So, today's been rougher than the past few, which were rougher than the few before that. Not entirely sure why, but I've just been having a tougher time of things. The old tension I sometimes feel inside is surfacing for the first time in Korea, and I feel the withdrawal that typically accompanies it as well. I'm tempted for a moment to blame it on Nausea, but I think it's just happening to coincide with the book. It's been a really long week, and I think that's my problem. It's not that the weeks been long, it's that I know that the longness of it is completely subjective. It's as though somethings churning below the surface, and it is this churning that makes me anxious. The anxiety, of course, is self-perpetuating, and I need to take the off-ramp this weekend so that I'll be able to get going again on Monday.
The nice thing is that in Korea, detoxing is pretty easy after a long week. I'm going to go to KFC tonight and have some good food, and after that I'll be going to the sauna to try and soak the week out of my tired bones. I'm finding it tough to be positive, but I'm also laughing at myself for not being able to. I guess, in all honesty, that I'm feeling homesick again. Remember about two months ago, when I couldn't tell you whether the things I felt were here or there? Well, I'm there again, or here, or whatever. So, anwyay, I'm in some nebulous space for the time being, and hoping to shock myself out of it, or ease out of it, or write my way out of it. I'd like to be out by the end of the weekend, but I'm not setting a time limit, just taking a day at a time. For now, I teach, and try not to be a monster.
Tomorrow, I'll do my best to live as though I weren't in a funk. That's always worked best. If I try to figure out why I'm feeling like this, I'll inevitably have to go onto the turf of the monster to do so. I've been there, and don't plan to visit. It's a pretty useless place. I'll just move fast, make do, and hope that it can't keep up with me as I go for bike rides, relax, and read all weekend.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Banana Class
Ok. So here goes, the description of my life teaching. My first class every day is Banana Class. They're 6 year olds, Korean age, which means they're five year olds by our standards in the West. Koreans start at one and get a year older every new year. They don't really celebrate birthdays. To them it's an interesting day, but they get older each year at the same time that their friends do. Banana class is the toughest for me because they are my youngest students, and they haven't really reached the age of true pattern recognition yet. This makes it tough for me to teach them because I see the entire universe in patterns, logical or chaotic.
In the class, there are a wide variety of levels. Eric was my nightmare child when I first got here. He's probably the lowest level student, and he has a lot of trouble focusing. Within the past month, however, I discovered his artistic abilities. He's got an amazing artistic eye for a boy his age, and is also much more quick to retain information if he's doing something involving crayons. He's really latched onto me, too. He was the first student who clung to me and told me he liked me. I hate to say that it's because of this that I tried so very hard to get through to him, but it's true. I knew he was my biggest problem, and I've tried my best to get him back on the level of the other students. It's a bit of a fruitless venture in many ways, but I get so much pleasure out of seeing him get even the littlest answer right. He's really one of the best parts of my day.
Daniel is quite a character. My first memory of him is him coming to the teachers' room to return the pencil I'd lent him. He'd slyly slipped it into his pocket. He does things like that. We often have growling matches when I tell him that we're doing phonics instead of free-coloring, and he's a bit of a headache to handle sometimes, but if you could see the kid you'd understand.
Amy's a sweetheart, and has pretty good English, compartively. She and Jini can sort of be grouped together as the girls in the class. They keep me accountable, and were really the ones who showed me the ropes when I first started here. They know the rules and hold the other boys to them. It's funny how the class controls itself.
In the class, there are a wide variety of levels. Eric was my nightmare child when I first got here. He's probably the lowest level student, and he has a lot of trouble focusing. Within the past month, however, I discovered his artistic abilities. He's got an amazing artistic eye for a boy his age, and is also much more quick to retain information if he's doing something involving crayons. He's really latched onto me, too. He was the first student who clung to me and told me he liked me. I hate to say that it's because of this that I tried so very hard to get through to him, but it's true. I knew he was my biggest problem, and I've tried my best to get him back on the level of the other students. It's a bit of a fruitless venture in many ways, but I get so much pleasure out of seeing him get even the littlest answer right. He's really one of the best parts of my day.
Daniel is quite a character. My first memory of him is him coming to the teachers' room to return the pencil I'd lent him. He'd slyly slipped it into his pocket. He does things like that. We often have growling matches when I tell him that we're doing phonics instead of free-coloring, and he's a bit of a headache to handle sometimes, but if you could see the kid you'd understand.
