Octobarch Break D. Day and Other Notes From Nowhere

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I lied, they're notes from Barranquilla, Colombia.

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I don't think I've mentioned this yet - currently, my school is on a week-long break. The students, anyway. The teachers have professional development all week, except Friday, which we're getting off in addition to Monday's holiday. Given the similarity of this week to Canada's March Break and also P.D. Days, I've termed the week "Octobarch Break D. Day". Hopefully it plays out more like your typical Octobarch Break than your typical D. Day.

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Since we have a 4-day weekend coming up, I'm probably gonna take off somewhere. Originally, K and E and I had planned to go to La Guajira, a coastal desert (oxymoron?) region not too far from here. However, one of the main draws of La Guajira at this time of year - flocks of thousands of pink flamingos - is being decimated by an unexpected shark attack. The regions where the flamingos can typically be viewed are shut down, and this really is an unexpected attack - apparently it's never happened before, or at least not on this scale. It's definitely disappointing, but also kind of hilarious, and ironically not the first time this blog has featured animals unexpectedly eating other animals.

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Today, for the first time, my iPod application that's just a pure white screen (i.e. a flashlight) came in handy when the power went out around 10PM. Stupidly, the first thing I did was use it to find my one candle before realizing that lighting said candle had become superfluous with the re-discovery of the App.

Also: this power outage illustrates another reason the wireless USB internet device I get my internet from is useful. I can't turn on a light, listen to the radio, or watch TV, but I can be on the internet. For about 10 minutes, anyway. My battery sucks so much. Sorry if this entry seems hastily thrown together, my impetus for writing it was the aforementioned lack of power, preventing me from doing what I was doing before (marking), and I'm trying to squeeze this in before my computer randomly shuts down at 56% battery, which actually only takes about 13 minutes to get to (I just calculated based on what's left).

(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things, Part 3

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Check out (Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things Part 1 and 2!

In my grade 8s' first test of the year, I asked the question: "Think of two real life situations when the Pythagorean Theorem might be useful. Explain why it would be useful, and how you would use it." The question was generally very poorly done; even the best answers were things like "if i want to find the shortest route from my house to the mall", which is full of holes: am I to assume you know the lengths of the perpendicular sides of such a triangle? How did you measure them? Won't finding the shortest path involve physically walking through buildings?

Also, most of the answers were boring, like the one described above.

One student, however, gave me not one but two answers that were both well thought out and creative. I should mention that, before this, this student had not stood out at all; I thought she was fairly average. Well, she was the only student in 2 classes to ace the test. Anyway, here are her 2 responses:

• "Let's say you work back stage in a theator. in actor has to roll under a later leaning twords a prop the actor is 1 meter long (ha ha) and the prop is 3 meters high. You would use the P.T. to see how long the later has to be." (this was accompanied by a picture of a stick figure rolling between the base of the ladder and the prop)
• "Your decorating your room with a math theam you want to do a triangle out of pencils on pencil is 10 cm and an other is 15 cm you would youse the PT to find out how long the other one has to be."

Just awesome. Although, unfortunately, she missed out on the brilliant touch that once you find the 3rd side you could simply sharpen the pencil until it reaches desired length.

One time we were playing a game in class because the A/C was broken and there was no way those kids were doing anything productive. Even though I had told them they didn't have to play if they didn't want and could simply sit in the desks outside the circle of the game, one of my students felt it necessary to tell me that another student wasn't going to play because he had a problem with his - at this point he leaned close to whisper in my ear - testicles. Ironically, this was the day that I would later be kicked in the nuts.

From the department of Crazy Things Mr. Dave Says: I've gotten into the habit of calling quizzes "Quizzitos" - in Spanish, the "ito" suffix denotes a smaller/younger version of the thing, like perro = dog, perrito = puppy, also known as the diminutive. Anyway, my grade 7s are having a Quest this week - halfway between a quiz and a test. They asked me if it was a Quizzito, and I said "no, more of a Testito". Fortunately, even though Sex Ed. starts around grade 6 (in Canada, at least), the language barrier saved me.

