Long-Haul Teachers

So as I sit here in my hotel room, trying to keep a straight line of thought going long enough to get this episode up for Don and the gang, it occurs to me that this profession we’ve chosen, we teachers, really is some kind of perpetual motion machine. Because while I am physically very tired, I am emotionally energized like nobody’s business by the things I saw today, the things I keep thinking about, and the interactions I had with students, educators, and others. It was a very good day.

Natalia and I hit the road at 7:40 to go to the liceo, or high school. (Today was the last day she’ll come get me at the hotel; tomorrow, de ida y de vuelta, I’m on my own.) We walked to the proper bus stop – all the way down Paraguay, to where it starts to curve, and stop at the bus stop across from the gas station; then take the #148 bus – and rode in to work. She had three or four classes at the liceo (I forget), and then three classes – two 90 miutes long, one a full two hours – at the instituto. I would be presenting to all the instituto classes, and most of the liceo classes.

We first hit the teachers’ room, which is really more of a staging area – all they do there is pick up their attendance books for the class they’re about to teach from a big cupboard built for the purpose, and perhaps drink some mate. (The adscriptos, or teachers’ aides, always get a hot thermos of water and a packed mate ready and leave it on the table for whoever needs it going by.) Keep in mind that the teachers kind of run around the small campus when they teach – they go from room to room, by and large, while the students tend to stay there. Then we were off to present. Natalia picked up the key to the classroom she was going to from the teacher who’d just been there (it’s on a wooden key chain with the number of the room carved on it), and used it to unlock the room, then lock it again once the passing period had ended. She took roll, then introduced me, and the fun began.

Most of the groups spent the first part of their class – several had two back-to-back English classes – asking me questions that Natalia had had them prepare. Following that, I would fire up the trusty MacBook Pro and show my Power  Point on Massachusetts. It’s funny how the culture of an individual class works; some groups that she had expected to be the worst-behaved, least-motivated, were the very best, and vice-versa. Not that there were really any behavior problems – overall, I have to say, I am very impressed with the maturity, composure, and bearing of Uruguayan students. They rarely appear to abuse any privileges; the small cantina in the middle of their courtyard appears to have had no vandalism or any other purposeful damage done to it, pretty much, ever, and the campus itself isn’t littered with trash or anything like that. The students carry themselves with a real, quiet dignity, I find, and it carried over into how they treated me in the classroom.

Their English level was sometimes quite good, sometimes a little less so; as often happens, the most-motivated ones asked the most questions, while others sat back and tried to hide. But we had fun; they liked the story of Quinn pretending to be a Jedi when he would open the doors of the supermarket. Nothing's as universal as Star Wars.

We did Natalia's classes, and I spent an hour observing a class where kids who are not having as much success in school as they'd like are helped out by a psychologist, who leads them in a sort of group therapy-cum-tutoring session. Again: There was absolutely no surliness whatsoever. The kids participated very willingly in even some activities that to me seemed kind of hokey or embarrassing - but the teacher sold them with such earnestness and conviction, that these kids just lapped it up. 

I was called away to present again to Natalia's classes, and things went as before: questions for me, followed by presentation. The classrooms are cold; the whole country is kind of cold - very rarely does a building seem to actually fire up the central heating. Restaurants do; hotels do. But schools, offices, gas stations, hardware stores, etc. just suffer in the 45-degree (I'm guessing) cold. It gets to you after a while. School children, as you can see above and below, sometimes stay the entire day in their coats and scarves. I think the overall cold isn't as intense as in Massachusetts or Wisconsin, but the fact that you have to be in it all day makes it a much bigger part of their lives than in those places.

Once finished at the liceo, we walked the 15 minutes or so to the Instituto, where Natalia taught one class from 3:30 to 5:00, another from 5:00 to 6:30, and finally one from 6:30 to 8:00. It was quite a haul. But the first group was this one:

That's everybody. They were 16 and 17 years old, and very eager students, ready to ask lots of questions and super-attentive during my presentation. The time flew by. As it did in the next group - those kids were 13 and 14, and had done the posters you can see above behind the students - without Natalia asking them to! - about Williamstown, Williams College, Massachusetts, etc. There was one on the wall opposite them that focused on Jiminy Peak! It was an ideal audience, and we all had fun, in all three classes, including the last one, which was of adults - well, two 17-year-olds, a 26-year-old, a man in his mid-thirties, and a nineteen-year-old (I think). Great fun.

