Constantly Learning

For whatever it is worth, I am the most educated person in my family, with two masters degrees. I have also taken other classes along the way, such as language classes. I have always enjoyed taking classes and it has always made me feel as though I am improving myself, because I am learning. But I don't have to take classes. It isn't as if I didn't know this and yet for some reason just lately I feel as though I have finally learned this particular lesson.

I have been attending many professional development workshops/webinars/conferences lately and have a couple more coming up. Some are librarian related, some are more related to being a faculty member in an academic institution and then I have had a few teaching and ESOL one. There has been some overlap, which is nice and hopefully some of this will lead to a better defined research agenda for me.

And then there is my volunteering. At Early Morning Reading, I have worked alot with this one particular young girl and to be honest I doubt she can read. She is smart and seems to be able to read ... but only certain books which makes me think she has them memorized. Any time I propose a book that she hasn't chosen she wants me to read to her. Is this how kids can go for years not learning basic skills? Some kids really get thrown if you correct them while they are reading or even interrupt them to ask a question, such as a prediction question and some really like it. One little girl usually points at what she is struggling with, repeats it after I say it a couple of times, says thank you and moves on. Which I find very amusing because in casual conversation she has such an attitude--she reminds me of Rosie Perez in one of her more exaggerated roles sometimes. But while reading, she is very serious and polite.

At English Conversation (which I don't go to as often) I read with an adult ELL for the first time and every verb contraction she came across she read in the full form. I only corrected her once, when the main character said "I'll say" in a short dialogue. I explained to her that is one is more of an idiomatic saying and if you change it to "I will say" it doesn't make sense. She is a very good reader, mechanically but it wasn't clear to me how much she was comprehending. Afterwards we talked a little about how she consistently avoided the contractions and she was aware of the problem and she said she found them really difficult. I told her she would get more comfortable with them over time, as she hears them and as she continues to come across them in her reading. It is a small thing in comparison to comprehension which she is clearly working on.

I am also learning a lot about creating a new language and cultural program because I am on the Advisory Board of one. I originally took classes via a small organization that only taught Cantonese, taught by volunteer enthusiastic but untrained teachers. The teachers pretty much ran the organization for years but in the Fall the founder came back on the scene and wanted to make significant changes which made the main 4 teachers uncomfortable but also seemed to exclude some of the senior students. So with the encouragement of the many of the students a new organization was started and I was asked to be an advisor.

Mandarin is now part of our program and it is intensely popular with our students and it has challenged some of the leadership's perception of what our mission is. Teaching Cantonese for free was what made the previous program unique (which as far as I know is being run by the founder but on a much smaller scale). What will make this program unique? I am learning a lot about leadership, about the politics of alliances and the tricky nature of trying to improve the curriculum when you have volunteer teachers who are long on enthusiasm but short on training and experience.

Of course this is nothing in comparison to what I will be learning on my trip to Hong Kong, which is a mere 3 weeks and 6 days away now. :)

Personal Shopper

I have been doing the shopping thing lately. I am not an experienced shopper. I tend to buy the same things over and over because I am comfortable with those products or because I know where to find them. So this has been challenging for me. Especially when it comes to clothes.

My upcoming trip to Hong Kong has forced me to look at my summer clothes much earlier than I normally would. I had some things from last summer, but not much plus I have lost weight so even what I did have some of it is too loose. I am set for sandals, last year I bought several pairs and I will of course have my sneakers with me.

So I have been shopping. Online, in stores. And then I went to a "personal shopper." Macy's has this free service and I decided to try it out. I shop alot at Macy's. I know exactly where to find my size and the store brand is in my comfortable spending bracket. I think I have bought a designer label all of twice. I thought this would be good for me, expand my mind on what to wear.

My appointment was on thursday evening and it was interesting. She is primarily a saleswoman but she comfortable enough with her product to say, "that does nothing for you." She tried a couple of colors for me that I never wear-yellow, fuschia. Yellow somehow makes me look like a totally different person. My favorite color when I was a child was yellow. My family discouraged this and I didn't understand for a long time. It was only after not recognizing myself in an old family photo that I understood. Fuschia is a beautiful color but I have to be in the right mood to wear it. So even though I told her I was looking to expand my horizons on how I dress, I clearly had my limitations. I wear a lot of blue, I like the way it looks on me.

She brought out some suits and some dresses. I did try a few on but I didn't see the need for them for my trip. I do have a couple of casual dresses that I plan to bring. I honestly don't expect to go to any fancy restaurants or events. And rarely do that here either. But they were nice to try on. This one dress was beautiful on me. I felt like I had just stepped out of a Joan Crawford film. She brought out some tank tops. Eek, expose my arms? But I love the cut on them, not the usual ones where I feel exposed in every which way. And I bought some lightweight blouses/jackets to put over them so that I can wear my tank and still hide my arms.

Despite my limitations on her I still walked out with 12 items. And quite a few are Jones NY, a designer I like but rarely buy because they are usually out of my budget. But somehow I caught some special sale and got an extra $25 off of everything. I had walked in there with a dollar amount in my head. I overspent it by $27. Now some of the things I am still iffy about, will I wear it? Is it me? My personal shopper was very practical about this--pack it with the tags still on it. I can return it for up to six months.