Amy's a sweetheart, and has pretty good English, compartively. She and Jini can sort of be grouped together as the girls in the class. They keep me accountable, and were really the ones who showed me the ropes when I first started here. They know the rules and hold the other boys to them. It's funny how the class controls itself.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Another day
So it's been nearly a month, and I apologize. I've been reading too fiercely, living too much to pause long enough to write things down. I've finished three books, all of which I'd gladly recommend to anyone who feels like reading something that makes the mind spin round on itself. The first, I've already mentioned, was Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, an Italian writer whose literary essays I've sampled recently as well. It was an immense book in so many ways, and there were only about a hundred pages in the middle that got terribly cumbersome. I'm sure they would fascinate a grail legend afficionado, but I am certainly not one. It was a story about intellect striving to find happiness, about the tendency of human beings to complicate rather than simplify their existences. It has led me toward a more profound contempt for my more complicating notions of self and toward a more nebulous view of self. I am not yet sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The second was, without a doubt, the most incredible book I have read in years. Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated taught me a new reason to laugh and to cry each time I opened it. It taught me to read myself as a stranger, taught me to escape my language. I don't really know how else to describe it. It was profound, counfounding, and illuminating all at once. The words were like delicious crumbs on a meandering forest trail toward truth. It left me both hungry and satisfied.
I then turned to Vonnegut, whom, I must admit, I have not read thoroughly enough. Cat's Cradle was quick, smart, and relatively light. I read it so as not to lose the pace I'd accidentally discovered, to propel me through my current venture: Nausea. It's dense. It traps me as only a void can trap, but it is so perfect in so many ways. At times I can barely pick it up for its weight. At others, I open it to find myself unable to stop reading, as though it is dragging me toward heaviness itself. I will let you know when I've come out on the other side of it.
Teaching is wonderful. I don't know how else to describe it. I have to go do it now, and then I will write more to tell you why.
Regards,
Joe
The second was, without a doubt, the most incredible book I have read in years. Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything Is Illuminated taught me a new reason to laugh and to cry each time I opened it. It taught me to read myself as a stranger, taught me to escape my language. I don't really know how else to describe it. It was profound, counfounding, and illuminating all at once. The words were like delicious crumbs on a meandering forest trail toward truth. It left me both hungry and satisfied.
I then turned to Vonnegut, whom, I must admit, I have not read thoroughly enough. Cat's Cradle was quick, smart, and relatively light. I read it so as not to lose the pace I'd accidentally discovered, to propel me through my current venture: Nausea. It's dense. It traps me as only a void can trap, but it is so perfect in so many ways. At times I can barely pick it up for its weight. At others, I open it to find myself unable to stop reading, as though it is dragging me toward heaviness itself. I will let you know when I've come out on the other side of it.
Teaching is wonderful. I don't know how else to describe it. I have to go do it now, and then I will write more to tell you why.
Regards,
Joe
Friday, September 28, 2007
Cogs turning
So it's an eternal oscillation between gratification and the undermining of confidence. On any given day, I can't be certain whether it is I or my students who have changed. My perspective seems to shift a bit and suddenly I've made loads of progress, established repor, and am gaining traction. Then it shifts back and I see what massive quantities of work lie ahead of me. On a good day, the shift happens within a single lesson. During a bad week, the days drag and I'm wading through a swamp with memories of running on dry land.
Yale class seems to be understanding more lately. A lot more. Method helps loads, and so long as I don't occupy myself with the disciplinary issues (I've started to come up with and borrow new tactics for regaining control of a classroom), I can make significant headway within a single period. Today we reviewed an entire month's worth of lessons and made progress into new material.
Cornell class today and everyday is just a little bit wonderful. They react a little better to my intstruction every day, and I'm beginning to understand that the boys are just being boys their age. The quick ones completely zone out, and I can't and probably shouldn't do anything about it. They get most of it. The slow ones, Billy in particular, have a little more trouble, but I'm finally connecting with them, and Billy is really trying as hard as he can to catch up and exceed the work of the other students. Once I get him past James (if it's possible) I might be able to get James' attention agian. The girls, on the other hand, are wonderful, and I'm making great progress with them. Their pronunciation and listening comprehension has gotten much better since I came, and I love teaching them.
