(Insert Your Own "Wizard of Oz" Joke Here)

Man, it's been windy here for the last few days. I've never seen wind like this, and I've been to Wyoming!* In any case, the house where we're staying now has a nailed-on roof (as opposed to a screwed-on one). For a few nights, the wind was lifting the tin panels into the air slightly (and taking some of the support beams with them). Every 20 seconds or so, the wind would let up a bit, causing the tin and the wood beams to slam down onto the rest of the roof. As you can imagine, this doesn't make for sweet dreams, especially when the crashing is literally above your head, with a thin layer of wood ceiling protecting you...a thin layer of wood ceiling that is continually dropping dust, dirt particles, dead bugs, and other crap on your head while you're trying to sleep...

Anyhow, the house where we live now belongs to Angela's brother, and he repaired it very well, and it's now pretty solid. Unfortunately, we can't say the same about the poor garage, which is getting screwed up more and more each day. They can't repair it since the wind hasn't let up enough to make it safe to get on the roof.

Fortunately, our new house was just fine, since it's built with stronger, more wind-resistant techniques and materials. We did lose a few giant pine trees, though, but they were ugly and blocking our view of the gulf anyhow. And the rest of Berlín wasn't so lucky, either. One house actually blew down yesterday. No one was living there, and since it was a seasonal house for coffee pickers, it probably wasn't built very solidly, but still....shit, man.

So for all of you who may think that living in "paradise" is a fairy tale, well, you're sometimes right. But this time, the story is "The Three Little Pigs," evidently.

Well, that's about the news for now. I'd have written more, but we also keep losing electricity, and it's hard to motivate when everything going on around you just makes you want to crawl back into bed (or under your desk).

Hope everyone is doing well, and remember to hold on to something solid.

*One time when I went from Colorado to the Wyoming border with my friend Josh, we opened the car door to get out and take some pictures of the "Welcome to Wyoming" sign. An enormous burst of wind blew into the car and swept out a Burger King bag that had been in the back seat. Seconds later, I'm sure it pelted someone in Nebraska in a small explosion of nose-blood and ketchup packets.

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Congratulations to Adriana!

The girl on the left of this picture is my lovely wife Angela, and on the right is Adriana Mora, one member of our army of nieces and nephews. Last weekend she graduated from the Universidad Latina with a degree in Administration, so I just wanted to say congratulations to her!

The picture was taken by Angela. The two intended to graduate at the same time, but due to various circumstances, Angela got out a bit earlier. In any case, many congratulations to both of these lovely ladies, and best of luck to you both in the future!

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Sitzmedia: Language Websites

Now that I’ve been teaching English at a call center for about a year, I’ve had many chances to go through the internet to gather various materials for listening and speaking exercises. If you’re reading this blog, then you can obviously understand some English, and for most of you, it’s your native language. There’s also a good chance that you take that fact for granted.

I am often taken aback by some of the English questions that my students have come up with, and I’m also surprised by the questions that I find myself asking. English is a very incredible and weird language, when it comes down to it.

Consider our vocabulary for a moment. I toss out scores of vocabulary words to my students every day but I know that I’m only scratching the surface of a deep ocean of wonderful words. Then again, in a book called “The Mother Tongue” by—once again—Bill Bryson, he comments: “Here, as in almost every other area of language, natural bias plays an inescapable part in any attempt at evaluation. No one has ever said, ‘Yes, my language is backward and unexpressive, and could really do with some sharpening up.’”

The point of this whole discussion is to draw your attention to a few resources that you, presumably as a native speaker of English, may not have even known were out there. The Internet is all about strange little insular worlds concentrated on one idea or area of expertise, and the digital realm of English Language Learning is no exception to that concept.

I have selected a few resources, both digital and in print, that you might find interesting, even if you’ve spoken English since the day you were born. Consider them curiosities to add to the bookcases and knick-knack shelves of your brain, if you will. The first two have proven useful and entertaining to both my students and myself, and the third is just a good book about the history of the English language. The last is just a weird, random thing if you’re into Swedish… and who isn’t these days?

Take a look or have a listen if you ever get the chance, and see how the other, English-learning half lives:

1. http://www.talkenglish.com/
This site is a collection of hundreds of dialogue samples and real-life scenarios, all of which have imbedded audio and text, both of which are great for my teaching purposes. The audio is kind of dry and at times even nerdy, but if you’re trying to learn how to talk the talk, this is a great site. If you already speak English, it’s worth checking out the profanity or sex talk parts, just to remark to your coworkers, “Wow, listen to this geeky-sounding voice talking about how he likes big titties!”