I wanted to include the above picture because it's funny. This is on the walk between the liceo and the instituto. The guy holding the mate above is a player on the Uruguayan national team called "el loco". He does some wild stuff, takes some crazy chances on the field. The ad says roughly, "Change my brand of mate? What, are you crazy?" He's from Minas, the town that Natalia's parents are originally from.

On the way home we passed the "fuente de los candados", or fountain of the padlocks. Local legend has it that if you lock your and your sweetheart's padlocks together on the fountain, your relationship will stay strong forever, or something similar. 

But tonight I used it as a landmark, because just down the street from there, if you turn to the left when you get to the fuente, there's an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet. After so many days of asado and chivitos, it was a welcome change.

Long day, and another one tomorrow (though not as long). Off to bed!

Another Day, Another 22.5 Pesos

Hey folks - So I spent yesterday shadowing Natalia through her workday. It began for me at about 10:30 AM, when she picked me up and walked me through the process of taking the bus to he school. (I'm being hand-guided gain today, but tomorrow, I'm on my own at the bus stop.) We rode over to Liceo #9, which looks like this:

Natalia gave me a tour of the grounds, which are smaller than one might expect. That’s because not all of the students are there at any given time – there are two half-day “turnos”, or shifts: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. “School”, then, happens twice, identically – and in some cases (including the case in Liceo #9), three times, because there’s also a night shift – for people who work, and are trying to finish up their high school degree. Here are some pics of the grounds:

This is the cantina, where kids can buy food during their five-minute passing time. (Though the kids don't actually move much - the teachers, rather, go from room to room.) I took this picture because I liked the name of the treat in the middle: "Choco y coco".

Natalia didn’t teach Monday – she was in school to attend the meeting for the faculty, held every Monday and which all faculty must attend. It’s a lot like a faculty meeting in the US, though the number of faculty is smaller, and the atmosphere is a lot more “Hill Street Blues” – they talk about things that are going on that same day, as well as planning for the not-too-distant future. The room was cold, though they did fire up an overhead heater. I was happy, I have to say, that Natalia decided not to have me do my “American schools” presentation for them that day, but rather scheduled it for next Monday, because I was more nervous than I would have thought.

Impressions: Uruguayan teachers dress in a way that’s casual without entering into slobbishness. Jeans, but rarely tennis shoes; no ties, but lots of sweaters. The colors are subdued, lots of grays and blacks. But hey, it’s winter. Who feels like wearing fucsia.

Meetings are professional and cordial, without being tyrannical – there’s not a need for absolutely everyone to be silent the moment the head honcho starts to speak. Whatever natural conversation has to gradually peter out, does so, without anybody getting bent out of shape. They’re a nice mix between cordial and professional, and common-sense, it’s-only-thirty-seconds-of-talking-come-on-calm-down. I was warmly welcomed, and then set off with Natalia to talk with all the English teachers, and organize when I’d be visiting each of THEIR classes. With which I have absolutely no problem. Im probably not going to be able to actually project my Power Point presentation, but oh well. They can crowd in close to the computer.

Here they all are, meeting in the student cantina post-faculty meeting: 

We then headed to Natalia's Institute, as she calls it - It's IECO, short for "Institute of English and Two Things That Start with C and O", and is housed in a former private residence. There are several English teachers who work there, giving small, private classes to students whose parents want them to pay particular attention to English. Here are some pictures:

 And I am done talking smack about the “cold” here, by the way. Natalia claims to be friolenta, but I was shivering by the end of the day, and she was not. I’ll be buying some more sweaters here pretty soon. Hey, when in Rome. Here's the space heater they use in the classes:

The largest group of students she had was 10. (There should have been 11, but one didn’t show.) They range in age from 10 to 17, and they were shy at first, but somebody in ever group (I saw three) always managed to find the courage to ask me questions. I tried to be entertaining and to speak clearly, and I think I mostly managed.

Impressions: In-class behavior is not an issue, and when little things do crop up, Natalia is masterful at keeping a lid on things, but keeping it positive at the same time. They teach from a textbook that is determined by a board that sets up the various national tests in English; she has very little freedom in her curriculum, even at the private institute.

Post-Institute, we bussed it across town to have dinner with Natalia’s parents, two of the nicest and warmest hosts you could ever hope to meet. Lots of conversation about everything – Uruguay’s days in the dictatorship, the scars from that time that are still visible today, President Mujica’s idiosyncracies (all wonderful), the ironies of Uruguay – including a prison called “Cárcel de la libertad” (Freedom Prison), a river called “Arroyo seco” (Dry Riverbed), and a hill called “Cerro chato” (Flat Hill).