My kindergarten classes will require another entry at some point to go through my relationship with each student, but Kiwi class continues to be an interesting little comedy hour. They're my favorites, probably, and I love the days when we get to color and talk a little bit. Because of the number of personalities in the class, they tend to get a little unruly at times, but because of my co-teacher, they're pretty easy to get back under wraps. Laura (one of my coworkers) took an amazing video of Ashley dancing today. The girl could dance for five minutes straight without noticing anything else in the world. She is impossible to discipline because she frankly doesn't care, but only because she's pretty happy wherever. When she's on my side, I have no need to discipline whatsoever because she's constantly telling the other students to sit nicely and be quiet. At some point, I'll try to explain why she's so incredible and what she's teaching me about life. The rest of the class is great as well and I love watching Danny perfectly finish his coloring in half the time it takes everyone else to sloppily do it, because it doesn't end there. He is immediately willing to walk around and help each other student in the class. I would probably be best off describing each student through the way they color. They're such amazing tiny people, and I haven't quite wrapped my mind around that yet.
Banana class continues to be a struggle, and while I at first was ready to blame it on my co-teacher, I'm now wondering if it's me. I know in my head that kids need discipline and consistency, but I'm starting to internalize the fact that I must have discipline and consistency in order to give it to them. They're wonderful kids, but I'm afraid I'm perpetually confusing their universes as I learn to teach them. They're both behind and ahead of Kiwi, but their age makes it much tougher to level with them and explain new concepts. I'm not the greatest at teaching without some thread of logic or mechanical reasoning. It's tough. I need to get more creative.
My more private lessons are all unique and less difficult to track. The one that's frustrating me the most right now is Prodigy G4. They're two fourth grade boys who I have an incredibly tough time getting to speak in real English. They can read and form English sounds very well, but they're too lazy or too poorly taught to comprehend anything they read. They're good, smart kids, but they are my greatest point of oscillation. One day, they're great, and the next they're down below my kindergarteners.
Well, I have to go teach now. I wish I could write more, and might late. For now, all is well and I've really settled in to Korea in so many ways.
I love and miss you all. Hope to talk to you soon.
Joe
Yale class seems to be understanding more lately. A lot more. Method helps loads, and so long as I don't occupy myself with the disciplinary issues (I've started to come up with and borrow new tactics for regaining control of a classroom), I can make significant headway within a single period. Today we reviewed an entire month's worth of lessons and made progress into new material.
Cornell class today and everyday is just a little bit wonderful. They react a little better to my intstruction every day, and I'm beginning to understand that the boys are just being boys their age. The quick ones completely zone out, and I can't and probably shouldn't do anything about it. They get most of it. The slow ones, Billy in particular, have a little more trouble, but I'm finally connecting with them, and Billy is really trying as hard as he can to catch up and exceed the work of the other students. Once I get him past James (if it's possible) I might be able to get James' attention agian. The girls, on the other hand, are wonderful, and I'm making great progress with them. Their pronunciation and listening comprehension has gotten much better since I came, and I love teaching them.
My kindergarten classes will require another entry at some point to go through my relationship with each student, but Kiwi class continues to be an interesting little comedy hour. They're my favorites, probably, and I love the days when we get to color and talk a little bit. Because of the number of personalities in the class, they tend to get a little unruly at times, but because of my co-teacher, they're pretty easy to get back under wraps. Laura (one of my coworkers) took an amazing video of Ashley dancing today. The girl could dance for five minutes straight without noticing anything else in the world. She is impossible to discipline because she frankly doesn't care, but only because she's pretty happy wherever. When she's on my side, I have no need to discipline whatsoever because she's constantly telling the other students to sit nicely and be quiet. At some point, I'll try to explain why she's so incredible and what she's teaching me about life. The rest of the class is great as well and I love watching Danny perfectly finish his coloring in half the time it takes everyone else to sloppily do it, because it doesn't end there. He is immediately willing to walk around and help each other student in the class. I would probably be best off describing each student through the way they color. They're such amazing tiny people, and I haven't quite wrapped my mind around that yet.
Banana class continues to be a struggle, and while I at first was ready to blame it on my co-teacher, I'm now wondering if it's me. I know in my head that kids need discipline and consistency, but I'm starting to internalize the fact that I must have discipline and consistency in order to give it to them. They're wonderful kids, but I'm afraid I'm perpetually confusing their universes as I learn to teach them. They're both behind and ahead of Kiwi, but their age makes it much tougher to level with them and explain new concepts. I'm not the greatest at teaching without some thread of logic or mechanical reasoning. It's tough. I need to get more creative.
