Brain/Life Dump

It has been sweltering here in San Salvador, but this week that heat and humidity have finally turned into rain. First, a trickle, and then today, an all-out ugliness outside. I guess this marks the starting of the rainy season. Yuck!

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Geoff and I went to the beach last weekend to check out "Atami," a private beach club to which the school has membership. We had heard mixed things about it, so we decided it was something to see for ourselves. They had two types of rooms, $20 for a room with a fan or $36 for a room with an AC unit. We sprung for the one with AC, and it turned out to be a blessing, because the beach area was unbearably humid during most of our stay. But, besides that, Atami had a couple of huge pools (warm even at night because they are completely exposed to the sun during the day); a 100-meter water slide (actual curvy, water-park style); and a couple of salt-water pools right next to the ocean! The salt-water pools were awesome during high tide! The waves actually splash over the edge, but the pool is roped off on the sides so that you would not fall into the rocky ocean 10 feet below.

All in all, we had a LOT of fun at the club, and we think that we will try to go back there with a bigger group of people next time. My only gripe from the whole weekend is that the club is a bit remote from the happening spots along the popular beaches, and yet their food has a high price-to-quality ratio. Our weekend ended up costing a little over $100 bucks -- definitely not cheap for El Salvador -- once you included all the food and drinks, and that was only for mediocre food and a few drinks!

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In other news, my dad is out of the hospital! YAY. He was in there for a short stint for something potentially very serious, but in the end, the docs determined that he was OK and let him go after a few days of in-patient care. :) Thank goodness! (Needless to say, this had been very stressful...)

I can't wait to see my parents in June, which seems to be, amazingly, just around the corner.

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On the teaching front, I have been working hard to pull together the last projects of the year for my kids. I showed my Geometry kids a super fun movie about dimensions, called Flatland, and they loved it! On Monday, we will launch into a multi-day project on the computers, using this link in combination with some excellently scaffolded spatial puzzles (which I found while digging through the reference books at my school) to do a 3-d visualization/surface area/volume/base perimeter project. I can't be more excited! The entire project will take 3 or 4 days, but it should be super fun and educational for the kids.

In Algebra 2, we're wrapping up the exponential / logarithmic functions unit, so I dipped into my long-past engineering background and worked with the science teacher to figure out an RC-circuit lab for the kids. I have already tried it out, and I think it is going to be brilliant! (We're also doing a water-cooling lab, which is also exponentially slowing down as it approaches room temperature. But, that one is easy to set up, and I had actually already made the kids do it once last year with my friend Tim when I went away myself on a school trip, so I'm not too concerned about working out the logistics of that lab.) I am relieved to be wrapping up the long and very tedious exponential and logarithmic unit with some hands-on science activities.

Addendum July 2, 2010: In the spirit of sharing, here are the RC circuit lab thumbnails. Let me know if it looks interesting and you want the original file!





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The last bit of update is that I got to swing-dance to live jazz music last night right here in San Salvador!!

April is apparently the jazz-appreciation month around the world, so the American Embassy had sponsored a free jazz concert in the plaza across the street from La Feria (the San Salvador convention center). I went with my sensible swing shoes on, just in case the music and venue were swingable. And, it was amazing!! Geoff wasn't there, but Andrea and I danced, and then I asked some of the Peace Corps volunteers we had met to dance. By the end of the concert, there were 4 or 5 couples up swing-dancing, and it was so lovely! (Even the locals were looking on, admiring the energy we had spontaneously generated.)

Afterwards, Andrea and I went along to grab a drink with the Peace Corps people we had met. They were super cool, and they gave me an interesting perspective on El Salvador. But, that's story for another time. :)

Next year

Big news: I'm picking up one section of regular Precalculus next year! Yeaaaah! That's definitely going to keep me busy on top of the regular and honors Geometry sections I was already planning to teach. But, the upside is that it'll continue to expand the breadth of curricula I have taught at the high-school level, so I'm very excited. :)

Another piece of SUPER EXCITING NEWS on the teaching front is that we're going to have another American teacher added to the math department next year! :) I hope he turns out to be cool, because I miss having other teachers in the math department who are around my age.

