For anyone who's seen my Facebook profile in the last month, I've been updating this chart (alas, all too regularly) to illustrate how Teach for America has trodden on my natural pluckiness and prevented me from being rational, sociable, and capable of communication. I will continue to update this list, but at least I'm finally on the scoreboard.



This is what it means to Baltimourn:

Dead -
1 kitten (Teacup)
1 family cat (Mickey)
Prof. Osberg
Brianna Lynn Waugh

Sick -
1 kitten (Bert)
Me
Uncle (Huntington's)
Grandpa (Cancer and Oldness)
Brother (etc.)

Blood Tests -
14

MRIs -
1

Stolen -
GPS
Ipod
Backpack
St. Hilda's Hoodie
School Supplies

Car Damage - 
Front Passenger Windows (smashed, x2)
Front Passenger Door Scarred
Dent and Paint Damage on Trunk
Chipped Windshield
Keying on Back Passenger Door
Chipped Bumper
Flat Tire
Fender

Towings -
1.5 (the 1/2 towing involved extortion of $150, as driver attempted to tow my car 15 minutes before posted time. he argued with me until the appointed hour, then said he'd tow my car unless i gave him the equivalent of what he'd be paid to haul her in)

Undeserved Car Boots - 
1

Loans Taken From Parents -
3

Fights Broken Up -
7

Parking Tickets and Citations -
49

Interviews with School Police -
2

Afternoons Spent Learning About Students' Sex Lives -
1

Incidents In Which a Parent Enters My Room and Threatens Students While I'm Teaching -
1

Weeks Late on Rent -
2

Overdue Bills as of April 12 -
4

Heartfelt Apology Letters from Team 7 -
8

SCORE
Baltimore - Winner
Me - KO'd

Wendy Kopp, I shake my fist at you.



The one gloomy cloud looming over my return to the NorCal this summer is that I'll be returning to a place that no longer has Professor Osberg in it. Dear Osberg, with his twinkly blue eyes, twitchy mustache, and apple-cheeks, took me under his wing when I was a freshman; he ushered me into the Honors Program, encouraged my applications to Oxford and for the Canterbury Fellowship, and urged me to pursue grad school with his recommendation and even his nomination -- clearly not a discerning fellow, but a good-hearted, generous, and brilliant man. He visited me at Oxford and treated me to the best meal I ate all year at a lovely French bistro off of High Street, and that alone earned him my love and respect. But how could anyone resist the Chaucerian silk ties and the passion he exuded for the Canterbury Tales, for his genius wife, and for green and beautiful England -- especially Durham? This was a man who intended to major in Geology but switched to English when at the end of the semester his Dartmouth advisor informed him that he'd been supposed to attend a lab that accompanied his science lecture, and thanks to his oversight, would fail.  He stumbled into his calling, and eventually championed text over theory as head of the Santa Clara English Department, spearheaded the Office of Scholarships and Grants, and ran the Honors Program -- he accomplished so much and died much too soon. I'll miss him, but not nearly as much as all the students who'll never have the honor of knowing him.

Rest in peace, Professor.

Okay, so I haven't written anything since September 1st. I know. But if you'd lived my life these past, what, seven months, I doubt you'd want to record your experiences for posterity either. 

Besides, TFA's a tad touchy about what we blog about our students. Something about privacy.

Let me paint a picture:

My classroom serves as a microcosm of our current climate change situation. The temperature swings between 19 degrees and 98 degrees, and rarely takes a barometric breath to rest between the two. As a result, my students either shiver or swelter while I try to convince them that learning how to find "mood" in a text or to create a plot map is a matter deserving their utter fascination. They may not wear sweatshirts or jackets, so my windows frost over and cloud bursts of carbon dioxide waft from our mouths and nostrils. To make matters worse, my classroom faces the windy side of our mountaintop (it's a five-floor building with eight flights of stairs to reach our school, which takes up the 4th and 5th floors), and long before I arrived, the wind blew out the windows. The latches fractured, rendering them useless, so over the summer someone bolted them shut. Naturally, the summer sun beat against these windows, cranking up the heat and humidity in order to suffocate us with the reek of warmed-over, unwashed teenage bodies. In response to student complaints, we unbolted the windows with a crowbar. Big mistake. In the middle of "Romeo and Juliet," such a gust of wind battered the building that the window beside my desk blew open and nearly decapitated me. I taught the rest of that day by sitting propped against the window, and by having Megan, Adoria, and Jaibreauna take turns sitting against the window at the front of the room. No power drill on earth could re-bolt those windows, so now I've mummified the casings with duct and masking tape, which can withstand a breeze but not a gale, and some good Samaritan has wedged an enormous, heavy, cardboard box between the window and the bookcase. Granted, I can no longer spin my spinny chair for lack of room, and I'm perpetually terrified of getting sucker-punched by the window, but it will have to do for now.

I might also mention the mice who live in our walls and who feast in our teacher's lounge, or the roaches hiding behind the microwave (where I'm certain they're soaking up radioactive waves in order to fortify themselves for some mutant transformation cum takeover). I could talk about how my students can't keep their hands to themselves, how Deniya and Alyshia like to swap shoes so they're wearing one of each, how Keymonie apparently had a miscarriage during our first period class (oh, the screaming, crying, and metallic scent of blood...), how Andrea was quiet for a week after her boyfriend stabbed her cousin to death in front of her, or how we twice spent three hours outside in the blazing sun after being evacuated because the school below us, #82, crawled into the ceiling to break the water pipes and then set our gym on fire just in time for our first dance. 

