It's been awhile since I've updated you on the intra classroom affairs.
Back when I was in the US, I had my assistant teach a Post Office project. It was something easy to do in my absence, and its field trip conclusion coincided with Valentine's Day, so all the children could mail their very own valentines. Aside from the post office books and valentine-making instructions I left behind, I am not quite sure what went on those nearly two weeks I was away. I did get to come back just in time for the field trip though. The best part of this was putting the valentines in envelopes. A few children were familiar with the process, but most showed a mixture of shock and disgust at my suggestion, not to mention demonstration. A few cried when I said, "your turn." Some, enjoying the flavor of the gluey flap, practically ate their envelopes and we had to give them new ones.
When we arrived at the post office, the assistant-teacher went inside to find the man she had made the arrangements with. 10, 15, 20 minutes went by. My students were sitting outside the post office window in a neat but noisy row on the corner of a busy street. We started a sing-a-long and attracted much attention from passers-by. When the neat but noisy row swelled into an impatient riot though, I rushed inside to see what was taking so long. Our tour guide, it seemed, was in South Africa. He would be back "soon." I wheedled a receptionist to find us someone else to do the tour, but she wouldn't even let the children come inside. "Please," I said, "They are only three. They cannot wait much longer and the street outside is very busy." "You shouldn't be in such a rush," she told me. The assistant teacher spat something back in Sesotho. I asked her to translate and she said, "The children are climbing up the walls." I turned and sure enough, they were climbing up the railings, pressing the chubby faces against the glass that muffled their screams.
Another 10 minutes went by an the receptionist finally let us in. The children, stir crazy, set about dismantling the post office in the few more minutes it took for our postal worker to arrive and begin the tour. The tour was dry to say the least, and I had to play translator (I certainly don't do baby talk to preschoolers, but his language and explanations were not digestible to three year olds). Then we made a 21 pint-size-person line (much to the fury of the customers that came in shortly after), and each child bought his or her own stamp and dropped their card in the appropriate box. While in line, the children began licking the outsides of their envelopes (possibly they were getting hungry by then) and I had to briefly confiscate a few to save them from disintegration. "Wait for your stamps! You can lick your stamps!" A few of them, crazed by the impending taste of postal glue, sucked their stamps like candy and I had to scrape one off the back of Tlotliso's tongue with my fingernail. We thanked our very late tour guide with a deafening performance of postal/Valentine's Day songs, and surprisingly, the customers and employees looked a little wistful as we waved goodbye and made a noisy exit.
This week concludes a six week study of dinosaurs. I prefer projects that involve field trips, but their are no museums with fossils nearby and the dinosaur footprints you can find in the rocks here all involved strenuous hiking. Then again, after 4 field trips in 5 weeks, I needed a break from the stress and exhaustion that comes from organizing these adventures and subsequently taking 21 small children out into the world. So we got a little creative. With a tape measure we figured out how long various dinsaurs would stretch across our campus. We also made a life-size model of T Rex jaws and teeth on the floor and discovered, yeah, we could be easily swallowed. We played paleontologist and pieced together together cut up paper dinosaur skeletons and we simulated dinosaur battles (T Rex goes to bite Triceratops. Stick him with your horns, Triceratops! Stick him with your horns!) I very much stressed that dinosaurs have disappeared and cannot come back, and to the silent disapproval of the missionaries and staunchly Christian, that dinosaurs lived BEFORE people. Overall, I was very proud of the concepts they were able to grasp, and of their new dino-vocabulary (fossil, extinct, fierce, prehistoric). Instead of a field trip to conclude the study, we made The Preschool Dinosaur Book. This involved massive photocopying on my part, and you know me and appliances, a field trip probably would have been easier.
This afternoon I leave for Cape Town for my first ultra marathon (56 k, about 35 miles) in preparation for the big one (Comrades on May 30, 89k/56miles). As you probably know from reading recent posts, my knee is pretty angry at all these long distances as of late, and I can't seem to get more than 15 or 20 k in without a protest. So after another frustrating week of rest, I'm hoping for a fairly painless and non-swelling Saturday. Yesterday, in a typical short person move, I fell off of a shelf in the PE storage room. I landed squarely on my tailbone, with the plastic, wheeled trunk full of PE equipment I was trying to put away, landing squarely on my other knee. At least now I have two busted knees so if nothing else, I will limp evenly.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
How it Went
When I got on the starting line on Saturday at 6 am for a 73-kilometer day, I hadn’t run in three days. And the last time I ran, I made it one kilometer before the snapping in the back of my knee kicked up and I had to hobble home feeling pathetic. After three cranky days of popping anti-inflammatories, icing to the point of freezer burn and smearing horse meds on my flank or leg or whatever, I didn’t have particularly high hopes that I would finish the marathon, let alone spring back for the half-marathon and 10 k later that day. On the 4+ hour drive to Lake Umuzi in Mphulanga province, Mike repeatedly turned around with a gleam in his eye saying, “Are ya ready for the challenge? Are ya?” I said, “I don’t know if I can even run one kilometer.” Mike was also injured (plantar fasciitis and Achilles something or other), but at least he could run in a straight line. The pain I could deal with, it was the snapping that was immobilizing.
