Monday, December 28, 2009

drunk with students

TODAY'S LEARNED VOCABULARY:

pele wele - colloquial slang for sex
pusca (that 's' is a 'sh' sound) - rifle
bet - drunk

there are many a taboo in the world. most of course differ between cultures.

Taboos in Murka:

Drinking with Students
Having Sex with Students

Taboos in Moldova:

Women Drinking
Women Smoking
Women Swearing

I of course have no qualms with myself drinking, smoking or swearing. I curb them all in order to be initially respected and then let them go with time, thus easing my community into the idea that a woman CAN IN FACT do these things and STILL function in a respectable manner. Who knew.

However, mixing taboos is an interesting taboo cocktail. Like a Long Island Ice Tea -- by all chemical rights it shouldn't work... but... it does!

That is, I just returned home from the following:

+ 6 breakless hours teaching kids who have no interest in what I am teaching.
+ 2 hours cleaning, talking with my host mother in Romanian, making bread.
+ 1 hour speaking in Romanian with Renata (magic) and two of my least motivated boy students in 11th grade about why I won't sleep with them and drinking Renata's (magic) moonshine (the only tasty moonshine I've yet tasted.... stay alert for a posting on Moldovan moonshine)
+ Picking up Renata's daughter at the kindergarten
+ Having a snow fight with one of the students (who previously I'd hated for breaking the concentration of one of my favorite girl student, Olga's, in her classes as they are unfortunately dating)

Home now, I feel fulfilled and happy and warm. Tomorrow I leave for Spain and I could not have imagined a better way to leave my village to entice me to come... home.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Because I Remember Almost All These Instances, and I Can't Love the Real World All the Time

Or:

"100 Reasons We Like Kirk More than Picard, Kiddo's Favs"

1. When Data died, Picard had a funeral. When Spock died, Kirk reconstituted the body, forced it's soul back in, and even got him laid along the way.

5. Kirk has caused computers to self-destruct by out-thinking them on three separate occasions.

9. Picard is from France

14. Kirk chastises omni-powerful super beings for not being polite to women

20. Picard's name is known and respected throughout Klingon space.
Kirk's name is cursed and vilified.

24. Picard quotes Shakespeare for fun. Kirk quotes Shakespeare to intimidate his enemies.

30. Kirk once said: "You're the Captain's woman till he says your not."

37. Kirk mocks Federation bureaucrats that he doesn't like and then proves that their aides are Klingon spies, just to make the point.

I take issue with:
43. Kirk repopulated the Earth's once extinct humpbacked whale species.
I think this was more Spock's doing than Kirks. Kirk just banged a blonde

57. Kirk fought the Greek god Apollo. And won.

59. Kirk's middle name is Tiberius.

66. Kirk chops his own firewood.

67. Kirk once led a Mafia take over.

68. Kirk would have slept with Beverly Crusher by episode two

87. 87% of all Klingon opera is about the singer's desire to kill Kirk.

88. The other 13% of all Klingon opera is about the singer's desire to be killed by Kirk in glorious battle.

96. "KHHHAAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!!"

97. Kirk blatantly disobeys one out of every five Starfleet orders just to remind them who's really minding the store.

100. Style: Kirk did it first, he did it better and he did it wearing gold velour and Beatle-boots with a space girl on each arm.
.

Now, I ask you, Chuck Norris fans, what have you to say for yourselves and your sloppy idols?

Frosted Glass

As a kid I was fascinated with frosted glass. Its glass -- but I can't see through it! I always wondered why it was called "frosted" as it was clearly, just furred, just brushed. Either of these options have been my mind's mainstays til last week while on hall duty in the high school.

Our school, like most around here, is run on a series of wood-burning, hot water boilers called sobas. and they tend to be unreliable and not terribly good at heating anything. The rooms are warmer than the halls, and the halls are warmer than outside, but its been sitting at -20 F for a week and "warmer" is on that relative sliding scale usually reserved for igloo terminology.

Igloos, by the way, are uninsulated, impermanent structures. Cinderblock walls with unglazed windows and no mention of tapestries at least cause me to think of layering clothes in a completely new way. However! The unglazed windows have become a thing of fascination for me! Did you know that if you press your hand, lightly, on a thickly frosted glass window, and take it off relatively quickly, your skin will melt the ice just where your prints are, so you are left with a police mugbook quality print in frozen condensation of 600 teenagers breathing? Its fantastic!

To make a long story short I have a flu like sickness confining me to bed. Mom's winter care package of DayQuil, NyQuil, long underwear, gorgeous thick socks, tea and poetry books has come at the perfect moment! Gods bless my parents.

I'm not the only one getting care packages either! (Franny, I wish you could have seen this) Today I didn't really teach my lovely second grade class... a woman came in with felt puppets and told a lively rendition of the nativity ending with "and that is why we get presents on Christmas! So here are your presents!"

Every one of these children who cannot afford to buy new copy books so I'm handing out typing paper and pens every class, was then given a shiny, christmas wrapped shoe box sealed with "Samaritan Purse" tape. Each package had a To/From sticker on it. The To was for Girl or Boy, tick this, this or this age.

If any of you (I know many of you do, cus you do it with me) ever put together a charity shoebox present and wondered if it mattered, if you'd bother again next year, if maybe you skimped and should have added a bag of cherry flavored cough drops or 2B pencils, wonder no longer. My kids love you. They love you like you will never know until your English class gets interrupted by true joy.