The elementary school where I teach is a bilingual school, meaning the students study English for several hours a week and also study two subjects in English, in our case Science and Art. This means I'm a Science teacher several times a week for my second-graders, which I love.
We're studying plant life, and today I had them drawing a flower and labeling its different parts. They're all working quietly when Ainhoa, a sassy, too-smart-for-her-own-good type, beckons me to her desk. She asks me, "Teacher, why do I have to learn these things? If I need to know about a flower I can just look it up online."
I froze.
This kid was born in 2006. She's never known a world without Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, or Twitter. She learned to google when she learned to read. She was barely forming sentences when the first iPhone came out. For her, all the information in the world is, and always has been, readily available whenever she needed it.
And as she stared up at my with critical, demanding eyes, I had to admit she had a point. Why does she need to know about the reproductive organs of a rose? I forgot all that immediately after high school and have never suffered as a result. In fact, when we started this unit in the book, I had to refresh my memory on the various parts of a flower.
I googled it.
But of course, the flower isn't the point. It doesn't really matter that Ainhoa remembers where the stamen is, or what function the sepals perform. The point is that she starts developing an understanding of the world around her, hopefully igniting an interest and a curiosity that will lead her to an intellectually fulfilling life. I don't want to fill her head with the loose facts she might encounter in a Google search; I want to teach her how to examine things thoughtfully and critically.
I offered her a kid-friendly version of this explanation, and it sufficed to turn her back to her drawing, but I don't think she really bought it. Maybe someday when she's a biologist hard at work in her lab, she'll think back on this day and realize that I was right, but until then she's probably just going to WhatsApp her friends about what a pain in the ass her teacher is.
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Sunday, February 9, 2014
civil
It's a general rule on the Madrid metro (and on most public transport in the world, from what I've seen) that young, healthy people should give up their seats to people who need it more. Usually, when anyone over sixty gets on the train, a couple people jump up and offer their seat. On the more crowded lines at rush hour, however, getting a seat is such a miracle that people are hesitant to surrender it, regardless of the age or physical well-being of incoming passengers.
A few days ago I'm standing, squeezed shoulder to shoulder on a downtown-bound subway train when an elderly woman with a walker climbs onboard. She looks around hopefully at the lucky ones in the seats, all of whom appear suddenly to have very important things to do on their cell phones or in the bottoms of their purses.
A guy leaning against a wall offers this second-best position to the lady, and after helping her get secure enough to withstand the jerky stop-and-go motion, he turns on the sitters.
"Look at all of these shameless jerks, bowing their heads like they don't see her," he practically spits at the crowd, who are now addressing truly urgent iPhone crises and launching search expeditions in murky depths of their handbags. "It's disgusting, it really is. All a bunch of assholes. People these days have no manners. Fuck."
Thoroughly shamed, most of them choose to hold their ground at this point, apparently deciding that they'd come too far to turn back, but one guy (possibly because he doesn't have a smartphone to hide behind) stands up and, blushing, offers up his seat. The lady thanks him profusely, clearly a touch embarrassed by her uninvited knight in shining armor. Our hero, however, can only triumphantly mutter, "finally."
A few days ago I'm standing, squeezed shoulder to shoulder on a downtown-bound subway train when an elderly woman with a walker climbs onboard. She looks around hopefully at the lucky ones in the seats, all of whom appear suddenly to have very important things to do on their cell phones or in the bottoms of their purses.
A guy leaning against a wall offers this second-best position to the lady, and after helping her get secure enough to withstand the jerky stop-and-go motion, he turns on the sitters.
"Look at all of these shameless jerks, bowing their heads like they don't see her," he practically spits at the crowd, who are now addressing truly urgent iPhone crises and launching search expeditions in murky depths of their handbags. "It's disgusting, it really is. All a bunch of assholes. People these days have no manners. Fuck."
Thoroughly shamed, most of them choose to hold their ground at this point, apparently deciding that they'd come too far to turn back, but one guy (possibly because he doesn't have a smartphone to hide behind) stands up and, blushing, offers up his seat. The lady thanks him profusely, clearly a touch embarrassed by her uninvited knight in shining armor. Our hero, however, can only triumphantly mutter, "finally."
