...which still calls for occasional homesickness

Sunday I was overcome by my greatest bout of homesickness so far this year. I'm feeling the first major aftershock this evening.

True, the school year is veritably zipping along. I almost can say without exaggeration, "three months until home!" But that's a quarter of the year. What I've already passed away from the comfort of my own home three times, I have to pass yet again. And this last time, it's going to be HOT. This reality has been hitting me over the head like a wooden spoon the last few days.

Don't get me wrong - it's not so much the "enduring" what is down here - that's a verb I used a lot last year, but doesn't even really apply any more - it's the missing what's back home (that part has remained true throughout my Honduran tenure). The Decemberists, my favorite band of the past 6 years, is playing in Michigan TWICE over the next month and a half, including at Calvin, the very first place I saw them back in 2004. Plainwell Ice Cream had their opening weekend, and I talked to my brother as he was eating his first cone of the season on Sunday. I'm listening to the stream from the Grand Rapids local station, 88.1 WYCE, as I type this post.

The biggest problem is homesickness for things that don't even exist. This afternoon, as I tried to take a nap, I was suddenly plagued with the mental image/feeling of being freshly showered, one bare foot dug into the carpet as I sit in the corner of the couch at my folks' place, watching the Tigers on TV before the second-half slump, window and sliding door open to provide a nice cross-breeze, and could not get it out of my head. My stomach began hurting with the desire to feel that in real life immediately. (Sure, that situation would also imply no planning, no grading, no guilt for not doing those things, as well. That's definitely part of the desire.)

It all started when I realized the Holland Christian one-act competition piece, which I saw for 9 years straight, was done for the season. That got me on the HC website, scanning the staff page, seeing all the familiar names of my old teachers. The only way to get it out of my system was to write a few emails and call home.

To deal with today's aftershock, I booted up blogspot, began writing this, and concurrently read over my older posts from when I hated Honduras. The fact that I'm not that same person who wrote those posts speaks in droves toward...something optimistic.

Honduras still isn't paradise. It will never be home. I'll always be a total homebody, not to mention a nostalgia freak - whether I live in Michigan, Colorado, Honduras, or China (I won't live in China, but still), I'll look back on the past (or future) more favorably than the present. I think I'll always find or build some fence to separate me from the perceived greener grass. It's not an appealing character trait, and certainly something not to condemn myself to, but I think that's just me. That will result in bouts of homesickness. Deal with it.

And I will deal with it. But first I have to deal with a pile of grading and an exam to write.

...where roses are red and violets are blue

No, this post is not what you may think. Tonight was a classic night of me and my roommates getting on a topic and making lots of jokes about it. Tonight's topic: romance. The classic "Roses are red/ Violets are blue/ Sugar is sweet/ And so are you" poem came up, and my roommate Matt decided to parody it:

Pennies are brownish,
Angels rejoice;
Dinner with me this weekend
Is the right choice.

This obviously got me thinking about other possible ridiculous "love" poems of the same meter. I've decided to compose a few, starting with something to woo some lady as bookish as I:

Dickinson's dead,
Hawthorne is too;
Don't be a stranger
(like crazy Camus).

Ireland's Irish,
Wales is Welsh;
I am dyslexic
and admire your flesh.

T-shirts are teeny,
Keyboards have keys;
We should get coffee -
No, really! But--please?

Amoebas have one cell,
Prisons have dozens
My love for you
is more than my cousin's.

Post-Armageddon,
If we both remain,
We should hang out
It could be, like, you know, fun, and stuff.

courtesy of toothpastefordinner.com

...looking at my top 30 songs

One of my fellow teachers, Mr. Tao, came over to my house after a soccer game a few weeks ago. As we talked about numerous things, we ended up on the topic of music, and he mentioned he has a propensity to gather lists of people's Top 30 songs, and then distribute his own list. I thought this was a really cool tradition, and as we kept talking, it started weighing on my mind enough that I had to ask him to leave so I could get started compiling my list. I haven't been working on it constantly, but it's been in the back of my head for a while.

