Memories of Wiggling

While talking to a friend about a few Ecuadorian adventures about an hour ago, I recalled a story about what is possibly my favorite teaching moment up to date...

I was reading The Color Purple by Alice Walker aloud to my class one day. As English language learners, some of my students didn't have the most extensive vocabulary. So as I was reading, a hand flew up into the air and upon calling on the student, she asked for the meaning of the word "wiggle". I pondered for a second trying to formulate the right explanation, but before I could even begin that explanation, another student raised his hand and nearly shouted, "I know what it is, Teacher Stephy," and he jumped out of his desk and started wiggling and dancing to LMFAO and sang "wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, yeah! Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, wiggle, yeah!"

Who knew that "Sexy and I Know It" would actually turn out to be a learning tool for ESL students? I definitely didn't think of it as a possibility. But it was a wonderful moment that I will never forget.

So there you have it…my favorite teaching moment up to date: The Color Purple and LMFAO!

My New (Little) Friends

I've been working with The Whole Child Learning Company since the beginning of March. More specifically, I work with the Little Amigos branch of the company. So I'm a prekindergarten Spanish teacher. Working with little ones has never been on my agenda; however, I am enjoying this new chapter of my life immensely. The kids that I work with are not only adorable, they listen and participate in class! (Well, at least they do most of the time.)

See, they're cute!

I don't work at a school. Well, I do…but I work at various locations. I'm a visiting teacher, so I give classes with a number of kids at Trinity Christian Academy, New Visions Academy, Alamo Heights Presbyterian Day School, and Country Kids Academy. They're all private schools in the northeast side of San Antonio. Traveling from place to place helps against having a monotonous life. As much as I'm ready to sail towards the rest of my life, I do think that this is a great transition. Plus, this job is giving me the opportunity to explore things that are completely out of my comfort zone. And by things I really mean children. Sure, I've been around them before and babysat and all, but teaching them is a completely different story. Granted, I only have them for 40 minutes at a time, and my biggest group of children has probably been of 8 or 9 kids.

Beyond everything already mentioned, I love my job because kids say the darndest things! One of the conversations between two girls went as follows:
          Student 1: I know what I want to be when I grow up!
          Student 2: What do you want to be?
          Student 1: I want to be a cheerleader! And I also know what you want to be.
          Student 2: I know you do! But, tell me, what do I want to be?
          Student 1: You want to be a weather girl.
          Student 2: No!
          Student 1: Then what do you want to be?
          Student 2: I want to be a MERMAID!
          Student 1: Oh, okay. You would be a good mermaid.
They have also had conversations about my hair. One little boy insists that it's ugly while another students claims that my hair is as beautiful as Belle's (from Beauty & the Beast -- such a compliment!). So I guess my hair is a controversial topic of debate in my pre-k classes, haha.

In all, I think one of my favorite things about getting to work with this age is that we do a good amount of arts & crafts. We read, we sing, but mostly, we color and cut and paste pretty paper! One of my favorite projects so far has been making rainbow fish with them. I cut up tissue paper and they made their very own pez with all of the colors of el arcoiris! I'm pretty sure it was one of their favorite projects, too. At first they were so sad that they didn't get to color that week, but  then they were so excited to show their  mamá y papá! And to tell you the truth, I was nervous about having them work with glue sticks. But they were such champs!

I'm Awesome.

Or at least that's what other people have told me. Honestly though, I have a hard time seeing it most of the time. Not because I'm a masochist or because I don't believe in myself; really, it's mostly because I would rather spend my efforts focusing on the potential and good qualities of other people rather than my own. In fact, I'm generally uncomfortable talking about myself.

But this time…this post…it's all about me. I deserve it. Even if it is just this one time.

Over the past year or so, I've done a lot of growing up. Do I still have room to do a little more growing up? Of course. Then again, doesn't everyone have room for growth? Anyway, in that time I've been forced to make a lot of decisions that I didn't want to make. I've been forced to answer a lot of questions I didn't want to answer. And I've been forced to move away from things and people that I didn't want to move away from. That said, I'm a firm believer in that everything happens for a reason. I wouldn't be who I am today without the struggles I've fought, without the tears I've cried, without the people I've met, and especially not without the roads I've taken.

