No internet

I canceled my Cablevision services for the summer, so as of this moment I am signing off...

T minus 162 hours.....

A week from today I will be visiting the homeland [well at least my homeland :-)] for about 7 weeks. I’ve wanted to do this trip for a while now, but it only became a concrete plan about a year ago. My vision is to have a complete change of environment in a somewhat familiar place, where I sort of know people but they don’t know much about me. My home barrio of Nibaje seemed like the perfect place for this. I used my connections in the island to rent an apartment for the time I’ll be there. I will be arriving in the Santiago airport a week from today. I am both excited and nervous about this trip, and in light of recent news about a relative there, also sad.

There will be a humanitarian component to this trip as well, because the altruist in me can’t pass up the opportunity to give back. I will be volunteering part-time in an elementary school while I’m there. I attended this school for about a year as a kid but have very little memories from that time. I’m looking forward to learning different approaches to the ones I use here.

I’m also looking forward to revisiting childhood memories and sharing them with Duke. I am also a little anxious and scared that I have over-romanticized this trip. I’m afraid once I arrived there and compare my fantasy to reality I would be miserable or disappointed, but that’s just a small fear. After all, it’s bad experiences that make great future stories. I am armed with mosquito repellent, a first aid kit, and my rebel….seriously, what could possibly go wrong? I’ll also have internet access so I’ll be posting frequent updates and uploading pictures to my flickr page, so stay tuned.

mdl

mixed_message

mixed_messege
Originally uploaded by NYCmiri

i got this brochure in a health fair at work today, accompanied by an NYC condom. Hows that for mixed messages?

mdl

being part of history

Last summer Duke interviewed me at the storycorps booth in the WTC station. I received this certificate today telling me that my conversation has been added to the collection at the library of congress. I guess this means we are part of history now :-)

mdl

validation

Today the scores for the New York City Math third grade exam came in and once again my existence has been validated. Duke scored a four (meaning he exceeded the standards). Although knowledge itself should be a reward enough, I'm still buying him something nice, deserves it :-)

mdl

I have been sleeping more than usual lately, which is good, I guess but it's also annoying. I'm also remembering my dreams more than usual. A few nights ago I experienced a semi-lucid dream. I was sitting in a classroom while the principal observed another teacher. I tried to read what she wrote on the chart paper and I couldn't. I then looked around the room and it was arranged differently than when I first came in. I thought for a few seconds and suddenly realized i was dreaming,. Of course right after I realized it I woke up. Fascinated and confused at the same time I tried to go back to the dream but couldn't. This is not the first time I experience lucid dreaming but it's the first time in a while that it happens without me inducing it.

Coincidently, while walking in around in the city yesterday i found a copy of this book on sale in bookstore in the upper west side. I flipped through it and found the lucid dreaming chapter. I've actually read this book before in college but never really had time to devote to it and explore some of the ideas in it. I have now become obsessed with this idea and have decided to try it until I can master it ( or die trying...he he). I couldn't prepare for it last night because i was much too tired to concentrate on anything. I am ready tonight, though. Hopefully it'll work and I can do something cooler than just become aware of my dreaming state, freak out and then wake up.

mdl

360 degrees

If we make a 360 degree turn-around would we end up in the same place where we started? This question came up today during staff meeting after a comment encouraging us to help our student make this type of change. Thanx Mr. C, thinking about this and the announcements made me laugh all afternoon :-)

mdl

"mama got shot by GI Joe"

During one of my after-school conversations with Ms. G, she expressed her curiosity for the origin of the chants our students sing while playing clapping games. These chants seem to spread to the most remote NYC neighborhoods. The following is a fragment from one of the rhymes I ‘ve heard my students chant. What's really amazing is that every child in that age range that I've met knows this chant. My best guess is that it was created by a teenage mother and that it was probably made up no later than the early 90’s because of its Barney reference. But I still can't explain why it's so wide spread, perhaps a branch of sociology can be created to study this phenomena...he he

“Mama Mama can’t you see…
What the baby’s done to me
Took away my MTV, now I’m watching Barney
Tic-Tac Toe three in a row…..
Mama got shot by GI Joe”

Talking about this also made me remember some of the chants I used to say as a kid. I don’t think I really knew what they were about, but that doesn’t make them less inappropriate. I can’t remember too many in English since I didn’t didn’t learn English until I was a pre-teen (this site seems to have a lot of them including “down down baby”). In Spanish I still remember a bunch along with the hand motions. Some of my favorites were mariquita abusadora, la caraqueña, las cortinas del palacio, matarile, pollito pleibi, el juego de la vaca and el gallo.

::sigh:: those were simpler times :-)


mdl