Friday, February 26, 2010

Adventures at Home

So I've been home for almost a month now. And it's been great. I've eaten PCC food, drunk Vita coffee, played our beautiful in-tune piano, obtained an iTouch (!) from indulgent parents to whom I have very grateful, enjoyed siblings who make me laugh just by saying things like "Congrats! You've won a fish card!" and...had some pretty crazy adventures. I will tell you about two of them.

Adventure #1:
Substitute Teaching Judaic Studies at SHA (Seattle Hebrew Academy)
I was looking for employment when I came back to Seattle, and I'd taken a few (minimal) steps to secure some...but then this fell into my lap. My 6th grade Rebbe's wife had just had their fifth child early (on the bathroom floor, I might add) and he was due for his two-week paternity leave. And there I was. In Seattle. So he called me up, sat me down, and explained me me how weird his classes were. He now teaches the 4th and 5th grade (morning and afternoon, respectively) and he did things in class like name each of the Chumash worksheets for the fourth grade and make up a story with a moral for each one. I didn't realize exactly what he meant by "story" -- and got a little carried away with my shiny new mem-bet page. I told the story of "Meanie" the Chumash worksheet who had been asleep on a train from Rabat to Marrakesh when her life's work had been stolen from under her nose. To make it interesting I asked them for suggestions - just words to throw into the story, like on "Who's Line is it Anyway". SO Jay-Z ended up being the thief, and in the end he returned everything because he felt so bad at having stolen it. It was a crazy, involved story, and the moral ended up being something like "honesty is the best policy". I think they liked it.

Other things that I learned in school:
If you're a teacher, you have a lot of power, and if you have a sibling in school, she also might think that she has some power by virtue of your power.
That whole first existence/second existence thing -- very true.
It doesn't take a lot to get a kid suspended from elementary school.
I accidentally gave them 40 minutes of free recess.
I purposefully gave them 40 minutes of free recess.
I learned that you become an adult when you're 18, but a grown-up only once you turn 41.
I learned that I do not, never have, and will never have ADD. But some kids do. Some kids in my class.


Adventure #2:
Road Trippin' w/ mah sista down to Yakima to watch the Northwest Yeshiva High School's 613 Girls compete in the State Championship
Epic road trip down, deadly road trip back. Well not deadly - just frightening. I picked my sister up from school at 2:15, we got pizza for dinner and hit the road around 3. The game was at 5:30, and it takes about 2 1/2 hours to get through the pass and into the Yakima Valley. It was pouring - like God-was-angry-and-turned-the-shower -on-max-pressure-to-relieve-His-stress pouring - through the pass, and the balding tires of our Prius were hydroplaning something nasty. But once we got through the pass (with its beautiful vistas so lovingly captured by my sis) we hit I-82, and that's where things started to get weird. Here's a list of things we saw:

-Hay
-A city called Thorp
-Deer
-A truck full of Buffalo Meat "...just for the health of it" (yes, that was really their slogan)
-Antique Fruit (yes, that's how they advertised)
-A city called Selah (while listening to the Ben Folds album "Forever and Ever, Amen", strangely)
-A sign that told us "Chain Up Parking Area Ahead" (which we could only assume meant that if we parked there we'd have to chain ourselves to our car, or our car to the parking lot, or something like that)
-A road called Thrall
-Cows
-Rivers
-Shrubs (that, if Mars really had water, would grow on Mars.)
-Anti-social houses (As in, they had no neighbors. At all. For miles.)
-A sign that said "Leaving Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (we hadn't seen one that informed us we were entering said "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area".)
-Logs
-Horses
-A place that looked like a NASA space station that my sister, appropriately I believe, dubbed "Apollo Ono 13"

And then we'd made it to Yakima. The game was sad. We lost 25-62. Painful. But we had been in the 4th seat and we were playing the 1st placed team. So there was that. And they had Baskin Robins (Kosher ice cream!) as consolation for the Jewz. So then we got back in the car. But it was dark, and I was feeling ill, and picky about the music. So it wasn't a, well, pleasant ride back. But we made it alive back along I-82 without being trampled by any maggots or horses or buffalo health meat.

At the end of one month in Seattle I have picked up the pieces of my shattered cyber-life and am leaving America with the following important items: A computer (!), an ipod (yay parents!), a journal (thanks Estee!) AND...a passport valid for the next decade (!!!). And what I have now is Time. I have approximately four months to not be a University student. I will spend my Time reading, talking, researching, making music, and learning a bit of this and a bit of that. I hope you stay with me for the next round of this robin. I leave you with an old favorite that will mean more to some and less to others, but isn't it always that way? Here's "Time" by Ben Folds. (The last few minutes are nothing, and the song has nothing to do with Weird Al, I don't know why he's in the byline) Oh, and, just for kicks, some Billy Joel.

1 comment:

  1. Do you really think you'll have that passport for 10 years?

    "-A city called Thorp"

    Love me some Thorp. They sell some mean fruit

    Also you didn't mention the exit 93 fruit trucks.

    "-A city called Selah"

    Isn't this basically a suburb of Yakima

    "-A sign that told us "Chain Up Parking Area Ahead" (which we could only assume meant that if we parked there we'd have to chain ourselves to our car, or our car to the parking lot, or something like that)"

    I'm going to assume you actually did understand this sign

    ReplyDelete