2. http://www.china232.com/
This is a collection of podcasts and their complementary English lessons. As the site’s title indicates, the podcasts are from China, and they are recorded by two Canadians (but we won’t hold their nationality against them…for now). The lessons are definitely for language learners, and if you’re not careful, the speakers’ slow, nearly-monotone Canadian voices can lull you to sleep. But when you pay close attention to the humor that’s beneath each broadcast, it’s quite easy to get pulled in and listen to these two brothers explain their take on everyday things. All in all, it’s enough to make you want to call your own brother to try to convince him to move abroad with you to record an English-learning podcast…Paul, you in?

3. "The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way," by Bill Bryson
This is the book that I mentioned previously in the post, and it’s one of my favorites by Bryson. While he’s a hilarious writer in basically any circumstance or scenario, he also proves himself to be a consummate researcher and academic in books like this. This fascinating book frames the development of the English language by considering its historical, cultural, and contemporary significance. My personal favorite section is—of course—the one on swearing. A sample from page 215:

“English is unusual in including the impossible and the pleasurable in its litany of profanities. It is a strange and little-noted idiosyncrasy of our tongue that when we wish to express extreme fury we entreat the object of our rage to undertake an anatomical impossibility or, stranger still, to engage in the one activity that is bound to give him more pleasure than almost anything else. Can there be, when you think about it, a more improbable sentiment than, “Get fucked!”? We might as well snarl, “Make a lot of money!” or “Have a nice day!”

As an aside, Bryson also wrote a book called “Made in America,” which examines our language even more closely, but from a specifically American English perspective. Both books are well worth your time if language remotely interests you. The more compact "Mother Tongue" is a good start if you’re just curious about English or language development in general, but would prefer to learn about it with bit of a laugh.

4. Swedish Radio Site: Klartext
This is the weird one for people who like Swedish. It’s basically daily radio broadcasts from Svenska Radio, but with simplified vocabulary and slower speech. If you happen to be learning Swedish, it’s a great resource, and if you’re not learning Swedish, it’s still funny to laugh at. Check it out one way or the other. First, follow the link above. Below the calendar, click on the little speaker symbol for the day you want to listen to. An audio player should pop up, and after choosing your player preferences, click "Spara" (Save). Listen, enjoy, and repeat as necessary!

Well, that’s it for today. Now, you had all better start studying, because all of this could possibly show up on the quiz!

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Oh, Coast Tasty

Sorry I've not posted anything in quite a few days. When I went to the internet café, it didn't have internet. This happens surprisingly often for a place called an internet café*.

Ah, sometimes I love this country so much that I think I might just scream till my head explodes...

Fear not, though, the situation is being dealt with, and we'll be back in service directly.

Thanks for reading!



*Especially considering that internet cafés here don't have cafés, either, even on their best days... just internet. And although some cafés have wireless internet, it's just an incidental coincidence, and the internet at those usually doesn't work anyhow.

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Why Angela Doesn't Like Birds Anymore

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Sitzmedia: "Eastward to Tartary," Part 2

Last weekend I finished up Robert D. Kaplan’s book “Eastward to Tartary,” which I mentioned in a post a few days ago. The end was as good as the beginning, and as the book and the author’s journey came to a close, I fantasized about packing my bags to go and see with my own eyes the destruction and squalor left over in the former Soviet republics of southwest Asia.
Which I probably won’t do. But still, it was a good book, and just by reading it so voraciously, I feel a bit smarter.

I bring this up because I came across an interesting quote. As I mentioned in the other post, the book was written in 2000, but Kaplan showed an uncanny ability to predict the changing fortunes of the parts of the world that he visited. Among these instances, I found the following quote from pages 266-267. Hot on the footsteps of the Russian invasion of Georgia, it seems all the more foreboding:

“From what I learned over the next two weeks, I was left with the queasy apprehension that was Vietnam was to the 1960s and 1970s, what Lebanon and Afghanistan were to the 1980s, and what the Balkans were to the 1990s, the Caspian region might be to the first decade of the new century: an explosive region that draws in the Great Powers.”

Obviously, in the time that’s passed since the book was published, the world has witnessed the September 11th attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and ethnic struggles throughout the world, particularly in Africa. Kaplan obviously couldn’t have known that these things would happen, but that still doesn’t discount the prescient statement above. It gave me pause, at least.

In any case, if you’re looking for an erudite examination of a volatile but very important region of the world—especially if you want it to read like a slightly adventurous travelogue written by a man with the combined outlook of a renowned geopolitical journalist and a Lonely Planet guide—then check out this book.

Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus

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Going Gatsby On You

Man, I think Tuesdays are even worse than Mondays. Mondays hit you so hard you don't even feel it. But Tuesdays do the same, only they add on the realization that you have to put up with four more days of this crap.

I was going to put up another quote thing, but I think I'll do that tomorrow. Gotta get to the store to buy some bread before I get accosted by a drunken hick (the Palmares Festival is in full swing).

I'm not that into today...

P.S. - Happy Birthday, Angie!

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Sitzmedia: MP3 Thing Test

I'm just seeing if this thing works.

I've been listening to this song a lot.

Please tell me what you think, and if it works for you.

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Sitzmedia: "The Fall" In The Summer (Or Winter)

One thing about Costa Rica which has fairly confounded me, and which continues to do so to this day, is the way they designate seasons here. Right now it’s January, and here in Costa Rica we’re basically in what they call “Summer,” although in the United States and, indeed, nearly the rest of the Northern Hemisphere, it’s Winter.

Here in Coast Tasty, “Summer” goes from approximately the end of December to some vague date in April or May. At that point, the rainy season (or “Winter”) kicks in. Still, there are quite a few nice days up through July and possibly even August, but around September, things start getting rainy, moldy, and altogether shitty right about then. There’s no real Fall, since different plants seem to lose leaves at different times, and those varying plant lifecycles also mean there’s no identifiable Spring.***

This actually is a very circuitous introduction to a movie review. You see, although it’s “Summer” here, it was actually more “wintery” this last weekend, with overcast skies and even a bit of drizzling rain yesterday. That meant that Angela and I had to scrap our plans of going to the pool and getting a sunburn, and instead we stayed at home and watched a movie called “The Fall.”

Paul gave the movie to Angela for Christmas, and I guess he explained it to her a bit when she opened it up. I even remember him mentioning it on his blog some time ago, but I guess I was somehow confused, because when we started watching it yesterday, I was under the impression that it was a French movie. It’s not. It IS the type of movie that continually pops into your thoughts for the next few days, though, and that’s why I’m writing about it now.

If you’ve seen the movie, maybe you can post a comment on what you thought about it. If you’ve not seen it, it’s sort of like “The Princess Bride,” if that movie had taken place in a hospital in the 1920s and Fred Savage’s grandpa had been suicidal. Also, this time around, instead of--well, Fred Savage--the protagonist is an adorable 5-year-old girl from Russia or Albania or some other place where people wore scarves. So I guess the two films are not exactly alike, but there are a surprising number of similarities between the two movies--all of which I’m sure more astute and nerdy bloggers have already commented upon.

Still, both contain an underlying theme of convalescence through fantasy storytelling, and that’s worth recognizing. In any case, I’m getting off topic here, and I basically wanted to bring up this discussion of “The Fall” based on my own thoughts and reactions to the movie. I think that no one can argue that “The Fall” is visually stunning. In fact, I had to watch the special features before I even believed that the places where the crew filmed were real. But what else does anyone know about this movie? What is your opinion? Maybe you’ve seen something that awakened a similar feeling in you—whether it be nostalgia, amazement, hate, or whatever. Anyhow, if anyone feels like sharing, please do.

Thanks!

***SEASONAL BONUS!***If you can explain the following conundrum to me, I will consider you a genius. OK, when I started teaching at my present job, I left one class to go teach another one every evening around 5:30. As I walked outside to my second classroom, I often was blessed with amazing views of the sunset. In a period starting in March and ending in July or so, I observed these daily sunsets. The physical point where the sun dipped below the horizon was gradually moving a little bit every day.

Now, it does that in Colorado, too, and as America’s Summer comes into being, the days get longer and the sun sets later every day. That's normal. However, in Costa Rica, the opposite was the case, and the sun would set a little bit earlier every day. Maybe I was forming my own personal time zone by just drinking WAAAY too much coffee, but that just doesn’t seem right at all. I know that we’re much closer to the equator than in Colorado, but how could this be possible, seeing as we’re still in the northern hemisphere? Anybody got anything?

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Answer to Photo Quiz

So, remember this picture from the other day?

It turns out that the picture was taken in... (drumroll please)...

Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran!

I only bring up this picture thing again to make a small point (Fade in after-school special music; we're gonna learn something more valuable than mere geography here, kids). The point is probably cliché, but it is interesting to see where our prejudices and stereotypes can sometimes take our imaginations.

Now, I'm not sure how I came across this image, but I think it had something to do with looking at a map of Santiago's metro system, and one thing led to another, as is often the case. Suddenly I was looking at the Wikipedia page devoted to Tehran, and the pictures, especially the one above, really caught my eye. "Weird," I thought. "That's what I'd imagine some place like Salt Lake City would look like." But in fact, Salt Lake City looks like this:

...which ironically looks like a mental picture I would have formed of Tehran, before I saw the first picture.

