Bad habit or no? Striking up a conversation with the stranger sitting next to you

The view from the Barefoot bar as I “talked stories” with my neighbor.

So according to my husband, I have a bad habit of striking up conversations with strangers. He says it’s not really a bad habit per se, it’s simply a result of my upbringing here in the uber friendly state of Hawaii, where it’s natural to talk to the person sitting next to you at the bus stop or somewhere else without fear of being victimized by that person or others working with that person. Or not thinking twice about stopping on the side of the road to help someone who is stalled or trying to change a flat tire by themselves. Apparently that’s totally an “only in Hawaii” kind of thing. My husband spent 13 years in the active service and was posted to many locations across the U.S. and internationally, so he’s seen a lot and worries about my “naivete” when it comes to the intentions of others in a situation that looks like a person is in need. He says growing up in Hawaii can be a blessing and a curse if you have to move anywhere else. Not just for the I can’t believe I had to move away from paradise factor, but dealing with the not so friendly attitudes of others. Case in point, Hawaii-born person, you’re traveling along H-1 and see either a mother trying to change a flat and keep and eye on her kids in the car or a senior citizen with a flat. First gut reaction? Stop and help right? Sure, only in Hawaii, because if you aren’t in Hawaii and you aren’t a member of law enforcement or the road safety crew, you may not want to pull over. That seemingly innocent looking person could actually be the bait for others waiting to victimize you, or that person may actually not be what they seem to be and could be waiting to victimize you themselves. These are things I never fathomed growing up here because most of us grow up with Asian ideas of karma infused into our upbringing, regardless of ethnicity. We all grew up being taught that you stop and help the grandma lady because next time if your grandma gets stuck someone will do the same for her.

In the end though, I think he’s right and unfortunately it seems that Hawaii is slowly becoming more like everywhere else. We now have to be more vigilant and careful when it comes to being “overly helpful.” Am I planning on moving anytime soon, no, but that’s a conversation that has come up fairly often in our household. What’s your opinion, is there such thing as being too helpful and too nice?

Things you learn teaching at an all boys’ school…las cosas que mis alumnos me enseñan

PC: Morguefile free photos

It’s been more than ten years since I started my teaching career. I’ve spent the majority of those years working in the co-ed environment from grades K through 20 (university). But now, I’m in my third year of teaching at an all boys high school, and within these three years, I have learned a ton of things; from how differently boys learn in comparison to girls to how teen boys will truly interact with each other when there are no girls in the classroom. Let me tell you, it’s an eye opening experience and you learn something new everyday.

One of the first things I quickly learned was that I’m extremely grateful that my parents are PE teachers and that my dad was an American football coach for years. I learned how to talk the talk and walk the walk of an athlete and in that manner I can now connect with my student athletes. I am able to give them examples using sports analogies in order to help them better understand the finer points of the Spanish language.

The second thing I’m thankful for is that I am married to a military man who is “prepping me for the zombie apocalypse” LOL. We play Call of Duty games all of the time and these games help me to connect with the other half of my students, those who are more introverted and prefer to take their skills to the computer and television through video games. I’m able to use video game analogies for those students in order to reach them and create a bridge for Spanish through those examples.

It is thanks to the men in my life, my dad and my husband, that I am better equipped to understand and relate to my students. Of course, it is necessary to involve my men in my teaching strategies because they are the same gender as my students and were in their shoes once, whereas, since we learn differently, I cannot say that I was ever in the shoes of my students. I was a student and I was a teen, I definitely know how it feels to be there, but my methods of learning and comprehending are different from how young men learn. I learn something new everyday and my teaching strategies are always changing and evolving.

