Walk home from work for The First Time. This is big. It’s a small island with roads of coral that go slick in rain. Drunk drivers are everywhere, sidewalks aren’t. When you walk on the white line (no shoulder), face the traffic, just in case.
Men will honk. Women will stop and ask, brows wrinkling, “Do you need a ride?”
And then the dogs. The many, many dogs. Descended from dingos. Lean and mean. When you walk down to the coffee shop from your house, pick up four coral stones in case you need to throw them.
To ignore the traffic, pick a plumeria and spin its stem until it the petals blur.
When you pass a house and five dogs bound out from behind it, freeze. Remember what you’re holding. Flower in one hand. Stones in the other.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Voggy Valentine
Vog = smog + fog - a few letters and + one. Easier: volcanic air polution.
A volcano north of us (the tippy-toppiest one of the Marianas that starts with an "A," is errupting. Yesterday, the air smelled sulphuric.
Today is Valentine's Day. On the mainland, it's still the thirteenth, so you probably aren't in a sugar coma yet. My Aunt Sharon sent me an entire package of V-Day decorations and candy, cushioned by a gallons-worth of foam heart stickers, of which I have one remaining: on my face. School parties are a bit tiring. There's the prep, like blowing up balloons. And I hope it's the vog that made that so difficult and not a seriously diminished lung capacity, because I had to sit down halfway through my first and last balloon. (Thank you, first period, for coming to my aid).
This is, perhaps, the first Valentine's that I have felt giddy with love for everybody. Candygrams came flooding into various students all the day long, everyone was in high spirits. All of my classes signed a pink banner that last period carried to the office to hang on the bulletin board. Three of the boys asked if they could bring their ukelelis to play for the principle. Sure. We arrived to the office, and the principle, who was having a late lunch with his wife, suggested we find the vice principle near the library . . . who was entertaining a member of the Board of Education.
Hmm.
Miss Elkins (now wondering if this were a wise idea) and her troop crossed campus and found our audience.
It turned out to be magical. We all stood in a circle, and listened to a song about what the speaker would do for his lover if he had all the money in the world. But the refrain was nothing that money could buy.
As we walked back across the field, I looked back to the students singing as they came and found that it was quite easy to breathe. In fact, I think I could have tackled that balloon with ease.
Love you all.
A volcano north of us (the tippy-toppiest one of the Marianas that starts with an "A," is errupting. Yesterday, the air smelled sulphuric.
Today is Valentine's Day. On the mainland, it's still the thirteenth, so you probably aren't in a sugar coma yet. My Aunt Sharon sent me an entire package of V-Day decorations and candy, cushioned by a gallons-worth of foam heart stickers, of which I have one remaining: on my face. School parties are a bit tiring. There's the prep, like blowing up balloons. And I hope it's the vog that made that so difficult and not a seriously diminished lung capacity, because I had to sit down halfway through my first and last balloon. (Thank you, first period, for coming to my aid).
This is, perhaps, the first Valentine's that I have felt giddy with love for everybody. Candygrams came flooding into various students all the day long, everyone was in high spirits. All of my classes signed a pink banner that last period carried to the office to hang on the bulletin board. Three of the boys asked if they could bring their ukelelis to play for the principle. Sure. We arrived to the office, and the principle, who was having a late lunch with his wife, suggested we find the vice principle near the library . . . who was entertaining a member of the Board of Education.
Hmm.
Miss Elkins (now wondering if this were a wise idea) and her troop crossed campus and found our audience.
It turned out to be magical. We all stood in a circle, and listened to a song about what the speaker would do for his lover if he had all the money in the world. But the refrain was nothing that money could buy.
As we walked back across the field, I looked back to the students singing as they came and found that it was quite easy to breathe. In fact, I think I could have tackled that balloon with ease.
Love you all.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
The main themes
Third period, Giqo asked if I would help him write a poem about eczema.
“Let me guess, it has to rhyme, and it’s for your fourth period health class?” He snapped his fingers with a smile, found out.