Within 4 days, I'd scanned through all of my ~8800 songs in my iTunes, grabbing any songs that rather stood out from the pack and putting them in a playlist. I ended up with about 120 songs. I let it sit for a week. I went through those 120, looking instead for songs that are just special, and put those into another playlist. I got 38.

I've occasionally been glancing at the list, culling the fold., sometimes deciding that a song isn't quite up to the level of the others, sometimes removing one because of an artist redundancy, deciding that while both are good, I should ensure that I range a variety of artists, rather than having 5 songs each from my top 4 bands and a few thrown in.

Thursday I reached 31. Tao threw me his loophole: 31 is okay.

So now I share my list of 31 songs, presented in alphabetical order according to Artist (In the case of classical/choral music, I've listed the composer, with the particular performer/album I have in iTunes coming after):

• Artist - Song Title (Album Title)

• Anathallo - Dokkoise House: With Face Covered (Floating World)
  
• Aqualung - Cinderella (Memory Man)
• Arcade Fire - Wake Up (Funeral)
• Barenaked Ladies - Break Your Heart (Born on a Pirate Ship)
• Barenaked Ladies - When I Fall (Born on a Pirate Ship)
• The Books - Take Time (The Lemon of Pink)
• Johnny Cash - Hurt (American IV: The Man Comes Around)
• Vic Chesnutt - I'm Through (Silver Lake)
  
• The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3 (The Crane Wife)
• Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal (Fleet Foxes)
• IKAIK - Just Because Things Are the Way They Are Right Now Doesn't Mean They'll Be That Way Forever - (Caldwell Sessions + 2)
• Billy Joel - Scenes From an Italian Restaurant (The Stranger)
  
• Kid Cudi - Pursuit of Happiness (Man on the Moon: The End of the Day)
• The Knife - Silent Shout (Silent Shout)
  
• John August Pamintuan - Ama Namen (performed by the Ateneo Chamber Singers on Pagsamba)
• Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack (Drum's Not Dead)
• The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Want to Get Over You (69 Love Songs)
• The National - Fake Empire (Boxer)
• The Postal Service - Nothing Better (Give Up)
• Sergei Rachmaninoff - Blagoslovi, Dushe Moya (performed by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers on Rachmaninoff: Vespers)
  
• Regina Spektor - Fidelity (Begin to Hope)
  
• Regina Spektor - On the Radio (Begin to Hope)
  
• Sigur Rós - Inní mér syngur vitleysingur (Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust)
  
• Sigur Rós - Sæglópur (Takk...)
• Sleigh Bells - Tell 'Em (Treats)
• Sufjan Stevens - Holland (Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State)
• They Might Be Giants - Older (Mink Car)
• Vampire Weekend - M79 (Vampire Weekend)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic - White and Nerdy (Straight Outta Lynwood)
  
• Kanye West - Gone (Late Registration)
  
• Eric Whitacre - i thank you God for most this amazing day (performed by the Calvin College Capella on Jubilate)

Now, if that's enough information for you, by all means stop reading, because I am about to nerd out on you. Statistics!

• Song that I've known the longest: "Hurt." It's possible/probable I knew "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" earlier, but that would really only be because of my brother Jeff. I grew to truly appreciate it later. It should be noted that these are the only two songs I was familiar with before college.

• Most recent song: Quite sure it's "Tell 'Em." "Pursuit of Happiness" came earlier in 2010 in the form of the music video. Both are the only songs on my list that are more recent than late 2008.

• Choral songs: 3 - two of which I sang while in Capella at Calvin, the other (Rachmaninoff) heard at a joint concert with Capella, sung by the other choir. Beautiful.

• Songs that come from a COMPLETE ALBUM I own: 28. Two of the others are from greatest hits compilations (of which I do have the complete discs), the other is "Ama Namen." So those hardly count. I'm an album guy.