Bus to the hotel, and to bed. Wow! I covered the whole day! Today’s going to be a long one – we tart in ten minutes, and then we go go go until 8:30 PM tonight. Wish me luck!

"Mate" and such

Hello! I’m a little pressed for time this morning, so I’m hoping to get just the most basic facts about yesterday up for your perusal today. I’m being picked up in about 20 minutes, and JUST now acquired the adapter that lets me plug in my computer. (My roommate Paul Stieber had one in our room, so I leeched off him, which allowed me to put off a purchase until this morning. And then this morning, nothing opened until around 9:30 AM. I am regularly so punished for my wickedness.)

So yesterday we transferred to our new hotel, with the aid of Natalia, my host; her daughter, Florencia; and the host of Joanne, my colleague, whose name is Pamela, and whose importance more than doubles because of the fact that she has a car. They took us across town to the Hotel Oxford, where we dropped our luggage and then headed to the Feria.

There’s a large area of streets that are blocked to traffic on Sundays, and which are then home to a huge street shopping extravaganza. It goes for blocks and blocks, and you can find everything under the sun.

It’s a very photographable place, of course, and I was snapping like crazy. One of the things that most struck me at the market was the ubiquity of mate. Natalia had told me that the typical thing to see in Uruguay was people with their thermos of hot water under their arm, and their bombilla of mate in the other, but even having been forewarned, I was astonished at the percentage of people who were actually doing it. I started snapping pictures, and couldn’t stop. Here are the results. (As this takes so long to upload, it’s probably going to be the meat of my post for the day. I may get a few more things in, but I would hate to be late to meet Natalia downstairs.)

After the market, we took a bus to Parque Rodó, which the Uruguayans refer to as their Disneyland, with a chuckle and a hope that you won’t quite chuckle, because they really do love it. It’s a small amusement park that’s open year-round, and, in a twist that I found just delightful, is run by the municipality. A publicly-owned amusement park – beautiful.

My greatest triumph there was in a game where you shoot targets against a wall with a rudimentary shotgun, which probably shoots light beams that you can’t see. When you hit certain targets, the semi-animatronic dummies and structures there leap up and shoot water at the crowd assembled behind you. I don’t think many of the Montevideans are hunters, because they weren’t quite aiming correctly, and a couple of people had their turn before I even realized that the soaking was possible. (I realized this by getting soaked.) So when I stepped up, I expected it to be very difficult. Instead, just about every shot I took wound up sending arcs of water shooting out past me and into the crowd. 

That’s how it’s done, Montevideo. That’s how it’s done.

Well, it’s 10:18, so I’d better had down. Hasta luego!

Plan Ceibal: More Interesting than My Underwear

...But not by much.

There are a lot of details around just how it was I got from Asunción to Montevideo, but I'm going to skip most of them. Suffice it to say that around 7:30 AM, they called us back onto the plane, and that I was in Montevideo, sans checked luggage but at the hotel, around 12:30 PM. I talked to the ovely Patricia, the woman from the Fulbright commission who is in charge of our stay in Montevideo until our hosts come get us, and she said  I should come have lunch with them. I said I'd rather shower, and that I would meet them at the US Embassy for their 2:00 PM appointment.

Which I did. But I had to get there, which I did by walking / running - the guy at the desk pointed to a spot and said "The Embassy is here, it's a 15-minute walk." He was right about one thing: That spot is a fifteen-minute walk away. But the Embassy is not in that spot. To get to the Embassy, you have  another twenty-minute walk yet to do down the Rambla, the huge, miles-long avenue that fronts the river/ocean front. So I ran the rest of the way and got there on time.

Our tour of the Embassy was informative, if not mind-altering, and we all met for drinks at the apartment of the President (I think) of the Fulbright Commission in Uruguay afterward. Had some finger food, some nice drinks, and a tango demonstration. Then off to the hotel, where I had some laughs with my new friends, the fellow Fulbright Exchangees, up in one of our hotel rooms. And off to bed.

So that was our arrival. Since then, boy - a lot of sight-seeing in Montevideo, guided by Patricia and Magdalena; and a lot of worrying about my luggage, made easier by everybody's sympathy. One funny thing that happened was that I really, really needed to buy some underwear. So I went to the only place I knew about, the mall up the street, and started hunting for some. But the only place I could find was this place  called "Sí Sí", which sells women's underwear - and in one tiny, tiny section, way at the back, Calvin Klein underwear for men. The price said $799 per pair, which I took to mean seven US dollars and 99 cents. What the heck - this was an upscale mall; maybe all their prices were in dollars. After all, the ATM had offered to let me withdraw actual US dollars if I preferred - and everyone talked on and on about how dollarized the economy was.

