Man [or should I say Dude], I’ve been having strange dreams over the past few days. Last night I had one of a recurring series in which I own a house — the one reliable thing in a disarrayed life — but there’s something dreadfully wrong with it. Sometimes there are decaying foundations, or murderers breaking into the basement, or drugged squatters who won’t leave. Other times there’s a river undercutting the house and if […]
Read moreCategory: Teaching
Turkish Delight
You won’t think this is funny, but I still can’t stop laughing. A few days ago during class someone’s cell phone starting ringing. The woman next to me — the lovely and shy Natalia from Russia — blushed, grabbed her purse and ran out the door. While she was outside digging frantically through her purse, inside the classroom the phone kept ringing. When she poked her head back in a few seconds later, with a […]
Read moreI Did an Okay Thing
I hadn’t seen “my” refugee from Bhutan for three weeks due to what was, at best, a series of miscommunications in her family. To be honest, these most recent of many flakeages had finally started to exasperate me. It’s a half-hour drive to get there, and I build my schedule around that weekly time slot. Showing up to find no one at home gets old fast. So after this last episode, I’d figured my teaching […]
Read moreRefugee Day
Yesterday was my day to tutor my Bhutanese refugee. Before the lesson I met her at Oakland’s annual Refugee Day, an occasion I’d not known existed. Here’s a picture of her with her granddaughter. One granddaughter. Many granddaughters. During part of the day’s ESL instruction we worked with singular and plural. I spontaneously flew around the room with plastic Aquafina bottles in my hands and placing them here and there. This bottle. That bottle. These […]
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