Searching for Sunshine

This will make a lot more sense by the end of the blog, but let’s just say that this is the result of our classroom recess game Monster.  This student decided his monster would be a flying spider bat. Don’t worry, I asked this young man if the spider bat was eating me in the picture and he said no, not right now.  Apparently he is putting me in a web to eat later.  I guess teachers are a bit tough for bat spider bats and need some curing time.

Searching for sunshine is something I am trying to be more conscious of doing right now.   It is easy to fall into the trap of being overwhelmed by life, so I am trying to find things big and small that bring a little joy into my life.  Here are just a few.

Even though we are already into the second half of the school year, I still feel like I am just getting to know my students.  My bidet drinker from last year and I were best friends by October.  We are fast approaching February and I am just starting to have that same sort of relationship with some of my students right now.

That has not kept a few bits of sunshine from creeping into my classroom.  One in particular happened last week when my class was taking a standardized test on iPads.  I know, don’t get me started, standardized testing in kindergarten, but it is what it is.  The math test had 45 questions and it took my students between 15 and 45 minutes to complete.  And let’s just put it out there that 15 minutes is just a few minutes shy of the sweet spot for processing time needed to answer 45 questions accurately, so again, don’t ask.

Sorry, standardized testing is NOT the happy moment I was referencing.  That moment was provided by a young man who soon after the test began, started yelling, “I got the high score!” every time he answered a question.  And no, there is nothing that tells the students whether or not they answered a question correctly.  They just choose their answer and hit submit.  So, I was more than a bit confused, but also just happy that he was answering questions, so I let it go on.  Well, every time he yelled it, he got more and more excited, and then he started trying to tell me and all the kids around him about his amazing progress.  I won’t say that I had the most sterile testing environment, but in an attempt to keep the playground level shouting to a minimum, I decided to investigate.  Of course I start by congratulating him on his latest high score and then I settle in over his shoulder to find out what is going on.  It turns out that the high score he was seeing was the question counter.  Every time he answered a question, he would see the number of the next question in the bottom right hand corner.  In his mind, every time he hit submit, he got a new high score.  My first thought was “well, at least he is counting bigger numbers”. My second thought was, “what now?”.  Ok yes, I should have explained the question counter and how it wasn’t actually showing him his score, but I went with “when you get to 45, you win the whole game”.  Don’t judge, he finished his test.

Going out to recess is another highlight and something I do each day the weeks we are on campus, and for me it is one of my favorite parts of the day.  I love the fresh air, the exercise, and the laughter, and sometimes I let my class come out too.  I say that tongue in cheek because for kindergarten kids recess can swing in a heartbeat from a mob of pure unadulterated freedom, joy and chaos to a long line of kids needing bandaids, refereeing, and reteaching.  So my strategy here in Brazil has been to see how many kids I can get engaged in something so that I have fewer problems and more fun.  Playing Mister Adam versus the world on the soccer field is always a hit.  Pretending to eat the toes of the kids on the swings is always good for a laugh, but nothing seems to work quite like playing Monster, which like all good games, just kind of happened.  Because half of my kids seem to live in a fantasy world all day, I spend a lot of recess wandering around and trying to figure out what each little group of kids is doing.  So it was not a surprise to find myself talking with one kid who was explaining to me the intricate process of his transformation into a monster.  The surprise came when he asked me if I was a monster too. I of course told him that all teachers are either monsters or aliens, at which point he ran away screaming that Mister Adam was a monster, and well, game on.  And I don’t know the last time you actually tried to chase and catch twenty five year olds on their own turf, but it’s not easy.  Occasionally they will pack up like a school of sardines, but typically they know to spread out and can even work like a pack of velociraptors to distract you from the weak.  Luckily, even my pitiful pandemic fitness affords me more endurance than my five year olds, so I can wear them down, but it’s close.  Thankfully,  I have yet to knock myself out by catching my head on the top of the door frame of the plastic castle, and I only got stuck momentarily in the tube slide.  That was actually lucky because they lost track of me and I’m pretty sure there were a few skipped heartbeats when I popped out the bottom of the slide in the middle of a group of girls roaring like a good monster should.  And so far, Monster is 100% problem free.  They are so tired by the end of recess they are begging for a break.  Now if I could just follow recess up with a nap myself.  I need to wrap this blog up because I have to finalize the Monster’s Assistant schedule for next week.  I may not have math planned, but I darn well better know who is helping me be a monster on Monday morning.