Nope. Those were pesos. There are 22 pesos in a dollar. For those of you keeping score at home: Those were some $36 dollar underwear. I told the lady at the store that at this price, I wasn't going to wear any pants. They'd be the most expensive item anywhere on my body, and the people should get to see the good stuff. She smiled politely.

You should read the tag on these things. "50% cotton; 10% white wine; 10% extract of unicorn horn; 30% mithril. Washing instructions: Should the garment become soiled, then you are clearly unworthy. But you may ask the garment politely to become clean. If you are forgiven, it will so do."

That's my rough translation; it's actually written in Elvish.

I did not hide the fact of my indulgent briefs from mey new friends. In fact, I kind of lived it up. Stressed it, as it were, to make for a better story. They were receptive  - I mean, who deosn't love a guy who goes on and on about his own underpants? Right? Am I right?

So we did a day-long English immersion camp the other day - a great experience, where 40-some English teachers from Uruguay came to spend the day interacting with and learning teaching tips from the 15 of us. While they were all very attentive and enthusiastic about our presentations, I think we could easily have learned just as much from them. And I also think the simple fact of hanging around with us for the day, speaking and hearing English, through all our breaks and meals and fun mingling activities (facilitated by a couple of excellent MC-type young fellows), was the most valuable thing about it for them. It certainly made me feel very warm inside - the first indication I had, the first real, bone-level indication, that this was going to be a great and worthwhile experience, that the Fulbright mission was worth every penny.

Another of our events was a trip to visit Plan Ceibal, the initiative in Uruguay that's providing every single kid in all its public schools with a laptop computer. We heard about their planning, their next steps, the innovative ways they're using the laptops to assist in their equipment-starved classrooms, the way in which the infrastructure required around the initiative has led to so much more nationwide networking and communication than they had originally planned. Just a fabulous, inspiring time was had by all. Here are some pics:

This is one of my favorites - Lots of kids ride their horses to school in Uruguay, and this little fellow has his trusty XO (the name for the laptops) at the ready for the jaunt home. It's one of a number of enormous photos that line the walls at Plan Ceibal. 

This is our guide, Mariana Montaldo. She works on classroom instruction, curricular development, and teaching materials for Plan Ceibal. I hope to be in touch with her in the future about a program they do where English teachers, actual native speakers, plan curriculum and teleconference in once a week to a specific classroom. They only do it for schools that do not have an English teacher of their own. I would slice off a couple of lesser digits to participate. 

This is one of the laptops up close. The green ones are for the youngest students; they then graduate to the blue ones, which have about triple the computing power. (If you know anything about computers, I know enough to know that the previous sentence probably made you laugh and shake your head disdainfully at my complete ignorance of computers and their ways. At least I know enough to know that.)

A poster advertising the number kids should call if their XO breaks. 

They're really very sturdy and compact. This is how you open them:

Unfold the little WiFi "ears"...

...both of them.

Then pull up the bottom edge, which lifts the screen.

There! On the left, there's a little hole that's the microphone; and on the right, another that's the camera.

 

It's purposely designed to have a small keyboard, to match the finger size of the students.

The "on" button is on the bottom right. And that's it!

This is the conference room where our talk took place. And behind our presenter is the type of TV with a fiber optic cable hookup that they're going to be using soon in their pilot program to get English teachers into remote classrooms via teleconference.

OK, folks -there is MUCH more to say, but it'll have to wait until next time, because I am exhausted. Big day tomorrow - we move into the hotel where we'll be staying for the rest of our time here. Stay tuned...

Papa's on the road

Hey folks...So I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor of the airport in Asunción, Paraguay, at 6:48 in the morning. I'm supposed to be at a scheduled event to kick off my Fulbright Exchange Program uruguay leg in Montevideo in two hours and twelve minutes. I got a sneaking suspicion that that ain't happening.

How did I come to be in this pickle? Well, you may recall (or not - don't think I was blogging much then) that I applied for and was awarded a spot in this program. During their summer (February), Uruguayan teachers come to observe our schools and stay with an American counterpart. That part happened successfully - Natalia Ximeno came and lived with us for a coupe of weeks, and got to see the insides and talk to key folks at a number of our local schools. Including LMMHS, where I teach. Now it's my turn to reciprocate.