A couple of days ago I opened a letter that made me so *expletive* happy…my acceptance letter to UTSA. So, graduate school, looks like we'll be meeting this fall! I've always wanted to go to grad school, but I've always let that idea stay on the back burner. For some reason I guess I just didn't have it in me to make it through even the application process. Call me a pessimist, but I really didn't think I would get in. But I did! I got into the program that I wanted to get into and I'm one step closer to the rest of my life. So yeah, a lot of people in my life have told me I'm a great person, that I'm awesome, but somehow those comments tend to fly past my head. Instead I focus on the things naysayers have told me. There have even been people in my own family that have not been supportive of my decisions in the past. They've said things like: "Why are you going away to college?" "Why are you joining a sorority?" "Why are you studying psychology?" "Why are you studying Spanish?" "Why are you going to Ecuador?" "Why are you coming back?" "Why did you take a year off?" "If you take a year off from school, you're not going back." And the list goes on…

Well, you know what? I PROVED YOU WRONG. I'll be the first to tell you that I could have thought things through more thoroughly in my past, but it is what it is, and I've made the most of it. Things are not always going to be perfect. Things aren't going to play out the way you want them to or expect them to, but you have to work with what you have and you have to have faith. Not necessarily faith in a divine God…just faith in something. Faith in yourself. And sometimes you even have to round up that faith when times seem the most difficult. Ultimately, it's your life. You gotta make the most of what you have and play the cards fate gives you.

Haha, this post was supposed to be about me and how awesome I am but somehow it wound up being a sort of self-help tool. Eh, it is what it is!

But whatever. I got into grad school. I'm awesome!

One of Many Gems

I never kept a journal in high school…not on my own at least. My childhood best friend and I kept a joint journal. It was neither hers nor mine, it was ours.

Anyway, I was searching through some of my things and found one of the journals! I'm now enlightened. I now know why I will never find my perfect man: I apparently have too many dammed (and might I add unrealistic) expectations (especially that 2nd to last one) for the poor bastard. Well, in one of our entries we decided to write about our ideal guy, and apparently my ideal man has to…
-- be TALLER than me…HAS TO (Yes, this is my first qualification. It apparently makes or breaks everything)
-- have light brown or darker hair
-- be just as smart as me, give or take a bit, because I don't want him to look like an idiot around me, but I don't want to look like an idiot either
-- see me as more than just one thing
-- be a sports player--I don't know why, but he has to
-- look good in uniform!
-- know how to cook
-- be flexible
-- learn how to wait till marriage (haha!)
-- respect me
-- have a good personality
-- be somewhat attractive
-- like some of the same music that I like
-- learn to speak Spanish
-- get along with my friends and family--IMPORTANT
-- have a promising future
-- if not Catholic, he has to let me baptize my children as such
-- be just as liberal as I am
-- always ask things of me in a polite manner, not just command me to do it
-- know how to have fun in a good way
-- not be a drunken bastard
-- can't be a smoker
-- can't be a druggie
-- not be a control freak
-- watch my chick-flicks with me (hahahh!)
-- be a Boston fan (WHEN WAS I EVER A BOSTON FAN???)
-- be a SPURS FAN! (YEAH! THIS IS MORE LIKE IT!)
-- hate the Lakers
-- be willing to change
-- ect. ect. ect…I'm sure I'm forgetting lots

So yeah…that's apparently my checklist. It makes me laugh. But, I mean, we all have to have standards, right?

That all said, my standards have shifted a bit. I don't care about a lot of the things I used to. 23-year-old me is a lot more open-minded than 15-year-old me was. I've lived and learned. So I just have to wait in see what destiny has in store for me.

There are so many little gems in the journals that I kept with my BFF, Jordan. Maybe I'll touch on some of them later!

A New Experiment: estrofa.

I like to play around with words from time to time. You know, stitch them together, see if they sound good or form some type of meaning. So now that my Ecuadorian adventures are over, I think I'm going to keep on blogging about some of my life with some of my thoughts, and some of my words. I think I still have to squeeze out one more post regarding my time in Ecuador, but I feel no motivation to spit that one out just yet.

So instead of doing that, I'm going to share this with you...A POEM!! I translated it to English. But Spanish is the original. And I like the Spanish version a LOT better. I think I'm a better writer in Spanish. I think. Let me know.


estrofa.

estrofa,

llámalo párrafo si quieres.

verso,

no me importa si lo llamas oración.

las reglas,

fueron escrita para romperse,

¿no?

mi poesía no tiene ritmo, 

tampoco tiene rima.

pero sí tine sentimiento, 

los sentimientos mios.

mi poesía es mia, 

quizás te guste, quizás te enfade.

analízala si quieres. 

pero lo que tú piensas -- 

en realidad no me importa.




stanza.

stanza,
call it a paragraph if you want.
verse,
i don't care if you say it's a sentence.
the rules,

they were meant to be broken,

right? 

my poetry doesn't have rhythm,

it doesn't have rhyme.

but it does have feeling,

feelings that are mine.

my poetry is mine,

you may like it, you may not.

analyze it if you want.

but whatever you come up with --

well, i honestly don't care.

sigh... some of my last adventures in Ecuador.