I could also talk about the fact that most of my students read at a 5th grade level -- and that this is after 1.5 years' progress gained since September. I could mention James' transformation from F student with a 46% to A student hell-bent on being first in his class...all because he lives in a one-bedroom apartment with an enormous family, an apartment infested with vermin and lacking in light or sanitation, and because he now yearns to go to college and have a room of his own, to play pro football, and to be more than another lost boy of Baltimore. We've laughed in my class, cried in my class, seen illness and anger as often as jubilation and pride. At age 15, many are hearing for the first time that "fag" and "faggy" are akin to "nigger" and that calling someone a "chink" or a "towelhead" is not something to be proud of. 

Tamika, your mother is wrong.

We've discussed murder, groupthink, human nature, forgiveness, genocide, warfare, poverty, love, family, abortion, politics, sexuality, religion. Many of them are so indoctrinated or closed-off, I wonder if it'll make any difference, but at least we've opened the dialogue. And if they fire me for it...well, so much the better, in my mom's opinion.

So, seven months in, exhaustion. I don't even have a verb to go with it. Just exhaustion.

I managed to ruin Christmas by succumbing to what at the time felt like mental illness, but now turns out to be an endocrinological problem. Major depression, buckets of tears, rancid self-loathing, irritability, insomnia, malaise (I even took to napping during my planning period on the burnt sienna-colored futon in the teacher's lounge), migraines, 3 years of amenorrhea, and even a panic attack en route to Disneyland. It wasn't pretty. I wasn't pretty. I suspected Peri-Traumatic Stress Disorder (since I don't yet qualify for Post-), but my mother advised me to put my new healthcare plan to use and seek a doctor.

To date, I've now had 10 blood tests, 1 MRI, seen 4 doctors, and been told they're concerned about cancer or tumors twice. The first thought was thyroid, which did show funny test results -- low TSH, low T3, normal T4...not to get into detail, low TSH usually means hyperthyroid, which I'm anything but, so they checked for a pituitary adenoma (tumor). No dice. They tested and tested, and now I know I can sort of handle butterfly needles if they let me babble while they draw the blood. That's about all I know, because there's still no diagnosis except that clearly something's not right -- so come back to be re-tested in 3 months. In the meantime, I managed to get one doctor to prescribe me a trial of very low dosage thyroid meds to see if it would have an effect. My TSH levels independently went from very low to normal low, and since taking the medication they've crept up to slightly better normal low. I'm hoping that if we can single that problem out, the fatigue and depression will go away and help me figure out what's going on with the rest of my body. Naturally, I haven't told my other doctors, because I'm still 4 years old and afraid that getting Mommy's permission doesn't mean Daddy will approve.

Now, I have to admit this in writing -- I hardly worked out this week. I mean, I was bedridden for a couple of days thanks to a killer migraine, but I also wanted to give myself a vacation of sorts. I work out every day, eat healthy, drink kettles of tea, and can't seem to shake the constant exhaustion. So I tried light workouts every other day this week, and, magically, I'm sleeping better and fought off the migraine with more moxy than expected. Rest...something I haven't really had since sophomore year of college. I need more of that. Lots more. Buckets.

The other thing I've been atrociously remiss with is correspondence. For the love of vegan cupcakes with sprinkles, I cannot seem to keep in touch with the people I love most in the world -- part of it is distraction, part of it is fearing that I won't sound like me anymore, and most of it is having so much to say that I'm overwhelmed into silence. How do I tell Andrea and Dan that not having them in my life, my Tuesday regulars, is awfully lonely and full of fewer smiles and absolutely Wii-less? How do I tell Stella and Ryan from DCP that having them just a cubicle away and scrutinizing Pirate logos or making Fairies avatars or laboring over the now-defunct PixieVision made me hate weekends and adore being at work with them? As for Jane, Kat, and Gaby -- I miss my sisters, and more than anything I miss the freedom of travel and undergraduate conversation and shared experience. I also hate Jane right now, and deservedly so. I know I need and am needed by KTP and Maren and Silvia and Timi and Christine and Joel and Jesse and Paul and...and people are leaving, and changing, and dying (sigh, Professor Osberg), and I'm sitting here watching "Dumbo" because it's 9 am on Friday morning. Davey's in and out of rehab again, my Grandpa thinks I'm married and living in DC, and my uncle's hit the actively suicidal phase of his Huntington's Disease. The last time I saw KTP, we both cried. Maren needs to celebrate her Maren-ness and give herself a chance. I almost destroyed my friendship with Timi. 

I have no money for my rent, bills, or Hopkins registration. My car's been broken into twice. My Ipod, GPS, and Hilda's sweatshirt are gone. My car's been towed and I've received nearly 40 parking tickets so far. I write great lesson plans that I almost never follow. I occasionally clown my students with sarcasm or "smart" remarks. I haven't memorized the IEP binder and rarely make graphic organizers.

I need to go home and mend some things. 

3 months -- less than, really. 2.9 months. 

At least, if nothing else, I always know I'll be fine. That, and in 2.9 months I'll be on the almost done side of my TFA experience.