The Fulbright Commission bought me a ticket for Sunday the 15th. I was to take off from JFK in NYC at 5:25 PM, going to Miami, whence a flight would leave for Uruguay at 11:11 PM. I checked into it, and the Commission wouldn't reimburse for leaving the car at the airport, nor for a driver to get me there. But they WOULD reimburse train travel. So on Sunday, we piled into the car, all four of us, and drove to the Albany-Rensselear Amtrak station. I printed out my ticket for NYC, and after waving goodbye to the family for three to four weeks, I rolled out of the station.

So far, so good. Arrived as scheduled at Penn Station, walked to the Long Island Railroad, bought a $5 ticket to the Jamaica stop; got off there, walked up to the Skytrain stop, bought a $6 ticket, and rode in to Gate 8. (It's so fresh in my mind!) Checked in and walked to my gate area. It was about 2:30 at this point. A little early, but if I'd taken a later train from Albany, it would have been cutting it too close.

So we board the plane, and we just sit there. I'm informed that it's because we have to wait for some people to make this connecting flight from flights that were themselves delayed earlier for some reason. I suppose I don't have a huge problem with that, and wait patiently. I had plenty of time to make my connection in Miami, anyway.

That was the key moment right there. Because when we finally tried to roll out, we couldn't, due to some sort of traffic issue at the airport that I didn't understand. And then we couldn't because the weather had gotten bad in Miami. And then three hours on the tarmac had passed, and we rolled back to the gate, where I got out and bought a turkey wrap.

Back on the plane, with no promise that we'd even be able to fly. Miami had cleared up, but as we sat on the tarmac, the pilot announced that there was now a storm in NYC, which wasn't going to allow the ground crews out to get the plane going. So now the weather locally wasn't letting us go! We sat there for nearly another three hours - when we finally took off, at 11:46 PM, only 18 more minutes would have meant we'd have had to go back to the gate. Bleah.

Of course I already knew I would have missed my flight, but I figured they'd set me up with another one when I got there. How long would I possibly have to wait, anyway?

Two days, turns out. Well, one day - it was now 2:20 in the morning on Monday, and they weren't going to be able to get me on Monday's (direct) 11:11 flight to Montevideo, but they could get me on the Tuesday night one. Meaning I wouldn't even get to Montevideo until Wednesday morning, and the program was set to kick off Tuesday morning at 9:00 AM.

I was doing all this on the phone, by the way. She put me on the Tuesday night flight, and I started to ask where I was going to sleep until then, but she said that she couldn't take care of that, that someone in person would have to do it. So I set off to find an agent.

They didn't open until 4:00 AM. And when they open, they open in order to walk over to Starbucks and get coffee. Nobody actually waved me to a window until about 4:20.

Where I explained the problem, being as nice as I could muster, knowing that this person could make things go dramatically better for me, or draatically worse.

It's been a while, and I'm not sure which she did.

No direct flight - but I could go to Panama at 9:30 that morning, to Lima at 3:00 that afternoon, and then to Montevideo at 10:00 that night, putting me in Montevideo a full day ahead of where I'd be i f I stayed with the reservation I'd already made.

I jumped at the offer, and had uneventful, on-time rides to all three destinations.

Except Montevideo, because about an hour out, they announced that Montevideo was fogged in.

Fogged.

In.

And we'd be landing in Asunción.

That's where I've been ever since. I've been here about three hours now - I bet I could have driven a car to Montevideo in that time. No word as to when they'll reopen the airport, so a full planeload of people just sits here, all around me, silent, for the most part, waiting for our fate to be determined.

So here's some pics:

I drew my carry-on with my fleece vest draped over it. Case you coudn't tell.

Moby Dick-less

So, we went to New Bedford today. Turns out, it’s kind of a shit hole.

I mean, it clearly had its day. Problem is, that day was a couple hundred years ago. Well, more like 150. It was the whaling capital of America, and possibly the world. But now it’s a somewhat grim industrial town that’s trying to cash in on its history and its location near Cape Cod (not actually on the Cape, as I also learned today. Or re-learned – the giant “Welcome To Cape Cod” signs once you cross the Cape Cod Canal had clued me in on the first trip across, but somehow I’d forgotten that by today).

Today was forecast to be rainy, so we had set aside this day for exploration of that particular burg, drawn thither by the possibility of the Whaling Museum. And, strangely, this song popped up on Janneke's ipod:



It refers to "Moby Dick" throughout. And is a delightfully quirky song, which the kids were humming for hours afterward. As was I.

Say what you will about the rest of the town: That is a fine museum.

Actual skeletons of a right whale, a humpback, and a blue whale – as well as another, which I can’t recall – hang from the ceiling.