After returning a quiz to one of my classes, a student repeatedly asked me if she had "won" or "lost" the quiz. She had lost, but I told her if she corrected her mistakes she could win it.

Days of the Week

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Just a short post tonight, because it's 10:56 and I gotta sleep dudes and ladies! Anyway, I just thought up this post in the shower. Enjoy!

Oh, hey guys, one thing I just noticed: I messed up publishing yesterday's post - even though I hit the publish button yesterday, it appeared on the blog as if I had published on Sunday, before Sunday's entry. It's too bad, because I think a lot of you missed out on it, especially since it was the thrilling conclusion of a two-part story arc! So check it out!

The schedule at school is pretty bizarre. Here are the many ways in which it is bizarre:

1) periods are 45 minutes long, but sometimes they're double periods (i.e. 90 minutes). I have 2 short classes and 2 long classes per week with each of my 4 classes.

2) also, sometimes periods are 50 minutes and long ones are 100. I forget when that's the case.

3) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, there are mandatory extra-curriculars for the first hour, so school goes an hour longer than usual, so the periods are all out of wack.

4) there is absolutely no pattern from day to day, just an overall weekly schedule that is (fortunately) constant from week to week - that is a recent development.

5) "period" in Spanish must be "hora", because students refer to classes as hours. This is an Abbott and Costello-inspired conversation I have every day: "do we have 1 or 2 hours today?" "We have 1 and a half." You can fill in the rest.

This results in at least 3 students wandering up to the front to check the schedule every 2.3 seconds, so most of the words I say are "sidownchekschedlatr", a combination of many words I'm trying to say all at once, which I am forced to do because of the extremely high rate at which said students are approaching the board. It doesn't deter them.

Another result of this crazy schedule is the fact that every day is different for me. Now that I'm starting to get a feel for it, I've started to anticipate/dread certain days, and just now I came up with a ranking for how strenuous each of my days is.

Now, there are 2 factors that go into ranking the days. First, how many classes I have, and second, how many minutes of class do I have - because, remember, some classes are half as long as others. So, to combine these 2 factors, I decided the final quantitative ranking would be s = c • m, where:

s = stress level

c = number of classes

m = number of minutes

The results, ranked from most to least stressful:

1. Wednesday, 900 (4 classes, 1 long, 225 minutes)

2. Tuesday, 810 (3 classes, 3 long, 270 minutes)

3. Monday, 720 (4 classes, 0 long, 180 minutes)

4. Friday, 675 (3 classes, 2 long, 225 minutes)

5. Thursday, 360 (2 classes, 2 long, 180 minutes)

Now, there are other things I could take into account, like the 20 minutes of homeroom on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, the extra hour I have to stay on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the math club I have to run for an hour every other Tuesday, but I think I'm starting to nod off here. But one thing is clear: Thursday is the best day by a mile. And this Thursday is the best by an even milier mile, because for some reason the school hired a masseuse, and I'm getting a free massage at 8AM.

Kicked in the Nuts

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Most Fridays, the teachers at school get a soccer game going after school. I've participated three times so far - the first time was just teachers, 5 on 5, the second time was a bigger game, teachers vs. janitors, 7 on 7 on an expanded "pitch" (more of a court), and today was the third match, this time teachers vs. students from grades 10 and 12, 6 on 6.

(Today's match also happened to be much earlier than usual, because of a school-wide power outage (not the first time this year) which started around 8:30, and by the time it was back on at 12:30, the students had gone home early.)

I look forward to these matches every week - as most of you probably know, I love to play sports, and this is the only regularly scheduled sport I've got going on right now. One week I even stayed like half an hour after school in expectation, only to discover everyone else had left.

Now, in week 1 I was pretty bad. I mean, I'm a decent athlete, but I don't play soccer very often - I don't think I had played in 2 or 3 years, and when I have played it's usually been smaller games, like 2 on 2 or 3 on 3, with friends who are equally inexperienced.