 Less than one month ago, I drove from Pacific to Atlantic, enduring flash floods, tornado warnings, lightning storms, Clarksville Arkansas, tank top tans, a diet of ritz crackers and warm water, and conducted my job interview on the shoulder of Hwy 5, not far from Casa de Fruita. My dad's Highlander broke down and had to be traded in for a minivan, a car tire exploded in front of me and assaulted my fender, and on our last day of driving, we traveled from Ohio to W. Virginia to Virginia to W. Virginia to Pennsylvania to W. Virginia to Virginia to W. Virginia to Pennsylvania to Maryland to W. Virginia to Virginia to W. Virginia, then finally back to Maryland. I hate W. Virginia.

I arrived in B'more just in time to fill my apartment with cardboard boxes, give Gaby an anxiety attack, and realize that my toilet was broken, my fridge was leaking, and TP and paper towels were nowhere to be had. I awoke at 3 am, burning to check my voicemail, which I hadn't heard in over a week, and found out I was to report to MATHS, not BCPSS, at 9 am. Gaby and her Blackberry found me directions, and I returned home that evening just in time to pack Gaby in a cab and pray I hadn't ruined our friendship.

Since then, I've befriended the critters inhabiting my classroom, slumbered on my kitchen floor for 2 weeks thanks to a bed shipped sans hardware, and spent over 8 hours on the phone: negotiating with bed salespeople in Kentucky, waiting on hold for Comcast, and begging UPS to find my damn package with the bed parts. I cried at the UPS Customer Service Center, where Gretchen the service girl gave me a tour of the belt and fed me chocolate while promising to rain hellfire on the delivery guy. It took Comcast 15 days and 2 technicians to get me online, and took the Baltimore Police only 4 days to give me my first ticket (we're at 3, and counting) for parking in front of my building--where I should have a permit to park, if the City Transportation Authority didn't hold hours exactly when I have to be at work.

Even though I have exactly $0 in my Checking and Savings accounts and am living on credit, I adopted 2 kittens from a woman whose apartment smelled like iguana lust and was lit by a blacklight. All was going swell until Friday: Teacup fell ill and I packed her up to take her to school with me before a vet appointment--only to arrive at my car and discover a kindly looking gent peering into my passenger window and gripping a walkie-talkie. As it happened, someone clever deduced that I'd placed my GPS in the glove compartment rather than in my trunk. Foolish.That someone summarily smashed my window, purloined my navigation system, and made off like a bandit in the night. The concerned fellow called the cops, looked up apartments in White Marsh and retrieved 3 numbers for auto repair shops while my kitten mewed in pain.  At Diamond Auto Glass, Carol invited me to the lasagna dinner her mother was cooking as a belated birthday feast.

Mmmm...lasagna.




3 days later, my dear, dear kitten, Teacup--a black panther-kitty with white mittens and go-go boots--took a turn for the worse. Her appetite disappeared, she became weak and wobbly, and all in a matter of hours. While I was away at school, she passed away at home. 

RIP, little Teacup. Bert, your Earl Grey playmate, and I will miss you very, very much.

The last week looms. Yesterday I taught a 2-hour block while kneeling in a puddle of coolant leaking out of the air conditioner -- which only started working this week. Not only is it appalling that ours was the last classroom upon which William Penn bestowed breathable air, but it is also more than mildly upsetting that TFA has so thoroughly sapped me of all feeling and sensation that I helped Jericka for at least 10 minutes before realizing I was soaked from skirt to shoes. I sopped up the mess with old posters, letting the Mr. Sketch ink bleed onto the linoleum, and then squished my way to the front of the room, where I demonstrated Effective Execution by simultaneously wringing my skirt, wiping my shins with a tissue, and teaching a lesson on logical appeals in persuasive arguments. 

Bravo.

In other news, Lashay, age 15, has a 2-year-old son with an outtie belly button and brown eyes that "bring out his face." Khaleel pretended to fall out of his chair, knock himself unconscious, and break his leg...but when I refused to leave his side, he miraculously stood up and returned to work! I'm a healer! Less wonderful is the fact that Gina's boyfriend Baasil is in Wes and Cupcake's Algebra 1 class, and it seems that the little bastard is cheating on my student with her best friend, Vanessa--but Gina doesn't know yet. Gina, who compared and contrasted herself to Shakespeare's Juliet. My collab partner, Adam, and I, in a fit of outrage, have started inserting girl power poetry and themes into our lessons--"Still I Rise" will be the subject of my Peer Editing lesson, and if I have my way, SWBAT (Students Will Be Able To) get over unfaithful friends and block ex-boyfriends on MySpace.

For about a minute it disturbed me to think of what my teachers might have known about me in high school. But then I remembered that I was perennially single and utterly boring...and somehow, this didn't make me feel any better.

In fact, I'm pretty sure my freshmen all have more interesting love lives than I do. AWESOME.

IN BRIEF:
- I've taken possession of my Bmore apartment--I got the keys, dragged my whalish suticase inside, plopped it in the kitchen, threw 4 magnets on the fridge, and left. Institute leaves no time for domestication, so painting the walls and buying furniture will have to wait.

- Philly's public transit system, SEPTA, smells like weeping bunnies. The trains sport posters listing rules for riding, including, "No animals unless in pre-approved containers." To me, this means beef and chicken packed in Tupperware.