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
parada
The elementary school where I work four days a week is in Perales del Rio, a tiny bedroom community outside of a suburb of Madrid. If I were to hop in a car, it would take me about fifteen minutes to get from my downtown apartment to my school. Since I don't have a car, I spend a little under an hour in commute each way in a foot-subway-bus combo. At first it seemed awful, but I got used to it and eventually came to actually enjoy it. It's a good opportunity to get some reading in,and occasionally I cross paths with some interesting people.
As I approached the bus stop in Perales the other day, a woman of seventy or so, looking rather agitated, began throwing questions at me before I had even stopped walking. She´d been waiting for this damned bus for nearly half an hour, she said, and was losing patience. She supported herself unsteadily on a garled wooden cane and was missing several teeth. Her clothes were neat but simple. I told her the bus would arrive in about ten minutes.
´I remember when this area was nothing but open field,´ she says, gesturing to the little village, whose architecture and young trees indicate no more than twenty years. ´The city was smaller then.´ She says the same thing has happened to downtown Madrid, where she has spent her entire life. ´There was a public hospital on Atocha Street, right by my house.´ She´s wistful. ´Now they´ve moved it to the middle of nowhere.´ Everything in Madrid´s city center has been slowly migrating into the peripheral areas, she laments. ´I´d never leave downtown if it were up to me. But a good friend lives way out here and doesn´t like to come into the city. I didn´t have kids because I didn´t want to complicate my life, and now my friends complicate it for me. But it´s nice to see old friends.´
It´s not all reminiscing, though. Although she remembers the city as smaller, maybe more quaint, she spent her youth under an oppressive dictatorship. ´I saw people starving. Dying of hunger in the streets. Sick and dying.´ Spain´s fascist regime, which lasted forty years and fell only upon the death of leader Francisco Franco in 1975, was initially intensely isolationist, cutting off international trade and further stifiling an economy already ravaged by civil war. In the latter half of Franco´s reign, the economy grew, but this growth was enjoyed largely by the upper classes. ´You weren´t yet in the world, honey, but believe me, it was hard.´
A couple of years ago Levi and I had lunch with an retired neighbor in Zafra, a stately, sweatervest sort of fellow with a modest but very comfortable downtown flat. He showed us the Franco-era pistol he keeps in a velvet lined box and his collection of Franco coins, lamenting that those were better times, before the euro, before these liberal Popes and progressive governments, when people had money and stability and Spanish culture was at its most glorious heights. Those were the days.
As I approached the bus stop in Perales the other day, a woman of seventy or so, looking rather agitated, began throwing questions at me before I had even stopped walking. She´d been waiting for this damned bus for nearly half an hour, she said, and was losing patience. She supported herself unsteadily on a garled wooden cane and was missing several teeth. Her clothes were neat but simple. I told her the bus would arrive in about ten minutes.
´I remember when this area was nothing but open field,´ she says, gesturing to the little village, whose architecture and young trees indicate no more than twenty years. ´The city was smaller then.´ She says the same thing has happened to downtown Madrid, where she has spent her entire life. ´There was a public hospital on Atocha Street, right by my house.´ She´s wistful. ´Now they´ve moved it to the middle of nowhere.´ Everything in Madrid´s city center has been slowly migrating into the peripheral areas, she laments. ´I´d never leave downtown if it were up to me. But a good friend lives way out here and doesn´t like to come into the city. I didn´t have kids because I didn´t want to complicate my life, and now my friends complicate it for me. But it´s nice to see old friends.´
It´s not all reminiscing, though. Although she remembers the city as smaller, maybe more quaint, she spent her youth under an oppressive dictatorship. ´I saw people starving. Dying of hunger in the streets. Sick and dying.´ Spain´s fascist regime, which lasted forty years and fell only upon the death of leader Francisco Franco in 1975, was initially intensely isolationist, cutting off international trade and further stifiling an economy already ravaged by civil war. In the latter half of Franco´s reign, the economy grew, but this growth was enjoyed largely by the upper classes. ´You weren´t yet in the world, honey, but believe me, it was hard.´
A couple of years ago Levi and I had lunch with an retired neighbor in Zafra, a stately, sweatervest sort of fellow with a modest but very comfortable downtown flat. He showed us the Franco-era pistol he keeps in a velvet lined box and his collection of Franco coins, lamenting that those were better times, before the euro, before these liberal Popes and progressive governments, when people had money and stability and Spanish culture was at its most glorious heights. Those were the days.