Another student in second period had asked me to look at her poem . . . at least she had already written it. Lot’s of suffering and isolation—I can’t even remember what disease she had written about, just that the speaker was on the verge of death and no one appreciated him. I forget how much high schoolers love drama. For the poetry slam in November, the winner did a teary performance about someone wishing she could come back from the grave after dying in a drunk-driving accident. Ah, if only such steep tragedy had half as much literary quality as it does exclamation points.
At lunch, I walked across the “Sahara,” the rambling grass field between my building and the library, to Ben’s ceramic studio. I passed students eating beneath the trees where I took my fourth period to read Beowulf the last time the power went. They sit in clusters, some wishing they were in other clusters, some all alone together, some all alone. Any high school anywhere.
I was carrying a manila folder with things for the librarian to laminate, things that are a lovely cross-section of what I get teach. The thirty-one rules of courtly love (for an AP exercise in which each student took a rule and wrote a scenario, Cyrano-de-Bergerac-style, in which it would apply), a page from Vogue showing a slew of runway fashions inspired by medieval armor (for The Canterbury Tales), and three of the best flyers last semester’s students designed for their performances of Macbeth.
When I arrived at the studio, Ben and P.E. teacher Glen were watching a muted basketball tournament alternatively with the presidential debates. Glen discovered a lady who makes Thai soup for three dollars. You pick it up in knotted bags: one with the noodles, one with the broth and greens. Two smaller bags tied come together: one with vinegar seasoning and the other with salted chilis.
As I walked back to my room beneath the covered walkways—it had started raining—I passed the senior boys singing island songs to ukulele. They sing beautifully, and I always stop to listen. I don’t have to understand Chamorro to know that they are singing of the same things we study in literature, the same things they like to write and read poems about. Life, love, loss.
Such is every day. Such is a Friday at Saipan Southern High School.
“Let me guess, it has to rhyme, and it’s for your fourth period health class?” He snapped his fingers with a smile, found out.
Another student in second period had asked me to look at her poem . . . at least she had already written it. Lot’s of suffering and isolation—I can’t even remember what disease she had written about, just that the speaker was on the verge of death and no one appreciated him. I forget how much high schoolers love drama. For the poetry slam in November, the winner did a teary performance about someone wishing she could come back from the grave after dying in a drunk-driving accident. Ah, if only such steep tragedy had half as much literary quality as it does exclamation points.
At lunch, I walked across the “Sahara,” the rambling grass field between my building and the library, to Ben’s ceramic studio. I passed students eating beneath the trees where I took my fourth period to read Beowulf the last time the power went. They sit in clusters, some wishing they were in other clusters, some all alone together, some all alone. Any high school anywhere.
I was carrying a manila folder with things for the librarian to laminate, things that are a lovely cross-section of what I get teach. The thirty-one rules of courtly love (for an AP exercise in which each student took a rule and wrote a scenario, Cyrano-de-Bergerac-style, in which it would apply), a page from Vogue showing a slew of runway fashions inspired by medieval armor (for The Canterbury Tales), and three of the best flyers last semester’s students designed for their performances of Macbeth.
When I arrived at the studio, Ben and P.E. teacher Glen were watching a muted basketball tournament alternatively with the presidential debates. Glen discovered a lady who makes Thai soup for three dollars. You pick it up in knotted bags: one with the noodles, one with the broth and greens. Two smaller bags tied come together: one with vinegar seasoning and the other with salted chilis.
As I walked back to my room beneath the covered walkways—it had started raining—I passed the senior boys singing island songs to ukulele. They sing beautifully, and I always stop to listen. I don’t have to understand Chamorro to know that they are singing of the same things we study in literature, the same things they like to write and read poems about. Life, love, loss.
Such is every day. Such is a Friday at Saipan Southern High School.
Anna, athletic?
On Martin Luther King weekend, islanders could be seen driving by a baseball field to see grown men in pink tutu’s limping in flippers to hit a volleyball they couldn’t see through their goggles.