- I introduced my kids to the "hackey-sack of knowledge" the other day, meaning I throw the sack to whoever I call on and we play catch as I question them--it keeps them awake and alert, and it's a great way for me to peg Donja in the face when she's getting chatty.

- Family things in California have gone horribly awry. Sad and troubled face.

- Back to San Jose on July 28, road trip to Baltimore on August 1st. Just enough time to have inadequate visits with too few people. Sweet.

- To end on a positive note: Harry Potter. Oh, and Christmas is in 5 months.

I don't know if I can properly sum up my first week of teaching English 1 at William Penn. There's been laughter, tears, feet bloody from high heel chafing, bowls of power oatmeal at 1 am, copy machine triumphs, disappearing lesson plans, a carousel of students, and post-it notes bedecking every available surface around me. Truly, that was a revelation--I had no idea how integral post-its were to pedagogy. 

Thank you, post-it people.

Unfortunately, post-its, like everything else, are expensive. The school district sent us books the kids have already read and can't actually write in or take home, I think another teacher almost shanked me the other day over a piece of butcher paper, and I've started hording any small items I can use in my classroom or for my students--markers, chalk, paperclips. But I want books. I want posters to liven up the room. The girls in my class like Corbin Bleu and the Cheetah Girls (see the Barcelona "Do Now" below) and the boys love basketball and making me be their border collie and it's impossible to address their personal interests in the classroom--content or culture-wise--when I don't have books or money or even REAL WALLS in my room. (I'm not kidding, we have 1 1/2 actual walls in Rm. 303--and we're kind of shaped like an exclamation point. 1 wall is just a door, 1 wall is filing cabinets, the other is a sliding fake chalkboard monstrosity that's bent out of shape and probably destined for some sort of calamity in which it will one day completely collapse and crush 2 hapless students while simultaneously crumpling all of my lovely Word Wall and Classroom Expectations posters. But that's another story.)

I'm in love with my students, and I think for that reason I'm absolutely frantic over the fact that I don't yet know how to teach them. They aren't guinea pig students, and issues like Rahdeem's 8pm-1am job at Chick-Fillet (which makes him exhausted for our 8-10 am class) or Shian's friend taking a bullet to the head yesterday, or Kasim's illiteracy, or Khaleel's inattention...they break my heart. Not out of pity, because my kids are funny and sassy and strong and diverse, but out of frustration that I don't have the time or freedom or ability to help them reach the goals I've set for them. 80% mastery for 100% of the students, 18 days, 1 hour a day--now reduced to 50 minutes. 

For now, I'll let my students speak for themselves:

Compare & Contrast

Some ways that I am similar and some ways that me and Superman differ are the following.

Me and Superman care about people. We both are friendly and we both know what people are really thinking. We care about the world and the things happening in it.

Some ways me and Superman differ are that I don't have super-human strength. My parents are alive, I'm not a man, I'm not in love with Lois, I don't have a son, he doesn't have a sister and I can't see through things.

In conclusion, those are some comparisons and some differences between me and Superman.
--Angelique Alejo

I'm going to compare and contrast myself with Juliet from "The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet." I think I'm alike with Juliet because we both will try to do anything to be with the person we love. Me and Juliet are different because her parents disapprove  of the love of her life. My parents don't disapprove of my boyfriend.
--Gina Gonzalez

Have you ever wanted to live in another city?

No, because I like my city. Philly is a great place to live. It has a lot of history and things to do. Even though it's kind of dangerous, it's still great to live at.
--Rahdeem

Yes, I would like to live in Florida, where it's always shorts weather.
--Malcolm

Yes, I wanted to live in Barcelona, Spain. I want to live there because i think that Barcelona is pretty and nice, and when I get to college I plan on moving there.
--Anair

Describe your favorite place.

My favorite place to be is the Pearl Theatre. Every movie theatre I've been to is good, but since the Pearl is freshly built I like it more. They have an okay ticket price. Also, their theatres are clean and are overall it's a comfortable place to be when you watch a new movie.
--Rahdeem

My favorite place is big and round. It has rides and lots of food. You can play any sport there and get in the water in the summertime. What am I? SIX FLAGS.
--Khaleel

A detailed description of my favorite place is the beach, with the cristal clear water and the brown sandy sand  when you walk on it. It feels your walking on clouds. And the seagals that fly in the clear blue sky. All the diffrent types of races playing and laying with their love ones. Kids in the water splashing around, and all the pails and buckets that lie in the ground.
--Shian

It's 10:18 pm on Friday night -- and not just any Friday night. The first Friday night at Philly's Summer Institute. The Friday night on which I get to pat myself on the back and say, Hey you, way to go -- you're 1/5 of the way there. Most of my friends and corps-mates are currently galavanting around Central Philly, a bleary-eyed plague of locusts descending on Irish pubs and drinking away their "relentless pursuit of achievement." I, on the other hand, am clearly here, in my dorm room at Temple, writing this journal entry and hoping my hair doesn't dry all frizzy. 

It's not that I don't want to go out -- I do. But this may be my only shot at quality time with myself. Not to be self-centered, but I need my "me" time -- and this is the first quiet, solitary time I've had since I got here. So damn the man, I'm staying home! 

