mostly about the Lord Mayor's Show

This week was very exciting because 1) I got my first London hair cut by an exuberant Italian man who sang and whistled, though not at the same time, the entirety of my overly short cut; 2) a friend came to visit; 3) there was a parade! 4) there were fireworks!

No, the parade and fireworks were not in behalf of the job I still don't have. They were for the Lord Mayor's Show which, in a nutshell, is a whole lot of pomp and circumstance for the Lord Mayor of London to go and swear loyalty to the crown. In the olden days, the kings were a bit nervous about the leader of London having delusions of seizing crown and country, so they needed to ensure they had a nice tight leash on the mayor. Today, the Lord Mayor isn't the actual mayor of London. She or he is the head of the City of London Corporation (one of many officers who could be voted into the head position by other officers) while the actual mayor is elected in the usual election kind of way.

Anyway. While our friend was visiting, I made several delicious dinner dishes in a row, dishes that did not include rice and beans, our staple these days. I finally saw Platform 9 3/4 but neglected to take a photo of myself because there were too many people about. I need solitude to properly pose at such an irresistibly kitschy location. I went to a delightful bakery and bought challah bread to make this french toast.

And then of course we went to the parade and stood in the pouring rain and saw sopping wet marching bands, freezing cold dancing Colombians, lots and lots of floats about recycling, surprisingly friendly military units, and finally, the Lord Mayor herself riding in a 300 year-old golden carriage. It was an excellent parade and totally worth having feet that resembled ice blocks.

Later that evening, or rather afternoon since it gets dark here at 4:18, we watched the fireworks and then  went off to a pub for our friend to experience the quintessentially British fish and chips followed by the quintessentially American apple crisp with ice cream. Yum.

a market and the Heath

One of the main drawbacks to our neighborhood in Bloomsbury is that it's not as much a neighborhood as a tourist mecca. You can find people who live here if you look very carefully, but they seem greatly outnumbered by the visitors. It also means that while there are plenty of grocery stores, there isn't a great neighborhood farmers' market. This really isn't a problem, however, since there are plenty of other markets within a couple of miles. It just gives me an excuse, as if I needed one, to visit them all.

Yesterday we popped up to the Parliament Hill farmers' market and it definitely did not disappoint. We ate a crodough filled with lemon curd and potato bread with rosemary and potato skins hidden inside, which were both scrummy, but the real treat was the Welshman selling said items. Not only did he think my accent sounded Irish (bless him! and don't be too shocked. It's all the r, I think), but he chatted with us for a good 5 minutes while customers lined up behind us. His accent was charming, although sometimes unintelligible, and I was reluctant to end the conversation. 

Here is one of the stories he told us: he saw two lines in a paper about a crodough (aka doughsant or cronut) being served in NYC and though it would be fun to try making them, which he mentioned to a friend, who immediately tweeted that the Welshman's bakery would be selling crodoughs at the next Saturday market. So the Welshman looked up a recipe online, made a couple of batches, and sold out of them the first week. They've been a hit ever since, particularly the ones rolled in cinnamon and sugar immediately after coming out of the fryer. I'm thinking about going back every week just to see him, but then it means I might miss other markets. It's really a difficult decision. 

We also bought a jar of sweet and dainty honey from an English flower I never quite caught the name of. I felt asking the honey man a third time for the name of the plant was just insulting, so I nodded, handed him a fiver, and scurried away with my honey. 

Then we found ourselves in the Heath, or, as I think of it, heaven in London. Hampstead Heath is an 800-acre "park," to use the word loosely. It's more a jungle of wild grass, massive trees, murky ponds, rambling hills, and tame wildlife plopped right in the heart of the city. You can pull on a pair of wellies and tromp through the mud and forget that you're in the suffocating midst of 10 million people. You can also frolic with your dog along with all the other dog people who look at you strangely when you ask them questions about their dog when you don't have one, but who chat merrily with the other dog owners. I definitely need a dog. 

I wish I had some photos to show you of the Heath, but I don't. Some things you just can't capture with a camera. At least I can't. If you can, please come visit and you can photograph it yourself. 