And  if it is still hard for you to really imagine what it is like to teach kindergarten, at least the way I do it, I am including a link here to a video that pretty much summarizes my daily existence.  It is catchy, confusing, weird, funny, and will possibly never leave your head.  It is the current favorite brain break of my class.  I give you, The Cat Party.  Two minutes and twenty two seconds inside the mind of a five year old, and possibly their teacher.

Be safe, be healthy, be well.

Love from Brazil,

Adam

Feliz Ano Novo

 What other professions besides teaching are there where missing work takes more time and effort than going to work sick?  Has anyone ever gone to the doctor and had a sub?  Can you imagine a doctor leaving detailed histories, medical notes and treatment plans for all of the patients that their sub will be seeing when they are out sick?  Maybe some do.  I just get the phone call asking me to reschedule.  And clearly for those of you who know my wife and I, you know that I am talking about her.  She woke up this Sunday morning not feeling great, decided that it is smarter to stay home for a day to make sure it isn’t anything serious, and has worked most of today just so she can be sick tomorrow.  And right now thankfully she is just teacher sick, which usually means an extra cup of coffee, a long day at work, and an early bedtime, but with Covid, she has to stay home.  We are on campus this week, and everyone has to fill out a questionnaire on an app every morning asking if we have had any symptoms in the last 24 hours, and she would get the big red stop sign if she tried.  And it makes sense.  We got back from traveling to northern Brazil seven days ago, which puts us in the incubation window.  We are 99% it is just another case of Ghost Covid, where every cough makes you wonder, but it’s not worth risking.

It is 2021 now, and as much as I was hoping it would bring changes for the positive, that does not yet seem to be the case.  Covid is rising again here in Brazil.  It is not on the level that it is in the US, but there is really nothing keeping it from going that way.  The first person was vaccinated in Brazil today, and while we are way down on the list of people to receive it ourselves, at least that process has started.  Like so many folks, we find that Covid is still step number one in everything we do, from grocery shopping to getting on an airplane.  It is sad how normal it has become to begin all discussions with can we do this safely?  Or at minimum, can we do it at a level of risk we are comfortable taking?

And it still remains weird to share anything happy during all of this, especially with the amount of suffering that is happening right now all around the world.  We have always lived a very fortunate life compared to so many, and that divide only seems to be increasing the longer the pandemic lasts.  We try to give back in our own small way, but it definitely feels like a drop in an ever expanding bucket right now.  That is my disclaimer in an attempt to assuage my guilt before sharing our latest adventures.

We have been back from our big holiday break for one week, and as much exploring and enjoying as we did, one of the hardest things has been not being able to share Brazil with as many folks as we had hoped we could.  Every place we go seems to connect in our minds to friends and family back home.  “So and so would love this.  This would be the best place to come with so and so.”  And there have been a lot of places and a lot of so and sos. Fingers crossed that maybe we will be able to show some folks around in June or July before we leave, but we will be sad to keep Brazil all to ourselves if that doesn’t happen.

And we feel so lucky that Brazil is open, because as sad as we have been not to be able to explore the rest of South America, Brazil is an incredible country all on its own.  We started this vacation by taking a quick four day trip to our most touristy destination yet, Foz do Iguazu, which is an incredible waterfall in the southern part of Brazil on the border with Argentina.  It is kind of like a combination of Niagara Falls and Victoria Falls, and well worth the hype.  One bonus of the pandemic is that there were only about 10% of the normal amount of people there, so it did not feel crowded like it can.  Imagine Yellowstone with 10% of the regular amount of people.  And we stayed at a hotel with a water park, which is still kid heaven for Hannah and Lila, especially since it was virtually empty which means you could go down the slide as many times are you were willing to climb the stairs.  We also got to visit a conservation and education organization who is working to preserve the Atlantic Rainforest, which means we got to see up close some of the amazing species of birds, like macaws and toucans, that we have been loving seeing on our journeys.

