Some Pictures on my Camera

So I realized that I had some pictures of things that I have done that I never posted on my blog. I thought you might be interested to see some of the things happening. Now please realize that I NEVER take pictures of many of the things that I do because I don't have any people to take pictures of and I hate the self portraits when you hold the camera yourself. So you get pictures of scenery, strangers or nothing.

This is the view from my front porch on the first snow day for NYC public schools in 10 years!! Cristi and I were so thrilled you would think we won the lottery, but one free day with no kids is JUST as good!


The day after my birthday, three friends and I went on a 50 mile bike ride through the Pennsylvania Dutch country. It was exactly what I wanted for my birthday, beautiful sunny weather, three of my favorite people and being just about as far from NYC as possible (culturally speaking)
The wide open spaces are probably not a big deal to you but to a New Yorker who is not meant to be a New Yorker, it is enough to make you cry and giggle simultaneously. Which I did until I came to a big hill which kicked the giggle right out of me. This Amish man is plowing the field with horses. NUTS (but secretly I want to run away from NYC and find a bearded Amish man and lose myself in the simple life)

My ESL class has been studying different countries around the world this whole year and to end our unit on Egypt we went to the Metropolitan Museum to see the mummies. They loved it!
Then they had to split into groups and do a project and a presentation about a country of their choice. Mom and Dad got to come and see several presentations.
I went with some young women to a trapeze school downtown. They strap you in and then you soared through the air with the greatest of ease, those daring young women on the flying trapeze. It was really cool.
I took my students to Central Park for a class on orienteering in the Ramble. They had compasses and a "treasure" map of Central park, so they had to find the treasures. For the first 30 minutes they were just so thrilled to be out of a building (there are no playgrounds in schools in NYC) that they went running around with no real aim or direction, they caught on eventually.
Then we had a great afternoon playing in the park...until one little girl became a woman for the first time (if you know what I mean) and I had to deal with a hysterical 6th grader. MOTHERS, please talk to your daughters about what is going to happen to them so they don't flip out on a field trip!!
FYI. Spring is here. This is the park across from the church, we went on a walk on a gorgeous Sunday. These are my three current roommates and a friend of ours. (Aja, Cristi, Cy and Danielle). That is the Hudson behind them and the New Jersey beyond the water.
I have some pictures of Mom, Dad, Evan, and Landon's visit. As you can see in this picture, Evan LOVED it!!

The First of Many...

Mom and Dad have begun their East Coast Tour 2009 so my total readership has been cut in half but I will post about my birthday because I know Dad will LOVE my birthday present.

So the weird thing about turning 29 is that when you tell people that you are turning 29 they think you are being coy and lying about your age, so to clarify I told them that today was my 29th birthday, the first of many!

I went to work on my birthday, only because I needed to get some papers out of my classroom and couldn’t figure out how to sneak in and get them…darn cameras. So my student Fatime came up and gave me a big, tight hug, the kind that knocks the wind out of you.
I have been trying to break her of this hugging thing but it is hard to tell a sixth grader who has been taken away from her mother and everyone and everything she knows to come to NYC that she can’t hug you. Fatime wished me a happy birthday and then produced a gift she had wrapped. Based on past gifts from students I expected it to be a half eaten bag of chips or some dancing cat figurine that she had swiped from her mother‘s bathroom counter collection. Instead I found this…


That’s right, folks, a real live Barack Obama wallet, complete with Michelle and one of the kids. She had saved up her bus money to buy it by walking home. I was, of course, ecstatic and have quickly adopted using it.

When I got home my roommate Cristi had turned my house into a birthday wonderland and gave me some awesome cake and an AMAZING birthday present. I have a brand new 10 megapixel Cannon Digital Camera. She had researched, with a bunch of professional photographers in the ward and found that this was an amazing camera. She said that she was investing some of the money that she owed me but in reality she is just an awesome friend that gives great gifts!This card sums up our friendship pretty accurately.

Some Shout Outs

Mom: Shout out to you for sending hand warmers. They saved us! We put like 3 in our sleeping bag at night and a few in our pockets in the morning.

Bryce: Thank you for selling me the camel back. It was awesome!

Bakersfield: Thank you for giving me the lungs of a 75 year old with emphysema. That was really great when I was gasping for breath.

My Own Odyssey

The last time I was in Peru was with Mom, Dad, and Alicia on my way home from my mission. I was suffering from a pretty serious case of mission weird and although I remember being impressed by Machu Picchu, didn't really remember it. I did remember wanting to hike the trail to Machu Picchu instead of taking the train, so this spring break I decided to do that.

