January 26, 2009
We had a lock in for the kids that participate in Destination Imagination, a program that encourages creative and critical thinking and lots of teamwork, on Friday night. The idea of the lock in was to provide workshops on different aspects of the program and to build a sense of unity among the teams.
For me it was a time to shed my teacher attire and jump head first into the camp counselor role that I miss so much. I ran two workshops, one on choreography and team songs and another on improv acting skills. The kids were classic and hysterical and I had a blast watching them act, dance, and mime their way through each rotation.
Alhough I tried not to be partial, I couldn’t help but adore my team– The Peanut Butter Boom– the most.
There are seven of them, four girls and three boys, all bursting with personality. Two fifth grade boys in particular are real hams. They quickly adopted a “gangsta” theme and pimp limped all over the campus while simutaneously rapping their newly pinned team rhyme. The girls struck street wise model poses and wore big earrings as they sashayed through the corridors and I joined the hip swanging action and tried to keep a straight face.
By 11:30 we were back in my classroom digging out toothbrushes and trying not to die of giggle fits as Pablo, hard core gangsta fifth grader, pulled out his Little Mermaid sleeping bag and Eduardo “Brush ‘Em Off” Toro, donned his cow pajamas.
We finally got settled in and turned the lights off. There were mysterious barking frogs in the night and stifled laughs beneath Ariel’s red, flowing hair and then there was a whisper.
“Miss? Can we talk about girls in Spanish?”
I laughed out loud at the request knowing that I constantly say, “BOYS! Speak in ENGLISH!” and then whispered “Oh, I guess so, you big nerds.” And before I’d gotten the word “nerds” completely finished off, there were a crowd of pearly white teeth and pigtails around me.
I laid there on my sleeping bag listening to them talk and answering questions about boys and girls and hand holding until after 1:00 a.m. and I thought about them and their questions for hours after that.
Kids are the same in every country, I’ve decided. Sure, they’re different in ways and languages, but their insecurities and curiosities are identical. They all want to be loved and popular. They want their friends to laugh at their jokes and to be invited to birthday parties and they want the girls in the classroom next door to notice them and I can understand that.
I think I’m like that, too. Maybe we all are.
Either way, I’m glad I stayed up all night and ate pizza and made up secret handshakes and terrible raps and I’m glad that those Colombian kids trust me enough to scoot up close and tell me their secrets when they know that their friends are listening.
And for some reason, the fact that fifth graders flirt doesn’t bother me so much today.
Posted in teaching 
3 Comments »
January 22, 2009
I’m not so sure about this total honesty thing viewed by the world wide web, but Dani tagged me and I dare not let her down. So, here goes. Ten honest (and very random) things about me.
#1- I rub my feet when I’m tired. Well, the one on the bottom. I stack them, see, and then rub the bottom one against the floor or the sheet or whatever I might be lying on at the moment. Momma still fusses if I’m in my spot on the floor at her house. “Emily, get up and go to bed or quit rubbing your feet!”
#2- I wish Dolly Parton was my neighbor. Seriously, I adore her and the fact that she once wrote a song using her fingernails as percussion. She’s also quoted as saying, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap, honey.” which is flat out awesome. And that’s not even considering Steel Magnolias or her singing old hymns in that bluegrass soprano of hers.
#3- If I want to impress my students, I do a back bend ’cause I’m cool like that. Yes, in my teacher clothes.
#4- I think people who walk on tile floors barefoot are gross, but I don’t have the nerve to tell them. So I just think to myself, “Ew. That is so incredibly disgusting” and go on about my day.
#5- I still stand on the hearth at my parents’ house and give concerts. Yes, I realize that I’m an adult, but I’m also quite certain that I was a rock star in another life. I’m telling the truth. Nobody, I mean nobody, can sing “I Have Nothing” like I can. Except for maybe Whitney and who cares about her anyway?
#6- If challenged to run, swim, or bike to any given destination, I’d choose to swim without a moment’s hesitation. I’m good in the water even if I don’t look like I used to in a swimsuit. (As reaffirmed by a student who saw me in my tenure at the Oxford City Pool. “Ugh. Mih Witt, teacher’s ain’t s’posed to be wearin’ no swimmin’ suits.”)
#7- I am a shameless fan of country music. I love it all. Hank. Garth. Martina. Johnny. Willie. REBA. And, yes, I know each and every one of them on a first name basis, thankyouverymuch. Oh, my current obsession is Lady Antebellum because “All We’d Ever Need” just rips me wide open.
#8- Horror movies and dumb funny movies do absolutely nothing for me. No, I don’t like Ben Stiller nor do I laugh at his absurd attempts at comedy and blood and guts make me want to vomit. I’m sorry if that offends you. But not really.
#9- I can’t stand to sleep in the bed with people. I’d rather sleep on the floor. Just ask the girls, they’ll tell you. They’d want us all four to climb up in the bed together in college and I’d say no, thank you everytime. Bless the heart of the poor man that might be in my future. Bless him.