We then turned right around and went back to Chapada dos Veiadeiros, our local national park, to spend time with friends hiking and exploring more of the waterfalls we have not seen yet. The running joke for most of our time here in Brazil is that Hannah has somehow developed the ability to affect the weather and cause rain to stop, no matter the forecast.  It began last Christmas when we went to the Amazon in the middle of the rainy season and the rain stopped the day we arrived and restarted the day we left.  It has continued in so many ways that it has become laughable.  One day, Sara and Lila went on a bike ride to one part of town, and Hannah and I went to another, and they got soaked in pouring rain and we got sprinkled on for two minutes.  When we were hiking on this trip, we would see rain clouds all around but somehow always end up in the clear spot.  As we were packing up on our day heading back to Brasilia, it rained so hard streets were flooding and we could barely see out the windshield for a while, but then when the sun was back out for the hike we did on the way home.  

We spent the middle week and a half of our break back home in Brasilia.  Brasilia really has become home for us, and it was exactly where the girls wanted to be for Christmas.  We had a whirlwind four days of baking and decorating before Christmas Day.  Baking is no small feat down here.  The apartment ovens here are really not much bigger than a toaster oven, so the assembly line of Christmas cookies was a little slower than in the US.  Luckily, they were a dedicated team of bakers and I supported by washing dishes and sampling the different varieties.

We ended our break by spending ten days up in Salvador, which included some new stops and a return to Surf Camp.  When we made the decision to come to Brazil, we made the girls a deal that they could each choose one of our vacations while we are down here.  After last Thanksgiving up in Salvador at Bahia Surf Camp, that decision was made.  So, we found ourselves spending our last chunk of vacation back on the beach for round two of learning to surf.  We did add on a couple of days in the city of Salvador itself, which is full of amazing architecture, history, and people.  We also added a day on the end to go check out a sea turtle sanctuary, but we devoted a week to just the beach, swimming, surfing, eating, napping, and relaxing in a little slice of Bahian paradise.

And so we find ourselves in January of 2021, only five months from our adventure here coming to a close.  We are starting to have discussions and to make plans for when we return to the United States, and it is a little sad.  Like so many things, time has flown and stood still at the same time.  We have lots of adventures remaining before we leave, and with luck and some vaccinations, maybe some of you can come down and share them with us.

Be safe, be well, and be happy,

Beijos,

Adam

“A dog and a log”

There are days when I forget that the important things to me are not the important things to everyone.  I was most recently reminded of this when I came walking up a trail over Thanksgiving break to find Hannah sitting on a log; hot, sweaty, tired and with an ear to ear grin petting a dog that had somehow adopted us for the day.  I don’t honestly know how we seem to end up hosting random dogs, but it is not the first time.  We once rented an AirBnB and ended up dog sitting for an entire weekend.  We had thought the owner was joking when he asked if Buddy could stay with us, until he drove away.  Oops. Our most recent friend Pacoca is, as best as we can tell, just another resident of Ilha Grande off the coast of Brazil.  He met the girls on the beach on our second day and just kept following us as we walked.  Every other person would say hello to Pacoca, but no one seemed concerned that he was following the random tourists.  And so we walked, and Pacoca walked, and five hours later after hiking over mountains, climbing into a sea cave, and swimming in the ocean, we ended up back at the village where we started and Pacoca simply walked off up a side trail  to wherever it is that Pacoca spends the rest of his happy dog life.  And so Hannah declared mid-hike when I wandered up the trail towards her that all she needed to enjoy a good walk in the woods is a dog and a log.  So thanks Pacoca, for being that dog, and thanks Hannah, for being that kid.  

It has been a while since our last blog, and we continue to live the roller coaster that is the pandemic.  So here, in mostly chronological order, is what we have been up to in the last two months.

Our school had a week long break in October and it was the first time we had left the Brasilia area since March.  So we jumped on a plane, took a six hour drive into the middle of nowhere, and ended up in the heart of the Pantanal, a place like no other.  In our first twenty four hours, we had seen toucans, macaws, capybaras, and a jaguar.  By the end of the week, we had filled the animal bingo card by adding anteaters, a tapir, a puma, giant river otters,  and more caiman and piranhas than you really want to acknowledge.  It is the world’s largest tropical wetland, and I didn’t even know it existed before we came to Brazil.  We’ll throw a few pictures in the blog, but it is so hard to capture a place like the Pantanal.  And I know how silly it is to say it, but you “have to go”.