Let me tell you, Colombians are great at soccer! I'm sure that doesn't come as a surprise, but it really is amazing how every single kid here (I am not exaggerating, at least with respect to the boys in my grade 8 classes, all of whom I've seen play) knows the game quite well, and even though you're always bound to find a spectrum of athleticism and coordination, every kid somehow makes it work and is pretty darn good.

So when it came time to lace 'em up in game 1, I quickly discovered that being able to run fast and kick the ball hard have almost nothing to do with playing soccer. I lacked that inate sense of the game that one only gains through experience.

By game 3 (today), though, I made some progress. Actually, that's a bit of an understatement - of our team's 10 goals, I scored 4 and assisted 2. Of course, what that actually means is that, on four separate occasions, I happened to be standing in front of the net when the ball magically appeared at my foot, and two other times I accidentally tripped over the ball, causing it to somehow ricochet in the general direction of a teammate, who made some amazing play and scored.

I really do notice the improvement, though. Especially in the area of not making idiotic mistakes and losing the ball because of accidentally kicking the air instead of the ball and then pulling a cartoon-feet-up-in-the-air fall.

I still have a long way to go, though. There are lots of skills I can't perform, and instincts I haven't developed. For example, today there was a ball that found its way into the air and was coming down near where I was. Taking the ball on the body and then subsequently gaining control of it is one skill I've developed somewhat reasonably, so this is what I attempted to do.

Unfortunately, the choice of what part of the body to block the ball with is not an instinct I have, apparently. You know what's coming. I went to stop the ball's flight with my crotchal region, while an opponent simultaneously went for the mid-air kick. The good news: I got to the ball before he did. The bad news: He got to the balls before I did. It was hard, and it was not in the least off-center. Kicked in the nuts!

This kid knows what I'm talking about.

Colombiana Part I

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This was one of my first ideas for a blog post when I started Colombia Blogging, and I thought it would become a frequent feature - a random collection of little differences I've noticed. It's not that there aren't tons of them, I guess I just a) keep forgetting to write them down, b) incorporate them into other posts or c) in certain area, like public transportation and technology, there are so many little differences that I'm going to eventually make them their own posts. Anyway, on a Monday after 7 days of intense Taganga Blogging, I didn't feel like putting much thought into the old Xlog, so I turned to a half-finished post. Here's hoping I can think of enough to finish the rest.

Without further ado, 10 peculiarities of Colombia! Or, at least, 10 things that seem peculiar after living in Canada for 22 years.

• In baseball broadcasts, they write a player's game-record backwards! I just saw "Melky Cabrera - Esta Noche - 3-0". 3 hits in no at bats... nice work, Melky.

• The website of the Colombian soccer league (which is called Copa Mustang, or Mustang Cup, sponsored by Mustang cigarettes - there are a couple interesting differences here, first that a major sports championship is named after a corporate sponsor, as opposed to the World Series or Stanley Cup, though I guess golf has the whole corporate sponsor thing going too, so it's not a huge difference, but secondly that the corporate sponsor is a tobacco company) requires you to enter your age. Apparently, you must be 18+ to view the standings, stats, etc... I have no idea why.

• The 2-L coke bottles are bigger! That sentence doesn't make any sense. The 2-L coke bottles are not bigger. There aren't any 2-L coke bottles. There are 2.5-L coke bottles though.

• Speaking of pop, apple pop is pretty common (it's red... other than that, no word on what type of apple is used). I've had apple pop before, it's just a lot more common here.

• There are a lot of mimes here. Or maybe there's just one who I see every day because he's always at the same intersection between my house and the bus stop. Also, there was one at school day for World Peace Day (umm, because if you can't talk, you can't fight?). But they're not really mimes: they have this weird little squeaky thing that sounds like a super fast forwarded voice, so they pretend to talk and then squeak instead. I've had a couple of squeaking conversations which have probably been better understood by both parties than most of my actual conversations around here.