With 5 Manhattan friends I headed to Peru. I had a very cool feeling as we touched down in Peru of being "home." I have never felt that way about NYC, perhaps it is because I am really not classy enough to live here. We stayed in Cuzco and visited a bunch of the Inca ruins around the city and got our lungs acclimated to the altitude. There really is a noticeable difference in your ability to breath, especially when climbing stairs. We ate papas a la huancaina and big choclo with goat cheese and drank chi cha.

On Easter we went to Mormon church, which I loved and then to Ancient Inca church at Moray. Bascially we went there to lay down at the bottom of these bowl shaped farming terraces to "get the energy from the Pacha Mama" which is apparently what the locals do when they need guidance or help in their life. That night we went to Easter mass at the Catholic church, a long held tradition of mine.

We met with our guide on Monday morning for last minute instructions and he took one look at us and with a disapproving head shake said, "I don't know why you decided to do this hike in THREE days." The hike is a rigorous 4-day hike, but since there were no permits left for the dates that we wanted, we signed up to do it in 3 days. He said it would be really hard and we left feeling a little frightened.

The next morning we left at 4 am to drive through the streets before all the protestoring farmers from the country took to the streets again and got violent.

After making some last minute alterations to my clothes we started down the trail. We hiked past some amazing ruins and through breathtaking rainforests. The trail was beautiful and had a very special spirit about it. Toward the end of the day we started to climb and endless path of stairs. We were headed to Dead Woman's pass at almost 14,ooo feet.










We stopped about halfway up the mountain and camped for the night. This was the view from my tent. When we arrived at camp the 12 porters who accompanied our guide and the 6 of us on our hike had our tents set up, along with a dining tent and a cooking tent. They proceeded to serve us a 5 course meal complete with a full set of silverware and a table with table cloth and folded napkins. I felt like a rich person on an African Safari.






The next morning we woke up and hiked the rest of the way up Dead Woman's Pass, stopping to breathe every few steps. That altitude really gets ya!! We summited at 7 am then started the descent. Turns out the descent is really hard on your knees. Once we got to the bottom we started to climb up the stairs again to the next pass. The hike would have been really hard, had the views not been so breathtaking. On the passes it was always either raining or misting because you are quite literally in a cloud. We met up with the porters and our chef for a three course lunch and then continued hiking up and down stairs until we got to the final camp that night. We slept there and in the middle of the night the parasites took their vengeance on Cristi. She had a really rough night and then the porters ran her the 3 hours to Machu Picchu the next morning. She spent her time at Machu Picchu on a bunk bed in a back room and then was rushed by ambulance to a hospital in Cuzco.
For me, Machu Picchu was a totally different experience this time. It was originally built for the Inca, the ruler of the Quechuan people, as a spiritual retreat or temple. He would go there a few times a year when he was seeking spiritual guidance or clarity. It was a holy place for him. What I found so different this time is that the Inca had to make that long trek to be able to make it to the temple. He had to really want that spiritual guidance, he had to plan for it and he had a long hard road to prepare to recieve that guidance. Coming to this holy mountain after having made that trek made it seem so much more special. I really loved the spirit that is present in Machu Picchu and it doesn't hurt that it is nestled in one of the most picturesque vistas I have ever had the good fortune to behold.

I promise I will do 3 in April

So this month has been so busy that I feel like I can't get a hold of it. My calling has been keeping me very busy as has the rest of my life. I will write more later about what is keeping me so busy but for now I will just tell you that my kids are all very disturbed by my eye color (My eyes are blue). Today one of them asked if I had surgery to get my eyes to look like they do. This prompted a few more questions including, "What is wrong with them?" and "do they hurt you?" I told them it is just like some people having different color hair or different shades of skin. They didn't buy that because they said that they had never seen someone with blue eyes before. Can you believe that? Here are kids who live in the United States who have never seen a blue eyed person. I find it all shocking.

Peace out

...and the good times continued.

t


This is a little frog that made a really cool noise who lives in the caves.

After the caves we went and watched the windsurfers on Cabarete, said by some to be the windsurfing capital of the world.
I ate a sweet mango and some Haitian women came up and haggled me into getting my hair braided.

We stayed the night on Cabarete at this awesome hotel right on the beach. The guy at the counter said that you can hear the music from the bar at night but we still couldn't understand why it was so cheap.

The view was awesome, the location perfect, the room was clean...and then the music started. It was the most raucous party I have ever heard! We, fortunately, were able fall asleep anyways thanks to some training on the loud streets of Harlem.