Mike used to live in the town where the race was held. He took me to meet his runner friends and bragged to them that I was running my first Comrades in May. One of them said something snide sounding in Afrikaans and Mike replied in English, “only just.” I surmised the man had asked if I qualified and I felt very indignant by the exchange. Later I found out he asked a somewhat less insulting, “Is she old enough?” It’s a problem I have in this country- appearing to Southern African eyes to be about ten years younger than I am, coming off as something like a more believable Doogie Houser with a better theme song.
I dubiously went through all the pre-race rituals, pasta the night before, bananas in the morning, special socks, plus all that horse-and-advil-voodoo on my knee. I fell asleep early but if I shifted in the middle of the night, a sharp pain jolted me awake. I was nervous in the morning, not knowing how far I’d be able to make it . . . and not particularly wanting today to be the first day that rather than finishing a race on foot, getting hauled back in a medical vehicle. Mike gave me some pain pills to carry with me and take mid-race. I thought he was nuts, but it must be a South African thing, because another man offered me some mid-race.
Luckily, the course was flat. Well, maybe it wasn’t, but it’s the flattest thing I’ve run in Southern Africa. South Africans don’t believe in designing flat courses. In America, a fast, flat course is supposed to be a draw for runners. In South Africa, the hillier the better, and the courses loop and snake to make sure you climb and descend as many meters as possible at the steepest gradient the natural geography will allow.
For the first 10 k, the pain was distracting, but it was the longest I had been able to run without stopping in a week. Then it subsided into a dull nauseating ache in my knee and, for some reason, now my foot. By 30 k, the rest of my body caught up, so no particular pain seemed significant. At that point in a marathon you just hurt, no matter how slow you go, and I was going slow, trying to pace myself for the two races later that day. For part of the race I ran by a man who boasted he had a fractured bone in his foot. He said he was just going to run through it because it was too close to Comrades (the 89 k race I’m running in May) to rest and it was going to be his 20th. He bounded ahead on his broken metatarcel and I didn’t see him again. Lunatics, these South African runners.
I finished the marathon, and amazingly, I felt decent enough to continue with the next two races later that day. I stopped at the Medi-Clinic (South African hospital) tent where a nice lady iced and arnica-d me and then called over a medical professional of unspecified position to “do nice, special things for your knee.” She poked, prodded and contorted me, called it an inflamed meniscus, and warned that if I wanted to do Comrades, I’m better off calling it a day, resting a week and then resuming training. She also pointed out that my knee was swollen. Very. Front and back. Then she called over someone else- a physical therapist who is also a runner. The physical therapist thought it was IT band friction syndrome, but agreed with her predecessor on everything else. Then they taught me how to tape my knee and told me a type of brace I can get (or where to cut a hole in my current and apparently useless one). She apologized profusely for convincing me to drop out of the 3-in-1 challenge but assured me with a week of rest and a week of easy(er) runs, I should be able to run the 2 Oceans Marathon (at 56k, my first ultra) in three weeks, and the Comrades.
I met up with Mike who ran 3:11 on his injured foot. He nodded when I told him the verdicts and prophecies of the Medi-Clinic tent, but I could tell he was thinking, “lame.” And he gave some half-hearted, “Yeah, you run anymore today, then you’ll have to take a month to recover,” but I could tell he was thinking, “wimp.” Mike limped his half marathon in 2 hours. Just by the times, you could tell he was in pain- 3:11 marathon, 2 hour half marathon- you do the math. But he stayed on for the 10k because it was his fifth year doing the race and he would get his permanent number this year. I think that is another South African running phenomenon- if you run a particular race for a certain number of years, any time you do that race from then on, you get the same number to wear on your shirt and no one else can ever have that number.
I spent the remainder of the day feeling pathetic and lazy for only running a marathon. And only in South Africa, can one feel pathetic and lazy for “only” running a marathon. The lunacy is definitely contagious.
Mike used to live in the town where the race was held. He took me to meet his runner friends and bragged to them that I was running my first Comrades in May. One of them said something snide sounding in Afrikaans and Mike replied in English, “only just.” I surmised the man had asked if I qualified and I felt very indignant by the exchange. Later I found out he asked a somewhat less insulting, “Is she old enough?” It’s a problem I have in this country- appearing to Southern African eyes to be about ten years younger than I am, coming off as something like a more believable Doogie Houser with a better theme song.