• As I've blogged about before, there is no shortage of huge Wal-Mart like superstores (there are 2 in the mall 3 blocks from my apartment), and this is where I did most of my initial shopping, but as I've gotten to know the city better, I've discovered that there are smaller general stores, called tiendas, everywhere. And the great thing about tiendas (not that I've taken advantage of it) is that you can order anything for delivery, for about 3 bucks.

• The question of whether Colombia is significantly cheaper than Canada is trickier than you might think. Certain things, like rent (in my part of the city at least), utilities, fast food restaurants, and some groceries, are about the same, while others, like transportation, other groceries, and street food, are way cheaper.

• E already blogged about this, but you can pay bills at supermarkets.

• I'm sure this doesn't come as a surprise to you, but there is a most definite lack of recycling. You see it every now and then in modern-ish buildings, but there isn't any at my building, at the school, and certainly not on the street.

• Related to the last one, there is definitely no garbage limit (at my building, when you have garbage to rid yourself of, you just take it out to a huge dumpster outside which isn't even part of the building - just a public dumpster I guess), but despite this ability to put as much as you want in the designated garbage bins, there's still trash lying everywhere.

Okay, that's 10 I think! Sorry for the lack of witty commentary on most of these. I used my entire wit quota for the day during class today when I turned my triangle-shaped ruler into a gun and pretend-shot all my kids as they came in. It was awesome.

The School Part 2: The Peacocks

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Yesterday I told you a little about the school I'm working at, and showed you some pictures. Today I've got some more, along with one of the strangest stories I've ever heard.... read on to find out more!

These dudes hang out beside the outdoor gym. Their cage is definitely not fully restricted: sometimes they can be seen walking around on the gym floor. Presumably this doesn't happen while P.E. class is happening, but it could make for some interesting versions of dodgeball.

I know this might be hard to believe, but animals make noise sometimes. I know, I didn't believe it either! Anyway, the gym (or "Polideportivo" - which translates to sports center) plays host to assemblies whenever we need a large space, and with the mini-zoo being right there, the speakers are often competing with the wildlife for the floor. Last time this happened, I took the liberty of translating:

"Dude, it is friggin hot out here! Look how many feathers I have! Not cool. Literally. Why does nobody ever hear me?! Every time you have one of these assemblies I feel like I'm on my last breath, and I scream as loud as I can, and time and time again, and nothing ever changes. Why? Why are you doing this to me?!? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY????"

Poor guys. Just look at those sullen faces. Especially Esteban the turkey. (that's not his name, but it should be)

Okay, crazy story time. Ready?

Last year, the school had more animals than this. They also had peacocks! Seriously, how cool is that? You hop over to the gym for recess and there's a peacock wandering around. But then tragedy struck: a couple of the other animals, who I haven't shown you yet, ate the peacock. Who was the culprit? Only the following video knows...

By the way, no blogging for me this weekend, because uhhh.... I have no internet. Yes, that is the reason. Cough. Don't say cough, actually cough! And don't type your thoughts! Idiot. Oops. Okay, see you Monday. I didn't say anything.

The School

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I visited the school I'm working at less than 24 hours after arriving in Colombia, which was about a month ago, and snapped some photos while there. Those pics have been idling on my computer since then, so I figured I should finally show them to you!

The school has a beautiful open-concept design, which I later learned is very common throughout Colombia (and presumably many other summer-year-round countries). It makes sense, just something I hadn't thought of. Note: we do get a fair amount of rain here, but as you can see in the above photo, the hallways are well-covered, and this coverage extends throughout the school, making it possible to reach any room (except the (outdoor, but covered) gym, if memory serves) without getting wet.

The spiky white stuff you see here is the roof of the cafeteria, where the two Lovely Ladies of Lunch (as I dubbed them mere seconds ago) serve their wonderful creations. Note: I don't know what they actually serve for lunch during the school year, but they some tasty food during training, so I can't imagine it isn't delicious.