So what's my point? That cities dominated by different branches of right-wing fundamentalist politics can deceive our stereotypes? Well, that's part of it. But I also think that there's something to be said about these stereotypes themselves. After all--be honest here--how many of you, if asked to form associations upon hearing the words "Tehran" or "Iran," would have come up with something positive? How many would have thought of Ahmadinejad, or terrorists, or Arabs, or dusty deserts? I, for one, probably would have.

Yet here we have a picture that shows us that despite our preconceived notions of our world, the home of our supposed enemy doesn't look that scary after all... in fact, it looks like a pretty nice place to go on a resort vacation and get in some quality time by the fireplace after a long day of skiing.

And Salt Lake City looks like a suburban skate park.

So, if anyone's headed to Iran any time soon for a bit of tourism, give me a call. I'll bring my curiosity, my camera and, of course, my snow boots.


PS: Interestingly enough, according to this site's Clustrmap, Sitzblog has even had one visitor from Iran! (Scroll down on the page that opens to see individual country statistics)

(Both pictures copyright-released and available on Wikimedia Commons)

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Sitzmedia: A Great Book With A Huge Title

Over the last couple of days, I've been reading this book:

It was given to me (or maybe just loaned, I can't remember) by my friend Julien Katchinoff when we were in Colorado for Pierogi Sunday. He and his wife Martha were the ones in Peace Corps Georgia, and he highly recommended me this book.

Well, he was right. It's a great book. Robert D. Kaplan travels from Hungary to Turkmenistan via many other countries (most of which will cause you to continually flip back to the maps on the first few pages of the book). The book was written in 2000 about a trip he took in 1998, but it still seems current and exciting, somehow. The writing is vivid without being overly flowery, and the end result is that you find yourself beginning to care about countries like Bulgaria, which before would have barely caused a blip on your World Geography Radar.

Here' a typical excerpt, from page 76:

"American and Russian values in Eastern Europe were still at war: the humanism demonstrated by a homeless shelter for an abused minority and a university to foster tolerance pitted against the absolutism and thuggery of criminal oligarchies. Bulgaria was a poignant, if obscure, battleground in this struggle."

Maybe I'm just a geography nerd. After all, my students half-mocked, half-challenged me to name world capitals during English class (In hindsight, I'm starting to think that they didn't really care if I knew the capital of Somalia, and I suspect they were just trying to distract me). But geography nerd or not, there's surely something interesting in this book for anyone who's interested in post-Communism world politics, travelogues, or just plain good writing.

And in an interesting twist, when I arrived to work today after reading my book in the back seat of my carpool, I looked up and what should I see but a Lada Niva, Soviet automotive engineering at it's best! As I watched this rare Cold-War beauty chug and smoke off into the distance toward the freeway, I reluctantly closed my book, eager to begin another new chapter during my lunch break.



(Lada picture from Wikimedia Commons)

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Sitzmedia: Bill Bryson Nebraska Excerpt

Hi everyone, we're back with another Bill Bryson quote from The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America ...although these quotes can probably be more properly termed "excerpts," instead of just mere quotes.

Frankly, I'm not sure if this is OK to do. I've tried doing a bit of internet research, and I can't figure out how much of a book or magazine I can excerpt and still be legit. If anyone knows, please feel free to tell me. And if you're Bill Bryson and you don't want me putting up so much of your book on my crappy site, feel free to tell me that, too.

In any case, today's excerpt is about Nebraska. Personally, I really can't say enough bad things about Nebraska. I know that this is a sticking point with some of my friends, since many of them have relatives who were unlucky enough to be left behind in Nebraska when their families migrated west towards a more promising future in Colorado. And I definitely hate Nebraska's football team. This is for two reasons: 1) I hate Nebraska and, 2) I hate football teams in general.

As an extra aside, this rabid dislike of Nebraska came to an interesting head when I went to the University of Colorado, because my university's team routinely played in games against Nebraska. But, you see, I also hated Colorado's team (see Reason 2 above). This meant that I had to strike a delicate balance and occasionally root for the home team, if only to blow those corn-husking bastards out of the water.

I've probably introduced this quote enough, so I'll let Bryson take over from here:

(From The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, page 207-208):

“I was headed for Nebraska. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to have to say too often if you can possibly help it. Nebraska must be the most unexciting of all the states. Compared with it, Iowa is paradise. Iowa at least is fertile and green and has a hill. Nebraska is like a 75,000-square-mile bare patch. In the middle of the state is a river called the Platte, which at some times of the year is two or three miles wide. It looks impressive until you realize that it is only about four inches deep. You could cross it in a wheelchair. On a landscape without any contours of depressions to shape it, the Platte just lies there, like a drink spilled across a tabletop. It is the most exciting thing in the state.