My more private lessons are all unique and less difficult to track. The one that's frustrating me the most right now is Prodigy G4. They're two fourth grade boys who I have an incredibly tough time getting to speak in real English. They can read and form English sounds very well, but they're too lazy or too poorly taught to comprehend anything they read. They're good, smart kids, but they are my greatest point of oscillation. One day, they're great, and the next they're down below my kindergarteners.
Well, I have to go teach now. I wish I could write more, and might late. For now, all is well and I've really settled in to Korea in so many ways.
I love and miss you all. Hope to talk to you soon.
Joe
Friday, September 21, 2007
Down by the station, early in the morning
So today's been a pretty great day to end a pretty great week. My attitude is, of course, influenced by the fact that I'll be on break for the next five days, which means I'll get to escape my routine and get around a little more.
Today was activity day number two for me. We had a potluck meal to celebrate Thanksgiving, which may seem odd to you since it's September, but the Korean holiday that's giving me this vacation is their closest analogue to it. The food was great, and we made all of the kids little Indian headbands and had them color pilgrims while we talked about the first Thanksgiving. It's so fun and so wonderful [read in the fullest sense of the word] to see education from the other side. It amazes me each day as I go back and imagine my teachers being exactly where I am in so many ways. I thought they had so much figured out, and I never realized that there might've been days when we colored because the teacher was filling in for what was lacking. Teaching is really pretty hard, and it's so full of brick walls and students who you can't get through to one day and who amaze you the next. Today was a welcome reprieve from the anxiety that I've been feeling about whether or not I'm getting through. I got to simply spend time with the kids, speaking conversationally and trying to just relax with them. We sat down to watch Garfield after the meal and there was practically a dogpile of kids on me watching the movie. They're all pretty wonderful, and it's great to know that as frustrated as we get with one another, we can put it all to the side and just enjoy one another's company.
Today was activity day number two for me. We had a potluck meal to celebrate Thanksgiving, which may seem odd to you since it's September, but the Korean holiday that's giving me this vacation is their closest analogue to it. The food was great, and we made all of the kids little Indian headbands and had them color pilgrims while we talked about the first Thanksgiving. It's so fun and so wonderful [read in the fullest sense of the word] to see education from the other side. It amazes me each day as I go back and imagine my teachers being exactly where I am in so many ways. I thought they had so much figured out, and I never realized that there might've been days when we colored because the teacher was filling in for what was lacking. Teaching is really pretty hard, and it's so full of brick walls and students who you can't get through to one day and who amaze you the next. Today was a welcome reprieve from the anxiety that I've been feeling about whether or not I'm getting through. I got to simply spend time with the kids, speaking conversationally and trying to just relax with them. We sat down to watch Garfield after the meal and there was practically a dogpile of kids on me watching the movie. They're all pretty wonderful, and it's great to know that as frustrated as we get with one another, we can put it all to the side and just enjoy one another's company.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Somewhere in-between
So I've now taken it upon myself the daily task of retaining and expanding my use of the English language. The tendency is, of course, to pare down my use of language to the irreducible chunks that can be easily transcribed into the minds of my students. In many ways, for clarity, I follow this tendency. First though, I intend to confuse them. I am here as a native speaker, and to reduce my use of language to what a native English speaker would only recognize as caveman talk would be a disservice to my students and to myself. They must learn to hear the language as it's spoken.
That said, I am attempting to restrict myself to a finite number of phrases rather than the infinity of constructions toward which a native speaker tends. The point of all of this, minus the digression into ESL teaching philosophy, is that I have noticed in the speech of fellow westerners a significant shift toward an almost Korean grammar. Perhaps I notice it more now that I am learning bits and pieces of Korean language, but it is particularly bad among those who have learned more of the language or taught here for longer periods of time. Feeling little slips myself, I've undertaken a reading of Umberto Eco, who, I've been told at various times, is an excellent and challenging read. It's true. I'm a little over 40 dense pages into the novel, and I'm loving it. It's occupied most of my free time today, and I forsee it taking a good deal of what I have remaining until I've finished the novel. I'm reading Foucault's Pendulum, and I can feel lamps burning in my mind that have long been dark. As the flames burn brighter - as they are exposed to more of the oxygen of thought - I can feel more of the lampblack burning away. Or, to to twist the metaphor a differet way, the lampblack is dripping away into the ink upon the page, and thus more is illuminated while the page before me is filled.