Edit: I started writing this a couple weeks ago, and I have now figured out the lunch situation, but it deserves its own post - I'll try to snap some pics soon.

I liked this archway-rock face view that you first saw in the last picture, so I snapped a close-up. This rock face snakes along much of the back of the school, and there are some places where it's kind of tempting to try to jump across. Kind of a lot.

As you can probably guess, this was one of the days in which we got some rain. However, if my month of experience is any indication, the rain is always short-lived; no all-day drizzles, but so far no torrential downpours either. Usually a fairly short, volumetrically-average shower.

A view of the beautiful courtyard in front of the kindergarten/grade 1 wing (the far end).

This is the aforementioned open gym. Larger assemblies are held here, including last week's birthday celebration which E wrote about. (By the way, at said assembly, I dressed up like revolutionary Antonio Nariño, in a costume hastily thrown together out of construction paper by my class. I'll try to get a picture...)

The person you see stretching is a teacher, warming up for our regular Friday practice in preparation for the big teacher soccer tournament in Bogotá.

Here's a shot of the terrain just past the gym, which is the the North bookend of the school. All I remember from the north end of my high school was the smoking pit.

(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things, Take 2

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Before you read this, check out part 1 in the series! This feature is well on its to becoming a fan favourite.

We did an activity where the kids had to draw a picture of a town that included several different geometric figures, such as lines, rays, angles, etc. Obviously this is the type of assignment that is somewhat open-ended, and can lead to hilarity... in fact, enough to fill an entire post.

Each town was accompanied by a short description/history of the town. Some of the more hilarious ones:

• "Walloni was a town created by an old chinise militar, he was taken out from his country because he wanted to (toof? - no idea what this word is) the control of all china so he went to America to see if there he could be the owner of a town so he decided to create Walloni."
• "My city is called Giltown. It is located in South Virginia."
• This description is hilariously all over the place: "Ruma's town has a legend, when you take a wish it becomes real. It have to much lines. It have a lot of clouds. Some planes fly through it. The persons that live there have a super market, a town hell (sic to the max), some houses, a park, a church, etc. It is a real fashion town."
• I am worried about this kid, and before you jump to conclusions, it's actually a girl: "one day one person name Tina live in a town name that is Shisville and her housband name Martin broke her housband face and she go to the hospital and the Doctor said that she have to have ciruguie and in the middle of the cirugie she died because the doctor not put correct the anestesia. Today in the life she is scaring her housband sainig that she are going to broke her face."
• "It is a town where the persons with more money live there. This town is a town where u don't pay all is free thats why they are rich because they dont use there money. (makes sense... why didn't I think of not using money?) Sometimes we got a lot of visitors but the most impressive is that all the famouse persons live there like: michael jackson (um), shakira, juanes, fighters (what kind of fighters?), etc."
• "Castle Ville is an underground Mini City in Luxembourg (which, for some reason, has all the same buildings as Barranquilla...). It was discovered yesterday. (by him, I guess) It was a nazi fortress to hide from the allies."
• "My town is the most happy town ever! Dosnt matter if you are lost cause your gonna still be happy! Small town but great people! You would love to live here! Animals are acepted." That last statement is the least important, presumably, given the dearth of exclamation points.
• "Nowhere town was borned in 1996 when some people arrived and thought it was it the middle of nowhere. It's development has been slow since almost no person ever visits, it." Sounds like Nowhere Man's kind of place.