Personal shoppers are a free service, tipping is not allowed. It was a positive experience overall and I plan to do it again in August for work clothes. As I become more of a "player" at my job, I am feeling the need to dress the part a bit more. Of course now I will want to be timing this for another one of those 25% off sales. I have told 3 of my friends about this and they all reacted much more positively than I would thought. Even my one friend who almost always shops at Goodwill was fascinated by this. I wonder if I am starting a trend :)

What am I doing?

What am I doing? I am freaking out. Or at least I was. I think I am past the worst of it. At some point I lost confidence in myself and the whole idea of learning Cantonese and going to Hong Kong alone for 5 weeks seemed absolutely absurd. I have been avoiding studying Cantonese and even went back to my roots so to speak and was studying Italian again--probably not that usefull in Hong Kong, LOL Just the fact that I am writing about this tells me that I am coming out of it. And it isn't absurd, it is an adventure. An adventure I have wanted to take for years but couldn't for various reasons. As soon as my freak out is completely over, I will get excited about that again I am sure.

One thing I did do in this time was to decide finally where I am going to take classes in Hong Kong. The 3 week intensive class at CUHK intimidated me and I was worried that I would be spending too much of my trip alone in my room doing homework. I am sure it is a great class, but not really for me, not this trip anyway. So I am going with the classes via languagesabroad.com. The description of the classes seem like something I could comfortably do and still hopefully learn a lot of Cantonese. They actually have a homestay component which sounds appealing on one level and stressful on the other--I haven't lived with anyone in decades so right there that would be quite an adjustment but then to have to only communicate Cantonese with them ... that is for a future trip, not this one.

Now that that is settled, my trip is planned. Which is why it has been frustrating to me that I have been freaking out versus getting excited. And I am getting excited, this is my biggest trip ever. And hopefully it will answer a question I have had about myself for a long time--am I flexible enough to live overseas? In my mind if I can't do it in a big international city like Hong Kong, I won't be able to do it anywhere.

Meanwhile I am planning on doing a lot of vocabulary review in the next few weeks as well as listening to some CDs and mp3s that I have, mostly Pimsleur and those from www.learnchineseez.com. I have been exposed to a lot of vocabulary, some I know really well, some not so well, the rest I have been exposed to only once or twice and haven't retained. Another blogger cantonese.hk/wp advised to focus on vocabulary in a recent post which makes sense to me right now. I have been focused on grammar and word order lately and maybe that has been a factor in loss of confidence.

Details, details

Life is full of details. This week I went for my regularly scheduled cleaning at my dentist's office so that she could give her regularly scheduled lecture on the benefits of flossing. I know she is right, I just don't like to do it. But as I get older (and older) I have started to make peace with alot of things I don't like to do that are good for me and do floss more than I used to--but clearly not as regularly scheduled as my dentist recommends.

I also got my taxes done. I don't understand much of this stuff and one of the best decisions I made a few years ago was to pay someone to take care of this for me. In an hour I am out the door with a promise of a refund. Nice! And he pointed out a detail that I have known I needed to look into more--what I am putting in my 403B--his subtle question was "do you want to retire before you are 80?" LOL I looked over my paperwork on this and I realized I was under a misconception that I was putting in more than I actually am. But that is easily remedied and I have already gotten the necessary form from the Benefits office.

But the details I have been taking care of have been for my Hong Kong trip are the most fun. This week I purchased a travel iron and a travel hair dryer as well as a voltage adapter. And being that my trip is my longest one ever, I am looking into a larger suitcase. It is a little early to worry about my wardrobe, I do still have two months but I am "window shopping." My recent trip to Florida did give me an idea of what I would need to buy.

One more detail, which can also wait, is to buy a Kindle. I love the idea of having reading material with me without having to carry a lot of extra weight. And generally I do give myself a gift when I get my tax refund so this will be it. The rest goes into savings for my future, whether it be traveling or retirement.

Florida

Pretty Victrola in Thomas Edison's "Little Office"


I had a very nice time in Florida, I spent a little time in quite a few places, Ft. Myers for the Edison Ford Winter Estates and Museum, Sarasota for Ringling Brothers Museum, Tampa-St. Pete to see my aunt and uncle who also live down there and a few more wonderful things. It was a busy trip and yet relaxing too, we were home every evening to either watch tv or play their Wii and the mornings we all gradually woke up, ate and got dressed.

I forget in between trips to other parts of the US, usually to see my family, how much Americans live in their cars. I don't have a car and although I do have a license I rarely drive. And at some point I became fearful of driving so I have no burning desire to either. My sister and brother live 45 minutes from almost anywhere of interest--the nearest airports, the nearest major cities or tourist attractions. This doesn't bother them because they like to drive. Which worked out well for me.






Banyan Tree @ Edison Ford Winter Estates


Anyway, for once, I have pictures. Unfortunately, one picture I was hoping to share really didn't come out well--I was in the Ringling Bros museum in front of one of those body altering mirrors and got to see myself shrunk down to less than 3 feet.