Another product of this shift is that I've begun to define more of those shadows that I mentioned recently. Life here gets better and worse with each passing day, but in naming those things which bother me, I am able to quantify them, classify them, and put them in their proper places. My mind reels more as I realize its motion, but each day, without slowing, the reeling becomes more like standing still. I suppose some would say it's all relative. Foucault would likely say that it's all relative to context, tradition, and the all-pervading cultural symbols(if I remember correctly).
All in all, I should say that, while little is new lately, new light is shed each day on those things with which I come in contact. The world continues to spin, and each error is part triumph and each triumph is accidental. Vigilance is good practice, but never an exact science. Teaching has become a sort of metaphor for my quest. Those things I tried so hard to do at first come so easily now in bursts, and those things which seemed so easy then get more difficult by the day. Perhaps it is that I see with new eyes, and perhaps it is that the field is everchanging. Perhaps the two are really part of one larger same.
Anyway. I'm digressing more and more lately, but somehow getting closer to telling you the truth of what I'm feeling here, cryptic as it may be. It has been so good to be in contact with home: to know that life is not standing still for any of you. It gives me great comfort to know that my world there is no more constant than my world here. Perhaps, that is its constancy. For the moment, I am musing on the fact that "perhaps" means something like "chance may be" at its core, and my mind is again in awe at the seeming randomness and simultaneous congruency of life. Creation is so easily difficult and so troublingly easy.
For now, I'm off to teach one of my favorite students. They're all teaching me what a terror I once was, while simultaneously showing me why my teachers held out hope.
Hope to write soon, and sorry if the syntax gets cumbersome - I'm trying to keep my English up to snuff.
I continue to keep all of you in my thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Joe
That said, I am attempting to restrict myself to a finite number of phrases rather than the infinity of constructions toward which a native speaker tends. The point of all of this, minus the digression into ESL teaching philosophy, is that I have noticed in the speech of fellow westerners a significant shift toward an almost Korean grammar. Perhaps I notice it more now that I am learning bits and pieces of Korean language, but it is particularly bad among those who have learned more of the language or taught here for longer periods of time. Feeling little slips myself, I've undertaken a reading of Umberto Eco, who, I've been told at various times, is an excellent and challenging read. It's true. I'm a little over 40 dense pages into the novel, and I'm loving it. It's occupied most of my free time today, and I forsee it taking a good deal of what I have remaining until I've finished the novel. I'm reading Foucault's Pendulum, and I can feel lamps burning in my mind that have long been dark. As the flames burn brighter - as they are exposed to more of the oxygen of thought - I can feel more of the lampblack burning away. Or, to to twist the metaphor a differet way, the lampblack is dripping away into the ink upon the page, and thus more is illuminated while the page before me is filled.
Another product of this shift is that I've begun to define more of those shadows that I mentioned recently. Life here gets better and worse with each passing day, but in naming those things which bother me, I am able to quantify them, classify them, and put them in their proper places. My mind reels more as I realize its motion, but each day, without slowing, the reeling becomes more like standing still. I suppose some would say it's all relative. Foucault would likely say that it's all relative to context, tradition, and the all-pervading cultural symbols(if I remember correctly).
All in all, I should say that, while little is new lately, new light is shed each day on those things with which I come in contact. The world continues to spin, and each error is part triumph and each triumph is accidental. Vigilance is good practice, but never an exact science. Teaching has become a sort of metaphor for my quest. Those things I tried so hard to do at first come so easily now in bursts, and those things which seemed so easy then get more difficult by the day. Perhaps it is that I see with new eyes, and perhaps it is that the field is everchanging. Perhaps the two are really part of one larger same.
Anyway. I'm digressing more and more lately, but somehow getting closer to telling you the truth of what I'm feeling here, cryptic as it may be. It has been so good to be in contact with home: to know that life is not standing still for any of you. It gives me great comfort to know that my world there is no more constant than my world here. Perhaps, that is its constancy. For the moment, I am musing on the fact that "perhaps" means something like "chance may be" at its core, and my mind is again in awe at the seeming randomness and simultaneous congruency of life. Creation is so easily difficult and so troublingly easy.
For now, I'm off to teach one of my favorite students. They're all teaching me what a terror I once was, while simultaneously showing me why my teachers held out hope.
Hope to write soon, and sorry if the syntax gets cumbersome - I'm trying to keep my English up to snuff.
