Oye Como Va El Ritmo Del Rio!

What, like, people are READING this stuff? Oh, shit, I guess I better be more careful about what I write. Well, at least the only people reading are the GREATEST ones in the world!

Yes, it's tough at the moment, but we might make it. We're staying in Memphis, which is about an hour from where I'll be teaching. I have an old friend living there. She's Spanish, living with her friend and her boyfriend, so the house is a great place to practice listening skills again, maybe some speaking, eventually.

This is okay for now, and I plan to commute for inservice, but I can't do that when school starts and it's a lot of gas. School starts on the 18th, so I hope to stay in a crappy hotel until Sept. 1. I'll be paid from ETS sometime in the 3rd week of August--the check has to be forwarded here to a p.o. box. Then the first pay from school is August 31. So it will be by the skin of my teeth that I'm able to afford the crappy hotel for a couple of weeks, if I can. The hotel is full now of coal plant workers just like everything else in town. There's a town house opening up Sept. 1 and I'm supposed to have the first crack at that. So, the crappy hotel is overpriced, of course. There are only two hotels in town, too--the crappy one and the just slightly less crappy one.

But today I'm in Memphis, baby! I can't wait unitl I can come back and go to Beal St. and Graceland! Wearing my CCR tape out, too. I took my boy to a children's museum today. It was a lot of fun and I had to drag him out of there. Frederico has set up his Guitar Hero game now, and my boy is trying to Beat It. (Yes, with the newly flooded airways, my boy has become a fan of The Gloved One.)

I'm excited and nervous. There are too many things to be done and no way to do them at the moment. I wish they would let me see the classroom already and give me a list of names, at least, of my students.

Oh, and I got to speak a little Mandarin today at the museum. That was cool. Messes with my brain, though, to try to code swich. I actually still have better Mandarin than Spanish, I think, or maybe it's all this Castillian I'm getting when I was just getting used to the the 'Rican. (My boy just said, "Whoo-hoo, I rock!")

I think I like being here so much at the moment because I don't have to be an American. That seem out of left field? Well, it's not. I've been so homesick for Taiwan these days. I'm burned out on the American thing. I get to be a Spaniard for a few days. Esta bien!

One more thing--another school district called to offer me a position as ESL co-ordinator for the entire district, a new position they've just created, on just my resume and transcripts, no face-to-face interview! I'm too far into this one to back out now, and that one actually pays less anyay, but, um, I'm the shizzle, y'all!

I guess this is a bit scattered, so Oye como va el ritmo!

I'm so special!

Yea! I got the job! In fact, I was asked to choose which job I wanted--how cool is THAT!!? No one gets that. I got to choose betwen 7th and 8th grade Englsih Language Arts, and 4-8 Special Ed. I chose Special Ed.

And then they said . . . .

You have to be here in four days for new teacher orientation and inservice begins three days after that.

Four days to move three hundred miles! Yes, three HUNDRED MILES! It was 70 bucks just for gas up there and back for the two interviews--that's seventy dollars each trip.

So, I'm flat broke. I have to pay rent for August here, but don't have that because I spent it on gas. Hopefully, they'll wait a couple of weeks. I don't have money to rent anything up there--not that there's anything to rent. They're building a coal powered electricity plant and everything has been rented and bought by people working on that. It's a very small place, evening population less than 800, and that plant has attracted a lot of people.

I'm praying to be able to borrow an rv and live in it for a couple of months--unitl I get paid on the Sept. 20. So what do I do with my stuff? I don't have a lot, but . . . . . If I sell it, I have some cash, not a lot. If I keep it, I need cash to store it. If I sell it I have NOTHING and have to start from scratch again.

I tell my son we're embarking on an adventure. How special is that?

I have found that I have a real friend in my mentor teacher. She's being wonderfully supportive. I'm very greatful to her!

Letter From Home

Letter From Home

There was a storm
Last night
Lightning and wind
Darkness rumbling through the air
Today, as I drove
Highway 9,
Ola to Morrilton,
I was seduced
Again
By blue sky
Like ocean plains
And clouds born of some artist’s brush
Casting shadows
On the hills
Painting the trees
Light green here
Dark green there
Rolling the hills
Back from the rice fields
Flooded with mirrors
A chicken house
Arthritic With disrepair
Its tin roof
Bleeding rust
A grain colored horse tail
Threshing flies
If I could see them,
They would glint
June Bug Green
Or Electric Blue
My eyes
And my heart
Were intoxicated
By the beauty
Of the everyday
Decay
And I thought of you
I am here
My feet on the ground
I am home
You should come home