredibly these experiences seem to be tailored to fit my desires, scab over my weaknesses, utilize my gifts... stretch my good muscles while allowing the bruised ones some space to rest. My gratitude to God for this.... this whole picture... is hard to articulate... but I feel it pushing up in my chest... sliding my adams apple farther up the neck... that choked up feeling you get when you see something so beautiful that you can't even breathe... because you know that the next sound over your tongue should by all right express something that you know there are no words for.

Thanks for your love... keep me updated!

First week of school...

Cell phone number: (But I'm out of minutes, so don't call right now. )

0982-257-291

Well, as of Monday morning, I am officially a payed professional educator! hahahaha. Wow. Who saw that coming? Methinks... things have begun well. I was, of course, terrified beyond description the first day, though. The classes are nicely sized, but the sizes range from 4 (Senior Physics) to 18 (Freshman Biology & Bible). I've had my share of expected new-teacher foibles, including one class in which I completely forgot to take roll (day 1) until halfway through class. It was awkward. I got partway through and realized I didn't know the name of a single student I was talking to. I was like... uh... wow... sorry. Today was better with them though, and the rest of the classes have been fine. I am particularly excited about the group of seniors, because the dialogue in the class is very different... much more relaxed. I think because there are only a few of them, it is less threatening to me, showing me a different teaching demeanor that I much prefer, and hope to apply as much as possible to the larger classes. I am enjoying very much the freedom to teach from my whole perspective, rather than having to censor myself. The wonder I feel towards the natural world is a God-centered endeavor for me... not because I study science to prove anything to myself or to anyone else, but rather because studying science to me is like staring into a piece of his intimate work... and coming to know the natural world is a means of coming to know a piece of the mind of God. I can express that awe freely here... and it makes my teaching feel much more complete and genuine. But please continue to pray for me, there is much work left to do...