Anyway, Geoff and I are heading out tonight to try out an Italian restaurant we had heard brilliant things about. I can't wait!! :) :)

Costa Rica!

After much anticipation / some anxiety, I arrived in Costa Rica on the Tuesday of Holy Week, only to find out that the guy I was supposed to be meeting from the Chinese embassy had just left town and would not be around until Thursday evening! I was pretty upset, considering that I had only arrived in San Jose 1.5 days early to take care of this errand stuff before Geoff would arrive, and now it looked like it was still going to trample our vacation plans anyway. Alas, it is Central America, so you have to be tranquilo and to just play it by ear.

Between Tuesday and Wednesday, I walked around San Jose (which is a bit of a dump during the day) and checked out their famous Museo del Oro (Museum of Gold). I also made some progress in my reading book and went on a crocodile safari tour. As it turned out, I got to see everything on the tour (monkeys, frogs, sloths, lizards, snakes...) EXCEPT for crocodiles. Ironic, but like I said, it's Central America. Apparently, some tour operators in a different part of Costa Rica would habitually throw chickens into the water to lure the crocs out of their lazy afternoon naps. Next time, mark my words, I will be bringing my own chicken. :) Anyway, the tour itself was kind of slow, but the people on the tour were really fun, so it made the time fly by!

Geoff arrived on Wednesday night. (He got to San Jose later than me, since he works for himself and therefore didn't want to take off quite so many days to go on this trip.) We met up, as originally planned, at the hostel. Our hostel is a beautiful place, by the way -- the Costa Rican Backpackers, located on the western tip of the capital city. I would highly recommend staying there if you had to pass through San Jose at some point. They have a pool and a lovely restaurant with good Jamaican food(!!) and lovely Belgian ales. After some catching up, Geoff and I and his dormmate Cody ended up heading down to Casino Del Ray (sp), which is a bit of a shady spot by reputation. It was the first brothel I had ever seen!! All around the bar are old men and young, boobilicious women. It was really interesting, except for the fact that the servers and bartenders were pretty rude to our group of 3, since it was pretty obvious that we were mostly sight-seeing. Eventually, we went across the street to a much quieter casino (no shady goings-on here, at least that we could see), and played a few rounds of blackjack. All in all, it was a fun and very educational night. :)

The next day, Cody, Geoff, and I took a bus and then a cab to La Paz Waterfall. I wish we had more time there, because there was a series of butterfly and bird conservatory places that we could check out, but by the time we had finally made our way there and had hung out a bit by the water, it was getting pretty late in the day, and we needed to start heading back to San Jose. (My priority for the day was to meet up with the embassy folks to get my Chinese tourist visa, so I needed to be back in San Jose by around 5:30pm.) Thankfully, the visa app went off without a hitch in the evening, and Geoff and I took -- wait for this -- a $200 cab ride from San Jose to La Fortuna late in the night, to arrive at our hotel in La Fortuna!!! Damn embassy people -- this is what happens when they flake out on you repeatedly and cause disruptions to your previously tight travel plans. At that hour of the night (it was about 8pm when we finally set out for La Fortuna, after taking care of the visa paperwork), we didn't really have many options left in terms of renting a car OR taking a bus.

Anyway, our next couple of days in La Fortuna made all of the hectic traveling worth it, however. We took our friends' advice and rented an SUV and drove up to Rio Celeste, which is a stunningly beautiful blue river that is created naturally as a result of chemical precipitation. We also took another friend's advice and did a day of whitewater-rafting down one of the many beautiful rivers of Costa Rica. And to top it all off, Geoff and I booked an evening of amazing getaway at the most famous of La Fortuna hotsprings -- Tabacon. For $70, you get a very delicious dinner buffet, plus you get to explore the extensive labyrinth of amazing hot springs at this extremely luxurious spa / resort. Ahhh. Neither Geoff nor I had ever seen anything like it before. The $70, which seemed like a lot of money when we first made our reservation, turned out to be worth every penny.



I loved Costa Rica. Most of all, I loved the rainforest and the plethora of wildlife. I hope that we get to go back at some point to explore more of the beautiful country!

