A Bit Rambly and Strange

I have stared at this screen for twenty-six minutes. For twenty minutes it was blank. Then I put photographs in, and stared some more. I know I must say something, I know I must say something, I know I must say something, but I don't know what to say.

Being a student is difficult, and scary, and requires that one be brave.

Being a teacher is not so different, at least in this way.

For most of my life, I think, I confused being brave with being tough, and being tough with being hard. Being hard is not being tough. Hard can mean impenetrable, like stone, and that is no way to live. Hard can also mean shelled, but inside we are undeveloped mush, and that is no way to be. Tough, rather, is like leather, enduring but giving, soft but somehow difficult to penetrate. I find toughness a very attractive quality in people, but there's a price to toughness. What once was tender is then stretched and burned and broken in by hard experiences, and while it can be good, it is costly.

But brave isn't either of these qualities. It doesn't belong to the brave to be hard, and while the tough may be brave, the bravest are not always tough. This adventure, I am learning, requires me to be brave, which means that I am scared beyond my wit can measure.

But it isn't bad, you know. It is not bad to feel small, and to be unsure of yourself or where you are exactly. It is not bad to question what you do and don't know, who you are and what you are made of. Don't tell my students, but I am not really a teacher. Maybe by accident, yes. Maybe I do what a teacher does, or rather I sit where a teacher sits, but when I think of great teachers, I'm thinking of saints, and heroes, of people who know really and truly what the deal with this human thing is. It is much more than can be contained in a classroom.

I think this post will make more sense tomorrow, when I explain what I saw this morning, and dive deeper into what Poland means in my imagination. For now, I go to watch my video. I have started to practice Polish, and my hosts are teaching me the Hail Mary. This is much tougher than teaching, but at the end of a long day's lessons, I am happy to be on this much safer side.

Days 2 & 3

After three days of lessons I could talk ad infinitum about the content of my classes, but I won't. I will only say that it is very strange to refer to 'my classes' while on the other side of the teacher-student relationship. For my entire life I have avoided teaching, and I am slowly realizing exactly why, but those are thoughts for another time.

After three days of lessons I feel as if I have lived in Poland for years. Each morning I have gone with Marta, my host, to the market, to buy fruit and food for the day. The fresh market is simple, with fruit stalls, vegetable stalls, some bakeries, two butchers, a small dry goods store, and what looks, oddly enough, like a travel agency. We've bought cabbage, beans, apples, cherries, strawberries, and this Polish fruit that I have never seen, not once in my life, that tastes like a kiwi and looks like a grape, but veiny-er, and hairy. We've bought bones for the dog, loaves upon loaves of bread, and Mexican pierogi, which somehow are a culinary practical joke, but taste like dumplings of taco meat. When we return we eat lunch with Marta's daughter, who is also teaching in the program, I make a cup of coffee, and classes begin.

Classes last from 2 in the afternoon to 7 in the evening, which gobbles most of the day. Yesterday I held a workshop with two absolute beginners to English, one who could not understand a word that I said, and the other who was not as advanced as my two regular students, but eager. We baked an apple pie, because Marta wanted me to cook something American with them. We used a type of oven I've never seen before, a stand alone oven without a temperature dial or timer, one that you plug into the wall. If that wasn't adventurous. I didn't even consider simple things, like the many uses of 'peel'- peel the apple, throw away the peels, be careful with the peeler- would be so foreign. The second student kept repeating, "Peel the ay-pull, peel the ay-pull," as she did so. It turned into a little song.

The first woman, the one who was a beginner and knew no English at all, stopped halfway through mixing the dough. Her eyes got wide, she looked at the white board, then she looked at the apples, and with a look on her face like she had been sleep walking, cried out, "Pie?" Like all in a moment she understood just that word, and it was enough to make sense of the rest.

The oven failed us, in the end, and the pie wasn't ready until 11 PM--- well after my students left. Today Marta encouraged me to try again with the student who said she had been bored with the book. She seemed dubious at first (to be fair, so was I), but once she smelled it, she blurted out, "I'm hungry." After that she was all about cutting boards and knives and apples, then she asked me if we could practice conditionals, then when the pie finished (the oven miraculously worked today!), she ate two pieces as we broke for coffee.

I take back what I said about only kids eating their vegetables hidden in mac and cheese. Adults will eat their English if it's hidden in apple pie.

In fact, I think I'm going to find another slice. Good night (or afternoon, as the time zone may be)!

First Lessons

Whelp, this time I have no pictures! If there is a great disparity between experience and photographs, I don't think the lack of the latter bodes ill for this trip.