1300 Residence Hall is calm; I no longer hear the patter of bare feet scurrying from Resource Room to Computer Lab to Copy Room, and gone are the clusters of Collaborative Groups huddled over laptops and power cords and butcher paper and Magic Markers in the hallways. I took myself to dinner, treated myself to "Ratatouille," and now bless iTunes' "Shared Playlists," which gives me access to Nicole Stich's remarkable selection of Animaniacs songs.  I should probably revise my lesson plans for Days 1 and 2 of next week because starting Monday, I'm a teacher.

I'm a teacher.

I'm a teacher.

I'm a teacher.

Nope, still don't really believe it.  I don't not believe it -- I think I've actually blunted my comprehension abilities over the last few days. I have no emotions, thoughts, opinions...just a quick-draw smile, the abilitiy to move my body to where it's been scheduled to be, and bottles of Vitamin B and chewable kangaroo multi-vitamins. Philly's had a fever the last few days, pitching on Wednesday night with a lightning and thunder storm extravaganza -- the worst appears to be over, and the storm was wicked fierce, but the damage is done: I've been bruleed by the climate, and all that is left is the sweet, fragile, torched shell, and should someone tap me with a spoon I might just collapse into the creme of my mushy mind. But don't get me wrong, it's not so bad -- creme brulee is never bad, and the carmelized part is still quite flavorful. I'm just not feeling very robust...and I saw a spoon watch me balefully from across the room.

By way of explanation, let me paint a picture of the last 5 days:

Alarm ringsringsringsrings at 5 am and it's already 70 degrees outside and the sun is pink not yellow and I wonder why professional dress means is so professional because really, sweatstained armpits and heel blood on my black pumps and girls staggering to the bathroom to vomit from heat stroke doesn't seem like a good way to do business. Breakfast at 5:30 and a man with a pirate eye patch greets 700 corps members who horde food in their bellies -- cereal, granola and yogurt, fruit (oh, the honeydew! the pineapple!), eggs, sausage, pancakes, coffeecoffeecoffee -- and 83 of us sit together and rush to buses by 6:45 (and it's already 80 degrees) and our bus goes to WIlliam Penn High School, which is three blocks away but also 10 minutes away because our big yellow bus can't make left turns so we detour through the projects which really look kind of nice. Penn can't afford air, so we sit through session after session as the heat rises, the moisture from our bodies evaporating in a steamy mist and washing the make-up off our faces. 96 degrees, water leaking from the ceiling, and trying to focus on buzz words and mantras and best practices and logistics and procedures and planning and planning and planning and diversity and planning and investment and planning. Our "Collab" (comprised of Gwen, Mike, and Adam)  is Penn15 and I giggle and smirk -- maybe I can identify with my freshman boys after all. Templates, outputs, exit slips, lesson plans, parent letters, surveys, investment plans, rules and procedures, diagnostic tests, and god help you if you're late or forget to hand something in. 

Lunch from 12:20 to 12:55. Peanut butter and jelly on potato bread, but the PB just won't mush with the J. I can't eat a segregated sandwich. Bananas and apples, maybe a plum. I'm stockpiling fruit in my TFA lunchbag but it's too hot to eat but my stomach is so growly and the veggie sandwich is so much bun and so little veggie -- 1 leaf of lettuce, 1 tomato slice, 2 small onions, 3 slices of cucumber...but at least there's hummus? This is my "not impressed" face.

Sessions and sessions in the swampy rooms. CMA groups play "capture the fan" but it's not really a game because losing might mean death. We smell like old man shoes and wilted peonies. Acronyms named Dawn and Philippe and Meredith are my favorites because they have souls -- and because I know I'm not grown-up yet because when I do grow up I'm going to be just like Dawn with her tattoos and sarcasm and loathing of call-and-response, and because Philippe carries toolboxes and red balls and beatnik words, and because Meredith has probably poked a student's eye out with her windmill gesticulations and she laughs at herself in sidebars and appreciates Wes' accusation that Wendy Kopp is widening the achievement gap by creating a program that makes an English major teach Algebra 2.

4:30 is back-on-the-bus time and rush-to-dinner time and praise-jesus-for-air-conditioning time. We work until 11, 12, 1, 2....and we don't even have students yet. This is just the preparation stage. Next week I put on my teacher face. Next week I will bumble through lesson plans and listen to multiple people point out my faults, flaws, and mistakes. Next week the tough gets tougher and goddamn I'm going to be pissed if we don't have air or school supples or students walking into Room 438 and thinking, Shit -- these posters with all the crazy fonts and designs are remarkably cool and inspiring.

It's my first Friday night at Institute, but my last Friday night as an English major -- the next time I see a Friday, I'll be a teacher.

I'm currently enduring my TFA limbo at Casa de Kathryn May, located in the quaint Philly 'burb of Chestnut Hill, and I think my hosts and their hospitality are all that stand between me and insanity. Since Induction ended last Thursday, I've been slogging through time, chipping away at the 10-day break before Institute and its soul-depleting workload. 

I enjoyed 2 days in B'more with Daniel Brown from Corps 2006, with whom I got a taste of my new home's nightlife at Pete's Pour House and some club skimping on the Captain in their rum & diets. Thanks to Daniel, I had a chance to sit down with other members of his corps and interrogate them about what I've gotten myself into and how to play the game to help my students win. The stakes keep swelling up, growing in importance but floating higher and higher, with only 1 in 4 kids graduating, with Special Ed 8th graders getting it on behind portables, with sophomores going on their first drive-bys and mourning friends shot in the face on the way to a birthday party, with 3rd grade reading levels in the 11th grade and no hope for Macbeth, with chicken boxes (literally, fried chicken in a box) heaved at classmates, with cursing out and backtalking and missing class because Papa got hauled off to jail last night. 