October 26th, Day One of Blended Learning:

Apparently “blended learning” is just teacher code for once again reimagining education, in your spare time.  Down here, blended learning means that my class is on campus for a week, and then back doing distance learning for a week.  And when we are on campus, I am teaching most of my class in person, while simultaneously broadcasting my lesson to other five year olds from my class who have chosen to stay at home.  So not only do I have to watch and engage the students in the room, I have to simultaneously watch and engage the kids at home, on Zoom, at the same time.   And let me tell you, conducting the Zoom seance in front of a live audience is not the best way to keep the five year olds on your carpet engaged.  “Ellie, are you there?  Ellie, can you hear us?  Ellie, please give us a sign.  Ellie, please don’t take the iPad into the bathroom!  Ellie, the whole class can see you!”  Let’s just say that teaching continues to be not boring.

Hamilton 

Did I mention we got a hamster, named Hamilton? We just call her Hammie, because well, she’s a girl.  Apparently it is anatomically distracting when you have a boy hamster, so we are going to call her Hammie, at least until she requests otherwise.  And because apparently we chose the cutest hamster in the world, we will now be researching how to acquire US citizenship for a rodent.  But the little FuzzButt, Hannah’s name, has grown on all of us, and we can’t see leaving her here.  

Thanksgiving. 

No, we didn’t even try to do the turkey dinner thing, but we were able to leave town again and see another new to us part of Brazil, a coastal island called Ilha Grande.  It is a car free island about twelve kilometers off the coast, and as close to a tropical paradise as we have visited.  Yes, there are giant spiders, venomous ten foot long snakes, heat and humidity, and near vertical trails, but the beaches are amazing, the water is crystal clear, and the trails are empty.  Our favorite day involved a hike across the island to a fishing village where they were hosting a beach soccer tournament with teams from around the island.  We hung out, swam and met a man with an old wooden boat who drove us out to a remote beach and then around the island back to our hotel.  

Our Covid numbers are back on the rise, but are still way lower than the United States, and we have the advantage of not heading into winter, so we are hopeful that this bump is not a wave.  It stills feels strange every day to be living the dual existence of living here and worrying about home.  I read the New York Times every morning, and it feels at once so close and so far away.  We feel incredibly lucky to be able to explore Brazil again, and we feel incredibly sad that folks stateside are facing some seriously tough months ahead.  It is strange for us to start to think about the fact that we are heading into the last quarter of our time here in Brazil.  We are having conversations about when we are flying home, and what things we will bring with us, when it feels like we just landed and moved in.   

We feel lucky every day to be healthy, we try every day to be grateful, and we hope every day for some happiness.  We wish the same to all of you.

Be safe,  be healthy, be happy, and enjoy the pictures.

The Pantanal

Hammie, and Hannah

Thanksgiving on Ilha Grande

The Q-tip of Comfort

 

I don’t know how many of you have had a Covid Test, but apparently you really want to pay attention to which box you check under test type.  Sara and I had ours this week as part of our returning to school in person protocol, and let’s just say that not all tests are created equal.  There is the blood test, which for the needle averse, could be scary.  And then there is the nasal swab, which can best be described as a fiery poker to the brain.  I had heard that it was uncomfortable, but clearly that was coming from aliens who have a much higher discomfort threshold than I do.  Granted, I should have known there was going to be some ”discomfort” when the nurse pulled the swab from the package like she was pulling a ninja sword from a scabbard.  Do you remember those really long matches that people kept around their fireplaces for lighting the kindling from a safe distance?  Yes, well those are short compared to the nasal swab.   And so, despite looking at the world’s longest Q-tip, I was still naive enough to think that maybe it’s really long so that she doesn’t have to get too close to me.  Wrong, we got intimate.  And it’s not really so bad initially, it’s just that it takes long enough to actually penetrate the brain that you are convinced that when she hesitates for a second that she has made it in as far as she needs.  I think that pause must have been so she could make that ninety-degree turn somewhere north of my eyeball before really getting in there deep.  I am pretty sure I saw cotton in the corner of my eye as the swab went by.  And it’s not like it’s just in and out.  It’s in, pause, adjust; in further, pause, adjust; in further, and jackpot, cerebellum.  And don’t forget the twisting, because apparently you can’t just find the end of the rainbow, you need to spin the Q-tip of Comfort in order to find the entire rainbow. And oh yes, there were tears, uncontrolled tears.  Of pain, of discomfort, and mostly of relief as she finally pulled the swab out.  But what they don’t tell you in the manual is that apparently Covid might only be present in one nostril.  So yeah, it’s a package deal, and nostril number two knows what’s coming.

