what do you smell like?

Today in class we were talking about American hygiene (which the Brazilians thought was border line dirty and the European thought was possibly over the top), a student asked me if American men wear cologne.

I had to pause to consider my answer. Yes, they wear it. But I think there's something about the 5 foot rule- if you can smell the cologne from more than 5 feet away, it's too strong...or something like that. I told him that yes, they wear it, but it's usually not very strong. He was wondering because someone actually said this to him in the mall the other day:

girl: Hey, are you gay?
male student: Um, no. Why do you ask me this?
girl: Because I can smell you from a mile away!

There's really no response. Who says something like that to a total stranger?! Now this student happens to be from a country where men typically were cologne and a lot of it. The more important the occasion, the stronger he smells. He doesn't always wear it for school (which may tell you something about why his grades aren't so stellar), but I've noticed that when he wears it, he wears it. You can smell him from the other side of the room. It usually smells nice enough, but not being a perfume wearer myself due to the instant headache no matter the quantity or quality, I usually keep my distance.

I like the idea of perfume. I like smelling the little sample sticks that come in magazines. I like looking at the lovely bottles and thinking about old fashioned perfume pumps (my grandma used to have some of those). I just can't handle walking around all day with a fuzzy brain. Even scented lotions sometimes bother me.

My sister usually wears perfume or some kind of body spray when she dresses up. My mom wears it all the time. My dad wears cologne for special occasions? or possibly all the time. I'm not sure. My grandpa smells like aftershave. My grandma smells like Tide and Bounce. But I couldn't recall smelling perfume on many of my friends. What do you guys smell like?

If you get enough people to say you're right, does that make you right?

What will happen if Palestine convinces the world to declare it a state? Will it actually work?

May I draw your attention to the "Books I've been reading lately" list. If you've paid any attention at all to my list, you may now notice that something is missing. Something that has been on the list for far too long. After 2 long years (2 summers actually) I have finally, FINALLY finished Harry Potter e il Principe Mezzosangue, aka Harry Potter #6. In Italian. It took me many moons and the all-too-constant assistance of a dictionary. But I finished.

Finalmente!

A jaunt to DC

Last week was fall break and being as I was dying to go somewhere, we finally used our Delta vouchers that have been sitting around for months (that's the only reason I'd willingly choose to fly delta) and hopped on a plane bound for DC. Why DC? Well, it was one of the only places too far to drive to and cheap enough to use our tickets; most of the activities were free; the metro is relatively reasonably priced and goes almost everywhere; we had an offer of a place to stay from our lovely friends Brooke and Max. Who could pass up such an opportunity?

Day 1: Arlington Cemetery. Tour of the capitol. Air and Space Museum. Below is the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington.
In the afternoon, we met up with T-rav's old roommate RyRy.
Day 2: Torrential rain (and no jacket- what was I thinking?!). Holocaust Museum- what to say about that. You can't really say it was great- moving, perhaps? Depressing? Educational? Museum of American History.

Posing by the very famous leather jacket worn by The Fonz.
They were filming a movie while we were in DC and we stumbled across this in a parking lot in Chinatown.
In case you don't recognize the truck in the picture, this might help.
Day 3: The Washington Monument- I swear it was swaying in the wild gusts of wind. Lincoln Memorial. WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam Memorials- I thought it was interesting that each war memorial seemed to fit the war it represented. Some were large and stately and full of triumph (WWII) while others were small and quiet and situated off the beaten path (Korea). National Archives- the Declaration is much more faded than I anticipated! The National Cathedral- a little bit of "medieval" Europe right in our nation's capital. A Haunted Tour of Old Town Alexandria- wasn't terribly spooky, but fun just the same. Maybe one day when I have dollars coming out my ears I'll buy a teensy little house in one of those neighborhoods and hunt for ghosts myself.
View east from the Lincoln Memorial
Vietnam Veterans Memorial .
National Cathedral. Bob gave us a great 1/2 hour (actually turned into 1.5 hours) tour and showed us a moon rock embedded in one of the stained glass windows and all kinds of other random coolies things (we found the Darth Vader gargoyle all by ourselves). This church is ginormous. And beautiful. If we ever need to get married again, I'm booking the children's chapel for the wedding.All in all, a lovely trip. I'm hoping we have lots of reasons to go back in the near future.

tie or tide...the results

So. It seems that you people prefer tide to tie. And I'm perfectly ok with that. You say tide, I'll say tie, and we'll all just get along.

