My new sitemate, Jordan! Yay, Tekhas!

Iowa Monster Cookies

Well this is just about the damned best hunk of sugar you’ll ever eat. From Charles City to Azerbaijan and right back at'cha. Courtesy of my friend, Kelsey.

“We’re not really what you would call foodies in Iowa.” -Kelsey, while eating marshmallow fluff straight from the jar.

6 eggs
2 c. white sugar
1/2 tbsp. syrup
1 c. margarine
1/2 c. chocolate chips
3 c. peanut butter
2 c. brown sugar
1/2 tbsp. vanilla
1 1/4 tbsp. soda
9 c. oatmeal
½ lb. M&M’s

Mix in order. Be sure to mix in soda well. Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheets and flatten slightly. Bake 12-15 mins. at 350 degrees. Yields two dozen, at least, but eat no more than two unless feeling pukey is your thing.

11/16
Post from Oroville to Azerbaijan

“SASHA!!!NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I know your a san francisco libral...but come on. this guy is going to kill us . . . if this article is how you feel about our country than maybe you should stay out of it, sorry but im tired of usa haters, especially bill mayher.”
This is an excerpt, all the slander about Obama left out because that much was expected. What’s included is what was not expected, and what’s kept me in near-tears for two weeks.
This letter was in response to an Onion article I sent a friend after she lambasted Obama’s win with multiple MySpace bulletins. “the only good thing about this is that racism is now over! there is no more white guilt, black people are not special anymore, they are just a regular ass hole like the rest of us.”
The headline was something like, “America Finally Shitty Enough to Vote for Social Progress.” I intended for it to piss her off a little, reasonably charm the anger out of her, and knock some sense into her conservative pea-brain noggin. “We’re family,” I thought. “She’ll find this funny.” That was so not true.
“how much do you think my mom should be fined or how long she should spend in jail for not getting health care for the kids, or taking obama’s mandatory health care because she feels it’s none of there god damn business what she does as far as thats conserned? do you think my mom is a bad mom? . . . i cant believe your an elitest with the family you got and growing up with me and my family. . .”
As a kid, her mom would tell me that I’d grow up, become a successful business woman, and forget about her family. “Of course I won’t,” I’d respond. “How could I forget you?”
They now live in Oroville, a four-hour, smoke-swathed drive up the five, just past Chico. After I transferred to SF State I had school, past-midnight work shifts, tutoring, and loads and loads essays. I focused on adapting to San Francisco’s neon bicycle hats, brunch with the girls, and freezing f’ing bondfires.
Carla was right, I grew up, moved on, and found a life I could live with. I visited them once, maybe twice a year. I didn’t see them before I left for Peace Corps.
“I cant wait to see what kind of change we are going to have, lol. mabe becoming sweeden, right?. . . sasha, i thought you were smarter than this, your a college graduate from a university!!!!! i cant even talk about this anymore, im supposed to be celebrating tonight because i just got hired today at radio shack.”
I want to tell to her she’s never been to Sweden.
I’d like to share that I am here to serve our country, not in the way that our Army friends do, but in a more peaceful, cooperative way, as naïve as that may seem.
She needs to know that before I left I was skeptical of the U.S. government and people’s complacency to blindly follow suit. But after having lived in Azerbaijan, I am ever more grateful to be an American citizen. I can’t wait to go back to teach, and learn more about my country.
I want to scream, You can’t reform California schools from a second-rate electronics shop!
I won’t tell her these things, though, because after reading her response, I felt like I often did growing up, when her mom would tell me I’d run away and never look back.
They just don’t understand.
“we are living here in america right now, feeling this pain, your not.”
She’s right, I am in my 45 degree apartment (it’s not winter yet!!), and I wonder if it’s all worth it. Not the Peace Corps, although this experience is part of it.
It’s all so f’king hard sometimes.
I could go back. I could rent an apartment in Carmichael with high school friends and attend Sac State to work as an English teacher. I could. I really could.
But I want resources for students that I didn’t have. I want support for local schools, teachers and students. I’d like to see real commitment from real committed people. In SF and here, they are the people I work with, whether or not they are “elitists.”
“i voted for john mccain because he represented me and my family, most people voted for obama because he was black..and i dont think thats any better than voting against him because he is black. your supposed to judge them by there character and conduct . . . ”
I voted for Obama not because he is black, but because he is empathetic. Obama is up for program reform, in health care and education, and in an economic system whose problems have been ignored for 200 years too long.
Mostly, Obama assures me that my day to day is right and good, and that’s a long haul from the posts of Oroville, California.

11/11/08

Yesterday I made a caterpillar alphabet. On the head I attached pipe cleaners for antennas and googly eyes, courtesy Mom. The patterned green, blue, red, orange and yellow slinks up and down the wall of my fifth form classroom, as a caterpillar would.
It’s the most eye-popping visual aid they've ever seen. “What is this?!” “Woah!” So bright, so funny, so new and weird.
Jenni told a friend that her work as a Youth Development Volunteer is terrible and amazing. Terrible because everything she does is grass roots and has never been done, and amazing because everything she does is grass roots and has never been done.
Same goes for teaching.
The walls are bone bare mostly, with three hand-drawn and painted posters hung where few eyes drift. John Galsworthy and Charlotte Bronte depict modern English literature. Some written in Russian to English instead of Azeri, paint peals off the visual aids from decades of blistering sun and zero restoration.
This school year is infinitely more enjoyable than last. Teachers have adjusted to me, and I to them. They understand what I expect, and what I have had to compromise. They know that I can make up lessons on the spot, but prefer pre-written plans to follow.
I understand their customs, mostly that children and home trump work. They can plan at school but not at home where they have to cook and clean and prepare winter jam. I know that I have to tell the director what we’re doing and when we’re doing it. I know more of what they want and need, and they tell me when I don’t.
This year one of my goals is to provide a more creative environment in which to learn. Both teachers are pitching in and are totally excited. I am restoring old visual aids, swapping Dickens for Vonnegut and Hemingway, and drawing quarky vocab flashcards to make students laugh.
All this takes this takes paper and markers, I tell Nushaba. And a little imagination. We’re working on that.

11/10/08

Excerpt from 6th grade text book

3. Listen to the dialogues and and pay close attention to the intonation.
3a. Now listen again and repeat.
3b. Translate the dialogues. Use your glossary.

I. Emil and Araz are talking
-It isn’t easy to make friends,Araz.
-It is not for me. I’m a good mixer.
-Really? Do you have many friends?
-Yes. Some are my schoolmates and visitors to our country. They live here with their parents.
-How did you get to know them?
-I met them at parties, at the stadium, during summer camps and in our playground.
-Are they all foreigners?
-No. Some of them are.
-What languages do you speak with them?
-Azeri, English and Russian.
-Oh, you know many languages.
-Not so many. But I’m going to learn French.
-That’s great.

How many languages do you know?
Are you a good mixer?

“Are you a good mixer, Gizbast?”
“No,” she pauses, considers her potential. “No, I don’t think. Sasha, are you a good mixer?”
“I don’t really know what a mixer is, Gizbast.”
“I think it is to have some friends, to approach people well.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Also, a singer is mixer.”
“Oh, a DJ!”
“Yes, I have seen on television.”
“Yeah, MTV Turkey. Many good mixers there.”
“Yes, they are mixing well.”