So that’s fun.  Clearly things remain interesting down here.   I won’t say that things are better or worse for us, just the same and different all at once.  Sara and I were at school this week trying to wrap our heads around how we are going to teach our students, and maintain safety and social distancing when we return to campus, which happens for us in three weeks, hence the test.  Our family will have to go from near zero exposure to being communally exposed to over half of the student population once we all are back on campus and bringing all the viral love home to share.  Yes, with the numbers as high as they still are in Brasilia, we are nervous.   Thankfully, our school has the resources to do this right, and Brasilia itself has a favorable climate that allows open windows, fresh air,  and being outside, which should make a big difference.   And we have one more week of school before we get a weeklong break, which is always a moment to savor.   

We remain grateful that we are healthy, that we have friends on both halves of the earth to lean on, and that we have each other, especially right now in our crazy world.  Be safe, be happy,  and be well.  And if you can find it in yourself to help others do those same things, even better.   

Love to all, thanks to all, and don’t sneeze on the swab lady.  She doesn’t like that.

Ups and Downs

Stress is cumulative.   That’s one of those adages that you hear so many times, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate until you hear it as you are living it.  Now I hear it. Stress is cumulative.  It feels like a toxin that builds up in your system until it reaches a level where it starts causing damage.  And like so many other things, just stopping the accumulation of stress isn’t enough.  Stress seems to have the half life of uranium-232, and like Covid, there is no pill you can take to make it go away.  So not only do you have to stop accumulating stress, you have to then figure out a way to reduce stress, so it slowly leaches from your system, hopefully sending you back into the world of manageable levels.  Unfortunately, this is not some sort of self-help blog where I regale you with the ten simple steps to a stress free life, this is our life in the pandemic.  Stress is not always negotiable.  I don’t get to choose to not worry about every interaction I have every time I leave the apartment.  If I don’t want Covid, I don’t get a choice about wearing a mask.  I don’t get to go and meet a friend for dinner at a restaurant.  We haven’t gone to a restaurant since March.   Hell, we haven’t hugged someone outside our family since March, and we are in the hugging capital of the world.  I have probably averaged one real face to face conversation a week with someone not living with me in that time.  That’s ugly.  

I think that we had convinced ourselves that we were rejuvenated after our June and July holidays, but I think we simply were doing enough positive things that they offset all the negatives and our stress level plateaued.  I now understand just how precarious that balance was because school has been that extra layer of stress that we weren’t ready for.  And it wasn’t that teensy little straw that broke the camel’s back.  It was the Wile E. Coyote anvil dropping from the sky.  Today, tonight, too much is too hard.  There is no joy in the Mudville of distance learning.  It is all the stress, and more, of teaching, with ten percent of the joy.  It turns out, I really do like children.  What I wouldn’t give right now to solve a meaningless argument over the proper procedure for sharing the one pink ruler at the table.  I would smile to again see a five year old look me in the eye as I give them directions, and then completely ignore everything I said.  I look so forward to reteaching the short vowel sounds so many times to that one student that I question my sanity,  because at least I would get to see more than a flat expression on Zoom.  

So, if it is not abundantly clear, today, things are not all rainbows and unicorns.  It is Thursday of Week 5 of this year, and  Month 5 overall, of distance learning and I might just be a little tired.  But this is our life tonight, in this moment, and that’s the story these words are meant to portray.  Tomorrow will be better.  We will be ok.  We have a three day weekend ahead of us and an extra day will make all the difference right now.  If this makes you feel bad, that was not my intention.  This is simply our story of today.  If you want to help, send my wife a text or email telling her you are thinking of her, and don’t be upset when she doesn’t reply.   If your children know my children, they would appreciate the same.   As for me, I’m ok, I just wrote it all out and won’t respond to texts anyways because I’ll be asleep on the couch. 

As always, be safe, be happy, be well,

Adam