Monday, January 13, 2014
mercado
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| Enjoying a chocolate stout with my friend Erin |
 |
| Juanma at work |
The market itself is an old warehouse-style building with two dozen or so mini-shops like La Buena Pinta. There are wine and vermouth shops, a couple of Spanish-style bars with tapas and light beer, a Greek snack bar, a sushi restaurant, various bread and cheese stores, a cobbler (who rescued my boots for seven euros) and a book shop that sells second-hand books by the kilo (Girl With the Dragon Tattoo weighs .65 kilos, so it's €6.50). A few tables are set up in the open space and each food and drink shop has its own little bar, so you can pick up some olives, some goat cheese, and a baguette and have a picnic with your pint or glass of wine.
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| Sunday morning party time |
*All photos are, of course, courtesy of the incredibly talented Levi Shand. Check out his website!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
casa
After over three years without setting foot on American soil, I finally had to opportunity to go home over this Christmas break. I spent two fantastic weeks hanging out with my parents and my now-all-grown-up baby sister, siteseeing in St. Louis and lazing around the fantastic downtown apartment where my newly hip(ster) mom and dad are enjoying their first child-free years in nearly three decades. My mom organized what turned out to be an incredible reunion of all my favorite Springfield people, the family friends and high school buddies I´ve missed so much, at an Irish bar we frequented for years. I at last had a chance to enjoy the American culinary variety that has been sadly missing from my life; I ate a reuben, a pan of mac´and cheese, a tex-mex feast, Rice Krispie treats, Christmas cookies, gourmet hamburgers, pad thai, Toaster Strudels, cheesecake, Starbursts (don´t judge, you miss weird stuff when you´re away so long). I think I drank somewhere in the neighborhood of ten pints of Guinness and enjoyed my dad´s two-week tour of the bars and pubs of downtown St. Louis.
Incredible food and drink aside (it really is better in America than anywhere I´ve ever been ) the highlight was seeing my family. The hardest thing about living abroad is the distance between me and my loved ones. My parents and my sister visited me in Zafra in 2011, but I hadn´t seen anyone else since I departed in August of 2010. So this was the first time I´d been with them in a good long while. The cousins who were little kids when I left are now talking about college. The ones who were toddlers and kindergarteners are now kids old enough to politely fib that they remember me. I hope to never again go so long without a visit.
The only disappointment of the trip was not getting a chance to see my great grandfather who, due to the truly wretched weather in the Midwest, was unable to make the trip to the McDermott family party. A Skype date is definitely in order. Love you Great Grandpa!
All in all, a fantastic trip. I can´t say I was sad to leave the 14 below weather in Chicago, but I already miss my wonderful family. It´s 50 and sunny here, guys. Come see me!
Incredible food and drink aside (it really is better in America than anywhere I´ve ever been ) the highlight was seeing my family. The hardest thing about living abroad is the distance between me and my loved ones. My parents and my sister visited me in Zafra in 2011, but I hadn´t seen anyone else since I departed in August of 2010. So this was the first time I´d been with them in a good long while. The cousins who were little kids when I left are now talking about college. The ones who were toddlers and kindergarteners are now kids old enough to politely fib that they remember me. I hope to never again go so long without a visit.
The only disappointment of the trip was not getting a chance to see my great grandfather who, due to the truly wretched weather in the Midwest, was unable to make the trip to the McDermott family party. A Skype date is definitely in order. Love you Great Grandpa!
All in all, a fantastic trip. I can´t say I was sad to leave the 14 below weather in Chicago, but I already miss my wonderful family. It´s 50 and sunny here, guys. Come see me!
Thursday, November 14, 2013
basura
The Madrid trash workers are on strike. They´re facing wage cuts as the city tries to trim down it budget in light of the current economic crisis, and they are clearly unhappy about it. We´ve gone over a week now without trash collection. The ever-growing piles of bagged garbage are fine. Unsightly and stinkier every day, but I can live with it. The people who keep this city clean don´t deserve to have their salaries cut, so fine, let it pile up.
But they decided not to just let it pile up. Apparently afraid that simple heaps of rotting trash wouldn´t make a strong enough statement, the angry workers took to the streets on the second and third day of the strike to tip over gabage cans and dumpsters, scattering their contents far and wide.