a brief moment on the camino

We step in to an inviting looking cafe sandwiched between a convenience store and a bar and look around. The tables are all empty, but two old men sit on stools at the counter, and there's a man drying off some cups. As we enter, everyone turns and stares at us, and we awkwardly gape back at them with half a dozen questions running through our minds. Do we sit? Table or counter? Is there a menu? The man behind the counter frowns slightly at us, possibly because we're still standing in the doorway, but more likely due to our general air of sweat and dirt. Trav and I exchange a quick glance and finally lug ourselves and our backpacks to a corner table. Sighing as he places the now dry tea cup on the peg board behind him, the man comes over to our table and asks what we want. I ask what type of tea they serve and receive a puzzled look, as if it never crossed his mind they might offer multiple varieties of tea. I timidly point to the oversized poster blocking the doorway that explain the many types of tea served in this cafe. The puzzled look is replaced again by a slight frown and he abruptly walks away. Some minutes later he returns with my tea, Trav's muffin, the only edible item in sight and therefore the safest thing to order, and our bill. I gulp down the tea while Trav uses the toilet placed rather inconveniently in the middle of the room, and we remove ourselves from further awkwardness and head back on the camino. Later on, we learned that that every cafe in Spain sells cheese and bread, as well as a plethora of other unannounced items. You just had to be savvy enough to know this without asking.

teary

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I've become a weepy, teary-eyed sap as I've gotten older (I hate to be able to tag that onto the end of any sentence...gotten older. It sounds so foreboding). When I was a child, I prided myself on the fact that I rarely cried, unless I was really sad about something or  induced into a fitful rage, at which point tears were an inevitable result of not being able to lash out in the way I wanted to. My momma was tough and didn't cry; I was tough and didn't cry. That didn't mean I wasn't still very sensitive. I was. I just didn't like to show it.

My best friend Jay would cry during a Hallmark commercial, a sappy chick flick, in church, or during a good song. And she always did it so gracefully. Her eyes were never puffy and her nose never turned red. Maybe her mascara smeared a little, but it somehow managed to make her look more radiant. Jay could shed a tear with beauty and grace; sophistication, even.

But not I. Which, since I never cried, meant it wasn't much of an issue. But nowadays, I get choked up all the time...during movies, plays (like last night when we were at A Christmas Carol at Ford's Theater), books, when singing particular songs (let me just add that it is really hard to sing and cry at the same time. It usually comes out as a very unattractive sob, just hopefully not on a high note), and yes, even occasionally during a sentimental commercial. But this is new territory for me, this letting my emotions actually reach the surface, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. If nothing else, it seems I need to buy some waterproof mascara.

Gen Y

Before you read any of this post, please take this (possibly overly) simplistic quiz and find out in which generation you fit according to your beliefs, not age. My score was 70, making me a pretty solid Millennial; what's yours?

Last week one of the lectures in one of my textbooks covered the topic of Generation Y (Millennials). It was actually really interesting and I learned all sorts of things (which is one of the joys of being an ESL teacher- I get to study and teach science, history, culture, economics, sociology, etc, and language). For instance, the average Millennial spends at least $30 at the mall every time s/he visits (which is often).  They're very close to their families and usually get along pretty well with their parents; they value time with family and success in marriage far more than success in their career. They are less white than any generation before. They love to have fun. They consider themselves to be pretty tolerant of everything from interracial relationships to religion to sexual orientation. They're well educated, especially the girls. Anyway, you can read the full, and very long, report from the Pew Research Center here.

So I had my students take the quiz--most of them scored somewhere in the Millennial range of 60-80 with a few around 95 (not surprisingly, those are the students whose phones I'm constantly collecting for texting during class) and a few with the scores of Baby Boomers--and then we spent some time in class discussing what it meant to be a Millennial and the differences between us and previous generations.  They were extremely enthusiastic during our discussion, possibly because it meant they got to talk about themselves more, but they brought up some good points.

Most of them said that the one thing they felt was most unique about them compared to their parents' generation was the use of technology. One student agreed that Millennials like to have fun but was concerned that it meant that Millennials are lazy. He's not, he assured me (which is true), but maybe Millennials enjoy leisure so much to the point of making it detrimental to society. I think he's on to something. Millennials are lacking the work ethic that abounded during the time of the Baby Boomers. It may be better that we're not raising another generation of workaholics, but worrisome that we might be lazy entitled piles.

I was surprised that several of my non-Muslim students (from mostly Catholic countries) thought it was ok to date someone of another religion, but definitely not marry that person. I think most young Americans are fine with interracial/religious dating and marriage, and I actually think it's beneficial for society to mix and mingle...which is another thing that makes me a Millennial, I suppose.

Anyway. I was wondering what you thought.  Regardless of whether or not you are one, what do you think is good/bad about Millennials?

One more thing. As I was reading up on Gen X and Y and Baby Boomers, I kept wondering how we all turned out the way we did. What was it in the way our parents taught us or what teachers said at school or what we saw on Sesame Street that helped form our belief system? I was a little offended that I too, fit fairly nicely into a category along with everyone else. I hate that the little voice in my head that shouts "But I'm different!" is wrong.