The magic of teaching; El Trifinio

I've been cruising during the last couple of weeks at work. In between teaching increasingly difficult algebraic topics, I sprinkled in some fun Geometric activities, various pep-talking, and some small-group tutoring to help my 9th-graders get through this time. For Geometry, March and April are our last push of heavy algebra before we move on to hands-on 3-D geometry stuff, so at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It helps that this period of heavy algebra coincides with kids working harder on their own to stay afloat during the second semester -- I cannot tell if this is a result of this being a private school or if my various pep talks throughout the year have finally started to pay off. But, the other day, when a kid had not completed his homework assignment, before I could say anything, another kid turned to him and said in an imitation of me, "Herbert, you're not making good choices." It cracked me up, and I think that it's a good sign that the kids are at least partially internalizing what I say to them...

Some of my Algebra 2 Honors kids are lobbying for me to move up with them to teach Pre-Calculus Honors. The word on the street is that I'll be teaching only Geometry (both regular and Honors) next year. I am excited about the prospect of teaching Geometry Honors, now that I have (close to) a year of experience under my belt in teaching regular Geometry. The second time around, I think I can make the Geometry topics a lot more fun than they had been the first time, because I have been collecting various teaching materials and ideas throughout the year. But, I will miss my older students. So, I am taking the stance of sitting back and seeing what comes out of their lobbying, even though I'm pretty sure they won't be able to influence the school's plan of letting me teach Geometry full-time. (I don't really know, but I would guess that there is probably some small bit of politics involved in moving "up" to teach Pre-Calculus and Calculus. Especially in a department like mine, where I am the only teacher under the age of 35, I try to stay under the drama radar.)

In other news, Geoff and I are going to Costa Rica soon! The Holy Week is coming up, which is a big deal here in Central America. We teachers actually get 10 days off -- weekend to weekend, plus the following Monday. Since I need to get a tourist visa to China before June, I had been on the phone with a guy from the nearest Chinese embassy, located in Costa Rica. He assured me that they will open their doors to allow me an appointment during Semana Santa, so I went ahead and purchased my tickets to go to Costa Rica. Geoff will join me and spend a few days there as well, so that we can look around. --I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!! Costa Rica is supposed to be a lush tropical jungle, Jurassic Park-style. I cannot be more thrilled to go there. :)


By the way, our friend Colleen recently organized an amazing trip to the Montecristo National Park. We drove up there (Geoff and I drove in our sedan, which was not a pretty picture on those mountain roads), camped out on Saturday, and then did a day hike on Sunday to summit the point where Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala borders all meet at El Trifinio. It was a foggy day and the view wasn't great, but the hike was amazingly comfortable through the serene forest. I had missed being outdoors!

It's Unbelizable!

Without exaggeration, Belize is my favorite spot thus far in Central America. The ocean there is absolutely breath-taking; looking out from a boat, in every direction you can see the ocean scintillating in various shades of blue -- light blue, dark blue, aqua -- all because the water is so clear that its color reflects the plethora of marine life underneath the surface. The islanders are extremely warm and friendly, and overall, it's just an amazing place to visit.

We only spent three days on the San Pedro Island, but it was three days well spent in paradise! I wish we had more time to linger in the waters, because Belize has various well-established tourism options, such as cave-tubing and snorkeling. In the small amount of time that we spent there, we opted for a half-day trip on the Catamaran to snorkel among the beautiful reefs. Belize has the second largest barrier reef in the world, and supposedly the plentiful fish keeps the usual predators well fed, so that they stay a safe distance from human divers and snorkelers. (This includes predatory sharks such as bull sharks and whale sharks.)

While we were snorkeling in the water, we saw a giant sea turtle, many big fish, and a few large sting rays. The guide went down and grabbed one of the sting rays so that we can pat it near the surface of the water. It was majestic and stunning! (Geoff also saw a small shark -- probably a nurse shark, which is extremely docile and common to the area; the tour guide has lots of pictures where the tourists are swimming among and touching the nurse sharks!)

On land, there was a constant breeze that kept the island extremely temperate. They speak English there, because they were a British colony until 1981. But, they're also extremely diverse, and they have a cultural makeup that descends from the Russian Mennonites, Kriol, and Spanish-speaking Mestizos! As a result, it's a very interesting and eclectic place, where you can get a lot of different (good) beers and foods, and people speak all kinds of languages amongst themselves. It's so unique, that the locals even have a proud tagline: "It's Unbelizable!"

