Minka: The Preview

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If this seems oddly familiar, it's because several weeks ago I embarked on a weekend trip to a nearby town called Taganga and spent an entire week blogging about it, starting with a post called Taganga: The Trailer. I just had a 4-day weekend, surprisingly unrelated to Canadian Thanksgiving, and took a trip to another nearby town, this one a mountain village in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. I don't think I have a week of blog entries in me this time, but at least a couple of days.

Anyway, one of the first things that happened on the trip was mosquitoes. Tonight, I decided to count all the bites I was left with. Below is photo documentation of my methodology.

I counted 147.

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).

The Colombian Frat Party

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Last night, I went to a party. When I walked in, it immediately struck me as similar to the North American frat party, so one of the things I spent my evening doing was analyzing the similarities and differences.

(Another thing I spent my evening doing was inventing a new dance, called the beer dance. This is used when you're dancing and you want to take a sip of beer - you don't want to keep dancing normally, because it looks stupid, so you have to invent a special dance that you only use when taking said sip. There isn't one universal beer dance, so feel free to invent your own - it's just important that it's distinct from your regular dancing.)

Anyway, frat party comparison chart:

Similarities

• it was in a huge house. well, actually in the huge backyard of the huge house
• there was constant loud music played by a live DJ and, eventually, a live band
• girls got in free, guys did not
• upon entering, I got one of those annoying paper wristbands that always gets stuck to my arm hair
• there was an ever-present cloud hovering over the party area. though i've listed this as a similarity, the smell was stronger than any i've ever encountered before, and was remarkably constant throughout the whole party, which is especially impressive considering it was an outdoor area
• there was a distinct lack of shirts
• there was a pool outside, but it was empty, so it became an empty beer bottle receptacle

Differences

• there were no kegs
• (related to the previous) there were no keg stands
• the host of the party was the family who lived in the house, not a frat. (i'm not even sure if the concept of frats exists here, i don't think universities have on-campus housing - almost everybody lives with their parents through and well past university age) also, the mom, who coincidentally works at my school (this really is a coincidence, i found out about the party from someone else), was taking tickets at the door rather than being out of town and having no idea about the existence of the party
• there weren't any douchebags (then again, I haven't encountered any in 2 months of being here, so maybe I just don't know what to look for yet)
• (related to the previous) there weren't any fights and/or ridiculous pranks

(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.

Sweaty Wednesday

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So, I just looked down at my shirt and noticed something I've never seen before (on me, anyway): boob stains.

I'm skeptical they're real (they might be implants?). I mean, I'm not very sweaty in general, and today hasn't been a sweaty day - I mean, every day is hot here, but I haven't been playing sports or anything, and I've spent most of the morning in my air conditioned room. Also, even in times of extreme sweatiness, I can't recall ever seeing isolated boob stains. Maybe a whole chest drench, but never the twins.

I just had a snack, so I suppose it's possible I somehow spilled in a very precise manner without noticing. But I dunno man, that's quite a coincidence. Maybe I'm just lactating.

Or maybe this is a turning point in my teaching career. Maybe this is the moment I become the stereotypical sweaty math teacher. Mr. Boobstain. Hey, it sounds better than Mr. Rutt.

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.

My First Riot, Part II

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Pre-requisite: My First Riot, Part I

So Doris Vespa was a little underwhelming, but still enjoyable. Hopefully I'll be blogging about them again, from a show not filled with metal-heads.

Speaking of which, the next band was the second metal band of the evening, and this time the cops were prepared. I guess a lot of people had decided not to jump the fence during the first band (or had jumped back over? I didn't see it, but that would have been hilarious, especially since it would have been way harder than jumping into the VIP section), but the cops mostly shut them down this time. They were relentless, though, and a few got through here and there.