Context. That weekend, I took the ferry to Tinian to join twenty other contestants in a volleyball championship. Which, me being me, is funny enough. Funnier: it is the Rudy Rudiger Volleyball Championship.
Now there’s the difference. At the opening of every game, one player from each team had to run up to the net and chug a beer. Whoever finished first could chose court side or first serve. If the other team served a ball and it touched the ground in bounds, your team had to chug a beer in thirty seconds, or . . . (I was never sure about the “or”, thankfully, my two teammates were both seasoned beer-bongers in their forties, and they always managed to come in well under twenty seconds. Bravo, boys).
And it’s a game in which the better you are, the worse you get. Example: if you make two good serves in a row, you might have to wear a flipper on your hand, serve from your knees, or don a pair of snorkel goggles with the left eye magic-markered black. If you spike that ball, you might get tied at the waist by a ten-foot rope to your team mate. If you argue the score with the ref (likely a team member you just beat in the last game), you get to wear a sumo-wrestler’s wig or a green princess dress. Even I did well enough to don many of the assorted handicaps at one time or another.
Surprisingly, none of the locals were interested in joining the tournament. They preferred to watch a field of expatriates, gowns and wigs blowing in the trade winds of January, downing beer and devouring cheddar Pringles for sustenance. And I thought I’d have a relaxing weekend with lots of time reading on the beach.
My weekend warrior-edness continued. Last Saturday, Rebecca, fellow English teacher Autumn, and I went sea kayaking from Autumn’s house down to Sugar Dock where we all often swim after work. You could spot me a mile off in hat and sunshirt, as ever. It was a crystalline day and the lagoon felt more like open ocean, with swells you could glide to shore on.
And tonight, it looks like I’ll be doing my first hash run with the Saipan Hash House Harriers. This sort of hash is not to be confused with a condensed form of a certain weed but is rather a creation of frat-boy track runners once upon a college. The island version involves a someone called a “hare” who hacks a trail through the jungle that the harriers run through . . . .
My default being inertia, I was about to say I'd rather be on that beach with a book. But although I won't be seen jumping from an airplane any time soon, adventure is beginning to get to me.
Context. That weekend, I took the ferry to Tinian to join twenty other contestants in a volleyball championship. Which, me being me, is funny enough. Funnier: it is the Rudy Rudiger Volleyball Championship.
Now there’s the difference. At the opening of every game, one player from each team had to run up to the net and chug a beer. Whoever finished first could chose court side or first serve. If the other team served a ball and it touched the ground in bounds, your team had to chug a beer in thirty seconds, or . . . (I was never sure about the “or”, thankfully, my two teammates were both seasoned beer-bongers in their forties, and they always managed to come in well under twenty seconds. Bravo, boys).
And it’s a game in which the better you are, the worse you get. Example: if you make two good serves in a row, you might have to wear a flipper on your hand, serve from your knees, or don a pair of snorkel goggles with the left eye magic-markered black. If you spike that ball, you might get tied at the waist by a ten-foot rope to your team mate. If you argue the score with the ref (likely a team member you just beat in the last game), you get to wear a sumo-wrestler’s wig or a green princess dress. Even I did well enough to don many of the assorted handicaps at one time or another.
Surprisingly, none of the locals were interested in joining the tournament. They preferred to watch a field of expatriates, gowns and wigs blowing in the trade winds of January, downing beer and devouring cheddar Pringles for sustenance. And I thought I’d have a relaxing weekend with lots of time reading on the beach.
My weekend warrior-edness continued. Last Saturday, Rebecca, fellow English teacher Autumn, and I went sea kayaking from Autumn’s house down to Sugar Dock where we all often swim after work. You could spot me a mile off in hat and sunshirt, as ever. It was a crystalline day and the lagoon felt more like open ocean, with swells you could glide to shore on.
And tonight, it looks like I’ll be doing my first hash run with the Saipan Hash House Harriers. This sort of hash is not to be confused with a condensed form of a certain weed but is rather a creation of frat-boy track runners once upon a college. The island version involves a someone called a “hare” who hacks a trail through the jungle that the harriers run through . . . .