And a sperm whale skeleton stands in another room. Utterly gorgeous. Scrimshaw out yon wazoo, as it were – they had a rack of whale-ivory-headed canes that ‘bout make your head spin. And a half-scale model of a whaling ship from the turn of the 20^th century that the kids bounced around on for a good long stretch.

I’m going to go on about the museum for a paragraph or so, so if you’re sick of it already, just skip ahead to where it says “So, anyway” in huge letters.

Now, apparently, when the whale is alive, its whole being is kind of suffused with the oil that it produces from its food, and this acts as a nutrient delivery system for the long periods of time when it doesn’t eat. The bones are even filled with it – so much so that the blue whale skeleton, from an animal that was killed when it was struck by a ship in 2004, is still, to this day, oozing the oil. A bg plexiglass triangle hangs below its skull, where most of it appears to be oozing out, and the triangle leads the oil into a plastic tube, which leads to a beaker right at the level of one’s eye (if one is slightly taller than me). It’s black, and smelly – the whole room is rife with the scent of it. "Smelly" is probably the wrong word – It does smell, and somewhat strongly, but the odor isn’t unpleasant. It’s kind of fishy and kind of not, and definitely rich and oily. I found that fascinating. And the sperm whale skeleton was amazing because of the giant dish that its bones form just ahead of its brain case, where its giant, fatty melon sits. The melon, you see, is the organ that they and dolphins and pretty much all toothed whales have, through which they can focus sound in the most interesting ways – dolphins, and probably not only dolphins, echolocate, while sperm whales emit the loudest sound produced by a living creature, and can apparently focus it into a beam that’s essentially a weapon to be used against squid in the deep, dark reaches of the sea. And there’s a whaling captain, named Cuffee, whose mother was an Indian from one of the Cape Islands, and whose father was black, and whose wife was also an Indian, who became one of the richest men in America, met and counseled the President, and was active in the emancipation movement, and who I need to know a hell of a lot more about. And Nantucket was, when Melville wrote Moby-Dick, considered the whaling capital of the US, but he at the time thought the weight had probably shifted to New Bedford – and later historical evidence confirms the switch that he smelled in the air. So I have got to read Moby-Dick, and I have got to get to Nantucket. All in good time, my friend.

SO, ANYWAY...  The morning of the museum visit, Janneke and T were up doing laundry, and I decided to take advantage of the moment to conscript Q into a ride on the bikes. We hit the bike trail to take it to its terminus in Woods Hole, that gorgeous little burg I'd fallen in love with the day before. Since T wouldn't be up for such a long haul. Don't fret, I had prior approval from the missus.

So Q and I blazed (relatively) the 6 miles into Woods Hole. That part of the bike trail, which we'd not been on past the bus stop for the ferry some 2 miles from Sippewisset, is much more scenic than the other part we'd ridden to the beach. A good chunk of it goes right along the beach, and there are a number of tidal ponds along the way. It was a nice bonding experience for the two of us. Once in WOods Hole, we sat in a little bakery and had macaroons and fruit drinks. Then we hit the road and zoomed back to camp, where we all headed out to New Bedford.

Which I already told you about.

So, after the museum, we tried to walk around scenic New Bedford, but there isn't any. I found this out when I stopped in to the Chamber of Commerce in town, having spent a few aimless minutes peering down streets trying to find one that looked scenic, and being unable. And the lady in the chamber of commerce office basically said we'd seen all the nicest parts already. I then asked her to point me to the most authentic Portuguese restaurant in town. She obliged, and we headed for Antonio's.

The waitresses all toggled back and forth effortlessly between English and Portuguese, which was a very good sign, I thought. And I asked ours what was the most authentic Portuguese item on the menu. She suggested a dish of pork served with clams and cubed, baked-then-fried potatoes. It was great. The kids shared a dish of something chickeny - chicken, steeped in tuna juice, I think - with sliced, fried potatoes on top. (They like to pile potatoes on top of their food in Portugal, it seems.) Janneke had a spaghetti and shrimp dish (no potatoes atop it), and we all came away much more than satisfied, and weighed down with doggie bags. It was a grand eating experience.

But New Bedford is still a shithole.

Back to camp. Some sittin' about, chattin'; then we setted in to watch "Dolphin Tale", which was cheesy, but sincere. And to bed.

