Rocking that *International* Paradise

If I had to pick just ONE weekend out of the year that I wanted to be home in La Crosse, Wisconsin, well, okay, it would probably be Christmas.   But thankfully I have 3 weeks off at Christmas, so I’m making that happen.   BUT if I had to pick just one OTHER weekend out of the year that I wanted to be home… It would be this weekend.   The beginning of Oktoberfest.   Why I want to be home is not so much that I want to join the rest of the city in a 10 day drinking binge or eat my year’s share of bratwurst.   It’s the people, and the atmosphere. Unlike high school, after college there are no 5 and 10 year reunions to look forward to.   But if you were in marching band, there’s something better.   And it is called The Alumni Band, and marching the Oktoberfest parade.   Oktoberfest weekend, almost every person I remember as a friend from college comes back to La Crosse.   Friday night brings Alumni Band practice, reuniting with friends, and us...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and the pictures don’t cut it, how am I supposed to write a blog about my Saturday experiences?  Nothing I say will do the day justice.  To show you what I mean, here’s the bare bones of what I did on Saturday: I got up before 8am, met a group of 5 th and 6 th grade students and their parents, and picked up trash at several locations along Rio Patillas (the river in a nearby town named Patillas).  See?  It doesn’t SOUND like a wonderful day.  But it was. Saturday was El Día Internacional de Limpieza de Costas, Ríos y Lagos (The International Day of Cleaning Coasts, Rivers, and Lakes).  Therefore, the 5 th and 6 th grade Recycling Club at Guamani organized a day to clean up Rio Patillas.  Being a friend of the 5 th /6 th grade teachers and a good little volunteer, I came along.  We met up at a restaurant, and carpooled to 3 river locations from there, because we had such a good turnout of students....

I had a good day at school today.  And that is important and exciting, because today was a B Cycle day, which usually means my rowdier kids, no prep period, and a general haggard feeling by the time 2:15 rolls around. Today, however, was different.  In first period, we FINALLY started reading The Hunger Games , which my 7th graders are completely excited about.  It was so refreshing to see my students completely engaged in our reading.  The difference is palpable.  As I read aloud, the students actually stop me to ask comprehension and vocabulary questions (during the short stories from the textbook, they're never interested enough to care whether or not they 100% understand).  When I pause to ask questions during The Hunger Games , multiple people are ready to supply the (correct) answer. But there are also others who say, "Come on, we've answered it now...let's keep reading!" In second period, my 8th graders were surprisingly (refreshingly) focused as...

On the list of “things I never thought I’d experience but I somehow was able to and now I’ll never forget,” watching the sun rise over Old San Juan while sitting in a hot tub on the roof of my hotel currently tops the list.   Needless to say, my weekend in Old San Juan was memorable.   It’s hard to put into words, actually, just what made my weekend so enjoyable.   But I’m going to try. The original plan was this: All 7 US teachers from Guamani, along with Danielle’s boyfriend and Kelsey’s brother, who both arrived in PR on Saturday to visit for the week, would go to San Juan (the capitol, and biggest city on the island), staying in a hotel Saturday night and going to a club, then going to the beach on Sunday and coming home.   Things didn’t go quite according to plan, however… First, we got a late start to dinner on Saturday night, making our time to get ready to leave a little tight.   Our aim was to arrive at the club before 11pm, because it was lady’s ...

The school director is fed up.   Enough is enough.   He spends class periods just walking up and down the halls, listening for excessive noise coming from classrooms.   In the last week, I have had no less than 8 interruptions during my class time by the school director, the principal, or the high school office assistant.   Most often they have an excuse—dropping something off for a student or giving me a message—but several times it has been simply to poke their head in the door and tell my students to quiet down, or stop speaking in Spanish, or to get off the desks.   (Some explanation for that last one—we were playing a game of Jeopardy, and I told the students to move their desks closer together so they could converse in their teams.   Rather than doing that, however, some students chose to sit on the floor in the aisles, or on to alternate between sitting on top of the desks and standing near their teammates.   Everyone was pretty focused, so I l...

Well, after a whole TWO days of school last week (3 cancelled days due to Hurricane Irene uncertainty), we were all stressed to the max and in need of a relaxing day at the   beach.   ;)   Luckily, we had reservations for the ferry to Caja de Muertos all booked in advance. Caja is a small island and nature preserve just off the cost of Ponce, about an hour’s drive away.   The name of the island can be translated to “Coffin Island.”   The “official” reason for this name is that the island is said to look like someone laying down when seen from far away.   The legend behind the name is that a pirate married a woman and took her pirating with him, but she died on the first raid.   Heartbroken, the pirate but her in a glass coffin and buried her in a cave on a deserted island.   Each month, he is said to have come back to the island to visit her grave and leave half of his treasure in the cave.   However, the pirate was killed eventually, an...

As many of you may know, Hurricane Irene passed over Puerto Rico last night.  I just wanted to let everyone know that we are 100% fine here. School was cancelled for today in case the town/school lost power/water, which turned out to be a non-issue; our power didn't go out for even a minute.  We did have moderate rain and some wind last night, which has continued on and off today, but on my run this morning I didn't see any signs of wind damage at all. In fact, last night around 2am, as the radar showed a big swirling mass of red over all of Puerto Rico, including Guayama, the other American teachers and I were standing in the back yard, looking up at the sky and asking each other, "Is it even raining?  What's going on here?" So.  We're all well and good.  No worries.  :)