There and Back Again

Well, folks, I’ve been stateside for six weeks now, and I figured an update was in order!

Let’s rewind back to early June.  Leaving Norway was no fun.  I may or may not have cried quietly much to the distress of my seat neighbor on the flight from Trondheim to Oslo.  But once I arrived in Oslo, I started getting excited about my homecoming.  Why?  Because I met a TON OF AMERICANS in line for passport check.  If you’re a Norwegian friend reading this, you may be thinking to yourself, “How on earth did she connect with strangers in a large public place?  What terrible circumstance forced them to interact?  Were they all drunk?  Is that why they talked to one another?”

NO, Norwegian friends!  We talked to each other because Americans are outrageously friendly – I rediscovered my people!  In no more than thirty minutes, I met nine Americans.  Would you like to hear about them?  Okay!

I met four American women in their mid-fifties, two from Charlotte, North Carolina and two from Columbus, Ohio.  How did I meet them!?  Well, they were behind me in the very long passport check line and loudly complaining about how some people were blatantly cutting, when in reality no one was actually cutting.  (Aside from being outrageously friendly, I learned from this interaction that Americans can be kind of judgy and loud.)  Finally, to save them the embarrassment of further loud complaining, I turned around and explained that a lot of the folks “skipping” line were EU citizens, going through the EU passport control line.  Their outrage was immediately mollified, and I was greeted with a chorus of thank yous for the information.  I was then grilled: why I was in Norway? had I enjoyed my time there? and was my mom worried about me?

A few minutes later, I noted my gate was closing, and at the urging of my four new friends, I cut in line (oh, how their tune about line cutting had changed!).  In the process of cutting, two 20-year-old Americans who had been dating for two years and were on their first extended trip together asked if they could tag along with me (yes, they provided me with all the information within the first 60 seconds of our meeting) – they’d never been through passport check and didn’t realize it was a thing.  The girl kept telling me that she just didn’t know they’d have to do a passport check and they hadn’t budgeted enough time.  Like over and over.  (Aside from being outrageously friendly, I learned from this interaction that Americans have a hard time reading clearly marked informational signs.)  They were sweet though, and they were my baby ducks as I wove in and out of line, cutting closer to the front.

In my last cut, I encountered a grandfather/grandson duo.  I learned from them that the grandfather had been a special education teacher for 35 years.  No big deal.  He wanted to know all about my plans for teaching and where I was from.  They were returning home from a trip to trace their family ancestry in Denmark.  Despite the fact that they were boarding the same flight as me, for which the gate was closing, they let me cut in front of them.  (I learned nothing else about Americans from this interaction because they were just outrageously friendly.)

Finally, my seat neighbor on the plane not only helped me load my ABSURDLY OVERWEIGHT bag in to the overhead compartment but also shared the following with me: his name is Matt; he’s a junior at Tufts; he spent the last semester studying abroad in Amsterdam; they’re a lot more gay friendly in Amsterdam than in the United States; he’s moving to New York for the summer to stay with some friends in Brooklyn; he really likes organic food.  (Aside from being outrageously friendly, I learned from this interaction that America is riddled with hipsters and I’m okay with that.)

Boom!  Nine new friends in under thirty minutes, guys!  Heck yeah, America!  I’ll take your friendliness any day!  In jives super well with my willingness to smile all the time, desire to ask inappropriate personal questions, and general delight in strangers.  That, among many reasons, has been one of my great joys in being home.  The friction of being in another culture forces growth but the happiness of simply fitting without effort is a beautiful, warm thing.  It’s home.

All that said, my immediate joy in the familiar chitter-chatter of my fellow Americans and all that symbolizes has not completely erased the splendor of Norway (and my Norwegian-based friends) from my mind.  Coming home has certainly been a transition.

I spent a lot of quality time with my awesome family!

I saw wonderful friends!

I bought furniture! Like a grown-up! (From a second-hand store, but still, it’s a pretty grown-up thing to do).

I adopted two kittens!

I have a lot of English teacher reading to do because I’m employed! Raleigh high schoolers, prepare to get your learn on!

So, clearly I only have pictures of the happy parts of homecoming, but I do find myself missing the quiet of Norway, the expectation that the outdoors should play a role in your life, the extended and necessary walks associated with my day-to-day there.  These aren’t things I find in the United States.  I miss the cultural mixing, the challenge of finding common ground or being forced to empathize with an unfamiliar perspective for the sake of new friendship in a new place (I’m looking at you, Mats).  I miss having a deadline, knowing that my time has an endpoint, the necessity that forces on every moment to be present and alive and engaged and joyful.  I miss Norway.  I miss Ireland.  I miss South Africa.  I miss traveling.  I miss my friends.

That pull between enjoying the familiar and missing the what I’ve left behind has put me in a great position for reflection.  I fear sometimes it may be easy to fall back into the grooves and rhythms of life before travel, but I’m hopeful that my time abroad has changed the shape of my way of experiencing the world.  How so?  Well…