My default being inertia, I was about to say I'd rather be on that beach with a book. But although I won't be seen jumping from an airplane any time soon, adventure is beginning to get to me.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Vignettes, West of the Marianas Trench
Before the sun sets, you often see the tops of clouds that, though they appear to end at the horizon line of the sea, are just the tops of cumulus so enormous, they bend around the earth.
The Chinese women walk home from the garment factories after work. They wear flirty thin dresses and hold bright, clashing umbrellas against the sun.
The Korean tourists stop to take posed photos. "Here I am smelling this lovely plumeria." "Here I am playing air guitar beneath the rotating Hard Rock Cafe sign."
Dong, sushi chef at Shin Sen, makes the perfect, half-dozen sets of spicy tuna rolls. The waitresses can't add in English. You have to make sure they don't under or overcharge you. "No, that's your tip. You need to keep that." Or "The sake was fifteen dollars? Are you sure?"
For Halloween at school, I dressed as Lady Macbeth. The students had performed selected scenes from the play--complete with costumes, music, and flyers--in lieu of a test. I recycled the foil-wrapped, cardboard dagger one of the students had made for her group's staging of Macbeth stabbing Duncan. One of my usually reticent students came up to me with a smile. "Miss, I'll kill Duncan for you." Hallelujah, they'll remember Shakespeare.
For the weekend party, a teacher friend went as the Marianas Trench. (The deepest known oceanic trench in the world. Among other things, it keeps tsunamis from our island shores.) She wore a tiny plastic tugboat on a headband, a filmy dress of blue covered in dried seaweed, and strands of shells about her neck and waist. "To uncharted territory," she toasted. As the evening wore on, the tide pulled out, the full moon rose, and the wide, white swath of beach in front of her house was an open invitation to walk far, far away in the night silence. I accepted.
The Chinese women walk home from the garment factories after work. They wear flirty thin dresses and hold bright, clashing umbrellas against the sun.
The Korean tourists stop to take posed photos. "Here I am smelling this lovely plumeria." "Here I am playing air guitar beneath the rotating Hard Rock Cafe sign."
Dong, sushi chef at Shin Sen, makes the perfect, half-dozen sets of spicy tuna rolls. The waitresses can't add in English. You have to make sure they don't under or overcharge you. "No, that's your tip. You need to keep that." Or "The sake was fifteen dollars? Are you sure?"
For Halloween at school, I dressed as Lady Macbeth. The students had performed selected scenes from the play--complete with costumes, music, and flyers--in lieu of a test. I recycled the foil-wrapped, cardboard dagger one of the students had made for her group's staging of Macbeth stabbing Duncan. One of my usually reticent students came up to me with a smile. "Miss, I'll kill Duncan for you." Hallelujah, they'll remember Shakespeare.
For the weekend party, a teacher friend went as the Marianas Trench. (The deepest known oceanic trench in the world. Among other things, it keeps tsunamis from our island shores.) She wore a tiny plastic tugboat on a headband, a filmy dress of blue covered in dried seaweed, and strands of shells about her neck and waist. "To uncharted territory," she toasted. As the evening wore on, the tide pulled out, the full moon rose, and the wide, white swath of beach in front of her house was an open invitation to walk far, far away in the night silence. I accepted.
Friday, September 7, 2007
You know
You know you're on a tropical island when you have to wipe the mold off your leather shoes.
When your mint tin rusts.
When the tip of your sewing needle rusts.
When an apple left on the dash of the car cooks in a day (slow-food--island-style).
When the roads are made of coral.
When you shower in a rain storm on the roof when the electricity goes out.
When you spend an entire evening with friends in the ocean, watching the stars come out after the sun sets.
When you learn how to heft a five-gallon bottle of water on your hip like a child.
When you never have to use lotion. Ever.
When you name the geckos that have become additional roommates.