Local wildlife




-- an Ibis Crane who walked by during lunch at Ringling Bros -- Sandpiper Crane
mother and child walking the median near my sister's townhouse
-- a turtle a park ranger was protecting from tourists at Ringling Bros

Mild March

We are having some wonderfully mild weather right now, sunshine, mid-50s--just a little more than a week ago we had a monster of a snowstorm. I was out with a friend, walking thru the park which still had a few piles of snow which haven't quite melted away. It is supposed to be this way for the next couple of days. Nice! Of course winter isn't over with, we could easily get more snow and most likely will go back to colder weather at some point.

So, of course, my trip to Florida is coming up on Friday. :) A trip I planned back in January when the winds were howling and the snow was blowing and I was wearing my sweatsuit to bed. However, right now it seems my respite from the winter weather won't be as big of a deal as it could be, unless the weather changes radically before I leave. I am visiting family, not doing the surf/sun thing or the golf thing, or even the Disney thing (other side of the state) and this is the more important reason for my trip. My sister lives down there half the year and I will be staying with her. At some point we will drive further south to see my aunt and uncle.

I am actually not that fond of Florida. But it will be nice to get away for a week. And it will nice to see my sister, because I just don't see my family that often. They don't like NYC, they are comfortable suburbanites who never quite understood why I'd want to live in such a big, crowded, dirty (to them) city. And so the onus of traveling tends to be on me. Which for the most part is fine but it does tend to mean I see my family only a couple times a year, sometimes more but usually not. And this will be the first time I will be visiting her in her new Florida home so it will be fun to watch her show it off, talk about changes they've made, changes she wants to make, etc. My sister lives for this kind of stuff, it is all Greek to me frankly and probably always will be. I am a renter, I don't make significant changes to my apartment and don't even have anything up on my walls (they painted my apt. two years ago, I haven't bothered to put back the few things that were up). My sister would be appalled, but she hasn't been here in more than a decade and I don't expect her to visit anytime soon.

I remember when I first said to one of my brothers that I would like to live in Asia someday. He was more supportive than I expected but then said something to the effect that they'd most likely never go visit me if I did. And before I could ask how would this be different from now, my sister-in-law asked the question first. We all laughed. I have made a radically different life style choice from my siblings. We have all gotten to the age where we can accept it for what it is, I don't expect to change nor do they expect me to. They have stopped asking me when I am moving back 'home,' which is good but ironically I sometimes miss.

Paul and Harry

When I first moved to NYC I wanted to experience all the culture it had to offer. I went to museums, plays, and dance performances regularly and saw films from all over the world and the whole range in terms of size and budget. Gradually I realized that I didn't like alot of it and I started to become more picky. I grew tired of looking for meanings within meanings within meanings, it just made me feel stupid. I was looking for culture that created connections to my own life and how others are similar/dissimilar to me and to really sound shallow-for beauty. I have never been the fan of art that is created to shock me. Real life is shocking enough. I do like how it can make me look at an idea/concept in a different way but at the same time I hate being hit on the head with a hammer in the process. And I don't know what it is but no matter how much I am enjoying an exhibit, I start yawning and can't wait to get to the last piece.

So I started going less and less frequently and often lost track of even what was going on. But luckily I have a friend who breaks me out of this mode periodically. He buys 2 or more tickets via TDF for things he wants to see and then goes down his list of friends to see if they would like to join him. I am not at the top of his list, but he knows I am on a budget and only have time to do these things on weekends. Last night I went with him to see the Paul Taylor Dance Company perform. There were three individual pieces and although the third was clearly the best I will probably always remember the first one because the first evoked wonderful memories for me.

The opening is a guy alone sitting crosslegged getting high dressed in a tank style t-shirt and blue jeans. As the piece goes on, more dancers join him and they all dance in a carefree, exaggeratedly relaxed style which I am sure much harder to do than it looks. They are all wearing jeans in the styles that were popular in the 1970s--various degrees bell bottoms, the flat front with the double row of black buttons (how I wanted those at one time!), all that very pale blue. And the music--all Harry Nilsson songs, songs that I knew, songs that I heard on the radio when they first came out. I was very young in the 70s but this piece brought me back to that time in a way that I had not expected.

Frankly I felt so connected to this piece that although I appreciated the other two pieces on a intellectual level, they seemed too serious, too mechanical, which I am sure is an unfair assessment. And because the Olympics are still at the top of my brain, I started comparing moves to those I have recently seen in the figure skating competitions. LOL so clearly I wasn't in the moment like I had been in the first piece. For me, that piece should have been last because it set an emotional standard that the others couldn't reach. I didn't ask Larry what he thought, I didn't want to sound uncultured but also he is older and I am sure that piece didn't affect him in the same way.

My friend walked me to the closest subway station but I wasn't ready to sit on a train. I felt like moving and it was a beautiful night to be in Manhattan. My head was full of the better part of the 70s and Harry Nilsson. I walked past the next station and was about to continue walking past the third when reality set in, my boots aren't the best walking shoes and it was 11 p.m. with at least a 45 minute ride home.

But today I am listening to Harry, thanks to Paul.