The next day (today), we broke camp, which took less time than one might have thought, and then, on my suggestion, all four of us rode the six mile trail in to Woods Hole, that blessed burg, and had drinks and snacks at the bakery. It was a great experience. T never once asked to rest. I just wish she'd have found that level of fortitude inside her the day we were on the Vineyard. (Those of us in the know will tell you that this refers to "Martha's Vineyard". You're welcome.) I then zoomed back to the campground, loaded my bike onto the bike rack, and zoomed internal-combustion-engine-style back to town to pick up my dearies.

As I circled the block trying to parallel park, I noticed that they were blocking off the drawbridge! So when I came back up and actually parked, I told the fam to go down and check it out while I loaded the bikes onto the car. They obliged, and reported that it was well worth the walk down the hill. I felt very much the doting provider for those few minutes.

And then we drove home. I tell you, man: The Cape feels like a totally different place than the rest of Massachusetts. Down to the giant bridge you have to cross to get there. I love the history of it - largely, I think, because it's more socio-economic and such than it is political-historical. Soon as I finish up here, I'm going to find out who the hell the Vineyard was named after, and learn more about Nantucket. Then blow the dust of whichever copy of "Moby Dick" pops to hand first and dive in.

Sleep first, though. On a bed. That isn't glorified bubble wrap.

Seafarin'. And Cinemafarin'.

Whoah! Got a few things to update you on, vacation-wise. First:

Y’ever done one of those dinner-and-a-movie places? There’s one in Falmouth, where we’re staying. So we tried it the other night. There are tables of varying sizes, none appearing to seat more than 4, arranged in straight rows going from the full-sized screen toward the back. Everything is black – the soft, office desk-type chairs, the tables – so as not to interfere with the movie’s visibility, I suppose. You pay your theater ticket up front, then walk in and pick your seat. Before long, a waiter or waitress (waiter, in our case, who seemed very earnest and intelligent but somewhat flustered; it turned out to be his third day on the job) comes over to take your order during the previews. And before the movie actually began, out food was served, which seemed remarkably fast to us. (Granted, it was pub fare, which doesn’t require very elaborate preparation.) Then you sit back and watch and eat.

The good bit is that you kill a couple of birds with one stone. And what they did with the serving of the dinner, they did well; there were no glitches or hitches, apart from paying, which happened at the end, when everyone had to pay at once and no one seemed tickled about waiting around for the waiters and waitresses to get to everyone. (It would have been the simplest of matters to just walk out and NOT pay. Pretty much on the honor system, here.)

There are a number of not-so-good bits. One is that the floor in the theater is perfectly flat, unlike the risers in a regular theater. And the screen appears to be no higher than is usual. Combine this with the perfectly straight rows of tables I described earlier, and the odds that you’ll get some Cape Cod yahoo’s fat head right in front of yours are very high. And the table is of course perpendicular to the screen – I had thought they might serve you school-desk style, so as to allow feeding and watching. Nope – it’s tables that are all conventional. Makes it tough to concentrate.

Being a bit of a movie purist, this was very off-putting to me. I am at the movie to watch it, not to eat. I can’t really pay sufficient attention to either. (Luckily, and, perhaps, surprisingly, I had ordered only a salad, which couldn’t get cold or soggy with neglect. (Not more soggy, anyway.)) The other thing was that this place clearly is trying hard, but also just doesn’t put the same level of importance on the movie-watching experience that snoots like myself require. My evidence: The movie, “Brave”, was slightly out of focus throughout. Yes, I did inform them; yes, I did so several times. No, nothing was ever done. And yes, I did sit and fume throughout.

Was the movie good? I honestly couldn’t even tell you. I was so bloody distracted by their inability to either see, or correct, the problem, that I just sat and grumbled the entire time.

What’s that you ask? Did the kids like it? Well of course the !#@@!)(@ kids liked it! They’re kids, for !#@)(@# sake! What )@#($#*(& difference does it make if the @#$(*& kids liked it? “Zookeeper” is T’s favorite !@#@$((# movie of all ^#%$&* time, for !&*@#( !@#$*&!

So that was Saturday night. Sunday, the weather looked good, and since we had decided that if we were to do a whale watch, it would be from Provincetown, and since the two days after were going to be rainy, we headed to Provincetown.

The Cape, I’ll have you know, is friggin’ long. We drove from Falmouth to Provincetown and it took bloody near two hours. Traffic wasn’t terrible, though there was some kind of damned bike ride for charity that was going along the road almost the entire time once we got onto Highway 6. And in case you hadn’t heard, driving along the Cape, at least the way we went, is not at all scenic. The strip of land is so thin that apparently they had to put the highway right in the middle of it. You see the sea pretty much not at all from the time you leave Falmouth until you arrive in Provincetown at the tippety-tip.