I've walked up and down Baltimore, memorizing the city with my flip-flopped feet, learning important lessons (such as Orleans St. turns into Hwy 40, and walking along its overpass takes you by the jail) and guaging the probability that I will be able to walk to Whole Foods and the Inner Harbor from Mt. Vernon. No two streets are the same and there is no coherent dialogue between the neighborhoods. 

My new apartment at the Stafford (kind of dormish, but homey and safe) is in the middle of White Man's Land, where brownstones, churches, museums, theaters, and restaurants polkadot the tree-lined streets, and classical statuary hide out in gardens among the peonies and puff on pipes filled with Epicurean ideals. 

My new school lies just beyond my new home. Augusta Fells will be relocated to where Harlem Park Middle School once was, sharing a campus with Baltimore Talent Development, another neighborhood high school whose students and faculty dread our arrival. The area is destitute, gang-riddled, and tired; I've been instructed to buy a Club for my car.

But that doesn't scare me. Walking down the street I met a very old bearded fellow resembling Long John Silver who offered me a ride home because he liked my smile; I wandered past the H&S Bakery, which filled the road with such a smell of baking bread that I might as well have walked straight into the yeasty loaf -- I like to think that if God has body odor, it smells just like that; I saw a squirrel tackle a sealed can of SPAM, tear the top open with his claws, and devour the contents in a matter of minutes; next to Patterson Park I noticed a car with Virginia plates that read "MMM PIE." I can do Baltimore.

What scares me isn't failure -- I've been told to expect that -- but it's the possibility that I might not cut it during Institute and be sent away before I've had a chance to even try. Pre-failure is sneaky and insidious, and it terrifies me. This time before Institute is time out of my hands. I can't work, can't prepare, can't improve, can't know anything. Yet. I've now officially entered the financial red and taken a loan from my parents, I've faced the fact that I won't be sleeping or enjoying myself for at least two months, and I've come to terms with the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing. But I'm here and I'm waiting and I'm willing -- and that's the best I can do.

Two weeks out of LA, and I'm pretty sure my life has gotten unutterably weirder.

My return to Willow Glen turned into a week-long bon voyage comprised of 7 am coffee dates with professors; multiple dinners out with friends; Lisa's Tea Treasures with KTP (where we sat for 3 hours surrounded by curtains made out of doilies, mauve cabbage rose wallpaper, and faux Victorian portraits while munching on finger sandwiches, scones, and sugared lavendar and sipping spiced plum tea); a Pirate's Chai in San Francisco with Mallorie after dropping my brothers and their friend off at their soccer game an hour late due to bad directions, a closed road, the inability to correctly identify colors, and an almost head-on encounter with a firetruck; and gelato and candy at the new Powell's Sweet Shoppe in downtown WG. 

And thanks to procrastinatory inclinations, packing for Baltimore was a total disaster.

Now I'm at Coppin State in B'more with 2 suitcases filled with clothes, about 80% of the paperwork I need, no books to keep me company, and no face wash. I never realized until this week just how different body and face wash really are -- I mean, my face is attached to my body, but apparently it requires a totally different composition of chemicals in order to attain maximum cleanliness. Needless to say, I'm kind of a mess.

However, good things abound. The Stafford Apartments are kind of spectacular -- and if I needed a sign to confirm that it's my spirit place, I found it in the presence of a Minato Japanese restaurant literally across the street. If you know me, you know MInato in San Jose's Japantown is my gastronomic happy spot...so this is big. 

I also have a job -- high school English at Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts (aka Fells Savage). The high school is small, in flux, in need, and peopled with TFA corps members who I happen to like very, very, very much -- one of whom will be teaching Journalism and hopefully starting a newspaper. And did I mention the $7000 worth of incentive packages that should be coming my way, along with a new laptop and $250 gift card for supplies? That money's going into my travel stash, and into my "Christie's Big Girl Bed" fund. No more twin mattresses for me!

And if nothing else, I'm ecstatic to have landed a job at that god-forsaken job fair on Monday -- yes, the job fair we attended less than 24 hours after arriving in town, that we attended with almost no strategy or idea of what to expect. I can only liken it to the Sadie Hawkins Day race in Dogpatch, Arkansas (think "Lil' Abner"), where a shotgun goes off and every single girl in town hunts down the fleeing bachelor until someone finally tackles him and drags him to the alter. Jobs were scarce, principals were late, table numbers were arranged in no kind of logical order, placements and interviews were bartered like fur pelts sold by Russians off the coast of Oregon, and all in all the whole scenario kind of made me want to die. The whole ordeal was a crap shoot, and although we know everyone in the corps will get a placement by August, I can honestly say I will never, ever attend an event like this again. I'd rather eat my own elbow.

Culture-wise, I'm in love with Baltimore. The Inner Harbor reminds me a little of Seattle, with sailboats and moon-lit promenades and dragon paddleboats...just looking at it made me wistful -- so full of wist, in fact, that I'm actually a little sad to have to spend the rest of summer in Philly, away from the water. But I do look forward to Institute, to seeing Flora and Kat, hopefully Jane...but I'd look forward to it more if there were dragon paddleboats. 