It is now officially July and that means lessons are underway. If I didn't explain this already (I probably should have made the point to, eh?), my excuse reason for gallivanting around Poland is a month-long ESL teaching program. This first week I work with adults in individual, one on one lessons, two or three hours at a time. In the coming weeks I will work with a classroom of children, ages 6-8. For my very last week I will go camping (the kind with cabins and grill stations and water sports. You know, rugged camping!) with kids from size munchkin to teenager. Besides an amazing opportunity, a humbling experience, and fancy ice breaker in airport lounges, teaching abroad is hard. Harder, in fact, than I expected it to be.

I suspect the adults will be the most difficult, because adults are more resistant, hesitant, and self-conscious. Kids will eat vegetables so long as they are hidden inside macaroni and cheese. Adults will ask for organic kale and radish salad with a squeeze of unseeded lemon and proclaim throughout the whole meal that they're watching their weight. Adults are afraid of more things than children are: they're afraid of looking and sounding silly, they're afraid of failing, they're afraid of wasting their money and time, they're afraid of nuclear winter, they're afraid of the food on their plates. The truth about adults is that they need as much patience and tenderness as children, but if they catch wind of any kind of patronizing they will crumple in defeat.

As if you're expected to know anything when you walk into a classroom.

Oh snap, that's my job. Yikes.

My first student was  very sweet but very self conscious, with no faith in herself whatsoever. She wanted to depend entirely on the textbook and said at the end of the class she wanted to get through at least 20 units. We spent the first hour and a half in discussion and maybe half an hour on the prepared units. I don't think she noticed that her English opened up fluidly when she was just talking, but the units scared the daylights from her and she got nervous and more slippery. Regardless, she wants the books. They feel like progress for her. My second student was sharp as a tack who declared after half an hour that the units were boring, so we broke into discussion. She is slightly behind in English compared to the first, but so much more confident that she flies through conversation.

For today, all-new lessons for the second student, and nothing but units for the first.

Oh, and baking an apple pie. We'll see how that goes.

The Layover Adventure

I don't have much time to write this, but that will be true, I think, so long as interesting and important things are happening. If you aren't careful, interesting and important things happen all the time. You have to make the time to write them down, right?

Truth is, I have ample time to write, but not ample internet time. (Silly Heathrow.) I am laying over, without much laying, in London's Heathrow Airport, and like the supreme chicken of the universe, I did not go out into the city like I had planned. Manchester left me a bit knackered, and also lonely. But not sad. Very excited, really, to land in Warsaw, sleep in a bed, and be some where, for real.

Layovers always feel a bit like lost time.

Took the train from Manchester Airport to Manchester Piccadilly, their train station, which is very big. It's a big deal kind of station, like Termini but without the cats and the weird smells. It was such a big deal, actually, that coming off my train I walked RIGHT past a BBC actor whom I do, in fact, love.

I didn't say hi. He was carrying balloons. Balloons are the most efficient entourage ever. But it was AWESOME.

First stop was the Hidden Gem, St. Mary's Church. It's called the Hidden Gem because it's tucked away on a side street. In fact, I got quite a bit turned around trying to find it. I kept crossing Kings Street, and Cross Street, for that matter, and gosh darnit if I don't know St. Albert's Square like the back of my hand. But when I did find, it was just... there. Tucked away, jewel like in its plainness and its mystery. I think it's also appropriately called the Hidden Gem because photographs are not allowed inside. It is beautiful.

Before Mass began the sacristan carried a large arrangement of yellow flowers (and what looked alarmingly like green carnations--- unholy decadence, Chesterton!) to the simple, marble altar that wasn't much bigger than a card table. It stands before a beautiful Gothic altarpiece, decked out with angels and spires. He placed the flowers before the altar, stepped down to examine, then adjusted them, barely a quarter of an inch. He did that eight times that I counted. Kneel, adjust, stand up, step down, examine, kneel, adjust.

It seemed a little stuffy to be so particular about flowers in the wake of that beautiful altar, but that is a trap I fall into. What are little details in the wake of infinite majesty? But the details are the majesty. The details are the careful laying of stones, carving of marble, arrangement of flowers. In the forest of Divine Mystery, I tend to take the trees for granted.

After Mass I got lost, cold, and wet, so I went back to the airport and waited the five and a half hours for my flight at the bar. I think I alarmed the barkeep a little, completely oblivious to the World Cup and a little too keen on the concept of pints.

Yes, Merry. It comes in pints. And it's glorious.

What I need now is a strong tea and a good nap. Then straight on til Warsaw!

And we're off!

Leaving in 1 hour, 20 minutes (8 50 PM). By some kind of international sorcery, landing in Manchester, UK at 8:50 AM.

The plan: Mass, fish and chips, a hop over to London. From there, a double decker bus, a strong cup of tea, and straight on til Warsaw.

Bye, America. See you soon!