Once you do, though, it’s very pretty. Provincetown is one of those old seafaring towns where the streets are narrow, the architecture is fanciful and a bit crooked, and character seeps from every crack in every surface. The harbor is large and whale watching boats depart from it at intervals of a couple of hours. We found parking on the wharf ($15, all day), and before we left the wharf we had purchased tickets for a 12:00 whale watch. It was 11:10. So we got directions to the closest thing they have to a pharmacy, raced there, bought and consumed Dramamine, and raced back.

Can’t say whether the Dramamine was necessary or not, because I can’t say I ever came close to feeling sea sick. The weather was perfect – the sea was glassy calm, it was sunny & hot, and the long and the short of it is that we had a great time. We saw several minke whales, which are very unspectacular, and three humpbacks, one solitary one and a mother & calf. Not breaching, not rolling and fin-slapping, as I have seen on other whale watches. But really cool nonetheless. By 4:00 we were back at the wharf, and took the kids, as we had promised to do, to the beach.

There is a beach that’s commonly used right there off the wharf, and we used it, but it felt kind of sketchy. No trash floating around, nothing like that, but to be beach-going right where they park the boats is odd. It doesn’t feel like one should be doing it, somehow. I never went in, myself, nor did Janneke; both kids did eventually dunk themselves completely, but neither seemed especially to enjoy it. It was a bit of a flop, the beach portion of the day.

From there we walked the main promenade in P-town and searched for a place to eat. And “promenade” is the right word – there were a lot of the folks P-town is famous for, a-promenadin’. Gay culture has really become central to the whole raison-d’être there, and we saw a number of flamboyantly dressed fellows biking in high heels and top hats and such. It seemed every sign advertising any kind of show or revue had a distinct gay theme to it. Including a string quartet that features four beefy guys, all scantily clad. Their name? “Nicely Strung”. It seems sort of strange, that a string quartet of any sort would be anyone’s idea for attracting a particular sort of group. But hey, P-town is the place where such dreams can come true. There’s probably an all-male gay metal band, an all-male gay barbershop quartet, an all-male gay Chinese acrobatic group. God love ‘em.

There’s a food court that’s been placed in some kind of old wharf-type structure, and we went there, since there were good options for everyone. (And I saw a Glen-of-Imaal terrier there, Robin Getzen.)

Ate at a picnic table, walked the promenade again a while, and hit the road. Adiós, Provincetown.

Back to the tent and to bed. Long day.

The following day, we dedicated to Woods Hole, a similarly sea-faring town, but more connected to the rest of the world, not being stuck way out on the tippety-tip of a peninsula, to see the aquarium they have there (the kids were excited, but…meh), and the exhibition center / gift shop for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI, pronounced “hooey”, and also…meh). But the town itself was beautiful, and touristy, but in a distinctly different way. It bustles constantly with all kinds of seagoing tourists - the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard leaves from there (though it seems a hundred years ago and in a totally different town that we took it), and WHOI seems to own every third building, using them all for labs and office space. It’s like a college town where there’s a prestigious college, as opposed to Provincetown, which feels like a college town where there’s a college that attracts a lot of dope-smokers. I got a real kick out of Eel Pond, the little bay area separated from the main bay (the “great harbor”) by an honest-to-goodness drawbridge. We had eaten lunch in Falmouth after doing laundry and playing ping-pong, so there was no consumption in Woods Hole. But we did spend a long moment lingering over and talking about the coolness of the SEA Program, which I’ll explain briefly: A sailing ship that takes a small number of competitively-chosen kids around the world for a semester or longer, taking classes on the ship with their faculty as crewmates, learning about the sea. For some reason both Janneke and I imagine Q as a marine biologist. It probably won’t stick, but we do what we can.

Home, where the rain held off long enough for us to cook out and have s’mores by the fire, and then we piled into the tent to watch “Fantastic Mr Fox”. This made for something of a late night, so we slept in this morning a bit, and now here we are, with breakfast had, chores being performed, and the kids doing some electronica before lunch. Post-lunch, we’ll head for New Bedford, to take in the whaling museum, the seaside-town loveliness, and then some Portuguese food in one of the many restaurants of said ethnicity that dot the burg, or so we’re told. Can’t do much else, what with the forecast again calling for thunderstorms, though at the moment I’m here at a dry picnic table under a gray but non-threatening sky. Still, it’s cool – my fleece was left out in the rain last night by some irresponsible ass, so while it’s off being laundered by the women-folk (not to imply that they should, just to report that they are (laundering it)), I shiver. Fate has been unkind this morning.