As for today, with our Distict Processing/Health Clinic check-ups, here are the high and lowlights:
- pretty sure we cleaned fingerprinting ink from our fingers with a tub of butter
- i get benefits! lots of them! and if i die, robby and joey are my beneficiaries -- i have beneficiaries!
- Celia nearly peed in Derek's car, so Jace offered to pay her $5 to do it and to pay Derek $5 to punch Celia in the face...then Jace's karma earned him a spontaneous hernia exam
- my physical was all kinds of official: the nurse asked me my height and just took my word for it, and i failed the breathalyzer exam not because i was drunk, but because i couldn't correctly blow into the tube
- "that's what she said" may have to be replaced by "said the vicar to the choirboy"
- learned about chicken boxes, "walk it out", underground taxi services, and realized i'm starting out with a deficit of street cred
- i'm a mammal. i give live birth.

And that's all she wrote. 

 

If I were a knick-knack, I'd be a set of sturdy, perfectly matched bookends. Why, you ask? Because I have an ingrained sense of ritual when it comes to ending things exactly as I began them. I like my stories contained and organized with obvious markers -- for instance, during my first "homeless" week in SoCal, when I was living with KTP's family in San Fernando and searching for apartments in Pasadena, I took a stroll down Colorado St. in Old Pas and purchased a lemon teacake at Mrs. Beasley's bakeshop for Mrs. Pelensky, and then I went to H&M to buy my first set of "office" clothes. Two days ago, I was driving through Pasadena and decided to stop and walk around. I returned to Glendale with 3 bags of cookies from Mrs. Beasley's to bring home to my family and a bag of my first "teacher" clothes from H&M (yes, there are classroom-appropriate clothes there...and no, I'm not going to be that kind of teacher). 

I'm going to miss Glendale, and my life here. My apartment. My roommate (plus dog). My office and co-workers and friends. My Tuesday vegans. My Whole Foods. I love seeing IHoP from our kitchen window; I love getting lost on the 134 and ending up at the LA Zoo; I love Studio Days and Industry News and working for the Mouse; I love the smell of Timi's cooking and curling up with Teddy to watch TV. 

But bit by bit, my mind starts to wander and to wonder...

Final $2 Tuesday dinner and "House" viewing with Andrea, Dan, and Shelby -- check. Team Darkwing Duck celebratory happy hour at Islands -- check. "Pirates of the Caribbean" with Rex -- check. Character Dining/Christie Indulges Day -- check. Bon Voyage Pizookie at BJs -- check. Final DCP breakfast -- check. Furniture scattered around the San Gabriel Valley thanks to Craigslist -- check. 

And so it goes.

In the fashion of Holly Golightly and Paul "Fred" Varjak (V-A-R-J-A-K)  in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," Shortstack and I embarked on a day of firsts (and activities so rarely done, they might as well be firsts) to commemorate all that is spectacular about la vida Disney. 

For example:






The following is a run-down of our adventures:
1) We purchased tiaras to wear to our scheduled Character Breakfast with Minnie & Friends at the Plaza Inn.
2) While gorging ourselves on Mickey waffles, assorted muffins, cereal, fruit, and pastries, we accosted Dale, Geppetto, Minnie, Brer Fox, Eeyore, Max, and Tigger and forced them to pose for photos with us...photos infinitely enhanced by our free balloons and buttons.
3) I broke the 6-digit mark in the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster score, thanks to stalling in a tunnel where I was within 2 feet of a diamond-shaped Zurg target. However, was still 600,000 points behind Christine.
4) We explored, spelunked, climbed, and clambered all over the Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer's Island.
5) Shortstack partook of her first Bengal Barbecue Safari Skewer right after my first ride through the middle door on Indiana Jones -- it involved something to do with gold and riches. Hardly "Eternal Beauty," but such is life.
6) We shared our first Dole Pineapple Whip from the Tiki Room, and it was ever so tasty and refreshing...it fairly sparkled with pineappley yumminess on our palates.
7) Triple Mountain Whammy? Done. Space, Big Thunder, and Splash -- we own you.
8) We put the "party" in the Mad Tea Party with some exceptional spinning action. Granted, it wasn't a first, or a rare occasion, but it simply cannot go un-noted.
9) Storybook Land, a little-known land, received us for a ride through Monstro (who apparently "sneezed so hard he blew off his tail, allowing us to pass through") and into the wee world of stories and suicidal mallards. Our guide was a first-timer, first day on the job. Monstro fairly gleamed from his recent refurb, but I'm not quite sure I'm okay with Agrabah's proximity to Alice's Oxford or Kensington Gardens.
10) I drank 2 Coke Zeros -- which is huge for me, because I generally don't touch soda. It wasn't terrible. 
11) Goats, incontinent sheep, a long-tongued brown cow, and a pony named Pocahontas greeted us at the Big Thunder Ranch, where a goat kid called Mulan nibbled on my shirt. That was new; now I can tell people that Mulan tried to eat the shirt off my back. 
12) Making our way to Disney's California Adventure (aka DCA), Shortstack and I first hastened through the Boudin Bakery tour with our free sourdough samples in hand in order to hop onto the Mission Tortilla tour, which concludes with free, warm, fresh tortillas at the exit. Our tour o' carbs demonstrates why she and I should be friends.
13) I savoured my first alcoholic beverage in the park, a Hong Kong Disneyland Zen Green Tea (green tea, green tea liqueur, soda water) at Ariel's Grotto...that might not seem very potent, but consider the following statement I made trying to describe a chef/caterer I want Christine to meet: "I think he's black. Wait, he is black...I mean, I think he's gay."
14) Following the Hollywood Tower of Terror and California Screamin', I accompanied Shortstack on her first ride on the Sun Wheel.
15) Since we began our day with Character Dining, it seemed necessary to end our day with Character Dining: Ariel and the Princesses at Ariel's Grotto. One button and a photo shoot with Ariel later, Christine and I ate dinner on the outdoor patio, overlooking the light-betwinkled Paradise Pier. We dined on piping hot dinner rolls, salads, fish & chips and salmon BLT, and granny smith apple streudel and chocolate cake with strawberry sauce, and posed for photos with the roller derby-esque Princesses: Snow White, Belle, Aurora, and Cinderella. In spite of the creepy photo peddler silently rehearsing his sales pitch, the too-familiar Little Mermaid, our blonde, non-Ugandan but socially conscious waitress, the dad who pilfered plastic cups, and the ducks stalking Shortstack, the meal was an overall success.

