Oh me, oh my. I guess I should have been expecting this, but last Friday I lost my temper with my students for the first time.

It was over something silly and fairly insignificant. There was a workshop that period led by some outside speakers and two girls flat out refused to go. They said it was “stupid,” a “waste of their time,” etc. I told them it wasn’t optional. They said, “whatever, we’re not going” and didn’t move. I was frustrated. I didn’t know what to do to get them to obey… scratch that… I might have figured out a way, or at least had the wisdom not to make this bigger than it had to be, but I was tired and I gave up and started to yell.

I took the weekend to blow off steam, relax, and come back fresh. I started okay today, and was fine all the way until the end of the day when I almost lost it again.

It was study hall, last period of the day. Twenty minutes left. Four girls in my class. Next thing I know, they are all standing around a computer. A boy from a different class is standing with them. They are looking at myspace. I go over and nudge them to get back on task. Then I switch from nudging to telling. And they just talk over me, as if I weren’t even there. To be completely honest, I’m not sure they even noticed I was there. Either that or they are incredible actors. I waved my hand in front of their faces – visually disrupting their conversation – but they didn’t even bat an eyelash. I heard my voice starting to rise… and I was nearly on the vergy of yelling when I stopped myself and walked away. I let them socialize for the rest of the day.

When I yelled, I felt terrible. It was a terrible failure, a loss of control. When I stopped myself from yelling and gave up on trying to control the situation, I felt like a terrible failure. Lose, lose. I know there are techniques out there to get kids to listen. One of the teachers I work with is a master. But when you’re tired, stressed, and feel as though you’ve suffered enough abuse for one day, it’s almost impossible to rise above the situation and employ all those tricky little strategies. Instead it’s, I’M TIRED AND YOU KIDS ARE BRATS SO SHUT THE HECK UP AND DO AS I SAY. And even though I don’t say those words exactly, the kids respond by saying, “How dare you talk to us like that? Screw you, man. I ain’t listening to another goddamn thing you say today.”

Why do I keep reaching my breaking point? It’s the disrespect.

In an average life, people are treated with a standard level of respect from their coworkers, friends, aquaintences, hairdressers, postal workers, fast food employees, etc. I would venture a guess that close relatives are the only ones that ever get away with less-than-cordial interactions.

When you’re teaching a school full of turbulent teenagers, you get exposed to kinds of rudeness you wouldn’t experience in everday life.  Most people do not get maliciously ignored on a regular basis.  Or treated in any of the other degrading, contemptuous ways that these kids treat their teachers.  It’s a shock to the system, or at least it was for me.

Of all the pitfalls of the teaching profession, this is one I really didn’t internalize until now.

Leah is moving! 

I hate to say it, but I am sick of this blog.  It’s old and it’s disorganized.  It annoys me. 

This is the new blog, entitled, My Parents’ Basement.  It is a fresh start, which is good, because I am pretty much addicted to fresh starts.

My Parents’ Basement will be a little more personal than this blog has tended to be, more cohesive, and better edited.

As for you Mom and Dad, who ocassionally read this website, go ahead and read the new one.  But I warn you, you may not like what you see.  Proceed at your own risk.

Change me in your bookmarks!  Thanks!

(Leality will remain up for the sake of the archives, so enjoy.)

We took a walk in Beeston the other day, and happened across the Beeston Cemetery.  Cemeteries are the perfect playground for cameras.

Am I the only one who gets nervous when my mom buys me a gift and presents it saying, “The clerk told me these were very popular with girls your age.”From experience, I have learned this is not a good sign.  In the past, it has been followed by such gifts as a Mariah Carey cd,  or in the case of a non-conformist friend of mine, Ugg boots.

This time, though, I think my the clerk did okay.  (Don’t mind the hair that snuck into the shot there.

The flight was awesome because it was 2 pence. And we spent longer waiting in the airport than we did on the plane, since the flight was 45 minutes. And we could drink at the airport.

