Unapologetically Behind

“It’s been a weekend, and I’m terribly sorry to keep you all waiting. Here’s what I’m going to do, I started writing Friday’s post during school on Friday and I really don’t want to go back and change the tenses, so I’m just going to hit all three days like I’m not lazy” was what I intended to do for this post when I started writing mid-afternoon. But life is not so simple as being able to sit down and write for hours on end without interruption. And let’s be real, I got the chance to hang out with my host family and as much as I want to enchant you all with my stories, my host family is a little more local so bonding with them seemed far more important. Besides, it’s currently 22:15 and although my alarm is going to go off at 6:30, I’m betting the chickens will start around 5:30. So you’re getting this weekend in installments. If anything crazy happens tomorrow, I will notify you post haste, but until then, see if you can tide yourself over with a snippet of the weekend, here we go:

Friday

One of my favorite parts about this experience is seeing how students, no matter what nationality or country or culture, are the same everywhere. As I approached Marnix this morning, eyes smarting from the brisk wind, I was met with a scene I hadn’t seen since my own days in junior high. Or rather, I should say that it hit my other senses before reaching my eyes. My ears became aware first, the distant but familiar hiss of liquid becoming aerosolized. Next the assault on my nostrils – the thick, singe-your-nose-hairs “fragrance” of middle school boys everywhere: Axe. Only after I had taken a quick trip down memory lane to the hallway outside the boy’s locker rooms at Crabapple Middle School, did I see the three boys assaulting each other with streams of spray from their body spray cans. Ah, middle school.

The day lingered on, class to class to class. I have three pages worth of pedagogical observations about that, but you’ll need to request it specially. When lunch rolled around, I made my way down the hallway to meet another English teacher, Ester, and two male students who were furiously looking over their notes and (good naturedly) ribbing each other. Marnix College does a speaking competition, I believe, every year. Any student is eligible to enter, regardless if they are part of the bilingual program or not, but they must deliver a speech, in English, on a subject of their choice. That’s it, pick a topic and wow us. As I came in, the English department was reaching the end of preliminary eliminations (all apply, they do their speech in front of their English class or a few teachers, then the students who pass that round will go before a panel of teachers, and then the ones who pass that round will go to the final “big deal” competition later this semester). So, Ester had asked me to sit with her and help with judging because well, being the sole judge is awkward. I was introduced to the boys, who I’m going to call A and B for the purpose of this story. I realize that using their names would be so much easier but I’m terrified of using a student’s name in anything but my academic research, just too much liability when dealing with minors. We went round the usual, “I’m an American, I’ve come to teach, blah, blah, blah” spiel and in the best of “what a small world”, A told me that his father lives in a village (yep, they call towns ‘villages’) south of Atlanta. Next I learned that the boys entered the completion solely to complete against one another, and apparently that’s what they do, compete against each other in everything. Ester and I took our seats, and A delivered his speech and all was well and good. Then, B took the stage, shaking like a leaf. With a mixture of the cockiness that only high school boys who are completing against their best friend and an obvious disappointment look apparent across his reddening face, he revealed that since he was simply trying to beat student A, he had prepared a speech about “Why A Should Not Participate in MarnixTalks” but, I had thrown a wrench in his plan. The first driving point of his slander campaign, revolved around student A’s American roots… which makes for awkward conversation when one of your judges just happens to be American. Whoops. Of course I laughed and told him to bring on whatever he had prepared. So with a face who’s shade of red would’ve made a tomato jealous, he proceeded to “convince” us that student A’s American roots, habits of procrastination, and lack of mustache made him a completely inadequate candidate.

For the record, student B will be advancing to the next round.

After school, I was invited to go back to Ester’s home with a handful of other teachers. We purchased microwavable spare ribs (not as good as Southern barbeque, but A for effort) and sat around the table in her normal-for-Netherlands, smallerthanmycollegedorm, but nonetheless cozy living room, enjoying dinner. After the guys had killed of their crate of beer, we hopped on the bus to the central part of Arnem where the group shot pool in the back of a dingy bar while Ester and I swapped travel stories – which was mostly her giving me really good advice for traveling Europe and me thinking for the thousandth time that I need to start carrying a notebook to write all this stuff down.