And some of the more creative applications of geometric figures:

• "It has a park for the kids to play and the objects that are there for the kids to play are angles, right, acute, and obtuse" (this included a slide, swing-set and see-saw, but the student only referred to them as the aforementioned angles)
• The "angles" in one kid's town included the angles in the letter Z on the Zoo sign, the doorframe at the pencil store in which there was a 50% off all pencils sale, the body of a cow, the keel of a sailboat, and a fish's tail.
• The line segments in one kid's town were the "politic divitions of the town" (this is grade 7)
• The points on one kid's town were the doorknobs on the houses.
• The skew lines in one town are the x's crossing out "No poop" on a sign in the park. (I guess that means you're allowed to poop? In fact... I think it means you must poop.)
• The points in one kid's town were the heads of all the people. And she went to the trouble to label each one as a point - this was about 20 people.
• In one town, the example of "skew lines" was the swords of 2 knights clashing. This would be awesomely creative if it wasn't already the example I used in class. Later on, I found another town with the same thing, except this time the dudes were sword-fighting on a roof. (and then later, another)

And finally, miscellaneous fun stuff:

• One kid mis-spelled "skew lines" as "screw lines". Another spelled it "knew lines"
• a feature of one town: "anto's magnificient restaurant"
• One kid literally made a pop-up town. It was incredible.
• One kid made flaps that represented the tops of buildings, and underneath were floorplans of the building. Also incredible.
• As you can tell, most kids don't have a great grasp of English, but one kid called his town "The Ima-Gi-Nation". Genius.
• One of the kids drew a movie theater, and guess what's playing at it? New Moon, obviously.
• In one kid's town there was a Wal-Mart - actually there were Wal-Marts in several towns - but this one had a robber holding up the place.
• One kid's town was in Canada. Of course, the high school was called "Canada High School".

Man, kids are craaaaaazy!

Notes From Friday

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I usually try to focus these blog posts on a single topic/story, but sometimes there are just a few tidbits here and there I want to pass along. So, without further ado, here are some of said tidbits.

*****

I've mentioned this once before, but it was just a quick aside buried deep in a mostly-unrelated story, so I thought I'd mention it again: last week, a teacher band was formed for the purpose of playing at the school's first mass. I played (play? Not sure what our future is yet...) drums in said band. I'm telling you this because my colleague E wrote a blog post about the mass, so check it out! And check out the rest of her blog while you're at it!

*****

Another reason I wanted to mention the teacher band is because one of its members is a new friend of mine, and he's involved in both of the other two tidbits of today's post. This new friend's xlog-name is M, and he plays electric guitar and bass in the teacher band. He's one of the two music teachers at school.

And last night, M and I almost got arrested!

Okay, not really. But we could have been, because we were doing something illegal. Namely: we were men and we were outside.

I'm serious! This sounds like something you might read on Ian's Blog (I am just linking all over the place today), but in Colombia? What's the deal?

Apparently, last night was some sort of women's night in Barranquilla. At first I thought this meant men couldn't go to bars, but in actuality it was much more wide-spread than that; we weren't even allowed to be on the street! Obviously, I had a lot of questions about this, but M didn't know much more than I. This is not a regular event; last night was the first one, ever. M's understanding was that it was some sort of social experiment to see if nightlife-related violence was reduced, but he also brought up the very good (and also hilarious) point that of course nightlife-related violence would be reduced, since nightlife-related violence is usually alcohol-fueled, and without men, who would be buying the women drinks?

Anyway, last night M and I went over to J's apartment for the evening (if you don't feel like clicking the link, J is a displaced Canadian who I met on the bus this week. I also found out last night I am J's 3rd replacement at my school - meaning he taught the same classes as me 3 teachers ago), and even though it was only about a 10 minute walk (more like 25 on the way back...), we were terrified! Okay, we weren't terrified. What were they gonna do? Give us a stern lecture? I would have just pulled the gringo card, and I would have got out of even that. (by the way, maybe this is common knowledge, but I just found out last night that gringo refers specifically to Americans, so I'm not one - as someone who is often, and wrongly, referred to as a gringo, J was sure to make this point very clear.)

*****

Before venturing out into the wild unknown of no-men-allowed Barranquilla, M and I had been hanging out at my apartment. I had invited M over because we take the same bus and we were thirsty, and I had drinks.