I've been absent from the blogosphere for a while. My apologies.

My last couple of months in Ecuador were a blast. In 2012 the roommates and I took a few more trips--back to Quito, back to Baños, over to Mindo, and maybe a few others?

Side note: for those of you who were not aware of this huge change in my life, after lots of thought and pondering, I decided trek back up to the states. It wasn't an easy choice, but I do believe that I made the right choice in coming back.

We spent New Year's Day in Quito where we got to see a lot of very big and intricate "años viejos" which are traditional doll-type things that Ecuadorian's burn at the turn of the new year to symbolically get rid of the year just past. The good, the bad, all of it. They just burn it. It's really cool, actually. I loved seeing all the different versions. They're supposed to set good karma (or at least clear the path) for the year to come. They can be very raggedy and ugly, but some people get way into it and make things like this:


Let's see. Since I last talked to the blogging world, I also went mountain biking through the Andes!! It was a really neat experience, but it was quite tough. It got to a point where my legs would just not take it anymore. They literally locked in place…it was so freaking painful. But still, a great experience. The landscape was absolutely breathtaking and we actually got to the middle of sierra/jungle area, so things got pretty tropical. We even saw a wild parrot. He was so cute! And it talked to us! We stopped along the way, rode some cable cars (and, of course, sang The Fray while at it), and we saw some waterfalls. At El pailón del diablo, we had to crawl through a little cave to get behind the waterfall. I included just a few pictures. If you want to see more, you're always welcome to ask! Or just browse through them on facebook, I'm pretty sure they're all on there.  By the end of the trip, roommates and I were pretty tired and covered in mud. We also discovered that biking as much as we did that day makes you hurt in some very awkward places. So the sore-aftermath wasn't the most fun, haha. But definitely worth the overall experience. This bike trip is something I won't forget. Ever.

So after I made the decision to cut my trip a little short, I obviously had to notify my roommates. I hated to have to do that. You can bet I cried. So since I made up my mind with only about a week before I was to head back to the States for my brother's wedding, we only had one weekend between my Ecuadorian adventures and my departure back home. They asked me what I wanted to do for my last trip in Ecuador and I chose Mindo! There was no way I was going to leave the country without going to their infamous CLOUD FOREST! Because of the way cameras are set to work, these pictures do not do the cloud forest any sort of justice whatsoever. These clouds were so much more than just fog, and in the pictures they just look like fog. I mean, it is technically fog, but it's also so much more than that. it was so cool! While we were in Mindo, we also got to go white water tubing…but it was more of a white water rafting thing. It's weird, but I'll do my best to explain it: the tubes were tied together onto a raft-type device. So, all together, the tubes-made-raft looked kinda like a flower. Or like when cheerios stick together in your cereal bowl (does anybody know what I'm talking about? haha). Anyway, we sat in our tubes and the guides did all the work. All we had to do was hold on to ropes and make sure we didn't fall into any of the white water stream. It was absolutely intense and absolutely crazy. I loved it.


OH! And the hostel we stayed at had houses on trees! They were LITERALLY tree houses. They were so cool--I don't think I have any pictures of them though, which was really stupid of me. But the tropical weather meant lots and lots of bugs. Including big spiders. One of those huge spiders decided to make a home of my tennis shoe…aaaaand I stuck my foot in without even thinking about double checking that that was safe. I felt something funky in there so I took out my shoe to check it, but before I could even pick it up, a huuuuge spider crawled out of it. I think it was just as scared as I was. And Emily was more scared than either me or the spider. In fact, the amount of terror that I saw in her eyes made me calm down a little. I didn't need to be scared for myself because Em was scared enough for the both of us, three if you count the spider. On ΩZ bid day I actually went to a butterfly museum...isn't that vomiliciously perfect?! I guess it was meant to be. :)


I thought I would be able to briefly touch on everything I did my last couple of months in one post, but that's seemingly impossible now. I have a couple of things still to talk about. So I guess I'll leave you all to it right now! Have a lovely day!!