Hostel was great- we stayed at one of the International Youth Hostel chains and it was really good. £11 a night for a 4 person private room, and the beds were even decently comfortable. I got bottom bunk, which was good, since I could throw things at Kirk.

The first night I learned some important things: never order a salad at a pub, and also that Guiness and whiskey is better on Irish soil.  Also, Irish soda bread is what I’ve been missing my whole life.

We did the Tourist Bus thing. It was perfect since it was raining slightly and we got to see a good tour and learn stuff. We got off the bus at lots of stops. We saw the harbor area, and then walked down to the centre and city hall. We stopped in a cute pub for a drink to warm us up, and they were out of cream so we couldn’t get proper Irish coffee, but we got coffee with Bailey’s instead. The city hall is gorgeous. And there’s good shopping around there too.

 

 

We got off the bus at Shankill Rd, right in the heart of the “troubles.” We saw lots of barbed wire, and rubble. They called this area the “killing fields” of Belfast. Shankill Rd is the loyalist side of Belfast, and we saw lots of war murals to that effect.

 

 

A UVF memorial garden.

 

  

There were road blocks everywhere and we had been walking around for 30 mins in the rain trying to get through before we got frustrated and got back on the bus. Turns out, those roadblocks are up at night and on weekends and are part of a “Peace Wall” separating Shankill Rd. and its parallel road, The Falls, which is the heart of the Irish side of the conflict. We drove down The Falls on the bus and saw lots of murals, this time for the Irish side. Our tour guide explained that the Irish side identifies with other “occupied” peoples around the world, so we saw murals supporting the Palestinians, Cubans, and lots of anti-Bush stuff.

 

 

You can tell that Belfast  is in a period of healing and reform.  There are public service announcements everywhere, especially pertaining to drinking, smoking, and domestic violence. 

 

 

 

We passed into South Belfast, the nicer areas, and saw some pretty streets and student-y areas. We came to the Queens Unviersity of Belfast, which is a spectacular building. We were exaughsted at this point, and ended up at Cafe Rythms, a totally hippie joint that sold food, healing crystals, and played healing music. But it was perfect because they had hot soup (potato and leek) and tea and scones and all the really good food you want when you’ve been out in the cold all day.  

 

 

Bill Richardson is out of the race. This makes me sad as Bill was my homeboy, I liked him the best. He had the balance of experience, level-headedness, and charisma, but since he wasn’t black or a woman and running around like a celebrity, no one even noticed him.

Richardson was a Latino, however, and as much as everyone is talking about how cool it would be to have a female or black president, I think it would be much more progressive (and helpful) to have a Latino president.

I think the whole women’s suffrage equality thing is long established. Women are equal to men, we get it, we’ve accepted it, we’ve moved on. Even black equality issues are passe, as the Latino population quickly moves into place as the biggest American minority.

We’ve already seen border and immigration problems top the issue charts, and that’s only a prediction for the bigger issues in America’s future. Now, having moved on from racism, we will join Europe with our problems of anti-assimilationism – hating immigrants not because of their skin, but because they refuse to swim in the melting pot. A Latino president, if he had the support of the people, could really smooth things over. But alas, no dice.

If we are only, just NOW ready for a female or a black president, we may have to wait another 20 to 50 years before we see a Latino president.  Goodbye, Bill.

I am finally back in England, and happy to be so.   I just got back from Italy, where I spent New Years with a couple friends from college.   I caught a bug on the plane back from Italy and am sick now, which made my travels home pretty miserable, but I have tea and am looking forward to recovery. I will share more about my Italy trip later when I get my pictures uploaded.

Unfortunately I came back to some bad news. My mother hadn’t wanted to tell me while I was traveling, but when I got back there was an email saying that one of my brother’s best friends from high school had been killed.

Apparently he was walking along the highway at 4:50 am (no one knows why) and got hit by a tractor trailer truck. That night my brother had thrown a big party for the Patriots game and all of his friends were at our house, but his friend had other plans that night and went to someone else’s house.  He left their house in the middle of the night, and ended up on the highway.  It’s a mystery that will haunt everyone for a very long time.