The city center is a distaster zone. It looks like a tornado has ripped through the place, somehow managing to leave the buildings in tact but obliterating every trash recepticle in its path. The Lavapies plaza, the heart of our bohemian little barrio, already a touch shabby under the best of circumstances, looks positively apocalyptic. Every breeze kicks up torn newspapers and candy wrappers, and passing dogs have lefts trails of half-eaten, rotting food on the sidewalks. Even the pot dealers on the corner and the drunks on the benches look a little uncomfortable in their newly disgusting surroundings.
The newspapers say the strike may go on a while. God help us.
But they decided not to just let it pile up. Apparently afraid that simple heaps of rotting trash wouldn´t make a strong enough statement, the angry workers took to the streets on the second and third day of the strike to tip over gabage cans and dumpsters, scattering their contents far and wide.
The city center is a distaster zone. It looks like a tornado has ripped through the place, somehow managing to leave the buildings in tact but obliterating every trash recepticle in its path. The Lavapies plaza, the heart of our bohemian little barrio, already a touch shabby under the best of circumstances, looks positively apocalyptic. Every breeze kicks up torn newspapers and candy wrappers, and passing dogs have lefts trails of half-eaten, rotting food on the sidewalks. Even the pot dealers on the corner and the drunks on the benches look a little uncomfortable in their newly disgusting surroundings.
The newspapers say the strike may go on a while. God help us.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
back
After only fifteen months away, here we are again in Spain. I couldn´t be happier. Thailand was a great experience, but it certainly taught me that I would just really rather live in the developed western world. Our little flat in the center of Madrid has hot water, high-speed internet, a flush toilet located in a bathroom inside of the dwelling itself, an oven, sinks in the bathroom and kitchen, sufficient and comfortable seating...after Thailand, and especially the jungle container, it´s pure luxury. Three months in I still emerge from every hot shower amazed at how fantastic it is to have a hot shower. I´ve been cooking elaborate meals in my fully-equipped kitchen and haven´t once had to scrub mold off the walls. Life is good.
I´ve also been struck by how much easier this transition has been than any of the previous moves I´ve made. My study abroad time in Argentina was six months of culture shock; I never fully adapted because I couldn´t speak the language well and it was the first time I´d really experienced a culture other than my own. When we moved to Zafra, it took me months to being truly understanding the accent, and adjusting to small-town life was difficult and often frustrating. Living in Surat never stopped feeling insane--just when I would start to feel at home, a spider the size of my hand would scuttle across my floor, or my neighbor would proudly present me with an entire octopus and wait expectably for me to eat it, or my school would throw an enormous celebration (the motivation for which I was never once able to fully understand) in which the students would dress up in traditional Thai dance costumes and drape Buddhist scarves around a statue of the virgin Mary, or ceremonially give me a bath towel with a bow wrapped around it. There were days when it was just wholly, insurmountably foreign.
This move hasn´t been like that. I understand what people are saying. The things they do make sense to me. I can get everywhere easily, whether my bus or metro, without walking miles through unmarked village streets or risking my life on a questionable motorbike. I can buy any food I need or want. With three years under my belt, teaching is a breeze. The challenges I face every day are normal life challenges, not ´´I can´t figure out how to order food without chicken guts´´ type challenges.
Happy to be back.
I´ve also been struck by how much easier this transition has been than any of the previous moves I´ve made. My study abroad time in Argentina was six months of culture shock; I never fully adapted because I couldn´t speak the language well and it was the first time I´d really experienced a culture other than my own. When we moved to Zafra, it took me months to being truly understanding the accent, and adjusting to small-town life was difficult and often frustrating. Living in Surat never stopped feeling insane--just when I would start to feel at home, a spider the size of my hand would scuttle across my floor, or my neighbor would proudly present me with an entire octopus and wait expectably for me to eat it, or my school would throw an enormous celebration (the motivation for which I was never once able to fully understand) in which the students would dress up in traditional Thai dance costumes and drape Buddhist scarves around a statue of the virgin Mary, or ceremonially give me a bath towel with a bow wrapped around it. There were days when it was just wholly, insurmountably foreign.
This move hasn´t been like that. I understand what people are saying. The things they do make sense to me. I can get everywhere easily, whether my bus or metro, without walking miles through unmarked village streets or risking my life on a questionable motorbike. I can buy any food I need or want. With three years under my belt, teaching is a breeze. The challenges I face every day are normal life challenges, not ´´I can´t figure out how to order food without chicken guts´´ type challenges.
Happy to be back.
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