I dubiously went through all the pre-race rituals, pasta the night before, bananas in the morning, special socks, plus all that horse-and-advil-voodoo on my knee. I fell asleep early but if I shifted in the middle of the night, a sharp pain jolted me awake. I was nervous in the morning, not knowing how far I’d be able to make it . . . and not particularly wanting today to be the first day that rather than finishing a race on foot, getting hauled back in a medical vehicle. Mike gave me some pain pills to carry with me and take mid-race. I thought he was nuts, but it must be a South African thing, because another man offered me some mid-race.
Luckily, the course was flat. Well, maybe it wasn’t, but it’s the flattest thing I’ve run in Southern Africa. South Africans don’t believe in designing flat courses. In America, a fast, flat course is supposed to be a draw for runners. In South Africa, the hillier the better, and the courses loop and snake to make sure you climb and descend as many meters as possible at the steepest gradient the natural geography will allow.
For the first 10 k, the pain was distracting, but it was the longest I had been able to run without stopping in a week. Then it subsided into a dull nauseating ache in my knee and, for some reason, now my foot. By 30 k, the rest of my body caught up, so no particular pain seemed significant. At that point in a marathon you just hurt, no matter how slow you go, and I was going slow, trying to pace myself for the two races later that day. For part of the race I ran by a man who boasted he had a fractured bone in his foot. He said he was just going to run through it because it was too close to Comrades (the 89 k race I’m running in May) to rest and it was going to be his 20th. He bounded ahead on his broken metatarcel and I didn’t see him again. Lunatics, these South African runners.
I finished the marathon, and amazingly, I felt decent enough to continue with the next two races later that day. I stopped at the Medi-Clinic (South African hospital) tent where a nice lady iced and arnica-d me and then called over a medical professional of unspecified position to “do nice, special things for your knee.” She poked, prodded and contorted me, called it an inflamed meniscus, and warned that if I wanted to do Comrades, I’m better off calling it a day, resting a week and then resuming training. She also pointed out that my knee was swollen. Very. Front and back. Then she called over someone else- a physical therapist who is also a runner. The physical therapist thought it was IT band friction syndrome, but agreed with her predecessor on everything else. Then they taught me how to tape my knee and told me a type of brace I can get (or where to cut a hole in my current and apparently useless one). She apologized profusely for convincing me to drop out of the 3-in-1 challenge but assured me with a week of rest and a week of easy(er) runs, I should be able to run the 2 Oceans Marathon (at 56k, my first ultra) in three weeks, and the Comrades.
I met up with Mike who ran 3:11 on his injured foot. He nodded when I told him the verdicts and prophecies of the Medi-Clinic tent, but I could tell he was thinking, “lame.” And he gave some half-hearted, “Yeah, you run anymore today, then you’ll have to take a month to recover,” but I could tell he was thinking, “wimp.” Mike limped his half marathon in 2 hours. Just by the times, you could tell he was in pain- 3:11 marathon, 2 hour half marathon- you do the math. But he stayed on for the 10k because it was his fifth year doing the race and he would get his permanent number this year. I think that is another South African running phenomenon- if you run a particular race for a certain number of years, any time you do that race from then on, you get the same number to wear on your shirt and no one else can ever have that number.
I spent the remainder of the day feeling pathetic and lazy for only running a marathon. And only in South Africa, can one feel pathetic and lazy for “only” running a marathon. The lunacy is definitely contagious.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
The Boss of Me (And How He Got the Job)
This May, I will be hopefully completing my second ultra marathon. This particular race, at 89 K of hilly roads, is dubbed, "the ultimate human race." When a friend of mine who ran it last year heard I was thinknig about signing up, he put me in touch with a South African man who lives near by who has completed it about 20 times.
His name is Mike and I do whatever he tells me. If he's run it 20 times, he must know a thing or two in addition to being obviously crazy.
He also convinced me to join him for a race in South Africa known as the Kosmos 3-in-1. The idea is to run a marathon in the morning, a half marathon at 1 pm and a 10 k in the evening, totaling 73 K (16 less than the Comrades). Plus it gives your body an idea of what it feels like to be vertical and in motion all day.
I signed up, and a week before the big day, something funky at the back of my knee started snapping like a rubberband. Yesterday was my fourth day in a row of giving up midway on a run and hobbling home. Yesterday, I shut the blinds, threw my skirt on the couch, squeezed into a knee support, donned my new sneakers and ran around my livingroom. I convinced myself I was healed, ate a chocolate bar and called it a night.