However, what baffles me is what determines which one you say. Is it that you say what you think you hear and 1/3 of the population doesn't hear the -d on the end? Or is there actually a pattern in location, gender, age, etc, that is obviously missing here from such a small survey sample. In my family, for example, my mom, sister and I (New Yorkers) all say tie me over; my dad (Utahn) says tide me over (my brother probably doesn't say either, as he spends most of his time cursing). Where's the pattern in that?

Another question that I still have is where exactly did the expression tide me over come from in the first place? Now I'm no etymologist, but my theory lies in the meaning of an obsolete form of the word tide, which, according to the OED (thanks for the byu access, sister!) means:

tide: To carry through (an undertaking); to enable (a person) to surmount (a difficulty, etc.) as on a swelling tide.

The earliest use of this form of tide occurred in 1626 and the last in 1870 and, coincidentally, coincides with the first appearances of the expression tide me over.

to tide over: to get over or surmount (a difficulty, time of stress, etc.) as if by rising on the flowing tide, or by taking advantage of a favourable tide

And, surprise! (to me, at least) an alternate and modern definition of tide is:

tide: To carry, as the tide does

If you consider tide in this way rather than thinking solely about waves flowing to and fro, I think it makes quite a bit of sense where our expression originated.

Alas, the OED has no information concerning tie over (at least that I can find), so I can't answer when, why, or how it emerged into the English language. But I will say that as a descriptivist, and maybe also because I myself say the alternate expression, I can't condemn the use of tie. It's just the way language evolves, folks. Take it or leave it.

breaking news

A new language has been found!! Although most of you probably don't care two shakes, here's an article about the world's most recent language discovery. If I could, I'd fly right over to northern India to hear it for myself!

tie or tide

T-rav and I are in the middle of a word debate that probably doesn't have a right or wrong answer but is fun to talk about just the same. He noticed this posted on my facebook status: "hungry and far from the kitchen with only 3 small cookies to tie me over."

He thought it was strange that I said tie me over because he has always heard/said tide me over. When he mentioned the difference, I instantly went into ridicule mode. TIDE me over? What is that supposed to mean? But then I started thinking about it and tie doesn't really sound all that much better...and I suppose I had heard tide now and then...so we started doing some google research (if only I had access to the OED, I'd try that too). We found that:

• Tie me over has 10,300,000 hits while tide me over has 2,710,000 hits (not that this is scientific or proves anything, but ole' Dr. Robertson used it in every class to explain such and such an idea).
• There are loads of sites that mock the use of tie and support the use of tide.
• Many sites agree that tie me over is a colloquialism and therefore wrong (which I have a problem with).
  

One British site says: ...I say that the true form is to tide one over. In some slight defence of to tie one over, it is becoming more common, but it is a folk etymology (read “error” if you prefer) that has grown up because the word tide here seems to make no sense.

The idea is that of the swelling tide, which will carry you over some obstacle, with the implication that it won’t require effort on your part. It may be that it’s a deliberate echo of Brutus’s comment, in Julius Caesar: “There is a Tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the Flood, leads on to Fortune”, or it may at least be taken from the same idea of a ship, say, waiting for the tide to rise and carry it over the bar into a harbour.

Now I'm not sure I buy the part about a swelling tide...but he makes an interesting point. So what do you say? And I'm wondering if this is regional or age-related or random or some other variable. Post a comment and answer the survey (and send others my way. I need a bigger sample group!), please!

to beat or not to beat

I nearly chucked my marker at a student in my class today. Between personal conversations, questions to me (usually about something I barely answered), answering the phone in class (the inappropriateness of which we've already discussed) comments about our discussion, and random inane comments and noises from one strange Mexican kid, I could hardly hear myself think. Until today I've liked this class, but I'm starting to reconsider. They're just too unruly.