• I want to keep seeing life as a time-limited adventure.  Home can make the world seem dull, but there still are so many things to explore everywhere.  Maybe I’m not going to be trying my hand at cross country skiing or making inappropriate use of the American embassy in Dublin every day, but I can visit whirligig farms, make impromptu trips to the beach, revisit familiar haunts with fresh eyes, and take the time to poke into the unfamiliar corners of my familiar world.  Being blasé about things seems like it makes life too short and too long at the same time.  I want to stay excited!
• I want to continue cross cultural exchange.  One thing I’ve come to value about America is that we truly are a nation of immigrants.  I don’t know if that really sunk in until spending time abroad.  I love the variety of opinions and backgrounds and ideas we have here!  It’s hard, it causes friction, it’s messy, but it’s wonderful!  How lucky are we that this is who we get to be as a country?  We’re everyone and no one.  We make ourselves up every day.  I love that.  I LOVE THAT.  I’m want to make an effort to more actively value that now that I’m home.
•  I want to keep my space for quiet and creating.  It’s easy for me to feel uncomfortable in silence and solitude.  I like people; I like culture; I like sharing and snuggling and smiling.  But being abroad often forces aloneness on you and that’s a healthy thing.  It’s what spawned this blog.  It’s what’s forced me to clarify my values.  It’s what’s given me the time and space to reflect on the world around me rather than continuously consume stimuli.  I feel like life doesn’t amount to much if you never take three steps back and squint at it, you know?  I really want to keep some time for squinting.
• I want to stay brave.  We’ve covered in previous posts how I’m just not particularly brave.  How I’m scared about everything kind of all the time, right?  I don’t want to fall back completely into the comfort of a place and of some of the relationships I hold most dear.  I want to try hard, new things and probably hurt sometimes but, you know, also grow because there’s not much of a point in living if you’re not growing, right?  I want to continue to challenge myself and lean hard against boundaries and confidently (or at least uncomplainingly) leap into the unknown.
• I want to keep telling stories.

So, friends, part of the reason that I’m committing this to the forever-text of the internet is so that you can help hold me accountable.  Life and work and sameness will inevitably make these hard promises to keep to myself, and when you see me faltering I want you slap me (metaphorically) and remind me of these goals.  I’ve been all over the place and now I’m back again.  Don’t let me squander all the wonderful lessons I’ve learned during that time!

As a final note, I’ve had some questions about my intentions concerning the blog.  The spirit of the thing was to catalogue my experiences and impressions and thoughts while I was far away so I could feel close to my friends and family.  Now I’m home again and that initial purpose isn’t really a motivator anymore.  That said, I’ve been lucky enough to makes some great global connections, and while I no longer need to keep all of my North Carolina people abreast of the goings-on of my world, I’m realizing that I have friends scattered across Europe, Africa, Asia, and the United States who I’ll rarely see in the coming year.

Beyond that, I’ve really enjoyed the act of writing.  Writing forces me to reflect and be aware and consolidate the amorphousness of a string of moments into a (sometimes roughly) shaped narrative.  The way we tell our stories can inform the way we live our lives, and I want to keep that intentionality in my existence.  It makes me be a better person, and I love doing it.  How many things do we really get to say that about in our lives?  That’s a special thing.

However, teaching begins in August, and I will no doubt be an outrageous mess of a human being for about a year once that starts.  I’ll make efforts to be an un-mess but I make no promises.  And while I’d love to keep the blog exactly as is, teaching will likely dominate my experience of the world for the foreseeable future.  And, regardless, I feel like blogging publicly about my experiences as a teacher seems like a good way to get fired?  Also, just on the most basic level, Rachael is no longer abroad.  So, with that in mind, this blog post, with great sadness, will retire Rachael Goes Abroad.

The writing will continue in one way or another, but I’m not quite sure how yet.  Keep your eyes out, lovely readers.  I’ll figure out some way to keep storytelling in my world.  Thanks for reading for the past 18 months.  Words cannot contain how much I’ve enjoyed writing for you!

I’ll Miss You, Norway

Well, guys, I’m sitting in the airport, getting ready to board a plane that will take me back to the United States.  One of the nice things about packing up a year’s worth of stuff into two bags (okay, two bags and a giant backpack and a purse – I’m not a light packer) is that it’s pretty time consuming and doesn’t leave your heart and mind a lot of time to process.  But now that I’ve braved the gauntlet of checking in my (too heavy) bags and airport security (they don’t even check you ID in Norway!), the idea that I’m really, actually leaving is beginning to sink in.

I’m not sure how to begin describing how much I’m going to miss this place.

I’m going to miss looking at these beautiful buildings.

I’m going to miss the fact that there’s a bus that takes you to this place.

After getting off that bus that takes you to wonderful field-beach, you can walk around and just see places like this. This is right near town, guys! Beautiful places everywhere.

 

But, I mean, seriously. I got to live here for a year!

I’m definitely going to miss waffles and apple cake!

I’m going to miss seeing this everyday.

I mean, really look how cool this cathedral is! You’d miss it too.

I’m going to miss passing this, one of the more distressing pieces of street art I’ve ever seen, every day on the way to school.

I’m going to miss seeing these little guys all decked out for the weather on the bus every day.

I’m going to miss these jokers.

I’m really going to miss pretending to be Norwegian.  (Photo credit to the lovely Jen)

I might even miss mistyping everything because of these silly Norwegian keyboards.

Of course, more than the day-to-day wonder of being here though, I’m going to miss the generous, kind people I’ve met.  I’m going to miss these folks.

Throwback to week 1!  Little did I know how much these two guys were going to form my Norway experience.

Birthday dinner!  I only got to turn 25 once, and I had the good fortune to spend it with these folks.

Look at this frenzied cooking!  So many wonderful meals at Val and Mats’s house.

This is a photo really captures Mari and Ida’s dynamic. (Photo credit to the wonderful Jen)

I couldn’t have asked for better roommates!

I was even lucky enough to find a wonderful second home and amazing friends in Barry, Kaia, and Eivind!

I can’t forget all the other wonderful Fulbrights in Norway!

And a special shout out to Trondheim Fulbright buddy, Joe.  I’d have been lost without him. (Photo credit again to Jen)

I’m so sad to be leaving, y’all, but just in putting these pictures together for the blog post, I’m remembering how many real connections and incredible memories I’m going to take away from this place.  Thank you, everyone who let me in their lives here.  Thank you, U.S. government, for having the Fulbright program that let me be here.  Thank you, Norway, for being a place that I will always, always hold in my heart.

Okay.  Off to catch my plane and cry inappropriately in public!  Norway, I’ll miss you.