Hace más de diez años que haya empezado a mi carrera como maestra. Pasaba la mayoría de mi oficio enseñando en escuelas mixtas. Pero, ahora estoy en mi tercer año eseñando en un colegio para varones y dentro de estos tres años he aprendido un montón de cosas en cuanto cómo aprenden los chicos a diferencia que las chicas y además cómo se portan cuando no hay niñas dentro de las salones. La primera cosa que he aprendido es que estoy muy agradecida que soy la hija de maestros de educación física y que mi papá era un entrenador para equipos de fútbol americano por muchos años. He aprendido el habla y los pensamientos de los deportistas. He aprendido entenderse bien a los deportistas entonces puedo darles ejemplos en cuanto las lecciones que ellos pueden relacionarse a los deportes y así pueden entender las lecciones. Además estoy muy agradecida que soy la mujer de un hombre que está preparándome para el apocalipsis de los zombies através de los videojuegos. Con estas experiencias puedo entenderse bien la otra mitad de mis alumnos que no son deportistas sino son los que les gustan los videojuegos y las cosas más cerebrales. Porque tengo estas experiencias jugando los videojuegos con mi marido, puedo asociar mejor con estos chicos más tímidos y también darles ejemplos através de estas cosas para entender mejor la materia de los idiomas y el castellano. Entonces es gracias a mi papá y mi marido que puedo entenderse bien a mis alumnos, claro es un poco difícil porque somos géneros opuestos entonces necesito la ayuda de los hombres de mi vida para mejorar mi estilo de enseñanza.

It’s never as good as the book…or is it just me?

Summer is the time to hit the movie theater because it’s hot as heck and well there’s never anything good on TV anyway right?

Studios, producers, actors, marketers, and toy manufacturers, everyone seems to make their bread and butter from the “summer blockbuster.” There are no original films out there anymore, most seem to be based on novels, comics, or even an English remake of a foreign film.

I’m one of those people that the big conglomerates love to hate though because I’m a voracious reader, which means I’ve generally read the book that the movie is based on and I’m also one of those who loves the book a lot more than the movie. Why is it that the books are generally better? The English teacher, journalist, and writer in me says it is because the written word allows for each reader to join with the author in imagining the situation and characters, creating an world within his/her mind’s eye that is greater than anything created on screen. The news producer in me says that movies are a visual medium and are great in that respect, but the transfer from book to screenplay/script is where things can fall apart. Essentially if the author of the original work is not involved the transfer from book to screen goes something like this: The book is published and people love it. A studio decides to make the book into a movie, if the author doesn’t want to be involved, a screenwriter is hired to adapt the novel to a screenplay. This means that person has to first read and then interpret the intentions of the original author. That screenplay is worked into a script for the actors/director and then filmed. There are a lot of middle men involved between the author and the audience at that point, the collaboration that seems so private and intimate between author and reader when it comes to the book is gone, you are now receiving a very different message.

A perfect case in point with the The Hunger Games series vs The Harry Potter series. For both sets (The Hunger Games has only debuted two movies out of the trilogy so far), the books were better than the films, however most Harry Potter movies came extremely close to providing the same amount of thrills and excitement as the books did. As for The Hunger Games movies, so far, the books have been better than the movies. There’s so much more action happening on the written page of Suzanne Collins’ novels than on the screen. Perhaps it is because Hollywood is spending too much time focusing on the post apocalyptic nuclear war aspect of it given the climate of today’s world? J.K. Rowling provided the model of how to protect your artistic purpose and ideas in your work, become intrinsically involved in the marketing and development of your literary work as it moves through to the big screen. Reports show that Suzanne Collins is following Rowling’s model of involvement, but for some reason, the Hunger Games movies are not speaking to me the way the books did. Perhaps the Harry Potter series was a one in a million sort of thing where they were able to translate as much of the action and excitement provided within the pages of J.K. Rowling’s series to the big screen.

My theory stands as the summer blockbuster movie season gets underway, it’s never as good as the book was. Your thoughts?

Autora frustrada, Frustrated author

I love to write, it’s one of those things. I think most of us who go into journalism express ourselves better in the written word than we do orally or in a face to face environment. Don’t get me wrong, we can express ourselves just fine if we have to and we’re really good at public speaking and presentations as well, it’s just that it can get frazzling and sometimes we’ll go off on a tangent, or completely “squirrel” ourselves because our attention spans are just that short. We are the complete package and awesomely put together, when we are able to sit, draft, read, edit, and repeat. If we preferred oral communication, then most of us would have been lawyers instead, it’s the ability to argue factor, we simply do it better on paper.