The weeks since my last post turned into lesson plans and sunsets. The same week that mainland schools began their academic year, we had midterm progress reports.
Labor Day weekend, Rebecca and I developed an ear infection (from a waterfall at a local spa, we think). Regardless, we kept plans for a weekend girls' night with a few other teachers. We took a ferry to the neighboring island, Tinian. Tinian has a few thousand inhabitants, but they must hide in the hills. You can feel what Saipan must have been like before the it was westernized.
We visited ancient stone ruins and turquoise lagoons. Gorgeous. But by evening, I knew I needed to do something about my ear. Even so, I joined everyone for dinner. The meal was on the house, courtesy of an Australian marathoner who worked there and knew Rebecca.
After our second round of wine, a man came up to the table, friend of friends. He was the island doctor on weekend call and offered to drive us over to the Tinian hospital to check out the infection. Rebecca and I crammed into the cab of his tiny pickup truck as he told us about his hippie days in Israel.
The hospital was painted a definitive hospital green. A color so bad it hurt worse than my ear. We sat in a room stacked with enough little white boxes of various medical supplies to hide the green.
I was pleased that an "emerency room" visit (anything after 5 pm) cost only $25. And my ear drops $9. But they had no technology to accept credit cards. Between us, Rebecca and I had exactly $34 in cash. A bit of medical (and girls' night) serendipity.
On normal days, we all teach and then head for the ocean or sushi or home. Home feels like vacation. This morning, I skipped one of my six, nine-hour, saturday history classes to enjoy a full weekend. We had banana pancakes on the white-washed roof. Ben strung up his hammock, and Rebecca and I sat at the wood table we found for a steal when some other howlies (off-islanders, i.e., like us) were leaving island. As with the British who say they are "in hospital" islanders skip "the" and refer to being "on island" or "off island."
Back to the pancakes. I realized: I don't have to go anywhere to get away. I live on a tropical island. I repeat that to myself often. It still surprises me.
Life pulls me along. I haven't written much of anything other than with red ink on student papers. I feel on the verge of reaching equilibrium and am learning how to maximize my school time to bring less work home.
It is beginning to feel right. The kind of feeling that you can't put a finger on. You just know.
When your mint tin rusts.
When the tip of your sewing needle rusts.
When an apple left on the dash of the car cooks in a day (slow-food--island-style).
When the roads are made of coral.
When you shower in a rain storm on the roof when the electricity goes out.
When you spend an entire evening with friends in the ocean, watching the stars come out after the sun sets.
When you learn how to heft a five-gallon bottle of water on your hip like a child.
When you never have to use lotion. Ever.
When you name the geckos that have become additional roommates.
The weeks since my last post turned into lesson plans and sunsets. The same week that mainland schools began their academic year, we had midterm progress reports.
Labor Day weekend, Rebecca and I developed an ear infection (from a waterfall at a local spa, we think). Regardless, we kept plans for a weekend girls' night with a few other teachers. We took a ferry to the neighboring island, Tinian. Tinian has a few thousand inhabitants, but they must hide in the hills. You can feel what Saipan must have been like before the it was westernized.
We visited ancient stone ruins and turquoise lagoons. Gorgeous. But by evening, I knew I needed to do something about my ear. Even so, I joined everyone for dinner. The meal was on the house, courtesy of an Australian marathoner who worked there and knew Rebecca.
After our second round of wine, a man came up to the table, friend of friends. He was the island doctor on weekend call and offered to drive us over to the Tinian hospital to check out the infection. Rebecca and I crammed into the cab of his tiny pickup truck as he told us about his hippie days in Israel.
The hospital was painted a definitive hospital green. A color so bad it hurt worse than my ear. We sat in a room stacked with enough little white boxes of various medical supplies to hide the green.
I was pleased that an "emerency room" visit (anything after 5 pm) cost only $25. And my ear drops $9. But they had no technology to accept credit cards. Between us, Rebecca and I had exactly $34 in cash. A bit of medical (and girls' night) serendipity.