Adventures!

The last two weeks have been filled with wonderful women.  I went down to Bergen for a visit with Ida and Amanda, two of my very favorite Fulbrights here in Norway, and Jen, my wonderful friend/soul-mate from college who now lives in London, came for a visit.  It was exactly what my heart needed.  Exactly.

See, I’ve always been bad at transitions and the unexpected, which is pretty unfortunate in that those two aspects of life are generally when the really interesting, formative things happen.  I can’t just let the world happen around a moment of change.  Instead, I obsess over when and how and where and crush all the joy out of my remaining time in a place.

The last few weeks, I’ve been preparing to leave Norway, looking at the next steps and agonizing about big life choices.  Those are important things to do, but sometimes I let that all overwhelm me and I stop being present in a moment.  Ida, Amanda, and Jen all took me by the hand and pulled me out of the swampy, befuddling mess of a world my anxieties make for me and led me firmly into my actual world for which I should be thankful.

While perhaps what I value most from both adventures are the marvelous, enlightening conversations, that does not easily lend itself to a blog entry.  So instead, I’ll give you some photos of our physical experiences of the wonderful, present world these women helped me walk into!

Bergen boats!

Enhjørning (unicorn) store! Clearly Bergen and I were meant to be friends.

An entirely black church in a forest.

Amanda being lovely in a forest.

We went to the top of a mountain and it was really sunny! Apparently this is rare in Bergen, a moment to be treasured.

Sometimes in Norway there are just trolls.

Jen’s visit overlapped with Norway’s big national holiday, the 17th of May, which celebrates Norway writing their constitution in 1814.  (Strangely, Norway did not earn their independence until August of 1905, but never mind that!  The big celebration is on May 17!)  We were lucky enough to get to share in some of the festivities with real live Norwegians!  Thanks, Norwegian friends!

May 16th cookout hosted by Mats and Val! See if you can spot Jennifer.

The delicious May 17th breakfast feast Mari, Ida, and Stian made for us!

Our kind hosts! Look at Mari’s bunad!

There’s also a parade on the 17th of May.  I want you to imagine the level of organization a parade would have if your middle school class organized a parade.  This would be a rough approximation of the 17th of May parade.  People in the crowd would run across the road intermittently during the parade and sometimes they would hop in and just march with a friend for a while.  It’s madness.  That said, adult Norwegians do a lot cooler things than your middle school class would have done.  Here’s a sample of some of the groups marching in the parade:

Mustache club?

Nurses with drums?

Star Wars?

Needless to say, both my trip to Bergen and celebrating May 17th here in Trondheim made me incredibly thankful for this year in Norway, for being in this physical space, but more than that, both these adventures made me thankful for the generosity, the kindness, and the wisdom of the wonderful people in my world.

Some Things Aren’t Science

I’ve been a bad blogger, guys.  A terrible blogger.  It’s been about three weeks since I last posted.  But I was doing things, I promise!  Really important things!  I went up to Barry and Kaia’s for some great conversation and some muddy, happy time with their dogs.  Tyler came back to Norway for a visit!  I went on a retreat with the high school to Selbu where all informational sessions were conducted in Norwegian.  I discovered a hidden talent for aiming and firing guns!  I read The Kite Runner and The Color Purple!  Russ began, making my days at the high school simultaneously more frustrating and more interesting!  I applied for jobs (eek!).  I finished seven seasons of The West Wing!  Like I said, I’ve been been doing really important things.

Firing air guns?! This is only one of the strange and wonderful activities we engaged in on the teachers’ retreat!

I’ve also been doing some work.  You know, teaching and writing and whatnot.  The teaching part has continued on much the same way as I’ve described in the last couple of posts but with lots of bright spots sprinkled in there.  I continue to be amazed by the differences between Norwegian and American students as well as the similarities, especially as the school year winds down and the weather improves – I suppose all students everywhere begin weighing the benefits of education against the joys of bare skin and sunlight and find the former a feathery abstraction upon reflection.  And I feel certain a post on the practice of Russ, end-of-school-year revelry at its most extreme, is waiting out in the ether for me to snatch down and type into words.

But for this moment, I want to write a bit about what I’m doing at the university.  You see, this semester, there aren’t really any English language writing courses for me to help with at NTNU.  Instead, I’ve been proofreading master’s students’ theses and occasionally popping over to campus to help with writing short courses.  Because of the limited class obligation, Nancy and I have been working on putting out an article on the benefits of the weekly email assignment we had our students complete last semester.  These assignments were an exercise in casual communication with a native English speaker (me).  The prompts were generally open ended – you can think of it as journal entries, but instead of no one reading them, I did!  I didn’t correct their language but just asked clarifying questions about what they wrote or simply offered some positive thoughts.  The idea is that creating a supportive, interested audience for students to practice their written English makes them better at communicating in English.

To me, this seems like a, “Yeah, well, obviously!” kind of exercise.  It just intuitively makes sense to me that a non-judgmental space in which to practice written English will just make people better at writing, speaking, and thinking in English.  Surely you will want to combine that with some reading, some more formal written assessments, and some real-life spoken English practice (which we did), but yeah – these assignments are just a good idea for improving language development.

This brings me back around to the article though.  See, when you write an article, I suppose the goal is to provide some kind of proof that what you’re doing is a good thing.  But then, how do you prove that students’ written ability has improved?  At first I thought to myself, “Well, that’s no problem.  I mean, sure, there continued to be a lot of errors in the students’ writing, but some kids started talking about more abstract ideas.  Some kids entries got longer.  Some kids simply got less shy in class.  There were tons of improvements!”

