Saturday, October 29, 2005

sittin' at school in a tie, watchin' parents of stu-dents goin' by

this morning is the first parent-teacher conferences at the new school i'm working at. it just so happens that it's also the day to give parents their children's grades for the first bimester. i got here at 7am along with everyone else (it's now 10am) and i've talked to three sets of parents, mostly from kids who have effed up in one way or another. i'll be here until 1pm. talking to that many parents is supposedly a lot, says another english teacher. thankfully, i'm not a homeroom teacher. they have to talk to everyone. i was also informed by the same teacher that most of the parents (if they come at all) come between 10am and 12p. wahoo. in between conversations, i've been grading papers and effing around on the internet. the school just put up a wireless antenna yesterday and i'm utilizing it to its fullest potential.

i had temporarily forgotten how much i despise wearing a suit and tie.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

damn

For those of you who are into juggling or like to see juggling videos, Anthony Gatto has a new website with more sick videos than you can shake a club at.

enjoy.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

advice

when you get a chance, take a look at my new webpage for prospective employers next year. i went ahead and put the weblink on my CV also. i also put a quick copy of my resume online too. the idea is for it to be shorter and more concise than the three page monster that is my CV.

if you see typos or have suggestions on what is written, feel free to comment here or email me. in all honesty the long-winded diatribe i wrote is for the utopian classroom, not for what we teachers see everyday of the week.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

A different kind of noisy neighbor

i thought that the upstairs tenants were a bit rowdy this past weekend. i'll take that kind of noise any day over what happened last night. at 1020pm, a car bomb exploded about three blocks from my apartment. apparently, a national congressman who has been marked for death by FARC for the past few years has re-fanned the flames of his enemies. according to the newspaper article, his first assassination attempt was in 2002. apprently he receieved another threat recently. according to witnesses, the bomb (50 kilos of nitrate) was hidden in a parked red Chevy Corsa, that parked on the corner of Calle 71 with Carrera 9 at 1005pm. the bomb was detonated about 15 minutes later, minutes after he walked out of a radio interview at a national radio station located at Carrera 7 with Calle 63 (about two kilometers away). the idea was to blow him up on his way home. instead the FARC was a little too jumpy on the switch and injured a bunch of his escorts in vehicles ahead of him.

i didn't know this until now but, apparently, he lives in my neighborhood.

how does this affect me? not sure, really. it's not like i can watch out for parked cars. or lines of escorts for that matter, they're just about as common. and it's not like i can find out where this guy is going to be at all times. i guess i can rest a little assured that his assassination attempts are few and far between.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Hidden talent

i wanted to share the creativity of one of my tenth grade students. they just took a bimester test in which they had to write a 200 word composition (among other things). the composition was they had to finish a story that the teacher started. it began: 'At 530pmon September 15, 1992, George was sitting in his Manhattan office, perched on the 33rd floor of a mirrored skyscraper overlooking Central Park.' i'll write what the student wrote. i'll also protect her name but keep in mind, this is a 16 year old girl whose first language is not english.
'He was so bored that had eaten his left hand nails and was beginning to eat his right hand thumb. The American treatment for canibals that was receiving wasn't good enough and his 20,000 British Pounds were now gone. This was his new worry. His wife had been tasty, his son bitter, his little daughter sweet as sugar, but they were as lost as his money. George felt miserable and the most lonely person on Earth, he looked to hs right and saw a window, but it was a coward(ly) choice, over his shoulder but looking down, a pair of black scissors so infected that (he) couldn't find another response to desperation, any rope or cable or at least a gun, he died in the way he found more pleasure, he just ate himself.'

i thought it was very creative and had a good use of the language so she got an 'a' for that part of the test. the irony is is that she is far from the best student in school. she is repeatedly in trouble and has some discipline problems in and out of class. but she has a talent for english that i hadn't seen before.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

under the weather

i've been sick with a cold since the weekend and it's been kicking my ass. i've noticed a change in how my body is dealing with these viruses over the past couple years and i'm not liking it. before, i would get a cold and have symptoms for about a week or so and that's it. lately these colds have been sucking the life and energy out of me, rendering me useless for days on end. it's so bad sometimes i feel i'll have a heart attack just going up a flight of stairs.

a lot of people have been getting sick. most attribute it to the changing of the weather. bogota has been experiencing off and on thunderstorms lately. these thunderstorms are insane. i'm accustomed to the tstorms in tucson (elev. 3,200 feet (1,000 m) with thunderstorm bottoms starting at about 7,000 feet (2,300 m). here, the elevation of the city is 8,000 feet (2,600 m) and the thunderstorm bottoms are well over 10,000 feet (3,000 m). that's a pretty tall storm. and there's lightning here too. i heard three police officers were killed when the tree that was sheltering them was struck.