#10- I’m messy. Not dirty, but messy, and there is a very obvious difference. Dirty is hair in the bathroom sink and weeks of unwashed dishes. Dirty is left over food in the refrigerator and unflushed toilets. Messy is clothes on the bed (or floor or chair) and shoes that aren’t put away and is generally contained to individual space, at least in my opinion. (Yes, Mother, I know that your opinion is contrary to this one and I promise I made my bed this morning.)
I officially tag Lindsay R., Summer, and Anna. So you girls go on and spill it.
Posted in lists 6 Comments »
January 21, 2009
This year has been hard on me. The being away, for sure, but also because it’s the first year that I followed the election with any sense of ownership. I generally just get a cheat sheet from my mom and take it with me to the polls, but I didn’t want to do that this year.
It all felt too real and for the first time history came alive. At least to me.
I wasn’t reading about it in biographies or flipping through black and white pictures of it at Square Books. I was a part of it. And the feeling it gave me isn’t one I can explain. It’s rooted in my love of Oxford and her sordid past and grounded in stories my Mamaw told me about working in cotton fields.
Except now the stories are mine. I just don’t have the words to tell them.
Pat did. He told the story I wanted to tell and he told it exponentially better than I could have. I don’t know who got Pat’s vote and you don’t know who got mine and honestly, I don’t think it matters.
Because the fact is that today is a new day and our country has a new leader, but my King is bigger than any man and my faith is in Him alone. So, go read Pat’s recap and how he saw history changing on a snowy day in Oxford, Mississippi.
Posted in change 1 Comment »
January 19, 2009
Teaching fifth graders has been an adjustment for me.
No, they don’t lose teeth anymore and that’s a plus. Their whiny voices rarely rear their ugly heads and instructions are generally heard and followed without the third grade tendency to ask 563 questions and those things make me happy.
But they hold hands and giggle and write notes with hearts all over them. And, friends, I am NOT prepared to handle this. The good Lord knows that I failed Relationships 101 (more than once) and to be honest, it just freaks me out. They should want to hug me, for Pete’s sake, not the dark eyed beauty in the classroom next door!
I’ve really handled it well thus far. I have. No panic attacks, no breakdowns, but today five (not two, not three, FIVE) of my girls came in from recess wearing the pinkest lipstick you’ve ever seen. Think Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30.
But on crack.
And right behind them? The sweetest freckled face you’ve ever seen attached to the shoulders of the lovliest little ten year old kid in Colombia and he grinned at me like it was Christmas morning.
“Heya, handsome, ” I said happy to see him so happy.
“Hey, Miss!” he said as he floated past me.
And then I saw it- an outline of two perfectly pink lips covering those baby boy freckles on the left side of his baby boy face.
Heaven, help me, I’m not ready for this.
Posted in teaching 10 Comments »
January 14, 2009
Travel is the funniest thing.
It’s all invigorating at the onset. There’s the planning or the lack there of and there’s the telling people that no, you aren’t crazy and that yes, you’ll be back. Then, there’s the going and seeing and swearing that there can’t possibly be another place like this one on all the Earth. There are pictures in frames and pages of words scrawled in journals and both are gathering dust on a shelf somewhere.
But every now and again a song or a sound or the way the sunshine hits the pavement sends you back to that place- the one that you saw so very long ago– and when it happens the memories come rushing back like streams in a spring’s thaw and that, too, is travel.
Travel.
It’s in the sights, of course, but it’s also in the airport waiting, the train hopping, and the bus catching. It’s the smell of morning in a strange land and the taste of sweet tea when you come home again. Travel is photographs and paragraphs and friends all over the world. It’s trying to wrap up a lifetime of wow in a two dollar souvenir and agonizing over using modern language to describe ancient beauty.
Travel is all of those things and I’m making a life of it.
Posted in travel 8 Comments »
January 14, 2009
I like new beginnings, fresh starts.
That’s obvious enough seeing as how I pack up the contents of my life and move them all over the planet time and time again. But there truly is something so empowering about getting to know what once seemed impossible. Even if what you’re getting to know is yourself.
So, here I am at the beginning of another year and the novelty of it almost overwhelms me. There is all of 2009 to see and to breathe in and I just know that hidden in it are one thousand treasures.
I’m not sure what they are yet. Perhaps they are diamonds entombed in the stone wall around my heart. Or maybe they are new friends or new adventures. It could be that the treasure is coming home.
I honestly haven’t the faintest idea, but I do know this: I’d like to take this freshness and the feeling that it gives me and bottle it up so that someday, like in late Novemeber when days are short and winds are cold, I could take it out and have a little sip.
What about you?
Posted in change, rambling 4 Comments »
January 12, 2009
- Three breakfasts in one day helps you gain 2 or 12 pounds. I’m just sayin’.
- Momma’s house smelled just like I remembered it.
- Sisser and I took Mamaw to visit a friend from college and loved it.