But then Nancy and I got to talking, and she wanted to see if we could find a more measurable impact on just the writing.  Apparently, it’s not good enough for an academic article to just say, “Well, this one kid stopped visibly shaking in class, and this other kid started making more friends, and this other kid…”  Apparently, you need some uniform numbers.  UGH!  So Nancy and I brainstormed all the concrete factors that point to improved writing skills.  Length, number of complete sentences, word count, number of transitions, number of complex sentences, etc.  Suddenly my work seemed like it was going to be less fun.  I was going to comb through 30 students’ weekly entries and count these things.  I tried to think positive thoughts though.  I thought to myself, “This will be a good exercise in something different.  This is almost like science!”  And I felt a little proud of that.

I’ll admit that living in Trondheim, surrounded by mostly engineer friends, has worn on my humanities soul a little bit.  Sometimes I find it hard to explain just exactly why English is just as important as biology or math or chemistry.  Sure, it’s a little easier to make the case for the importance of teaching but if I can’t justify the importance of just exactly what it is I’m teaching, teaching doesn’t mean much.  I know it’s important, but after talking around and around the importance of soft skills, communication, critical reading, and clear writing, I just get exhausted. And to be honest, though I hold those aspects of teaching English in high regard, I believe it’s equally important to teach stories – to get children reading literature and loving literature just because it’s there and it’s beautiful.  I want students to feel how round and rich and colorful words make the world.  I never quiet get around to articulating that point – it feels inexplicable.  It feels frivolous in the face of so much bright, clean, hard-edged science.  But I know it’s important.  It just is.  I feel that in the very core of my being.  It resonates in the chambers of my heart.  It touches on a truth so deep that the idea of justifying it seems cheap.

That said, when no one around you seems to read novels or enjoy writing and when some folks generally deride what you love, it can be hard to be the lone bastion of the humanities amongst your peers, glowing out the warm light of that kind of learning on the shining plains of a science and technology university.  You start to feel alone.  You start to feel a little silly.  But this article!  This article and the research along with it was going to be a chance to grow another part of my brain and to gain some street cred amongst the scientists in my world!

So I sat down to reading the student work.  But really it wasn’t reading so much as counting.  I counted words and sentences.  I counted ands and buts and ors.  I counted emoticons.  I counted up all that writing.  And the more I counted, the stupider the whole thing felt.  Writing is dynamic.  You can’t peg the corners of written words down and tell them to stay!  It’s in their nature to evolve, to grow, to twist and pull and stretch at rules to make meanings understood.  But I took their missives, and I pushed them and herded them and fenced them in until every bit of them fit into discrete boxes.  I beat past the meaning of all the things that were written and I got some data.  I felt just awful about the whole thing.

Just some of the numbers.

Sure I had numbers, but I’d left behind all the best bits. Entries about anxieties of romance and studies.  Entries about holidays and small daily tasks.  Entries about loneliness and assimilation.  All these little windows into people’s worlds, windows these students had so generously opened for me, and I ignored them.

I felt uneasy about breaking open all these personal stories and chopping them up into indistinguishable bits, but I do understand why numbers are important.  I do.  Understanding why we do things is important.  Improving on our current practices, striving not to be good but great at what we do – that’s a beautiful human thing.  I want to be a part of that.  So I pushed all my anxieties about the lack of story and really tried to focus on the benefits of numbers.

But then I went to Belgium, and I met Isa, Janet’s friend from Chicago.  I was describing this project to her and my general frustrations, and she sort of laughed and flatly conveyed that she thought it was just ridiculous.  She explained that if you assign numbers to things where numbers don’t belong, you cheapen what that thing is.  There were fireworks in my heart hearing someone articulate what I’ve been feeling for the last weeks.

See, Isa’s right.  We live in this moment in time where quantifiable measures and science are king.  We want data.  And, yes, I concede that science is good and data is good and want my decisions to be informed by more than gut feeling alone in most situations.  But that said, I think we often over-simplify the world in order to assign numbers to it – it makes us feel safe to measure things.  We can show growth, gauge success, that way.

Education is a prime example of this.  I could go on and on about the damages that standardized testing inflicts upon the classroom.  I’m not saying we don’t need to have a way to evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness or show that students have learned – surely we do, but a uniform, multiple-choice test doesn’t actually address most of what we want our children to learn in schools.  We’re measuring the easiest parts of learning to measure, and we’re measuring the wrong things.  How often in life are you given four choices, one of which you know is correct?  Never.  We’re not measuring creativity or critical thinking.  We’re not measuring open-ended problem-solving.  We’re not measuring our students’ ability to function as free agents in the world.  And isn’t that the goal of education?  To make functional, thoughtful adults who can respond to a dynamic world?  Standardized tests don’t measure that.

The same goes for the language I’m tracking now and for English literature in general.  There’s not a number-based approach to tackle the impact and importance of that.  It’s too big, it’s too ingrained in our minds and our lives.  But that lack of quantitative quality doesn’t make it frivolous or silly as I sometimes fear.  Often in conversations with my science friends, I think to myself, “Right now we’re telling stories, we’re talking, we’re revealing the quiet inner parts of our beings to the rest of the world through structured communication, through words – that’s English class right there!”  And with things like writing and English and communication, I worry that, as with education, trying to assign numbers to it only strips it of the richness that makes it worth study to begin with.  Some things just aren’t science, and that’s okay.

Everything is a Teachable Moment

While I was in Cape Town, there was a professor there teaching a course on education.  I sat in on most of her courses and helped with a bit of the planning.  She had her students complete these assignments called “critical incident reflections.”  The idea is that sometimes we have a moment in life that just settles in the brain, playing on repeat, for reasons that are sometimes hard to pin down, and that working through those moments, logically peeling back the layers of emotional response to the core of a situation, can make you a better, more intentional teacher.  I’m also pretty sure that doing this can just make you a better, more intentional person.  She called those incidents “sticking moments,” and I had one of those on Thursday that I’ve been trying to logic through for a while.