On normal days, we all teach and then head for the ocean or sushi or home. Home feels like vacation. This morning, I skipped one of my six, nine-hour, saturday history classes to enjoy a full weekend. We had banana pancakes on the white-washed roof. Ben strung up his hammock, and Rebecca and I sat at the wood table we found for a steal when some other howlies (off-islanders, i.e., like us) were leaving island. As with the British who say they are "in hospital" islanders skip "the" and refer to being "on island" or "off island."
Back to the pancakes. I realized: I don't have to go anywhere to get away. I live on a tropical island. I repeat that to myself often. It still surprises me.
Life pulls me along. I haven't written much of anything other than with red ink on student papers. I feel on the verge of reaching equilibrium and am learning how to maximize my school time to bring less work home.
It is beginning to feel right. The kind of feeling that you can't put a finger on. You just know.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Miss
"Miss Elkins, can I have your phone number?" sings Wilford. It is fourth period, my one remedial senior English class.
"You have a fine voice, Wilford. Perhaps you could use it with your group to finish the 'Words to Own' worksheet."
"Ah, Miss Elkins is . . . " he looks down at his sheet, ". . . ve-e-e-xed," he sings with a smile.
I shake my head, laughing. He has, indeed, owned his words.
I actually enjoy these "remedial" students the most. They don't expect me to expect much of them, and yet they have so much energy waiting for the right current to sweep them away. Beowulf isn't a bad way to command the attention of almost thirty teenage boys. Blood, guts, et al.
Et al, I have 120 students. This, along with the technical difficulties of powerpoint, speaker systems, and no prep period, slipped through the job description. I practice my sense of humor as my students practice their latin prefixes. I have learned that, in a climate where nothing dries, you don't sit in the car with a wet bikini and expect it to be dry even two days later (as I discovered on the first morning of school last week).
At the market after school, buying sushi tuna caught that morning, we see our kids with their parents or friends. "Hello, Miss," they say.
We drive home each night in the gold four-door now dubbed "Goldilocks Wiglaf." The first name is for the three bears (Ben, Rebecca & I). The surname it got this afternoon, because we decided an automobile needs a bit of Norse warrior blood to make it up the potholed road.
I relish the pre-dawn stretching on the roof, the roosters cawing in the neighbor's yards. I compare skyscapes American and European and wonder what I miss from those places. Each time I hear my new "name," the question arises. What do I miss? I don't even know. And soon, this will be as much home as anywhere has been. And someday if I leave, I will miss it too.
"You have a fine voice, Wilford. Perhaps you could use it with your group to finish the 'Words to Own' worksheet."
"Ah, Miss Elkins is . . . " he looks down at his sheet, ". . . ve-e-e-xed," he sings with a smile.
I shake my head, laughing. He has, indeed, owned his words.
I actually enjoy these "remedial" students the most. They don't expect me to expect much of them, and yet they have so much energy waiting for the right current to sweep them away. Beowulf isn't a bad way to command the attention of almost thirty teenage boys. Blood, guts, et al.
Et al, I have 120 students. This, along with the technical difficulties of powerpoint, speaker systems, and no prep period, slipped through the job description. I practice my sense of humor as my students practice their latin prefixes. I have learned that, in a climate where nothing dries, you don't sit in the car with a wet bikini and expect it to be dry even two days later (as I discovered on the first morning of school last week).
At the market after school, buying sushi tuna caught that morning, we see our kids with their parents or friends. "Hello, Miss," they say.
We drive home each night in the gold four-door now dubbed "Goldilocks Wiglaf." The first name is for the three bears (Ben, Rebecca & I). The surname it got this afternoon, because we decided an automobile needs a bit of Norse warrior blood to make it up the potholed road.
I relish the pre-dawn stretching on the roof, the roosters cawing in the neighbor's yards. I compare skyscapes American and European and wonder what I miss from those places. Each time I hear my new "name," the question arises. What do I miss? I don't even know. And soon, this will be as much home as anywhere has been. And someday if I leave, I will miss it too.
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