August 30
So I flaked. I got home and I flaked. Really. Of course working 40 hours a week at Pick Your Part Auto Wrecking DMV Department is not quite exciting as touring Europe. But hey… I'm now officially back in school… well classes don't start until Wednesday. In a few days I will get my Ethernet connection and I will be back online without tying up my parents' phone line. It was really hard to get back into the groove with my parents hanging about.
So now what? Well, I think keeping this thing updated with interesting tidbits of my life shouldn't be too hard considering I will be beginning my student teaching in South Central LA in a few weeks. Getting to know my new roommates and working things out with them should be fun.
The run down. Shall I tell them I have a journal online? I don't know… maybe not at first. But what's there to hide? Basically sitting at a computer literally halfway across the world from my family made it easy to write about them. Now… I'm not so sure. If I take the bookmarks off my parent's Internet Explorer at home I'm sure they will forget all about reading it. My roommates don't know about it yet and not wanting to make life hell I just might want to stick the facts.
Jessie, Paige, and Erin are all sophomores and they are 18-19. One of them has already asked me to buy them alcohol. Ahh, the wonders of being 21. Jessie is a former architecture major who is currently undecided. Erin is a Music Ed major, and Paige is an International Relations major.
Today I learned an important thing about my roommate. She's slow… or perhaps it just takes her a long time to get out the door. Yes, I might be a little compulsive about being on time, if not early… but I really hate waiting around for people. I'm not complaining too much, just looking out for future problems.
Jessie is a transplanted New Yorker who loves to complain about California's weather. I do agree that 113 today was a little obsessive, especially while we were at the game. (We won by the way!) When I say game, I mean football… American football, not the game that everyone else in the world calls football and we call soccer. Jessie has an interesting mix of black and Italian heritage. I have yet to get up the courage to ask about her several tattoos. Jessie's mom came down to move her in and I can see that Jessie is very attached to her mom. Her mom was really nice. She's a school bus driver who used to work for the phone company. Isn't it strange how we define people by what jobs they occupy? What their major is?
It's been a few days since I wrote that entry and well, I've had my internet connection set up in my room for a few hours. I was supposed to go to a poetry reading at the Religious Center, but Dave called me and said he was going to a party instead and asked me if I wanted to come. So we're out to party rather than read poetry. Hey, I'm easy to please. Dave told me he wants to party rather than poetry because he hadn't finished what he wanted to read and he didn't want to be rushed to finish what he's writing. It's an interesting concept about a castle in Ireland and it's architect... very surreal. David said he wanted to make sure he had control over the part where everything falls apart... which makes sense. I promise.
My roomate is in the living room with her friend and she's singing along to her keyboard which is playing "I Shot the Sherriff."
I know I didn't finish the rundown on my other 2 roommates... so here goes.
Erin seems like the bubbly blonde type. Now this is not to be mixed up with blonde bimbo. She seems very nice and intelligent. Erin, as far as I can tell, is very outgoing, and her favorite cuss word is, (the only cuss word I've ever her her say) is "Mother Fucker!" She says it loudly. Very loudly. It's amusing to hear that exclamation coming from her.
Paige is a red head who Jessie described to me in very few words - an only child... an adopted only child. Needless to say we might have a little problem compromising. Today they had an argument in which Paige said she'd never washed dishes by hand and Jessie had never used a dishwasher. Yes, we've been here for less than a week and they are arguing about mundane things such as dishes. sigh. It might be a LONG year. Paige is also involved in university government and community theater. Right now she's at a rehearsal for Damm Yankees. Paige is also Rushing. We'll see how that goes.
Oh, so much to say, really. I received my student teaching assignment today. I'm going to be teaching an 8th grade gifted class. My first day is on Tuesday. My mom made an inspiring comment today over email. "That will be like the blind leading the blind won't it?" Thanks Mom.
Well... I'm going to get ready to party... wheee...
September 5
Well, the party people flaked so we ended up going to the Religious center poetry reading. There were less than ten people there so it was more of a laid back chat session with pie, cheesecake, tea and coffee.
We talked about lots of things and one of the subjects that inevitably came up was politics. Someone posed the question (I wasn't allowed to vote because I was... GASP... a Republican) "If Hillary divorced Bill, and a few years later she ran for President, would you vote for her?" Being a ... GASP Republican disqualified my opinion which was "No," but some of the others decided that it would be dependant on the policies she ran with.
We never did get around to the poetry, but there were several musicians there that played some pieces on the piano. David gave his Dillon impression with a song. I tried some Ginsing tea and bounced a little off the walls. Well... it was bouncy for me... I suppose.
This Little Entry is just really an update between the entry I made on the 4th and the one I wrote almost as a letter to Melissa. So here's the next one.
Fillin' ya in on this weekend's events. We went down to LACMA to see the new Picasso exhibit and didn't realize that you needed special tickets to see it on opening day. So we (Jessie, Dave, and I) toured around a few of the other exhibits... Monet and the Impressionists being high on my list of things to see. We were quite disapointed when we realized they were remodeling the bookstore/giftshop... so no postcards or posters. So we headed back to the car, passing by the La Brea Tar Pits... where we discovered one of the elephant statues was moving... oooh eeerie.