See, amidst all the nonsense going on the classroom that day, amidst all my love for rowdy kids, there were two boys in the back who were chattering a fair amount.  I called them out kindly a few times, and every time they responded pretty positively, quieting down, but they always got louder when we transitioned between activities.  Transitions can be hard.  I understand that.  So pretty much every time we had a transition, I’d make a point of walking to that back corner to help keep them on task.  They responded to this well.  There was some talking and teasing between them, but after a reminder, they would legitimately complete their work.  At one point, after checking on them post-initial reminder, we exchanged some high-fives because they got all their answers right.  I felt like we had the foundations of a pretty positive bond.

Our last activity for the day was writing a paragraph on one of the potential exam questions on the board, using all the strategies we discussed during class.  I got a few questions at first, so it took me a while to get back to my guys in the corner.  When I did, I saw that they were working together even though I wanted an individual paragraph from every student, so I said, “Look – we’ve got two brains working on this problem, so instead of one paragraph, I want two from you all, okay?”  They nodded and started writing again.

I came back a few minutes later to check out their progress.  They had two paragraphs written below their answers from the previous work for the day.  The boy with the computer scrolled down so I could see the lower of the two paragraphs.  It was on topic, not in great English but fair, and I talked them through some things they could work on.  I scrolled up to read the first paragraph they had written.  It was not on topic.

The boys had written a paragraph about me with some pretty thinly veiled sexual innuendo.  As I read it, they made no attempt to hide what they had done.  My first reaction to reading this was, “Oh, God.  Teenage boys.  Ugh.”  But the reaction quick on the heels of that internal statement was embarrassment.  I was a little mortified.

I had a class with 26 other students all talking and asking questions, so my first thought was just to triage the situation and get the boys to keep writing another on-task paragraph so I could get back to the students who needed help.  I think I said something along the lines of, “Okay, guys.  I’m not really sure what was going on with this paragraph.  It doesn’t seem to be addressing any of the mock exam questions on the board.”

They sort of smiled at each other.  “Yeah.  We were confused about the assignment at first, but we got it right in the second paragraph.”

“… Okay.  Well.  Guys, look.  That first paragraph – that first paragraph would definitely get you a failing mark on the mock exam, and if I might add, is a little rude.  The second paragraph, like I said, I think that would be solidly average.  I think you can do better than that.  Remember all the stuff we talked about?  I want you to write another paragraph like that one but stronger, okay?”  With that, I walked away, on to other students with other questions.

Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking more and more about that situation, and I’ve been more and more frustrated by what happened and by my reaction to it.

See, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of months rolling around in my head what it is to be a woman at this moment in time, and maybe more specifically, how the interactions between men and women shape the world in which I live.  I’ve been feeling more than a little dissatisfied with the way things are and trying to figure out how to make things better.  Situations like the one I described in the classroom, conversations with lovely Fulbright women and men here in Norway, article reading, and some deep delving into women’s literature has provided me with a lot of fodder for thought.

In terms of my personal experience as a woman, sometimes it’s hard to know where to draw the line of responsibility for my behavior between the influences of the societal pressures associated with my gender and the more personal influences of my character.  Perhaps they’re too intimately intertwined to be separated that way.  Regardless, my gender undoubtedly plays a part in the way I interact with the world.  I often feel pushed to accommodate behavior that, if I’m honest, I find unthinkably selfish. I feel obligated to make excuses for the lack of emotional awareness of my male friends.  I often find myself diminishing, undermining the value of my own perspective, describing my reactions to situations as “crazy” or “irrational,” reactions that, when I think about it, are perfectly justifiable but perhaps just inconvenient for others.  I feel pressure to brush off gender-based bruises to my pride because I fear so much coming across as a “bitch.”  When I think on this… when I think on this for too long, I feel unspeakably angry.

Certainly some responsibility for changing this lies with me.  I have to do better at internalizing and believing the things I logically know to be true.  But beyond the mental shifts individual women can make, there needs to be a larger movement.  I am a well-educated, well-traveled, well-loved woman, and I still feel these pressures and pulls and sadnesses.  That must point to a cultural gap, a need for change.  I believe that change has to be in the way we teach boys to become men.

There are so many negative trends when it comes to men positively integrating into the world.  I could go on at length about the cultural stigma around men processing and expressing emotions (in fact, I did go on about it at length and then deleted it all – count yourselves lucky that you’ve been spared that lecture for the day).  Information about the growing gap between male and female educational achievement is everywhere, with men falling behind.  When I think about the men I know compared to the woman, I see my male friends more often struggling with drug and alcohol abuse or waging heavy emotional battles without acknowledging them or seeking support.  This American Life recently did a two-part story on a high school in Chicago that is struggling with gun violence.  It seemed most of the students they spoke with were drawn from the social workers’ office and almost every student they talked to was a male.  And perhaps most horrifyingly, there have been a string of stories as of late about young men raping or assaulting young women and documenting it to share with others.  Not only is the initial behavior abhorrent, but the actions after the fact, the shaming of women victimized, points to not a simple one-time failure to abide by common human rules of decency but instead to a culture that indicates for some reason that it is okay for these young men to treat young women as less than human.

What does all of this say about how we are preparing boys to become men?  It seems to me that somewhere along the way there’s a failure.  As I’ve said before, I don’t think any baby is born with darkness written on the pages of their future.  I just can’t believe that.  Certainly the actions adults take in our world shape what we become, but perhaps more importantly, the lack of action in certain situations can mold us.

And that brings me back to the situation I had at school on Thursday and to why I’m so frustrated with myself about how it all played out.  I’m a little frustrated with my emotional reaction – I shouldn’t have had to feel embarrassed in that moment.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  I didn’t write the paragraph.  I was just there, doing my job.  I hate that even inside my head this situation or being whistled at when I’m walking down the street or being groped in a bar make me feel a little angry but mostly result in a feeling of shame.  And there’s no earthly reason why I should bear any blame for those things happening, but somewhere, somehow, I’ve been conditioned to take on that weight.  I hate that a culture I so clearly understand to be wrong still lives inside me.  I hate that.