Also, even though it didn't seem like the mosh pit was any more violent than it had been during Existential Hate, the organizers apparently thought so, and Vicious Circle was interrupted mid-set several times so that the attractive TV-personality-host-girls, with presumably-organizer-frumpy-old-dude leering over their shoulders, could tell the crowd to tone it down or things wouldn't end well. This is when things started to look like they wouldn't, in fact, end well (brilliant deduction, Inspector Xave) - chants broke out at various points in time throughout the breaks between songs, and it seemed like the chiding had antagonized the crowd even more. Nevertheless, Vicious Circle made it to the end of the set, and with no more metal bands on the horizon, things were looking up.

The next band, Rioba, was the one my co-worker MC works with, and they were billed as (i.e. she described them as) a reggae/ska band. On this night, they definitely leaned a bit more toward the ska end of the spectrum, perhaps learning from Doris Vespa's mistake, and it was definitely to their benefit. They were great. Fun music, high energy - they got the crowd into it just as much as the metal bands had. By far the best band of the night. Here's a picture of their 2 lead singers (aside: when I met MC before the show, she was carrying a broom. I asked her why, and she said she didn't know, the band had asked her to bring it. You can figure it out)

Ultimately, this ability to get the crowd into it proved to be their undoing. Or, not really their undoing, as they were able to finish their set, but the festival's undoing. At some point shortly after their set, critical mass was reached. I'm not sure how or why (I mean, I do, but I'm not sure why it didn't happen after Vicious Circle), but soon the fence between the VIP area and the ultra-VIP area (only for bands and those associated with the bands, like MC) was torn down.

Before

After

Astute readers will note that the "before" picture was taken from the Ultra-VIP side. I was one of the first ones through. Good rioting, Dave! Mad props.

Anyway, it wasn't a terribly violent riot. After the wall came down, there was a brief period of beer cans (it's a very good thing they weren't selling beer bottles) and other garbage being thrown at the hosts and organizers on stage, who were trying to calm everyone down to no avail. I don't think anyone was hurt, but I did see one of the host girls get beaned with someone that looked a little heavier than a beer can - luckily, she appeared to be fine.

After that, the concert was over, obviously, even though there was still one competitor left to play, and also the headlining act, a famous band from Bogotá called Aterciopelados who are too accomplished (seriously - look how long their english Wikipedia entry is!) to be eligible for the competition.

So, even though I've said a couple times I don't want to pass judgment on these kids (who am I, someone's dad?) for their musical taste, I will whole-heartedly pass judgment on them now. The riot was beyond stupid. You are willing to ruin a great event because you're not allowed to punch other people in the face? Get a grip. If you think you were somehow "sticking it to the man" by rebelling against the stodgy, middle-aged bigwigs of the event, think again. They're the ones sponsoring a music competition that is FREE TO ATTEND, which features bands who play THE KIND OF MUSIC THAT YOU LIKE, and all they were trying to do was ensure everyone's safety. Now, this is going to happen: 1) nobody will win the competition, because not every band got to play, so it would be unfair to declare a winner. 2) Maybe the prize money will be divided evenly, but who knows if anyone will get anything. And these are local, low-profile bands, and they could really use the prize money. 3) in all likelihood, this competition won't happen again, at least not for a couple years.

In the less immediate picture, this is a blow to the general music scene of Barranquilla. Local bands are the backbone of a great music city, and this festival was the kind of event that could bring a lot of positive exposure to Barranquilla bands. So much for that.

Anyway, after things settled down, people started to calmly (!) file out. I wandered around, and eventually found MC behind the stage with Rioba. We waited around for a while, and then decided it was time to call it a night. MC and her brother hopped in a cab and suggested I do the same, but I had one order of business remaining.

I had to get my belt back.

Despite the excitement of the music, the mosh pit and eventually the riot, the discomfort of my pants almost falling down for 5 hours (how did we do it in grade 4?!) had been at the forefront of my mind all night. MC had all but told me there was no way I was getting it back, but I was less hopeless. And sure enough: within 5 minutes of walking around the stadium I found a belt lady returning belts to their rightful owners. Each one had been tagged, so I found my belt quickly, and was soon in a cab on my way home, comfortable for the first time all night.