PRISENCOLINENSINAINCIUSOL

I know I haven't posted anything worthwhile lately, and unfortunately today won't be any different (or maybe it's fortunate; what I'm about to show you is much cooler than anything I could say on my own). If you recall from last year, I posted a video with fake English, giving native English speakers the opportunity to "hear" what English sounds like to the rest of the world. This little gem below is a song written by an Italian pop star 40 years ago. Some say it was the world's first rap song; I say it's just fantastic.

Read more about the song on npr's article here.

debate debacle

I made the mistake of watching the debate last night, or rather part of it since I couldn't take it anymore after 40 minutes. The particular news site I was using to stream the debate also happened to have an opinion poll on the same page. It allowed you to indicate how strongly you agreed or disagreed with what was being said while showing the average responses as they were being sent in, which meant that you could really get the flavor of the mood of the audience. What really irked me was that when either candidate stood up, before he had even begun speaking, the tracker would drastically swing to agree or disagree depending on who was speaking, clearly revealing them as partisan hacks who didn't give a damn about the issues or the words that were coming out of the candidates' mouths. They had already made up their mind about what they theought about each candidate before either of them had even begun to answer a question.

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, by the American people. Don't they care about the issues? Can't they wait a few moments to hear out the arguments on the other side and think about things rationally?

And this is what I hate about politics. Too many people choose a candidate based solely on political party and then automatically discount what the other side says because they're the other side. When election time rolls around, a politician who works well with someone of the opposite party is suspected as being a turncoat- too liberal or too conservative. Romney has to appeal to conservative extremists to get a nomination and then fall back to moderate once it comes to national elections. Obama is expected to completely turn around the economy in 4 years...etc, etc, etc. It's all just silly. Asinine. Infuriating.

I wish Nader were running again.

the giggler

The concept of classroom cohesion in ESL classes is quite mind boggling when you really think about it. You're take 15+ students from different countries with as different backgrounds as you can imagine, stick them in the same room 4 hours a day, and tell them not only to work well together, but to be friends, ideally in and out of the classroom. And I, as the teacher and language expert, am the great friendship facilitator. Sometimes my job is easy--my students are actually interested in life outside of themselves, and I don't really have to do much to encourage them to expand their social circle to include each other. Their language skills improve rapidly because they're actually speaking English while living in the US. It gives my heart a warm glow when I see that they're actually voluntarily doing things with classmates, even the ones whose accents are seriously difficult to understand. It's so nice.

Alas, it doesn't always work out that way. I've had semesters where the students remained in isolated language cliques unless I force it out of them, only to slink back into their comfort zone the moment my back is turned. These students generally don't learn much English. I've thankfully only had a couple of (miserable) experiences where there's actual animosity between students. One was an issue of racism where the student quickly found himself kicked out into the hall. Another was chauvinistic bullying that was never fully resolved (too many deeply rooted cultural expectations) and continued a semester past mine. It makes going to class unpleasantly nerve racking for both me and the rest of the class.

But never until now have I had a giggler. Actually, that's not true. I had one really odd boy from some South American country who sat in the back and laughed or hummed or made other sounds on a regular basis. I think there may have been something wrong with him. But this kid isn't weird. He's just giddy. And he giggles like a 5 year old, so no one wants to work with him because he's too busy chuckling at...who knows what. I'm definitely a little hammy in class, but I'm not that funny.

So today he and I had a heart-to-heart where I told him that I expected him to respect his classmates and me by acting in a professional way and containing his laughter. He vowed to "refresh" himself (??) over the weekend and promised to return a new man boy (he's only 18). We'll see if it happens.

a simpler life

Sometimes T-rav and I think about leaving our lives behind for something like this:

With a view of nothing as far as the eye can see.

We could move somewhere like Ocracoke of the Outer Banks. We'd buy a little house on the beach and get some inconsequential job at a gift shop or a restaurant - I've also considered starting my own "destination" English school at the beach - or volunteer to patrol the shore for sea turtles during nesting season. And we'd finally get our chance to ride out a hurricane.

Wouldn't it be grand?

goodbye (kind of) DLS

Today is my very very last day at the company I've been working for the past year. Actually, it's my third "last" day since I was supposed to be done July 27, extended to August 2, extended to August 17 or whenever I happened to finish the Pashto grammar book we've been working on.

Having three last days is rather anti-climactic.

It's been a good year at DLS. There were times when I was bored out of my mind and times when I ranted at the laziness of some of my coworkers who didn't quite share my work ethic. I'm a teensy bit sad to leave, but knowing that I'm probably going to be back for some odds and ends on my textbooks (that I already know need further editing) makes it less sad. But for a little while at least, I'm done.

And what's next? Georgetown full time for the fall. Here's to a new semester of (hopefully) good students and good teaching.