Beyond that though, I’m frustrated by my response to the boys.  On some level, in my mind, I tried to justify it, saying to myself, “It’s not a big deal.  They’re teenage boys.  Things like this happen all the time.  There’s no actual intent there.  It isn’t even really about me – it’s about the boys teasing each other.”  But, see, that right there!  That!  Justifying it as “no big deal” – that perpetuates the problem.  My body isn’t a tool for these young men to prove their manhood.

For weeks, I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate something about rape culture or the objectification of women or the hidden systems of power that constantly undermine the female perspective into my classroom as an English teacher.  That’s one of the most beautiful things about teaching English, I think – it’s such a deeply political act.  Part of what I’m supposed to do as an English teacher is to help students learn become thoughtful readers and good communicators.  We empathize with diverse characters.  We debate different perspectives.  We logically outline our thoughts using support gleaned from research and deep reading!  Those are crucial skills to becoming a good human.  And the beauty of literature is that it is the human experience captured in text – you can talk about anything as an English teacher!  It seems like such a waste of an opportunity to not use that time directing those skills at real problems.

I’ve been bouncing around with ideas about expanding a unit on media literacy, focusing on women’s bodies in advertisements.  Mrs. Dalloway.  The Bluest Eye.  Anything Alice Munro ever wrote.  THE SCARLET LETTER!  So many thoughts on how to talk about these things in the classroom!

Okay, so maybe I already have my students do this a little… we watched a documentary on the way women’s bodies are shown in advertisements and then the students pulled examples from magazines and labeled negative practices. Media literacy! YEAH!

But I had an opportunity.  I had an opportunity to have this discussion in a small but authentic way with two boys on Thursday.  I had the chance to hold them back after class and calmly explain that I like them and I think they’re bright and interesting and full of energy and that those qualities are so important.  I had the chance to let them know I respect them, but that I was disappointed to find they lacked the same respect for me.  I had the chance to explain that they can’t divorce jokes about sex, jokes about my body from my being – they are the same thing.  I had the chance to explain that when you do that to a woman, even in the smallest, most seemingly inconsequential way, it’s one more grain of sand on a scale already tipped in favor legitimizing the male perspective over the female.  I had the chance to tell them it was an unwarranted, unthinking use of privilege and power, and maybe, just maybe, help them actually recognize the existence of that privilege and power.

They’re 17-year-old boys, and I know that they might not have listened.  I know they probably wouldn’t have listened.   If you give into that logic though, when do you start talking about it?  How far do you have to tread on a women’s sense of identity and safety and pride before it’s time to say something?  See, these things – these little jokes, these small behaviors, that’s the first step down a slippery slope.

I want to talk about hard things.  I want to talk about hard things with young people who maybe just haven’t had the chance to have these conversations before.  There’s right and wrong.  You learn that as a child.  But you grow up, and as a teenager, you’re suddenly walking in a world that’s mostly gray.  Sure, there’s still right and wrong, but that is a falsely simple model to present to young adults.  You have hard conversations, and you think critically about your world and your actions in it.  That’s how you become a good person.  I have to believe that the reason so many folks drift to the darker side of things is because no one took the time to have those conversations until it was too late.

I feel like I failed in this situation with the boys.  I feel like I failed to take advantage of a moment.  But I’m a little grateful to have had the experience, to have the opportunity to think on this.  Next time, I’m going to do better.  Every moment is teachable, right?  You just have to be engaged enough (and maybe brave enough) to see them when they’re happening.

Teaching Revisited

Yesterday was a teaching day!  And not just a “I teach while your regular teacher sits in the back” teaching day or a “I pull out small groups” teaching day.  I was a legitimate substitute yesterday, flying solo in the classroom.  It was heaven!

It’s been a while since I’ve taught properly.  I had The Great Gatsby a few weeks back, and while I love the material, nothing crushes your soul so much as imploring children to read a great book day after day only to have the same three students consistently answer all the questions because guess what!  No one else has read the book.  I know, I know – this is a common teacher complaint.  This sadness, however, was compounded by the fact that the class I was working with just doesn’t have much verve – they’re generally quiet, they seem to tolerate each other, they have a couple of friends in class they sit with, and they seem neither overly happy or overly sad about being in English class.  They’re just there, Hindu cow type students, calmly accepting that school is happening around them.  That’s my least favorite kind of a class.

Give me cut-ups!  Give me smart alecks!  Give me rabel rousers!  Sure, in an ideal world, I’d love a class of driven, thoughtful, outspoken students, but in the actual world, that rarely happens, and in the actual world, I’d take a class with a handful of rowdy students over a calm class almost any day.  Why?  Because!  Because it’s incredibly difficult to create energy in a classroom.  Sure, maybe the rowdy kids come in with energy going in all the wrong directions, but you can deflect that, you can play off that, you can make a joke out of that, you can turn those kids into your allies!  And before you know it, you’ve got something happening in the classroom.  You’ve got eyes off computers and ears listening to the outrageous conversation starters Rowdy Kid throws out, or at the very least, you inspire Quiet Kid to provide an answer so as to just get Rowdy Kid to shut up.  You’ve got something!  You’ve got something!  But Hindu cow classes?  Nothing.  Nothing.  I don’t know how to light a fire there.

Luckily, the classes I had yesterday either bordered on rowdy or sat squarely in the middle of that territory.  I was given little to go on in terms of lesson planning – the kids have “mock exams” coming up next week, which are not, in fact, mock exams but actually legitimate, graded midterms and finals.  I have no idea why they call the “mock exams.”  It’s one of the many things in Norway about which I feel quietly baffled.