I continue to keep all of you in my thoughts and prayers.
Love,
Joe
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Engine back in gear
Ok. So I finally went for a run last night, and I'm planning on a follow-up run or a visit to the gym tonight. It made such a huge difference, even though I didn't make it that far. The air here isn't great for a run, but when I compare running in smog to not running at all, the choice becomes obvious. Last night, I didn't idle away a few hours. I didn't follow the pattern that inevitably leads to depression in my case, which is pretty much the one where I sit and stare at the computer all day or watch shows I've downloaded until I get so sick of my own company that I burst forth, only to run around seeking attention and approval.
I apologize, the self-interrogation that preoccupies me of late can't be stripped from my entries that easily. It is what I think about, and try as I might, it continues to bleed through in what I write. Things are sublty shifting, and I'm trying to track the changes without overestimating them. The strangest change I've noticed is that I'm no longer the kind of man who can sleep through the night, unstirring. I dream. and dream. and dream. At first my dreams were about home, and then came the displacement dreams wehre I was constantly placing things from home here or things from here at home. The third type that arose was the utterly displaced type of dream, the surreal sort of revery where I am at once in a Kafka novel and a Dali painting. Those were pretty cool. Recently, and particularly last night, the two chief occupants of the room that is my mind combined to create an interesting scene. It was as though I were on trial before a room of my students. They scrutinized me innocently, in the fashion after which they comment on my armhair or the fact that I blush. They spoke with such a wondered curiosity, matching their daily behavior as I explain new things to them. But things were different in the dream. It wasn't my clothing or my hair that they looked at with rapt curiosity, but instead they looked at my faults, my past, and the very things that have been vexing me lately. I call it a trial, because I had somehow to explain these things to the children without making them alright and without the children shunning me. It was something of a nightmare, and it's haunted me today.
But, as with all other things in life, no one thing can occupy the mind continuously, and in my moments of forgetting, today has been a pretty great day. I'm blaming it on the run last night and the little ways I keep reminding myself that the kids have progressed since I got here. I'm doing my best to see things as they are, stiving toward some sort of objectivity. Camus has taught me that objectivity is pretty impossible if one is to continue to interact with an absurd world, which I find darkly funny at the moment. I'm doing my best to keep rolling the rock up the hill, though, because if I can never achieve my aim, I might as well get better at failing. I hope you can hear the smile in my words, and understand that I'm actually doing quite well. For now, I'm off to class. I hope all is well back home and I look forward to hearing from you, if you have the time.
Love,
Joe
I apologize, the self-interrogation that preoccupies me of late can't be stripped from my entries that easily. It is what I think about, and try as I might, it continues to bleed through in what I write. Things are sublty shifting, and I'm trying to track the changes without overestimating them. The strangest change I've noticed is that I'm no longer the kind of man who can sleep through the night, unstirring. I dream. and dream. and dream. At first my dreams were about home, and then came the displacement dreams wehre I was constantly placing things from home here or things from here at home. The third type that arose was the utterly displaced type of dream, the surreal sort of revery where I am at once in a Kafka novel and a Dali painting. Those were pretty cool. Recently, and particularly last night, the two chief occupants of the room that is my mind combined to create an interesting scene. It was as though I were on trial before a room of my students. They scrutinized me innocently, in the fashion after which they comment on my armhair or the fact that I blush. They spoke with such a wondered curiosity, matching their daily behavior as I explain new things to them. But things were different in the dream. It wasn't my clothing or my hair that they looked at with rapt curiosity, but instead they looked at my faults, my past, and the very things that have been vexing me lately. I call it a trial, because I had somehow to explain these things to the children without making them alright and without the children shunning me. It was something of a nightmare, and it's haunted me today.
But, as with all other things in life, no one thing can occupy the mind continuously, and in my moments of forgetting, today has been a pretty great day. I'm blaming it on the run last night and the little ways I keep reminding myself that the kids have progressed since I got here. I'm doing my best to see things as they are, stiving toward some sort of objectivity. Camus has taught me that objectivity is pretty impossible if one is to continue to interact with an absurd world, which I find darkly funny at the moment. I'm doing my best to keep rolling the rock up the hill, though, because if I can never achieve my aim, I might as well get better at failing. I hope you can hear the smile in my words, and understand that I'm actually doing quite well. For now, I'm off to class. I hope all is well back home and I look forward to hearing from you, if you have the time.
Love,
Joe
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