Geoff, Andrea, and I loved it. :) In fact, Geoff and I are thinking about spending part of our summer there, renting out a house near the beach... So, if you are thinking about visiting Belize, that might be a really good time to do so!

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In other news, I have finally purchased summer tickets to go to China! I haven't seen my parents for well over a year, so I'm very excited to be able to make this trip happen, both financially and logistically. :) But, I remembered belatedly that I'll need to get a visa before going to China this summer, and that's far from easy to do when you live in El Salvador. The closest Chinese consulates are in Cuba (which I'm not technically allowed to visit as an American citizen), Mexico, and Ecuador. There are also some additional difficulties, so it seems, with applying for a Chinese visa from a foreign country, because there are zoning restrictions and the consulates are not very patient with foreign applicants...

But, I'm not going to complain. This is a small snag compared to not being able to afford the trip at all, which is what I had feared. I just hope it will get resolved soon!

Rejuvenating Weeks

The last two weeks have been pretty amazing. For one, work has been extremely productive. The Measurement Unit I had envisioned for Geometry has been in full swing, and the kids' progress in understanding length, volume, and (2-D and 3-D) conversions is staggering and extremely rewarding. Not to mention it has been a lot of fun to give the 9th-graders a chance to work on all kinds of hands-on math problems! :)

The other beautiful thing about the last two weeks is that I have started going to a yoga class, held in a very intimate setting -- the home of our great yoga instructor! I had never had much of a motivation to do yoga back in the States (it seemed too much like a fad to me), but now with swing dancing being out of the picture for so long, I find that I really need something else to keep me active and energized. Salsa is totally fun, but I don't always work up a sweat, for some reason. My friend Colleen had told me about this yoga class she had started going to regularly, taught by a teacher I had taken a one-off yoga class from once. Last week, I tagged along with her finally, and it felt so amazing physically that I've decided to make a regular effort to attend the class.

So, between yoga, salsa lessons, and Spanish classes, life has been busy outside of school the last two weeks, and beautifully so. :) I'm also slowly reading my way through a pretty good book, The Geographer's Library. (Ever since I've come back from Christmas vacation, I'm finding time to do recreational reading again. Any suggestions? It can't really be current best-sellers, since I check them out from the school's library, which is delayed in its ordering of the best and the latest.)

Anyway, the next big thing: BELIZE!!!

2nd ER visit; Block G

For the past weekend, Geoff and I had originally planned on spending Sunday at a beautiful semi-private beach as per an invitation from my principal, but in the end, the plan was thwarted because I came down with an unexpected stomach pain on Saturday night. The sharp pain was coming in waves and had persisted for several hours when I finally decided to wake Geoff and ask him to drive me to the hospital, to make sure it was not appendicitis. Thank goodness, it was not. The ER people hooked me up to an IV (because at this point I was already dehydrated from all the bathroom runs) and took a blood and -- this is fun -- a poop sample. I stayed there for a couple of hours while they ran the tests on those charming samples, and it turns out that I have a stomach infection. I can't say that I'm surprised, really, considering that I do live in a third-world country. But still, it ain't nice...

I went home feeling really weak, and they gave me prescription for painkillers, antibiotics, and anti-diarrhea drugs. I ended up sleeping through Sunday to combat the onset cold from all of the exhaustion. And, miraculously, I felt good enough to teach on Monday. :)

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I'm frustrated with my Block G. Despite the fact that it is a tough class, and there are 7 ADHD kids in there (5 of them severely symptomatic), I keep wondering if there are things that I could do to make them calmer than they are. Regardless of conversations I've already had with them or consequences I have already assigned, it is a struggle for me each day to get through basic discussions of math problems because their energy levels are off the charts (and their focus non-existent, when it comes to conceptual discussions that matter). And it's frustrating not just to me, but also to the few students in the class who actually wish to learn and to hear the lessons, uninterrupted by ADHD kids shouting out random comments. I'm frustrated and I don't know what else I haven't already tried, except to be consistent and assign consequences each time they breach my expectations.

I have hope that they will change. For the better, for their own sake, and soon. But again, I'm not sure if that's optimism or delusion.