With written exams in mind, I sketched up plans for a couple of lessons on brainstorming potential exam questions and writing well-structured, articulate answers.  Class one went by almost entirely without a hitch – we brainstormed, we group worked, we wrote, we discussed.  It was a solid classroom interaction.  Class two, however, class two was where my rowdy kids live.  Oh, rowdy kids!

FYI – This is a sketched up lesson plan.

We did much the same thing in that class, but I had some really winning interactions.  Sure, I love rowdy kids for bring the fire into the classroom, but there are other reasons, more selfish, entertainment based reasons.  You see, in teaching, you have the perk of helping students make the leap to critical thinking, to cultural appreciation, to development of empathy, and that stuff is fantastic – huge perk!  But, day-to-day, you don’t always get to see a lot of that.  Day-to-day, I get by on the smaller things – the entertainment and sheer absurdity of spending vast amounts of time with teenagers.

I have to ask, when did you last spend time with teenagers, or perhaps more specifically, when did you last spend time with a cocky 17-year-old boy?  If your answer is, “Not since I was 17,” I have to tell you, you are missing a show.  They are nonsense.  NONSENSE.  The wonder of it all, the joy, is in taking a moment to really immerse yourself in a world where someone thinks the kind of behavior described below is acceptable.  It’s hilarious.  Sure, sure, you try to teach them valuable lessons along the way about how to operate successfully in the world, but before that, you just have to let the living Dadaism of it overwhelm you.

Here’s a good example:  Yesterday, I passed out a handout having to do with topic sentences, a simple concept, but one that students consistently fail at practicing in their writing.  The handout was fairly easy but I was hopeful that it would drill that skill into their brains.  I’m making my rounds through the room, stopping at each table cluster, asking if the students are alright, checking on their progress.  I get to my last table cluster, and I see them looking down at their sheets but there’s a lot of chatter.  I approach.

“Guys, you almost had me fooled.  You really did.  I applaud you.  Looking down at the worksheets while you talk about other things – that’s smart.  But I’m going to tip you off about the flaw in your plan.  Are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

“There is literally not a single pencil or pen on this table.  Not a single one.  In order to look like you’re doing work, you at least have to have all your work tools out.”

I thought I had scored a victory there, shaming them a little but mostly softly persuading them into doing work.  I was wrong.

“Rachael, I don’t have a pencil.”

“Well, borrow one from somebody else at the table.”

“No, Rachael.  None of us have pencils.  Or paper.”

“WHAT?!  How do you not have a pencil or a pen or something?!  How did you walk into class without it?  Don’t you need those things everyday?”

“No.  We just use our computers for everything.”

“But surely there are moments when your teachers want you to write something out to hand in during class or there are worksheets or something.”

“No – not really.”

TECHNOLOGY!  CURSE YOU!

“Well, Erik, you can type your answers out on your computer.  Some of your classmates are doing that.”

“I don’t have my computer.”

“So, Erik, what did you bring to class today?”

“Nothing.”

Pause.  Disbelief.

“Okay, well, Erik, do you think not having a pencil or a computer is a good reason to not do your work?

“Probably not.”

“Probably not.  So, Erik, how can we problem-solve this?  What are some solutions?”

“You could give me a pencil.”  Erik, in a totally confident, reasonable voice, continues, “Actually, can you give me a pencil I can keep?  That’d be better.”

Pause.  “Erik.  Erik.  How many times have you seen me in this classroom over the whole year?”

“Two times.”

“Yes, Erik, two times.  And in that time, have you seen me carrying around a box full of pencils to hand out to people?”

“No.”

“Well, Erik, why do you think I would just have pencils to give you right now?”

“I don’t know.  You’re asking us to work using pencils.  I thought you might have some.”

“No, Erik.  No.”

Erik eventually figured out that he could borrow a pencil from someone at another table though, God forbid, it required him to actually stand up and walk across the room.

A few minutes later, making rounds again, I see one student in the back is surfing the web rather than working.

“Stian, what are you doing right now?”

“Multitasking.”

“Stian?  Really?  Multitasking?  It looks like you’re unitasking.  And it looks like that task is reading about Sega on a message board.”

“Rachael, I’m not reading about Sega.”  Insert a grunt/laugh here, “That’s the guy’s screen name.”  Stian then looks at me like I’m the dumbest person in the world.

WHAT?!  What?!  That really actually happened.  No shame.  No shame whatsoever.  New tactic.

I pull up a chair and sit right next to Stian.  “So, what are you reading about?”

“Well, there’s this new game coming out.”

“Oh, really?  That’s interesting.  I want to read about that.”  Quiet.  Me staring at his computer screen.

Stian starts to get twitchy.  He keeps looking at me while I read.  After about 45 seconds, Stian can’t stand the awkward.  “Rachael, are you going to sit here until I do my work?”

“Yes, Stian, I am.  Do you know why?”

“Because I should be doing my work?”

“Yes, Stian, that is exactly why.”

“Oh,” he says and then closes the computer window.

One thing I both love and find utterly ridiculous about Norwegian students is the absolute lack of shame.  They rarely even try to hide wrongdoing or being off task.  It’s incredible.  It’s incredible!  While we were reading Gatsby a few weeks ago, I was working with the academic track 3rd years (seniors), and they would walk into class not even knowing the characters names.  Never in my life did I think I would look back on hallways filled with frantic discussions where a group demands of the class brain the plot points from the previous night’s reading with nostalgia and longing.  Never did I think I would reflect on the blatant usage of Sparknotes with fondness.  At least that way the kids have a passing knowledge of the work.