Then at 5:10 this morning, the rubberband started snapping one kilometer down the road. Have I ever mentioned that running may be the only thing that keeps me sane in the kingdom in the sky? It is.
The 3-in-one is three days away, so I emailed Mike in a panic saying I don't think I can run. His reply: "It is probably an over use injury as you body is adjusting to higher milage. I am also currently injured and Lisa got some "Ice Man" a healing gel used in Horses. I have applied this week with remarkable results." Within an hour, I had the horse meds delivered to my work with "We'll pick up for the race Friday morning. How is pasta for dinner that night?"
I should be outside doing PE with a group of 3-6 year olds but I'm supposed to rest for a couple days. So I'm sitting barefoot at my computer, an ice pack tied to me with a scrap of Mozambican fabric, smelling like a medicated horse.
**Note, if you have any knee-related expertise and advice, please share, but my cranky brain cannot handle a lecture right now.
His name is Mike and I do whatever he tells me. If he's run it 20 times, he must know a thing or two in addition to being obviously crazy.
He also convinced me to join him for a race in South Africa known as the Kosmos 3-in-1. The idea is to run a marathon in the morning, a half marathon at 1 pm and a 10 k in the evening, totaling 73 K (16 less than the Comrades). Plus it gives your body an idea of what it feels like to be vertical and in motion all day.
I signed up, and a week before the big day, something funky at the back of my knee started snapping like a rubberband. Yesterday was my fourth day in a row of giving up midway on a run and hobbling home. Yesterday, I shut the blinds, threw my skirt on the couch, squeezed into a knee support, donned my new sneakers and ran around my livingroom. I convinced myself I was healed, ate a chocolate bar and called it a night.
Then at 5:10 this morning, the rubberband started snapping one kilometer down the road. Have I ever mentioned that running may be the only thing that keeps me sane in the kingdom in the sky? It is.
The 3-in-one is three days away, so I emailed Mike in a panic saying I don't think I can run. His reply: "It is probably an over use injury as you body is adjusting to higher milage. I am also currently injured and Lisa got some "Ice Man" a healing gel used in Horses. I have applied this week with remarkable results." Within an hour, I had the horse meds delivered to my work with "We'll pick up for the race Friday morning. How is pasta for dinner that night?"
I should be outside doing PE with a group of 3-6 year olds but I'm supposed to rest for a couple days. So I'm sitting barefoot at my computer, an ice pack tied to me with a scrap of Mozambican fabric, smelling like a medicated horse.
**Note, if you have any knee-related expertise and advice, please share, but my cranky brain cannot handle a lecture right now.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Reading Month Challenge
March is Reading Month at school. Each year we set a goal and if the students reach it, the director has to do "something." Last year, his phone, laptop and keys to his office were confiscated and he was required to sit in a rocking chair all day (about six hours) reading aloud. By 2:30, his voice was wrecked and his daughter (my student at the time) told me her daddy spent the rest of the day asleep on the sofa. The year before he ate a massive grasshopper. The teachers have come up with the Reading Month challenge in the past, but this year, the children are all putting forth their suggestions.
The first graders first said the director should kiss a girl, and the boys, (deciding that was too mean perhaps) voted to change that to kissing a frog. I tried to explain the concept to my three and four year olds ("If you read lots and lots of books at home, Mr. Director will have to do something for you"). Some initial suggestions were:
-give us cake
-kiss us
-pat our head
-take us to the seaside
-bring toys
Then I introduced the idea that we could ask him to do something funny, so they added,
-be a clown
-be a ballerina (I informed them that Mr. Director already said "no cross dressing, please.")
-jump up and down
-jump up and on a trampoline
-go camping (it is a little funny to imagine this guy camping)
Or we can ask him to do something difficult, I suggested, so they went on with,
-read a book (well, it is difficult for a three year old)
-build a house
-make a washing machine
and my favorite. . .
-I think you should give me a paper bag and a bridge and a mountain.
The first graders first said the director should kiss a girl, and the boys, (deciding that was too mean perhaps) voted to change that to kissing a frog. I tried to explain the concept to my three and four year olds ("If you read lots and lots of books at home, Mr. Director will have to do something for you"). Some initial suggestions were:
-give us cake
-kiss us
-pat our head
-take us to the seaside
-bring toys
Then I introduced the idea that we could ask him to do something funny, so they added,
-be a clown
-be a ballerina (I informed them that Mr. Director already said "no cross dressing, please.")
-jump up and down
-jump up and on a trampoline
-go camping (it is a little funny to imagine this guy camping)
Or we can ask him to do something difficult, I suggested, so they went on with,
-read a book (well, it is difficult for a three year old)
-build a house
-make a washing machine
and my favorite. . .
-I think you should give me a paper bag and a bridge and a mountain.
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