“When I was growing up, I used to wonder how Nebraska came to be lived in. I mean to say, the original settlers, creaking across America in their covered wagons, had to have passed through Iowa, which is green and fertile and has, as I say, a hill, but stopped short of Colorado, which is green and fertile and has a mountain range, and settled instead for a place that is flat and brown and full of stubble and prairie dogs. Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? Do you know what the original settlers made their houses of? Dried mud. And do you know what happened to all those mud houses when the rainy season came every year? That’s correct, they slid straight into the Platte River.

“For a long time I couldn’t decide whether the original settlers in Nebraska were insane or just stupid, and then I saw a stadium full of University of Nebraska football fans in action on a Saturday and realized that they must have been both. I may be a decade or so out of touch here but when I left America, the University of Nebraska didn’t so much play football as in engage in weekly ritual slaughters. They were always racking up scores of 58-3 against hapless opponents. Most schools, when they get a decent lead, will send in a squad of skinny freshmen in unsoiled uniforms to let them run around a bit and get dirty and, above all, to give the losers a sporting chance to make the score respectable. It’s called fair play.

“Not Nebraska. The University of Nebraska would send in flamethrowers if it were allowed. Watching Nebraska play football every week was like watching hyenas tearing open a gazelle. It was unseemly. It was unsporting. And of course the fans could never get enough of it. To sit among them with the score 66-0 and watch them bray for more blood is a distinctly unnerving experience, particularly when you consider that a lot of these people must work at the Strategic Air Command in Omaha. If Iowa State ever upset Nebraska, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they nuked Ames.”

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Photo Quiz

Please take a moment to look at the image below:

OK, now that you've had a look, think about it for a minute.

The question of the day is this:

Where was this picture taken?

I'll bring it up again in a new post a few days from now, but I wanted you to have a chance to put up any guesses that you might have in the meantime. Thanks for playing!

(Picture is a copyright-released image from Wikimedia Commons)

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Sitzmedia: Bill Bryson Quote

This will be my first official contribution to the "Sitzmedia" idea that I mentioned yesterday. I was recently reading the book The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America by Bill Bryson. I liked a few passages that I wanted to share, mainly because they were funny or talked shit about Nebraska. So, I'll put up the first quote in a moment, but first I wanted to mention something about Bryson.

He's brilliant.

Bill Bryson is one of my favorite authors. I believe--although this belief is not entirely confirmed-- that my friend Brad Bonner loaned me one of Bryson's books when we were exchange students together in Germany ten years ago. Ah yes, 1999. The German air was cool, my head was covered in hair, and a sense of a promising future filled with Eurotrash permeated every aspect of our lives. Basically, we were partying like it was 1999.

Brad loaned me Bryson's book, and even then it was 10 years old. Neither those 10 years, nor the 10 more that have passed since I first read this book, have diminished its entertainment value in any way. In the book Bryson basically drives around the US in a shitty Corvair, and snarkiness (and excellent writing) ensue. I can thoroughly recommend this book or any other one by Bryson, to anyone who enjoys humorous non-fiction writing. I'll put up a quote about Columbus today, and tomorrow I'll put up the aforementioned Nebraska-slamming excerpt. Hope you enjoy:

(From page 147 of "The Lost Continent," by Bill Bryson):

“It was the Columbus Day weekend and the roads were busy. Columbus has always seemed to me an odd choice of hero for a country that celebrates success as America does because he was such a dismal failure. Consider the facts: he made four long voyages to the Americas, but never once realized that he wasn’t in Asia and never found anything worthwhile. Every other explorer was coming back with exciting new products like potatoes and tobacco and nylon stockings, and all Columbus found to bring home were some puzzled-looking Indians—and he thought they were Japanese. (“Come on, you guys, let’s see a little sumo.”)

“But perhaps Columbus’ most remarkable shortcoming was that he never actually saw the land that was to become the United States. This surprises a lot of people. They imagine him trampling over Florida, saying, “You know, this would make a nice resort.” But in fact his voyages were all spent in the Caribbean and bouncing around the swampy, bug-infested coasts of Central America. If you ask me, the Vikings would make far more worthy heroes for America. For one thing, they did actually discover it. On top of that, the Vikings were manly and drank out of skulls and didn’t take crap from anybody. Now that’s the American way.”

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