Year 1 - Week 37: The Purple Disc Revolution

For the first time in a while, I truly had nothing to do. By the end of last week, I had caught up on grading exams. My new tech geeks wanted a break from lessons, to be continued on Monday. All I really had to do on Sunday was go to market. I headed over in the late hours of the morning with the desire to arrive back home right around lunch time.

My nap yesterday ruined any opportunity of having a good night’s sleep. Once I was finished with lunch, I was exhausted. I forced myself to stay awake through the afternoon, knowing that I would sleep like a baby during the night. Unlike previous afternoons when I had time, this afternoon proved productive. I spent a good bit of time studying GRE vocab. I have nearly finished studying for this part of the exam. Hopefully I’ll be done by the end of the month or the first weekend of September, giving me plenty of time to nail down the writing section.

Dinner, though it was delicious, was largely irrelevant for me tonight. Chili was just the appetizer for a glorious night ahead. The deluge of calls started with my parents, continued with one of my best friends, and ended at a couple minutes after 10 with my brother. It was great to catch up with everyone, especial the last two callers, with whom I haven’t talked in a while. Up later than usual and having already studied earlier in the day, I blew out my candle and went to bed.

I woke up Monday morning laughing. The Larium struck again in a most hilarious way. The dream was so good and so vivid that I had to write down what happened. My sister was getting married to some German hippie chick. There were flutes playing and at some point, a video about them came on. The Germans asked for the video to be played in German first and their request was accepted. Once this happened, my grandparents left to beat the traffic out. Eventually, the party split into two, one for my sister’s side of the family and one for the other girl’s side. Apparently, though, the party was impossible to find. Along the way, my sister stole cake from a bakery and eventually we ended up at Leo Tolstoy’s house. Fuckin Larium.

I tried to fall back into the dream but it wasn’t meant to be. I awoke once again around 8:00 and when I went outside, I found my student Afonso waiting for me. I had an 8:00 meeting with the English theater students. I expected this to mean 8:30, but shockingly, he managed to gather a quorum by 8:00. My students my not learn English well, but god damnit they are going to learn to be on time.

The meeting was quick – all they have to do is make copies of the play for themselves, and they don’t need my help to do that. While they made copies, I ran over to the house to pick up my computer and get going on my computer project. Today, we looked at tables, not exactly my specialty. I would rather use Excel for this kind of stuff, but it’s important for them to know how to use them. The class ran late – until about 11:15 – forcing me to act quickly to make lunch. I got lucky with getting carvão going, prepped while the coals got hot, and ate, all in less than 30 minutes, probably record time.

Classes went beautifully today. After giving an exam to one group of 12th graders, I continued with my students on a march through past tense. For this day, we looked at verbs in the past tense with “if”, like “If my students studied more, they would not fail my ridiculously easy exams”. They picked it up surprisingly quickly and I was able to end my day a bit early.

Once the energy came on, I had a new student come over to learn some tech stuff. I’m happy to help him with it – heck, I’m happy to help anyone with that kind of stuff – but it gets tough at night. I had been working straight through since 8 AM and I’ll I really wanted to do was eat and listen to music. The last thing I wanted to do was prattle more about computer stuff. But a promise is a promise, so I worked with him for about 20 minutes before giving him the boot.

Other than the one visitor, the night was pretty quiet. I spent a good portion of the night listening to the new Pete Yorn album. I’m trying to get on board with it, but I don’t think it’s his strongest work.

My sister called me Tuesday morning, a very nice start to my day. We talked for a good while until it was nearly midnight California time. I haven’t talked to her in a while. She says she’s a bad sister, but we all lead busy lives.

I was happily correcting exams when my neighbor – a math teacher – came over for some help. He had some problem that involved successions, something I relearned a few months ago with one of my classes. But this problem was a tricky one. I worked at it for about 30 minutes, resolving one part but not the entire thing. I was left frustrated, but like any good puzzle, I would come back to it.

Classes were okay today. One set of twelfth graders got a lesson on using past tense in “if” statements. My eleventh graders got a lesson on preterit imperfect – “I used to teach English in America” – which they picked up with ease. And my second set of twelfth graders took their exam.

In between two of my classes, I watched one of my colleagues (and friends) finish up his chemistry class. He had demonstrated the first of two problems and wanted the students to do the second one themselves. As they finished up, he walked around the class to see how they had done. “Lixo! Lixo! Lixo!” – “Trash! Trash! Trash!” Not exactly the positive reinforcement I like to use.