We were thirsty because yesterday after school the teachers had a Friday soccer game, which I believe is a regular thing (there was one 2 weeks ago which I had to miss because I had to go get my blood taken or some other moving-related administrative thing (by the way, I'm O negative, which I already knew, but I guess they won't let you just tell them your blood type), and then last week it was raining), though I didn't find out until yesterday that these Friday matches aren't so much games as training sessions (they're effectively the same thing, I guess it's just the motivation that's different).

Training sessions for what, you ask? Well, as I just found out yesterday (I found out a lot of things yesterday) the teachers are going to a soccer tournament soon. It's a tournament for all Colombian SACS Schools - SACS is some kind of accreditation that allows students to receive both a Colombian and American high school diploma, and my school just got accredited last year.

So anyway, there's this SACS soccer tournament in October. As far as I know, that's all it is. Maybe there's some sort of educational conference component to it, but I haven't heard about that. Oh yeah, and the tournament is in Bogotá! I don't know yet if I'll get to go, since, as mentioned, I just found out about it yesterday, but that would be amazing, obviously.

*****

One last note: yesterday I got my Cedula, which is the Colombian everything card - it's like a combination driver's license/SIN card/probably everything else? The most important result of this is I can now open a bank account and consequently receive a pay cheque. Things are coming up Dave.

(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things

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Here are some of the more entertaining responses to questions I've asked/activities I've ran in class recently.

Where would you like to sit when I make a seating plan?

"I want to sit at the back because I'm tall" (lots of kids wrote the opposite, but this was the only one who was considerate enough to think about the short kids)

"I want to be near Mr. Dave desk because I suck in math. I'll like in front"

"In the second line because I can't see very well. I (HEART) CANADA" (brown-noser)

"In wath ever place the important is the class." (let's hope this kid is sitting at the front of English class)

What was one thing you liked about math class last year?

"Well, I really think math sucks, I hate numbers and formulas, but I liked the teacher because honestly he was very good at math, he was very cool, handsome and cute. By the way, math is cool, I like having it as a subject, and I do care about it. But I hate having homeworks everyday, I know it really helped us do better and become better students but it was really boring and it was such a disaster, but anyways I can survive math classes for another five years."

(this is all over the place - this person alternately hates, respects and genuinely likes math, touches on the mindless tedium of homework, professes their love and ends with a rumination on the state of their educational future. A Tour de Force.)

What are you excited for in math class this year?

"Well, I expect to learn more about equations cause I want to be a MACANIC ENGINERE." (he's already got the spelling of an engineer down)

In class on Monday we did an activity on Cartesian coordinates in which I had the kids draw a picture on a grid and then write instructions on how to re-create the picture using ordered pairs. Some of the more creative pictures included: a really sweet guitar, better than I could have done, the word "gringo" (by an American kid) and a train, complete with emanating puffs of smoke of escalating sizes.

Here's a response that isn't so much hilarious as just plain amazing. In grade 7, we were talking about geometry terms, and specifically the difference between lines, line segments and rays. I asked the kids to come up with everyday objects that are analogous to each of these things, for example a line is like a highway because it's continuous on both ends, a ray is like a flashlight because it has one fixed end and one unfixed end, and a line segment is like a rope because it has 2 fixed ends.

Well, when I was asking about rays, one kid told me that the number Pi is like a ray because it keeps going forever in one direction (i.e. its decimal places). That is some seriously abstract thinking.

On Tuesday, we did an activity where I asked the kids to find and measure 10 angles in the classroom. Some of the more hilarious "found" angles:

• my coffee cup (360˚)
• the kid's protractor (180 ˚ - measuring that must have been kind of meta)
• a golf club (there were no golf clubs in the classroom, I don't know where he got that idea)
• the fan (this required standing under it and laser-sighting it through the translucent protractor - good thing it wasn't moving)
• the A-frame of a swing set that was obviously out the window
• an angle that the kid just blatantly drew on the board
• shirt collar with the top button undone, creating a bit of a v-neck
• one kid just went around measuring people's faces