It’s been more than ten years since I left the journalism world, and I’ve gone from being a “grammar, citation, and coherence nazi” to reports and anchors to being one with teenagers in the hopes that their writing, reading, vocabulary, and comprehension levels would improve in order to put them on better footing in college and the world beyond.

Now it’s my turn though, I want to go back to doing one of the things on my bucket list, I always wanted to write a book. My ninth grade English teacher opened my eyes to a vast world out there: Greek mythology, The Nectar in the Sieve a novel that told not only of the caste struggle and lives of the poor in India, but revealed the situation of genders and people beyond my little island of Hawaii, and of course Shakespeare at all levels. Through these works, I came to appreciate the historical dramas both in the written and film formats that have helped me to understand that history, literature and the world are connected. I would never have made it through my Spanish Language and Literature Master’s exam without my love of a good historical drama.

There are many things that I enjoy reading and writing about, now is the time to finally give myself the time to sit, gather all of those hastily written notes that I have collected over the years, and to finally get my autora self going!

La herencia de los abuelos. Keeping up the family legacy

New Year’s Eve 2013, the cousins and our spouses. We may be getting older but we still relish in each other’s company.

The cousins, we may all look different, but we sure act alike! Answer to the question: You related…is obvious when you watch how we all act. Kind of scary for the spouses I would say…hahaaha!

 

La herencia de mis abuelos paternos es la importancia de la familia. Para ellos la familia que iba a la iglesia juntos y rezaba juntos quedaba juntos. Hace seis años que mis abuelos murieron, pero la mayoría de nosotros, mis primos y sus esposos porque ya somos viejos y casados, y mis tios tratamos de mantener esa creencia en la importancia de los lazos familiares. Lo que pasa es que ya somos grandes, hemos perdido nuestra fundación, nuestros abuelos, pero ahora sabemos que ellos tenían razón. Aunque la mayoria de nosotros ya no vamos a la iglesia, creemos en vivir la vida bien, tratar a la gente como le merece y enseñar a nuestros hijos la importancia de la familia y la humildad. Además Díos está en todos lados, no solo la iglesia los domingos. Me encanta que puedo pasar tanto tiempo con mis primos y que somos tan unidos. No importa si crecíamos juntos o no, somos de la misma mente, la misma vaina, la misma familia. — The legacy of my paternal grandparents was and always will be the importance of family. For them, the family that went to church together and prayed together stayed together. It’s been about six years since my grandmother and then my grandfather left us for the bigger family reunion in heaven, but most of us, all of us cousins and our spouses, because yes, we are getting up there where most of the grandkids are now married, and our parents try to maintain the belief in the importance of family ties. Our grandparents were the foundation and we lost them, but now that we are all older, we’ve come to realize that they had a point. When the chips are down, even though you don’t get to choose them, most of your family will be there whether it’s something simple like moving a couch or losing/gaining a loved one. Those relationships though, need to be nurtured like any other. I love it that we would all prefer to hang out with each other at one of our Aunts’ or Uncles’ houses on nights like New Year’s Eve or other special occasions rather than hanging out with friends. I’m thankful that our spouses and significant others understand and appreciate those special bonds that we share as family and that they’re okay with hanging out with family. Of course, the fact that they’re with us to begin with shows that they’re okay with the crazy that is our family. One of my uncles commented that our grandparents would be proud with the way many of us cousins have continued to value each other and our friendships with one another over all else. In my heart I know he’s right, that’s a very wise uncle of mine.

We’re a little bit nuts ¡Estamos un poco locos!

The crazies

Crazy, locos, that’s us. My family is a little bit nuts! Okay, a lot nuts! We’re the type of family that you have to make sure you go to the bathroom often so you don’t have an accident while laughing.