One hundred more exams to grade and then I’m done for a couple of weeks. I got to it immediately, hoping to get through a small chunk of them. I set my sights at half way through the first class, and then I would give myself a break. Conveniently, I got to a failing test right at the half way point, giving me even more reason to give it a break. The wind blowing hard, I threw on a sweatshirt, plugged in the iPod ad took a stroll around the school.

Usually the afternoons, once school is over, is pretty quiet. Maybe there is a football game going on, which of course draws the attention of everyone, but other than that, people pretty much relax. So what I saw confused and delighted me: groups of kids in huge circles throwing our fuchsia Frisbees. The Frisbee revolution has taken over Machanga. I joined in on the fun, throwing the occasional trick throw to the delight of on-lookers. Once the energy came on, I made my glorious exit.

Before I started dinner, I committed myself to solving the math problem. I got itchingly close, even getting the right answer with an educated guess. The teacher’s book confirmed my answer albeit with no directions on how to solve it. With no mathematical proof, I was frustrated. I put it down for the night to sleep on it.

Afonso came over again tonight, this time way overstaying his welcome. I don’t mind having people over here, but not until 8:00 at night. Certain social cues that we are accustomed to – like completely ignoring someone in order to get them to leave – just don’t apply here. Eventually, I just told him “I need some time alone”. And like that he was gone. I watched an episode of “Scrubs” and went to bed.

I always thought that “sleep on it” was a funny phrase. Until this morning. I woke up Wednesday and like a vision I had the answer to the math problem. A little tricky substitution and I had the mathematical proof I was looking for. I marched over to the school office to find the teacher and smiling, relieved, showed my work.

If I had time this morning, I would have gone to the market, but I was lacking any big chunk of time. The English theatre kids had a meeting. They started their rehearsals, and considering it was the first day, it was pretty good. They have already memorized some of the lines. The play is running at about 12 minutes right now, and they still have to add some small transition scenes to get it to about 16 minutes. Even for my brightest students, it’s a lot of English.

After the theatre meeting, I was left about an hour to relax before cooking lunch. Fresh out of eggs – and just about everything else – I went to the low-resource pasta standby. The carbs got me through my classes, which went okay. Some of the students in my terrible class have the terrible habit of sending text messages while in class. They know that I can’t stand this. Usually I would transfer air time from their phones to mine, but they rarely have credit. I didn’t even bother to check this time; instead I just threw chalk at them and that stopped them in their tracks.

Finally with a bit of time, I was able to go to the market. I stocked up on all the regular goodies and got myself an almost cold soda. Once I got home, I didn’t even sort out my groceries. I went back to the field where the kids were playing yesterday to find even more kids playing. They love to laugh at each other when the fail miserably. Everybody is an expert until the Frisbee comes to them. I stayed with until the energy came on.

I had two students over for tech lessons tonight, but I just wasn’t up for it. I was exhausted and dehydrated. I told Afonso that he would be teaching class tonight; that worked out gloriously. I could relax and prep dinner while he explained in a combination of Portuguese and Ndau (local dialect) how to navigate around Microsoft Word. Gotta love sustainability.

Having learned my lesson from last night, I gave Afonso the boot again around 7:30 just before eating dinner. The rest of the night, to my delight, was quiet. With about 30 minutes of energy left, I watched an episode of “Scrubs” before checking out for the night.

I was sleeping a beautiful sleep when I heard the noise that might bother me more than any other sound here, even more than roosters: “Cença!” “Cença!” It’s not even a word: it’s short for “licença” and if said in a complete phrase would be “Com licença” or “Da licença”. It’s the basic equivalent of “Excuse me” or a knock on the door. Children especially exploit this half-word, often standing at the door of my neighbor, shrieking the word for minutes on end until they realize, yes, there really is no one home.

Today, I was the target. One of my students, minutes into the exam on Tuesday, told me he was feeling sick and asked to take the test later in the week. I was suspicious but I figured I’d give him the benefit of the doubt. He told me he would take the test Thursday morning. Had he not shown, I would have given him a zero. But like a good student, he showed up, and to my surprise, he showed up at the hour he said he would.

I corrected his test right after he finished and he did just fine. About an hour later, another student came by to take the test. I had low expectations for this student: he has passed exactly one exam this year. Even with low expectations, he managed not to meet them. He managed to accomplish a feat that no one had accomplished this year: a non-cheating zero. Out of 25 questions, he got 25 questions wrong. It was shockingly poor. When he said that he “didn’t know anything” on the test, I didn’t think he meant it literally. Of course, it shouldn’t be so shocking. As soon as he finished the test, he told me that he wouldn’t be in class that day. It’s awfully hard to learn the material if you are never in class. I can’t feel sorry for students like him.