• Songs I have paid money for: 22. Library, friends, and the myTunes downloading program took care of the others. It's worth noting several of the 22 I possessed in some way before later paying money for it.

• Songs that are the opening track of their respective album: 8. I find this curious. I blame the fact that the opening strains of an album are the ones that stick with me most, and become the poster child for an album I particularly love. (Dokkoise House shares this phenomenon, as it was the first song I ever heard Anathallo perform. Similar with Sigur Ros and Fleet Foxes, just not performed.)

• The IKAIK song is the only on the list done by an artist you'd have trouble researching online, i.e., by someone who's not "famous."

• Longest Song: "Sæglópur," 7:39. Shortest: "Older," 1:52

• Regina Spektor, Barenaked Ladies, and Sigur Ros are the only repeat artists on the list, but the first two have the distinction of getting two songs from the same album on the list. It's funny, because while BNL and Sigur Ros are certainly one of my favorite bands, I'm not CRAZY about Regina (although I like her) apart from those two songs. Meanwhile, I was struggling to get a TMBG song on my list despite how much I like them as a band.

• Songs with significant amounts of lyrics in a foreign language: 5 (Ama Namen, Dokkoise House, Rachmaninoff, and both Sigur Ros songs.)

• Songs I have seen/performed live: 12 (I don't think I've seen "Holland" live, but that would make 13)

I think I'm reaching diminishing returns for these statistics. I'm trying too hard at this point. I'm just going to post this now and call it good!

ESL Moment of the....Last 3 months, I guess

Umm, sorry to everyone about my delinquency in posting. Life's been...pretty good I suppose. I find myself depriving myself of sleep fairly regularly, and then once in a while, like today, I end up taking a nap over 3 hours long to accommodate my funny sleep patterns. But that's whatever. Life is good. I'm pretty big on the teaching aspect to my life, pretty big on the social/community aspect, and that makes everything better than last year.

The impetus to drive me out of my blog reverie is the somewhat ridiculousness of the annual spelling bee. Don't get me wrong; I love spelling bees. I pride myself on my spelling, and any opportunity to show that off is fantastic. Last week I held spelling bees in each of my classes, and the top students in each class will face off soon to determine representatives for IST in each grade in the local bilingual school association bee. I was given a list of words to read from with sentences that accompany each word - no definition provided, which I feel should always be available for the spellers so they can more effectively determine word roots and the like, but that's beside the point. These lists were apparently compiled a number of years ago through a collaboration of the various schools involved - each school, for each grade level, provided a number of words and sentences. The hilarity is found in some of these sentences, which (no offense intended to any of my students who I know are reading this) read like they were written by some of my students - getting the implied definition of the word wrong, phrasing things like they would be in Spanish, and especially using words as the wrong part of speech, which is the most typical and blatant error in the following sentences that I've compiled below, straight from my word list:

commune - He is really commune in the way he talks.
dapper - Jennifer went so dapper to the party. (yesterday) [editor's note: All sentences shown as they appear on my paper.]
crabbed - He has a crabbed handwriting.
culprit - The judge culprit him for assassination.
docket - We docket the document.
credence - Their credence in the god Helios did not dissuade them from eating the cattle.
chronic - The diabetes is a chronic disease. [editor's note: It is common in Spanish to use many definite articles.]
daunt - With his words he's only trying to make you daunt.
calamity - Loosing our homes was a great calamity to us all.
complacent - He had become a complacent after years of success.
acquisition - I just got a new acquisition, I bought a new CD. [Comma splice.]
mystifying - She has a mystifying behavior. [This one just seems lazy.]
amply - That is an amply quantity, is more than enough. [THREE things wrong here!]
garrulous - He is to garrulous and she is extremely quiet.
profiteer - The food seller profiteer his clients. [I think of profiteer mostly as a noun - a person - and while it certainly can be a verb, it should be conjugated correctly!]
flambeau - The president during the football tournament flambeau the torch. [Noun being "verbed," fake verb in the wrong form, and we have a misplaced modifier/comma issue - apparently he was just the president for the time frame of the tournament!]
cohesion - The seniors did cohesion on the party.
discounting - We were discounting the candies we ate. [D'you mean counting backwards?]
cynical - Alejandro is so cynical, he only thinks of himself.
veritable - He is a veritable person. [Okay, veritable kinda means "genuine," but sometimes synonyms aren't synonyms for every sense of the other word.]
conciliate - Judd offered conciliate the argument.
gossamer - The store sold gossamer for his clients. [A store itself (himself?) doesn't do any selling, and where can you buy spider web material?]
feign - he is being feign in his reaction, he really is disappointed.
facilitate - The math teacher facilitate us the things by giving us a study guide. [Good try in using an indirect object, but it doesn't work here, really. And what "things?" Can you specify?]
susceptible - The sound of water against the ship was barely susceptible. [I wouldn't think of attacking the sound of water!]
anachronism - It would be an anachronism if you include electricity in a play about the [...thousands of years before electricity was invented?]
consternation - I feel a great consternation about the note in the science class.
picturesque - We took a picturesque picture yesterday. [No real grammatical/usage errors, but really?]

Now, it's worth noting that this doesn't amount to a great proportion of the sentences provided - there were nearly 4 single-spaced pages of words - but I couldn't help but crack up when I read some of these, and I carried my list around for a couple of days, reading sentences to any other teacher who would listen, making them crack up too.

Hopefully I won't wait three more months for my next post. That would take me much too close to the end of the year.

ESL Moment of the Week:

"Each time a parent advice you they just want to protect you from something they screw, and they don't want you to screw."

H., 11th grade

...but fall almost exists here, too

There's a musical artist I'm fairly fond of named Denison Witmer. He's a singer/songwriter, and I'll admit I don't listen to him a ton, but every time one of his songs comes up on my iTunes shuffle mode, I desperately wish I could be seeing him live at that moment. Maybe that's why I don't listen to him much - I'm avoiding nostalgia overload. His music invariably reminds me of fall and cold weather - I've only seen him live in the months of October-December, and it is (in my mind) perfect music for bundling up and observing fallen leaves. Well, one of his songs just came on.

I'd really like to be in Grand Rapids this weekend. I know it's not quite fully-fledged fall yet, but my body calendar can't tell that after 7 weeks in Honduras. My mind is telling me of spiced cider, crisp winds at night and car rides, bare branches sticking into the solid gray sky, the feeling of a heater blasting hot air just inside of the entrance to a building, and (thanks to a friend's facebook status) Graydon's Crossings on Plainfield Ave. A dark wooden interior beckons me insistently. Or a Denison Witmer concert.

That said, I certainly got a fair taste of fall this weekend right here in Hondu. It's been fairly temperate weather for the last week - heck, the last few weeks, in fact, but this week has had cool winds AND clear skies. Yesterday, however, we left after school for a staff retreat north of town in the mountains, in an area called El Hatillo. The altitude make the weather downright chilly. I spent most of the afternoon/evening wearing a hoody (or as Western Canadians call it, a bunny hug?) and I slept with TWO blankets compared to my typical one over only my feet. We had a bonfire, and I actually participated in a touch football game. As the sun set during the game, I could fairly easily convince myself that I was in West Michigan. For the record, I had three receptions, one interception, and the game-sealing touchdown. Just another game of football for me, of course.

We had a couple of very good sermons, a talent show, and a few quite satisfying meals. We had hot chocolate - not even instant packets, but honest to goodness hot chocolate. I played cards, sat up until around 2 am - sometimes my WAKING hour as of late - and got some good journaling time overlooking a ridiculously pretty valley. I'm tired, but it was a worthwhile time.

We have one more week left in the quarter before exam week. Crunch time is already upon us. Woof. Fortunately, I've been letting myself feel closer to God more this school year than much of the last few years. Let's keep that up.