The next day we had virgin pina coladas for breakfast from the bar downstairs and then took off on a gua gua tour of the north coast. We were on 5 different beaches in one day. We stayed in a hotel on Malecon with another ocean view.

The next morning we left on our way to the waterfalls. This was the thing I was looking forward to the most. We took a few Gua Guas out into the country and I hired a few guides, Amilka and Gabby to take me up the falls. They grew up around the falls and they think of them like their own backyard. They were amazing guides!!

We started hiking up a river and then we got to the first waterfall.

We climbed up 8 waterfalls using ladders and ropes and sometimes just climbing up the rocks.
When we got to number 8 I needed I decided to start heading back so they showed me how to get back. To get down #8 you jump 25 - 30 feet into the pool at the base of the falls. This is me ready to jump.
The rest of the seven were a series of natural waterslides and jumping off the rocks. It was beautiful and SO much fun.

After getting back from the falls we jumped in another series of gua guas and headed to the airport. We missed our flight by a few minutes so we hung out in the airport for a while enjoying the warmth and then headed back to New York. It was murder getting myself on that plane and getting myself off of it into the cold NYC weather was even worse, but I made it back, for better or for worse.

A series of good decisions

Blogging is hard. But I am doing it anyways just because I promised mom and dad.

So I had a week off and after a year and a half of my students pestering me, I decided to head down to the Caribbean to a lovely little Island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. About 97% of my students are from the DR and so I am already fairly familiar with the food, the culture and their variation on Spanish. I headed down Tuesday morning with my friend Amy and some clothes shoved into my backpack.

Leaving the freezing cold of New York was the first good decision. Going to a tropical island that is sunny and 80 degrees in February was another.


Good Decision #3 - Tubagua Plantation
We arrived and were picked up at the airport by the owner of our first “hostel”, Tim. He drove way up into the mountains outside of Puerto Plata to a beautiful, green compound of thatched roofs. There was running water and toilets and comfy mattresses with a common area under a large thatched roof.

Where we slept...
The common area...

The view from the sinks where we brushed our teeth..
The kitchen where we spend most of our time hanging out with the locals...

It was gorgeous and we spent most of our time in the kitchen chatting it up with Tim and his wife and his kitchen staff. They were real Dominicans, completely untainted by the tourism machine of the coastal cities. His neighbor fed me fresh avocados and yucca from his property. Tim gave us great advice on where to go, made a call to a friend to secure our next night stay, and then drove us down the mountain. He stopped at a local school so I could take a peek inside and chat with some of the students.

Good Decision #4 Gaining insight into my student’s views on Education upon arrival to the U.S.
The students were packed into small dark rooms with no lights.

There was very little structure and they were allowed to get up and wander around as much as they wanted. They were walking in and out of class and there was very little instruction going on. They go to school there for 3 hours a day. I walked into one of the classes for 14 year olds and there was no teacher. I asked where their teacher was and they told me she had been in a meeting for the past hour. The kids were left on their own. I saw a teacher in the 1st grade class break up a fight using a metal stick to hit both kids’ arms.


As I walked around I just kept thinking…NO WONDER!!! No wonder they can’t sit down for an entire class period, they have never been asked to do that. No wonder they are illiterate and are not used to focusing in class, they had sparse instruction throughout their entire education. No wonder they get up and wander around in the middle of instruction. It was a HUGE eye opener.

Good Decision #5 Spending a whole day doing nothing but loving the sun.
We caught a “Gua Gua” (a mini van into which they jam as many as 28 people into that serves as kind of a public bus) to a beach a few miles east called Sosua. We ordered some lunch and ate on a plastic table in the sand looking out onto a beautiful beach. I had fish and Mangu (mashed plantains with onions).
As we sat there for the next 3 hours people kept coming up and offering tasty treats like mandarin oranges, peanut brittle, and coconut vanilla bars. Then we moved to some chaise lounges and fell asleep listening to the waves and went swimming in the beautiful clear water when it got hot, and that is when it happened; I fell in love with the DR!

We went to Cabarete on a gua gua that night and wandered around this party city.

Good Decision #6 Searching for the fountain of youth
Outside of Cabarete there were some caves and after following a long tour of the flora of the DR
led by a college student who seemed bound and determined to make us understand the corruption in the Dominican government, we were lead down a long, dark slippery staircase into a darkness.

At the bottom of the cave there was a pool of fresh water, said to make you ten years younger. I jumped in and it felt great, although kind of creepy to swim in a pool of water at the bottom of a cave where you can see NOTHING!!!
More to come...