In three days I pack up and leave SoCal, and my mind reels to think of how much I've done in the last seven months. This is no time to put on my maudlin face, but when I returned home to find our living room furniture rearranged and a man who isn't my roommate's boyfriend sitting on the loveseat, I almost had a coronary -- that was a tad too much change all at once. As it turned out, the new guy was a school friend visiting UC Irvine in the morning and crashing on our couch, but nevertheless...

I realize I need to say my good-byes one by one, baby step-style. First my bedroom; then the Magic Kingdom; my living room set-up; my Glendale haunts; my apartment, our Chateau d'If -- finally, Disney Consumer Products (DCP) and this chapter of my life.

I've  thought my last day all out: On Thursday I plan to drop by DCP on my way home to Willow Glen to celebrate my departure with a  final cup of Cream of Wheat with cranberries, raisins, brown sugar, and coconut shavings (as was my routine throughout my internship), to bid adieu to my beloved friends and co-workers, and to take one last stroll around ye olde Grand Central Creative Campus (GC3), my personal and professional playground since I started with Disney back in October (October 23rd, to be exact). After that, I drive my newly repaired Lucy the Civic into the proverbial sunset ...and will probably regret choosing to take the 5 North instead of the PCH.

But no fear -- Baltimore's my next big adventure, and it's bound to add a hell of an arc to my character development. And in my new place, there will be no ambulatory furniture to freak me out when I get home.

intentions? i have many, and most are pretty spectacular.  if good intentions were cherry-flavored tootsie pops, i'd be morbidly obese and my tongue would boast a robust red stripe. unfortunately, my intention to write regularly (and well) has sparked approximately zero follow-through. no more, i say! i am awash with absurdity and regularly witness whimsies and head-scratchers and knee-slappers that deserve to be recorded and archived, and then laughed at on rainy tuesday afternoons over a cup of earl grey and a plate of macaroons.

so, where to begin...

i'm afraid of my bedroom. i just stripped the poor thing of all color, decor, books, and trinkets -- i even crammed my stuffed friends into a small box and wedged them into a bigger box containing my kettle. it had to be done; i'm moving next week and had only today to pack up the big ticket items and load up my dad's car to be driven home and stored for the summer. in my defense, i thought phase 1 of "christie's big move" would happen tomorrow, and that the parent du jour would be my mother...the fact that my father chose to hijack the expedition in order to swing by the gene autry museum a day early threw off my groove. now that the dust has settled, i can see that my room consists only of furniture i've put on craigslist, a handful of tchotchkes, too many clothes, and holes in my walls that scream for spackle. where's the zest? where's the color? where's the me? my room looks like a cancer patient after a rough round of chemo -- i can't sleep in there! it doesn't even have a sassy wig or a pink ribbon!

solution? watching the food network ("the pillsbury bake-off is still anybody's game!") and creating this live journal whilst sitting on my matisse-pastiche of a futon and eating chocoloate-covered raisins i bought from a kid peddling goodies in front of von's for some supposed youth group raising money to fight teen drug use (which does so by making 5th graders do business after 9 pm in front of a supermarket?) -- and yes, i realize "youth group raising money to fight teen drug use" might mean "uncle moe needs more weed money," but raising a quizzical eyebrow and witholding my patronage would not have helped the kid get home at a decent hour or sent a message to his insidious uncle moe.

also, memorial day weekend means far less when one is unemployed. not that i ever enjoyed day's off at disney -- first, as an hourly employee, a day off made my paycheck grumble; second, i really liked my job, and i really liked my breakfast of cream of wheat with cranberries and raisins at the commissary, where i'd chat with maria the cashier about the weather and her second job at ikea...a day off tripped up my routine, and that makes my heart scowl.

i imagine i'll feel differently about days off when i'm teaching in baltimore. but i'm not writing about teach for america now. it's 1 am and bedtime for serious thoughts is 10 pm.

the pillsbury bake-off is getting intense...i wonder if ava peebles has a shot at the title?!