Thursday, March 26, 2009

Odds and Ends Thursday 7

Yesterday’s vocal inabilities carried over into today, as did drum practice. And whereas the ridiculous of the situation yesterday was wacky and absurd, today it was old and annoying. But as I said, the voice thing is latest facet of a vicious cycle of laziness and exhaustion that I’ve been caught in for the last couple weeks. I’ll be the first to cop to the fact that I’m only in front of students for a little over 3 hours a day, and that we frequently cancel classes. Nonetheless, it’s been 9 weeks straight of being at school at 7:30 a.m., and I’m ready for a 3-day weekend. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:
  • I bought Simon and Garfunkel’s “April, Come She Will” on iTunes on Tuesday.
  • I’m reading a Don Delillo book, and I’m mostly weirded out by it. I took a ceramics night class at Pasadena City College a while back, and a bunch of the older artsy crowd had a smug conversation about Don Delillo once. So far the book is affirming a lot of the prejudices I have about the older artsy crowd that takes night ceramics classes at Pasadena City College.
  • I finished “Arrested Development,” and I’ve moved on to 10 episodes of “The Office” from the most recent season. I haven’t seen an episode in 5.5 months, and I thought it would be all nostalgic to see all the characters again. But it wasn’t. It just felt like another episode. And it was, literally picking up where I’d left off. Felt weird that it didn’t feel weird.
  • I’m getting to know students’ names better, and I think they don’t mind the fact that it’s taken me 2 months to become familiar with their names. Although actually, I think that I’ve set the bar pretty low during these first 2 months, and now that I’m actually learning names, they’re happily surprised.
  • I told my year 13 class that they could have an extra period to work on the test that I gave them today. When they finished their test today and already missed most of the class they have after mine, they made sure I’d worked it out with their teacher. I hadn’t. Oops.
  • Today I was excited about the fact that I haven’t seen a palagi since Monday, and I was hoping to continue my streak through tomorrow. But then I realized that I had to go into town to buy a white T-shirt for Sports Day, which is tomorrow (I’ve been assigned to ref girls’ volleyball.). It turns out there’s a huge cruise ship in Apia today, so I binged on seeing palagis.
  • All the palagis in town also created a temporary price increase on goods that are usually pretty cheap. e.g. T-shirts. BOOOOOOOOO!
  • My students use the latin abbreviation “e.g.” quite often. It’s impressive because, in my experience, most Americans who speak English natively use “i.e.” when they should be using “e.g.”
  • Bananas were served along with the muffins today. I appreciated the potassium boost.
  • I ran into Joey and Peace Corps trainer H.P. on Sunday morning. They invited me to come to a get-together happening at Jordan’s tonight. I forgot about it. They just called wondering where I am. Oops.
  • I found that the computers in my lab can convert documents to PDF. This is incredibly exciting.
  • All the stores here sell generic brands from New Zealand. Pam’s is one of the more prominent ones. Pam’s makes surprisingly tasty tortilla chips, which is impressive being that there’s an ocean between Pam and Latin America.
  • Working with the Microsoft Office Suite so often here, I have grown to have strange things about obscure parts of the program. In PowerPoint, I have a much better appreciation for a “corner point” in the free draw tool. And I’ve come to really like Calibri as a font, and I find it extremely disappointing that it only comes with Office 2007, mostly because none of the computers that are hooked up to printers here have 2007.
  • I set a goal to get to in my Don Delillo book this afternoon, and just as I reached that goal, I fell asleep. But it was not an intentional nap, and when I woke up, I had no idea where I was or what time it was. That feeling is always a little off putting.
That’s all I got. Hope you’re not off put. Pictures below.
















One of my year 13s had blue all over her face because she'd written stuff on her hand in blue pen and it had spread. And then one period later, this kid comes into my 11.2 class with weird royal blue stains on his shirt. All of it incredibly reminiscent of Arrested Development. There’s got to be a better way to say that.
















I have no way to prove it, but I believe when this cruise ship sailed into Apia Harbour, it became the largest man-made structure in the country.
















A little bit more perspective on the cruise ship. The building on the right is the main government offices, and they are considerably closer to my vantage point than the ship. And they still appear to be the same size.





















White people in town today.
















In my search for a white t-shirt, I came across this gem at the thrift store. Unfortunately it wasn't my size.

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