Other than the two students coming over, it was a quiet morning. I corrected a few more tests and mostly just hung around before cooking up lunch.

Classes were quick and easy today. Outside of two classes, one to 11th graders and one to 12th graders, the rest of my afternoon was handing back exams. The students from these two groups were mostly satisfied with their grades – one class had a pass rate of 77%, the other 84% – and had few questions about the exam. Due to the lack of questions, I was done early.

It was a beautiful afternoon. A few clouds in the sky and a slight breeze kept the heat to a minimum and made for perfect Frisbee conditions. I went over to the field near the students’ dorms to find once again a crew of Frisbee players. I tossed it around with them until the energy came on, and then returned home.

While at the field, Afonso asked me if he could come over tonight to do some tech work. I told him yes, but he had to leave at 7:00. This last week has helped me figure out how to deal with visitors. One of the downsides of living at school is that we never leave work. It can make for terribly long days. But with a line drawn in the sand, it can help alleviate some of the pain. Once he left, I cooked up dinner and sorted out the two packages that arrived this afternoon.

One of my co-workers asked me if I wanted to go out “for a beer or two” and I figured, what the hell, why not. Just before the energy went out, four of us headed for the vila. Well, one our two beers led to seven or eight between the four of us and I was ready to go home. My co-worker said that numbers seven and eight were the last two, but out came two more. This frustrated me, mostly because I don’t like being blatantly lied to (does anyone?). I walked out in a bluster and was followed out but one of the four in the party. I told her I was tired and wanted to sleep, which was true. It was midnight and I was exhausted. But not too exhausted to fire up charcoal at 12:15 and cook delicious macaroni and cheese before going to sleep.

Unlike yesterday, I woke up on my own terms around 8:15 on Friday. I was a little dizzy, but far from hung over. Choosing to leave was a good decision. Had I continued, even with just those two beers, I would not be feeling good today. I wanted to get some work done in the morning. There are still 44 exams waiting to be corrected. But there was much to do in the morning – dishes to be done, water to be pumped, bread to be purchased – with no one here to help. By the time I finished with all the household stuff, it was already 11:00, prep time for lunch.

I had an easy day ahead of me. All I had to do was return two sets of exams, a total of maybe thirty minutes of work. Unfortunately, today I had to face the class with a 42% pass rate. It’s tough for me to yell at them – I’m not much of a yeller in English, let alone in a foreign language – but I certainly laid it out for them explicitly. The were the worst-performing group out of six. And not by a little: no other class had worse than a 70% pass rate. As expected, when I asked for questions about the test, there were none. For a class that doesn’t know much, they sure know it all.

Richie sent me a text early in the afternoon telling me that he would be back tonight. This was good news for both of us. I was ready have someone back in the house, and Richie’s travel time would be cut from two days to one. He told me, though, not to wait for him for dinner. This opened up the opportunity to try something new: homemade ravioli. The pasta was shockingly easy to make, but getting the little suckers to fold over was tough. It wasn’t a complete failure. There is a lot of room for improvement, but for the first time, I’m encouraged. Before the night was over, I talked to my grandfather for the first time in a while and watched an episode of “Scrubs”.

I didn’t know when Richie got back to the house, but I was long asleep by the time he arrived. It was a little strange to go to bed in an empty house and wake up to someone with it. The words I heard as soon as I woke up though rang a familiar tone: “I hate this place so much”. He rolled in after midnight and, with the music that blared all night outside, he didn’t get much sleep.

The music took its toll on me also. I was sleeping soundly until 2:30, but from then until 8, I was up at least once in a hour. Having no responsibility, I stayed in bed until 8:30.

I was not nearly as useless as Richie was today. After reading magazines for most of the morning, I made an afternoon market run while Richie napped. Shortly following, with Richie awake, we threw around the Frisbee for a bit before the energy came on.

The evening was strange to say the least. For one, we ate eggs and potato pancakes – our normal lunch – for dinner. Not only did we not have any food for lunch, but we figured that the potatoes could prepare us for a night of drinking. However, nothing could prepare us for the new “Brüno” movie. Following “Borat”, it couldn’t be terrible. While it has some hilarious moments, it’s not nearly as good as “Borat”, but if you have a strong stomach, it’s worth it.

When the power when out, our night began. We locked down the house and headed to the vila to drink with some colleagues with whom we don’t usually drink. It was all good fun. Between the two of us, we forked out three dollars total and were both feeling good afterward. We got back to the house around 12:30, both tired and ready to put ourselves and the week to rest.