In their defense:

1. We have a large class in a teensy classroom that is ill-lit (unless you open the shades on the windows, which in turn blind the teacher).
2. The students are sitting nearly on top of each other, making it extra easy for them to chat.
3. Because they're sitting so close together, it's very easy to conceal phones and text messages, furthering classroom distraction.
   
4. We meet right after lunch, which usually has a drowsy effect on students, but with this group it's like a party.
5. It's a listening speaking class, so we do lots of conversational, active activities.
   

But REALLY. During the second hour of class, I was ready to pack up and leave. But then the students would have been delighted to leave early, and student glee is NOT what I'm going for. I've had unruly classes in the past, but this one is pushing all the right buttons. Perhaps it's the Arab guy who gives me less respect than his male teacher. Maybe it's the weird Mexican kid who sits in the back and says "no" and/or claps at everything anyone says. Whatever the problem, they're going to be surprised when they come to class on Thursday and find that their teacher isn't quite as nice as she may have seemed. Here's what I've been tossing around as disciplinary ideas:

1. Throw things at them when they're noisy.
2. Refuse to speak until everyone is quiet.
3. Bring a horn/whistle to blow whenever they're not listening.
4. Stage a public beating.
   
5. Refuse to answer questions of students who may not have done their homework.
6. Throw out students who come unprepared.
7. Deduct 10 points every time a student speaks out of turn.
8. Yell.
9. Throw out the weird Mexican kid.
10. Confiscate cell phones and possibly laptops (I don't know if I can make myself do this one- my German teacher answers phones that go off in class...in German. I don't have that kind of...courage).
    

My personal favorite is to throw things, but I might get in trouble for that. I suppose I could make my class very boring in hopes that it will calm them down, but I already struggle to make our topics relevant and interesting to skeptical students. I get sick of hearing "teacher, why you make us do this?" or "teacher, how does this help my English?" Or maybe they think my class is boring and that's the problem? I'm not sure. Any other ideas out there?

Radio West had a program on Mormon Feminism last week with the fantastic Joanna Brooks and Claudia Bushman. It was great. Here's the link, if you're interested.

Slumpy Day

Today shouldn't be a slumpy day. Today had so much potential. I bought my level 3 students candy and did a fun activity (or fun for me. They had to eat black licorice with their eyes closed- not knowing what it was- and then describe it), I went to a fantastic lecture with the inspiring Uyghur woman Rebiya Kadeer, I didn't have to teach much of my level 4 class (because of the lecture that we attended) and I get to go to Irish dance. And I really like what I wore today, which, shallow as that may seem, actually can affect my mood for the day.

But I still feel slumpy. I partially blame two of my students. They're frequently negative about the topics we discuss in class and today I really didn't know how to react to them. Usually I just shrug them off and continue with our conversation, but today their brief comments about nothing made me go from perfectly content to perfectly not.

The thing is, I've been feeling like that more and more this semester. Now if it were January or February, this would be quite normal. But usually in the fall I'm happy to be back at school and starting afresh. But I'm not. I'm less patient with my students and less inclined to spend extra time doing things for them. I know I should "live in the moment," but I'm exceedingly antsy to move on with our life. I just wish I knew what "moving on" entailed, other than moving out of Utah. I'm going to stir crazy and some days I think the unsatisfied wanderlust might just kill me.

And more and more often I wonder if I really want to teach. Don't get me wrong- I really like teaching. But isn't there something more meaningful I could be doing? Like working with the Uyghurs to help free their people? Or finding money for my Haitian friend whose school is still in ruins? Or going back to Guatemala to help them with their gardens so their children aren't malnourished and sick? Or...or....

Sorry for complaining. I just had to get that off my chest. Do you ever feel this way?