I didn’t know him that well. Of all my brother’s friends he was pretty quiet and we never really talked. He was around alot though, and I can see his face. I think he gave me a ride once too. He was a sweet kid, a college freshman and always seemed happy.  Everyone is just completely confused. Why was he on the highway?  What was going through his mind?  I can’t even imagine what his family is going through.  I know my brother is taking it very hard.

Death is always hard, and the death of a young person is always harder.  But when it’s a death like this, a giant question mark, it is the hardest.

My trip home, which should have taken about 17 hours total, took 24. Here are some highlights.

Waiting for the bus at 5:30 am in the cold. Getting hit on by a 40 year old football hooligan who was just coming home from a night of drinking. Told me I was gorgeous, told me he had been drinking, and told me that Americans are friendly. He tried to pull the same thing on the Greek girl standing with me, but she completely ignored him. “See, what did I tell ya?” He said.

Being seated on the plane next to a family of three homeschooled children, whose mother made them do homework during the flight. “Mom! Is this right? Mom! Help me! Mom! Do I have to do the whole page?”

The descent into Boston took almost 40 minutes. This seemed strangely long to me. Then, once we had landed, the pilot came on the intercom and told us all that an automated program designed for inclimate weather had landed the plane.  I’m sorry, but this does not make me feel safe.  Call me traditional, but I don’t want a computer program parallel parking my car, and I don’t want a computer program landing my plane.

They couldn’t let us off the plane for an hour because they had to clear the docking bay, or whatever.  For the time it took, they must have had one guy out there with a snow shovel.  I swear, if they would have just let me off the damn plane, I would have helped!

They made us wait two hours for our baggage.  Apparently the machinery that extracts the bags from the cargo hold froze, and had to be de-iced.  One would think that in Boston, they might have planned for this.  One would think.

I’ve noticed two trends in particular that are WAY more popular in the UK than in the US.

1.  The demin miniskirt – leggings – Ugg boots combo.

2.  Putting small children on leashes.

Today something happened that I have not experienced in a long time.  Four years to be exact.

One of my course-mates  was giving out Christmas cards to our class, and she apologized very politely saying that she did not have one for me because she knew I did not celebrate Christmas and could not find a Hannukah card.  This girl, being one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in my entire life, was sincere.  And it’s true, I hadn’t seen so much as a dreidle in this country myself, never mind a Hannukah card.  I told her not to worry about it, for it truly didn’t bother me.

The funny thing is that this used to happen to me all the time before I went to Brandeis.  Everyone felt very awkward when it came to including me in the “Holiday” season celebrations, because as secular as they were, they were still Christmas celebrations.

Then, at Brandeis, being surrounded by Jews, and in such a community where all the gentiles at least were educated and comfortable with Judaism,  this never came up!  I’d get Hannukah cards from both Jews and Christians, and I’d get Christmas cards from both Jews and Christians.  It didn’t really matter since we were all Jewish, or friends of Jews.

As an interesting juxtaposition, today I received a Christmas card in the mail from a good friend of mine from Brandeis.  It was a Christmas card, and she is not Jewish, and she wrote: “Merry Christmas (Hannukah, whatever) and a Happy New Year!”  And she knew it just simply didn’t matter.

If I think back to the girl I was in high school, it probably would have mattered to me.  I was very sensitive to these issues, making it much harder for everyone around me to figure out how to include me.  But at the time it seemed necessary, and looking back, I still maintain that it was important to stand my ground and force people to deal with the fact that some of us have different religious identities.

But now, having spent some time in a mostly Jewish community, I’m much more relaxed about my Jewish identity.  But maybe part of that is just getting older, recognizing who I am, acknowledging my strengths and faults, and just being okay with it.  I don’t have to define myself anymore, I can just be.

But this silly incident reminded me that I am no longer at Brandeis, and that I am, once again, inhabiting a gentile world.  It will be interesting to see how this could change the sense of identity I developed in a Jewish community.  Will it be something I have to defend again?  Or can I just “be” even amongst the gentiles?