My dad has five sisters and they’re all very close. They hang out with each other and throughout the years, they continue to crack each other and us up on a daily basis. I admire that even now they are company for each other, they hang out with each other whenever they have a chance. When my grandmother was alive, they used to do “girls’ day out” as in pick her up and haul her to the movies. Everyone has the same weird sense of humor so it’s not like they had to argue over which movie to watch. It’s comforting to know my aunties have each other as company especially as they all get older.

For all of us, nieces and nephews, they are our greatest fans and our biggest critics. They’re the first to cheer and shout in support of us from athletic events, graduations, to other lifetime events. They are also the first to smack us on the head if we are getting to big for our britches in the ever loving attempt to keep you humble that only your family member are allowed to impart with such honesty. I think there are very few families out there where the 20 and 30 something year old nieces and nephews would prefer to ring in the new year with the 50+ aunties, yep we’re a weird bunch o’ nuts.

Oops wrong football! ¡Es fútbol!

Hanauma Bay

Last week Sunday the husband and I spent a few hours at Hanauma Bay… as you can see from the picture, the beach was pretty deserted which was interesting knowing how much of a tourist attraction Hanauma is. We sat there for a good while trying to figure out why the beach was so deserted on a Sunday and then I heard a group starting to hoot and whoop because they had just checked the “score.” Ding! We’re probably the only ones in the US who are into the wrong kind of “football.”

Our family is into fútbol. We like soccer, my husband was born and raised in South America, I played soccer when I was a girl and I’ve lived and studied in South America and have come to think of Argentina as my second “home.” I’m still the football coach’s daughter though, I understand the game; had to, dad coached for years, younger brother played and my high school girlfriends and I were the “stats girls.” It’s just that after years of being “forced” to live and breathe that kind of football, I choose to enjoy the fútbol that I loved playing as a girl. The fútbol that can unite an entire country for a time at least, and during Mundial season result in even the local priest telling people to stay home on Sunday and watch the game!

I like to mess with my students because I work at a high school that’s big on football, so the boys will ask me so Ms. who’s your favorite football team, and I’ll look at them without batting an eyelash and say Barcelona. Usually it takes a good 10 seconds for that to sink in and register with them. And then they say…awwww come on Ms. seriously who’s your favorite football team. And I generally respond with that is a football team. What can I say, our family is the only one that doesn’t get upset if drill weekend falls on Superbowl Sunday and Monday nights are great at my house because my husband and I can actually talk, he’s not watching the game on TV. In fact, we take serious advantage of the fact that everyone else in the US is football obsessed, from hitting Hanauma bay on Superbowl Sunday to hitting the theater and other normally crowded locales on a Monday night. However, when the World Cup rolls around….now that’s a different story at our house altogether!!

Finally Made it to Spain…¡Finalmente viajé a España!

Santa Cruz de Tenerife en las islas Canarias, España

Ever since I started taking Spanish as a language at 15-years old, I dreamed of visiting the “motherland,” the place where the language originated. I finally got that chance recently. I didn’t truly get to spend much time on the “Spanish mainland,” the Iberian peninsula, instead, I actually stopped over in Madrid to catch a flight over to Tenerife, part of the Canary Island chain. The island chain is located off of the main Iberian Peninsula, the situation and geographic location is a lot like Hawaii is to the US, except the Canary Islands are an hour by plane from mainland Spain, not 5 hours from the nearest land mass like Hawaii. The other thing that feels like home? Well, that it’s an island chain of course! The climate and scenery are a lot like Hawaii, except of course that everyone speaks Spanish and there are fewer Asians. Although the surprising thing is that there are a large number of Asians in Tenerife who, get this, speak perfect Spanish! There’s a large population of ethnic Chinese in Tenerife and the interesting part is they’ve maintained a lot of their home culture in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. For example, I went to a Taoist temple to attend a service and the prayers are done in Chinese, while the sermon is done in Spanish, the congregation is made up of both native Chinese and Spanish speakers. It’s an extremely interesting cultural mix and display. More to come on my adventures in Spain, after all ¡la vida es así!