Over the weekend, we took J to see the rhododendrons on Roan Mountain.
The blossoms were a little past peak, and some of them were already wilting, but it was impressive nonetheless.
Roan Mountain
general
Color Blinded
Now that we have a house under contract, K has joyfully jumped into the wide world of paints. We have swatches and brochures and booklets lying all over the place.
Since I'm colorblind, I can't really offer that much constructive input. After all, I did once buy a dark blue fleece jacket that turned out to be mockingly purple. And I did think for years that my friends' parents had a gray car, only to learn, after I'd confused everyone by suggesting we take said gray car, that they didn't own a gray car -- it was light green.
Still, I'm glad someone in the family is interested in it.
Even L was taking part in the discussion.
Solids
We've entered the wild, wonderful world of solids,
which means a number of things:
- It takes a little more time to prepare for a feeding;
- Feeding is more labor intensive;
- Post-poop clean-up is more labor intensive; and,
- Preference begins to rear its finicky head.
On the other hand, feeding is more amusing and more conducive to photography.
Cheating?
When I was in Poland the first time, I made a vow: I will write in my journal every single day. I blew that pretty much within the first week, if memory serves. I was in Radom for "Pre-Service Training" with roughly 90 other Americans, and the late nights took a toll, I suppose.
A photo blog of Radom is available here, but it's all in Polish. Still, gives you an idea of the city.
So I modified my resolution: I will write in my journal every single day once I get to my site. And I did -- except, I believe, for one day.
Well, two. Evening I got in late and was bed before I remembered, so I got up to write something -- anything -- and I think I put down something like "This is just to keep my streak going."
This time, I came up with something a little better, I believe...
A Day at the Park
Last week, we took the kids in the program -- who have been really working hard on their social skills of late and making great progress -- to Carowinds, a theme park on the North/South Carolina border.
It had been years since I'd been to an amusement park. And it certainly showed me how much I've aged -- within about an hour, after having ridden one or two coasters with the kids, I was thinking, "Well, if we were to leave right now, I'd be perfectly content."
And then one of the kids got the idea to go on the "Drop Zone Stunt Tower." A tower with seats that pull you up to some relatively impressive height -- at least it seems that way at the moment -- and then drops you. Fairly simple.
The specs are not all that impressive:
- Tower Height:174 feet
- Maximum Height Reached by Transports: 160 feet
- Length of Freefall Before Braking: 100 feet
- Highest Speed: 56 M.P.H.
- Lift Speed: 16 feet/second
But the overall experience is -- weightlessness for just a few moments.
And I must admit that I, another staff, and one of the kids (we split up for a while) rode it more times than we could later remember.
Imagine that -- in my mid-thirties and still able to have fun in a park.
Still, I couldn't help but think the unavoidable, the predictable: I can't wait until we take L to such places...
House Hunt: Mission Complete
Last week, we decided to make an offer on a house. We’d seen it three times. The first time, we were idiots — we judged from the easily fixable stuff and ignored the rest.
The kitchen, as it presently exists, is awful. Counter tops made from bathroom tile?! No thank you. The cabinets are old, and the walls are covered, it appears, with the original material from 1968. Dated and worn, in other words. It made such a little impression on us that I didn’t even post a picture of it.
Later, we reconsidered, but it had disappeared from the real estate web site. Then it reappeared, and while the kitchen was just as horrifying the second time, the rest of the house had a certain charm that we liked. More importantly — rather, most importantly — the foundation is solid and sound, and it has so much potential.
So we went back a third time, and decided to make an offer.
And that’s when the adventure started, because it turned out that there was already an offer on the house. “But they haven’t secured financing yet,” our real estate agent told us. We, on the other hand, had had the foresight to get pre-approved before we even began looking. So after a day of faxing, emailing, calling, signing, and FedEx-ing, we swooped in and scooped it up.
Which is to say, we are now on the receiving end of a house that is under contract.
Maps
Via Kerim at Keywords, who found it at Strange Maps.
It is a bit misleading, though, as Strange Maps explains:
The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries� GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map � misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.
Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that�s slightly higher than Israel�s � but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2,7 million and 3,4 million.
All the same, fascinating.
I went to Strange Maps myself (obviously) and found a map much more interesting, in my view: the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World.
How to read the map?
On this map, East and West Germany are next to each other, as one would expect. But Romania�s closest neighbour is Armenia? And Poland and India are side by side? Well, this is not a straightforward geographical map, but a cultural one. It plots out how countries relate to each other on a double axis of values (ranging from �traditional� to �secular-rational� on the vertical and from �survival� to �self-expression� on the horizontal scale). This makes for some strange bedfellows � for example: South Africa, Peru and the Philippines occupy almost the same position, although they�re on three different continents.
If I were a social studies teacher…
Improvement
When teaching English as a Foreign Language, I often wondered whether I would work in an educational setting that provided such clear evidence of progress. When you take a first year class that speaks no English and help turn it into a group of kids almost all of whom pass the English language exit exam with good marks, there’s a definite sense of achievement.
Then I spent seven months working with autistic children.
A couple of the students finished the year as completely different children than when they started. Gains in reading ability, social interaction, verbal expression, math skills, and general life skills left me simply astounded, and understandably proud that I had something to do with it. (Seven Months)
Now, working with at-risk kids, I get a third example.
A young man came up to me the other day to tell me something.
When he first arrived, he spoke to me only when he absolutely had to, he cussed me out on a fairly regular basis, and he never, in any circumstances, looked me in the eye. He had trouble getting along with other kids, and if you judged him just from that, you’d come away thinking he was a fairly unpleasant person.
This time, his eyes wide with a big smile, he said, “I done something good today, but you didn’t see it.” He then told me about how he’d managed to keep his temper under control with another kid in the program whom he finds irritating.
It was the first time I’d ever seen pride in his face.
NCLB
How effective is No Child Left Behind? Not very.
In fact, it harms our kids instead of helping them. How?
Here’s a letter from a parent who’s also a teacher with 21 years’ experience which explains the problems perfectly: Letter about Re-Authorization of NCLB.
New and Old-ish
Yesterday I was in G'ville to sign my contract for the next year. It's a startling experience to look around you and realize that you're probably among the five oldest in the room. Most of the new teachers are just that -- fresh out of school, with student teaching only a few weeks behind them.
Sitting there, looking at the young faces all around me, I quickly did the math and realized I could have easily been their high school teacher.
It's not the first time it happened. I once walked into the teachers' room in Lipnica to see a former student sitting there. We chatted a little, and it turned out she no longer just a former student but also a current colleague.
I expect, if I'd stayed in Lipnica long enough, I'd be teaching former students' kids.
All of this to say, I'm feeling my age this morning. Not feeling old, simply feeling my age.