- The family played an obscene amount of games. Mississippi Marbles is my new favorite.
the aforementioned family. the girls at least.
- I only went to the movies once.
- When I moved out, Mom made my bedroom the breakfast room. I sleep on the floor now.
- The girls and I met at Keifer’s and talked about the era when we only wore black, stretchy pants.
- Summer gave me lots of books to bring back.
- Wal-Mart scares me.
- There ain’t nothing wrong with a Sonic corn dog at midnight.
- Ada and I shook em on down like we were 17 again.
- The list of things I forgot to bring is looooooong.
- Coming back to Manizales didn’t seem strange at all. And Hugo held my hand when I stepped off the plane. Bless him.
- Sisser rocks my face off. Does. Miss her.
Posted in Uncategorized 12 Comments »
December 22, 2008
We landed in Memphis late on Thursday night and I hurried through the concourse. I was travel weary and travel dirty and still shocked by the transvestite Santa that had been sitting next to me, but there was the slightest skip in my step.
I saw Mom from a distance looking young and fresh and hip and my Sisser standing next to her sizing up my fashion sense or lack thereof. Lex and Stephen and that bundle o’ joy were there, too, as they always are.
And I think in that moment I figured out that home isn’t so much about a place as it is about the people. It’s about the feeling you get when you see someone after six long months. It’s not a giddy sort of feeling or an overwhelming sense of excitement. It’s a warm contentment that I can’t rightly explain, something akin to the taste of apple cider and the smell of a wood burning fireplace. That sort of feeling. You know the one.
It’s stayed with me over the past four days heating slowly from the inside out and I’m enjoying the toasty sensation. In fact, I think I’ll take three more weeks of it.
Posted in Uncategorized 8 Comments »
December 17, 2008
My plane leaves in just over two hours from now.
I’m sitting in my classroom staring at my bags and smiling at the way Colombian children say goodbye. There are hugs and kisses and wide grins that let me know they might miss me just a little.
“Give saludes to your family from us, Mees!” one girl says while another makes me promise to bring back lots of green gum. The boys hug me, too, and seem less bashful today. Perhaps Christmas and a blonde headed teacher have softened them just a bit.
There’s a giddy chatter that’s seeping in through the door as the kids are loading buses and I think I heard one of them speaking English.
Life is good here, but I’m putting it on hold for the next three weeks or so.
I’m going home.
Here’s to hoping that there are no emotional breakdowns this go ’round.
Posted in teaching, travel 4 Comments »
December 16, 2008
This time last year I was saying goodbye to the only other blonde in Manizales.
We were both bound for Bogotá and then on toward home. Home being good ole Mississippi for me and where The Muddy River starts up in Minnesota somewhere for her. We both acted tough on the first leg of the trip, laughing, eating and booty shakin’ through half of Colombia and then the hour came. The hour when she boarded one plane and I boarded another.
Truthfully, I don’t know if she shed a tear, but I reckon she did. And me? I cried like a child and missed her before she was gone. I’m better now, though, I think. Because instead of that teary goodbye, I remember six months here with her.
She ran my first Saturday run with me when I was training for the MS Blues Marathon and we laughed about how long it took us and the fact that our thighs rubbed together more than they used to. She was my movie buddy and my translator and a picture of the me that I’d like to be someday.
We’d sit over a dinner of 200 or 5,000 calories and talk about how the world beats you up sometimes and I promise, she seemed okay with it. In her 30 year old wisdom she’d tell me about how the hurting helps you heal and how the healing makes you stronger and I envied her view of the battle.
Then there were times when she said all the things that I was thinking, but never had the nerve to say. She talked fearlessly about lonliness and hopelessness and getting to know herself. She talked about girls whose pants were too tight and boys that couldn’t think past what happens after dinner and she talked about how both of those things could keep a woman from loving completely.
Then, inevitably some salsa song would come on and she’d be singing at the top of her lungs. And if I was lucky, some Colombian man would ask her to dance and I’d sit and watch as she matched every step, her hips shaking like the wanna be Latina that she is. She swayed and sweated and soaked away the world in Colombia’s finest boxed rums and sweetest smells.
Un olor a tabaco y chanel
Una mezcla de miel y café.
And somewhere between the popcorn, the Spanish, and stories about boxers I found another sister. A sistah, I mean, because that’s how she says it. “You and me, we’re just different. We’re ghetto girls gettin’ it done.”
So, even though she’s stateside and I’m here, we keep dreamin’. About trips around the world and starting schools in forgotten places. We dream about boys that have their acts together and girls that aren’t afraid to be without them.
We write obscenely long emails about bad decisions and horrific grammar and the effects of aspartame on the aging woman’s waistline. And we remind each other that it’s okay to be crazy as long as you aren’t there alone. And I’m not because she lives right next door.
Here’s to you, Ames, my Amyta la mexícana, de una moníta a la otra moníta.
I wish you were here.
Posted in friendcitos 2 Comments »
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