We headed over to Tommy's for lunch... yum yum yum... and then headed to Dave's room... the house where he rents the room is so cool. It's like one of those old turn of the century mansiony things that has stairs where you least expect them.
After looking at some of his stuff and some pictures he was mounting, we went to Raphs (grocery store) and bought some sprite and cheese and ice cream.
When we got back to our apartment I finally had my Archer's and Lemonade that I had been craving. David got pretty toasted and we watch Raiders of the Lost Arc. David talks a lot about stuff he should when he's drunk... which is something I know I shouldn't take advantage of... but I did.
Anyway... we headed to bed about 3:00 am and I woke up about 10:30... I got hungry and made pancakes, hoping everyone else would wake up and want food. Nope. Nobody moved until about 2:00pm. I sat and internetted for most of that time. I made pancakes for all three of my roomates, David, and Mark, some guy who we borrowed some syrup from... or maybe it was Mike... I don't remember. Anyway... we spent most of the day watching the MTV marathon of a show called Road Rules, and episodes of the Real World. Don't ask me why. I really don't know. Around 6 Jessie and I cooked Tortellini and garlic chicken for the three of us. I think Paige might have been a little miffed because she wanted us to split a pizza, but none of us had money. Erin and Paige sort of drooled over our chicken. After dinner, David washed dishes and then headed off so we could get at least a little work done. So what do I do? Sit here goofing off. It's not really goofing off, I promise...
Now there's a few issues that I skipped over... mostly because of their sensitive nature, but as I sit here typing I wonder whether I should included them. This started off as a letter to Melissa, but I think now it might as well be a journal entry... yes online... is this something I want my parents to read? Do my parents read it. Hi Mom... please don't be overly shocked by my friends.
After the first night David spent the night on our couch, the pressing question my roommates had about him was "Is David gay?" Gasp! Okay... so it's a question that made me giggle... but I didn't want to giggle too much in front of my friends. The truth is I wasn't exactly sure of the answer to that question. Now I knew he wasn't entirely gay. He's had heterosexual relationships in the past. But lately he's been making comments that I had been pretty much tossing off as him trying to throw my roommates off balance - like admiring cute guys riding past on bicycle. I pretty much told Paige and Jessie the truth - that he might be bisexual, but they would really have to ask him.
Of course coming out and asking a guy if he's gay is not an easy task... even if it's David who I doubt is offended with anything. He seems to take pleasure in some misconceptions. I suppose it takes a little while of knowing him to get to know his sense of humor.
Well, as we were walking to LACMA, I told him what Jessie and Paige asked me... and he laughed. I knew he would, and we agreed he'd wait until Jessie asked before telling her.
When we were at Tommy's, Dave left to go somewhere and somehow the topic of David's sexual preferences popped up. I told Jessie she should just ask him. When David got nearer, I said louder that she should just ask him, knowing that David would know what she wanted to ask him. David's next comment practically had me rolling on the floor with laughter.
"What do you want to ask me? Just ask me, I'm sure you'll get a straight answer." The whole thing was hilarious, and I'm not sure I'm doing it justice. Anyway, Jessie got her question answered in full during David's toastedness.
Othe antics? About 12:30 we tried to get David to go to bed. Jessie sat there rubbing his temple while he laid on the couch, holding our two teddy bears. It was so cute we just had to take a picture. I knew that Jessie's method of putting David to sleep was not going to work... he would have just conked out if we had turned out all the lights... but no. He began to fake a snore and as soon as Jessie began to tip toe away from him, he made some caustic remark.
This afternoon when David woke up he looked down and saw the camera on the table.
"What is that?"
"A camera," I told him.
"Shit."
"But you were so cute."
"Shit"
"Really, you and those two teddy bears were just too good to pass up."
"Shit" I can't wait until Jessie developes her film.
Well, I have officially survived my first 5 days of student teaching. I haven't really begun to teach yet, but I have been trying to get their names right. I would love to be actually be the kind of teacher they all adore. We'll see how it goes. I've started picking up on a few personalities. One student... we'll call him... ummm George... for the sake of his minor status. I've already picked up on the fact that he seems to be an overachiever type. His hand was up on every question and he was always the first to pick up on any other mistakes. Yes... I misspelled disappear when I wrote it up on the board. He will probably be the one who will be finished with everything first and that sort of thing.
Now I want to make sure that people don't think that I'm stereotyping people and placing them in categories based on first impressions. I refuse to be the type of teacher that thinks that students are only capable of achieving what their first impressions imply.
As my master teacher explained to me, 8th graders are at that stage where they haven't decided whether school is a good or a bad thing. Once you reach them in high school, they've pretty much made up their mind that they are or are not going to do well in school. I want to make all of my students love language and reading. I want them to love writing and I don't want them to be turned off of writing because they think of academic papers. Where would I be if I wasn't allowed to have my creativity throughout school.
Okay... that's enough lecturing and ideals for now. I think... I actually have my first screenwriting class tonight. Yeah! I'm hoping this will not be a dud class. I also have my first ed class who's title I cannot at this moment recall. Wonderful stuff... huh?