You see, a lot of my American students were sensible enough to recognize they should do the work even if they were too lazy to actually do it.  No such feeling in Norway as far as I can tell.  It may have to do with the fact that they just don’t receive that many low stakes grades here.  Maybe it’s that there’s not as much competition or fear of the consequences of failure here.  Maybe it’s that they’re on much more equal footing with teachers, using first names and operating out of a classroom that is “owned” by a group of stationary students while teachers migrate from place to place.  I don’t know.  But regardless, it’s strange and fascinating and, above all, makes for absolutely hilarious interactions.

I’ve Been Everywhere! Part II

Okay, folks!  Get ready!  I’m going to tell you all about Belgium and Oslo as promised!

After several beautiful days in Amsterdam (and in this case you can read “beautiful” to mean “cold and windy but filled with satisfying, enlightening company”), I skipped off to the train station to head towards Brussels.

How did I end up going to Belgium?  Well, I had a few days of vacation left unplanned, a fact I communicated to Janet of previous blog fame during a visit to Oslo in early March.  She explained that she had a friend living there, Isa, who is also Fulbright English Teaching Assistant and sent her an email.  Isa, being an amazing person, kindly agreed to host both Janet and me, a total stranger, in her cozy home for a few days.  Boom!  That’s how you plan a trip to Belgium!

I’ll be honest, guys.  I didn’t have super high expectations for Belgium.  I mean, sometimes I forget Belgium’s a place.  Belgium is that kind of country.  You know, you think of Europe, and you think France, Germany, England, Spain, Italy – the big guys.  But Belgium?  What is Belgium?

I’ll tell you what Belgium is:  AWESOME!  Here’s what you need to know:

• They are famous for beer and chocolate.  BEER and CHOCOLATE!  That’s just a recipe for making cheerful people, right?!
• They speak two languages in Belgium, French and Dutch.  My understanding is that they like to fight about that a lot.  But I think it just makes them more interesting.  Particularly because I don’t speak either one of those languages.
• Belgium didn’t really have a functioning government for a few years.  How wild is that?!
• In my experience, Belgian people are pretty funny.
• It’s pretty cheap to travel around Belgium via train if you’re under the age of 26.

What I’m saying is, you want to go to Belgium.  You may not think you want to go to Belgium, but I guarantee you that if you go to Belgium, you will be super glad you are there.  Guarantee, guys!

The first full day we were there, Janet and I purchased what can only be described as the sketchiest train ticket in the world and took off to Antwerp where Janet’s mom studied abroad as a high school student.  The original intent was to go to the zoo, which is right beside the train station.  We did not go to the zoo.  The zoo cost about 20 euro – that felt like too much to see animals that were probably too cold to be outside.  Instead, we just wandered all over the place.  It was a day full of walking and seeing and craving waffles.

This can’t be a real train ticket but it is, guys. It is a real train ticket! My delight with this object cannot be contained.

Look at this really amazing fire turtle they had outside the zoo!

We hopped the train back to Brussels and met Isa for some delicious African food.  Apparently there are a fair number of African immigrants in Belgium, which I didn’t know before.  I’ll be honest, it was really nice to be in a place with some substantial diversity.  I don’t think I realized how accustom I had become to seeing faces and complexions similar to my own here in Norway.  That’s not to say everyone in Norway is white and blond but it feels like the majority of people are.  Maybe this is just my slant as an American or perhaps as an American from the South, which tends to have more visible diversity, but I think it’s probably good for the soul and the mind and the world to have people mix up a little bit, you know?  Hooray diversity!

Our dinner was delicious – there was crocodile involved – and the company was fantastic.  Isa’s experience as an ETA is pretty different from mine.  She’s working strictly with university students, and her work focuses a lot more around literature than mine does.  I’m a bit jealous of that fact – there are so many books in her world! – but this year has been a good growing year for me to learn about giving writing feedback and some good time to reflect on what being American means.  That’s valuable too… but still… books.  Oh, glorious books!  I love you so much!

Aside from talking about her work and my work and their differences, the three of us had some good, long conversations about life and expectations and the future.  We talked about feelings and communication.  We talked about love languages.  We talked about a lot of things that made my heart feel whole and happy and engaged.  I love people who help make that happen and who are open to that happening.  Janet’s a great listener, and Isa has a way of asking insightful questions and really listening to the answers.  She gave me some good things to think on, for which I’m grateful.

The next day was a wildly planned adventure day.  We may have set our sights too high.  You see we wanted to do Brugges and Ghent… and we may have woken up at 11 AM… and we may have only actually left the house at 1 PM.  But still!  We were determined!

We headed out to Brugges first, about which I had absolutely no expectations.  I know exactly nothing about Brugges.  Sometimes I think this is the best way to travel because literally almost everything is exciting if you’re just learning about it for the first time.  So, off to Brugges we went, and guys, it’s beautiful!  Adorable!  There are canals, swans, a lot of chocolate, and as we found out, some truly delicious beer.

While we saw a lot of things and enjoyed that corner of the world immensely probably the best part was this tiny, tucked away bar that Isa took us to.  She’d previous experienced this place on a trip with some other Fulbrighters.  We were a bit disappointed at first when we came in because the barmen wouldn’t let us go upstairs and instead insisted that we sit at table in the middle of the room, basically right in front of the bar.  But guys, it couldn’t have been a better situation.  I don’t know how, but we managed to bond with these gentlemen – maybe because we asked about the name of the delicious mustard that came with our giant plate of cheese? – I couldn’t tell you.  Regardless, they were fun and it was fun and we may have gorged ourselves on “portions of cheese and sausage.”  It was one of those small moments that feels wonderful beyond words for the ten-thousand tiny things that make it.

We really needed some time to relax after our long day of relaxing.

This is the name of the delicious mustard, in case you were wondering.

Remains of our enormous plate of cheese. I don’t know why this is a thing, but I’m really glad it is one.

We headed out of Brugges in the evening time to make our way to Ghent.  Isa had these fabulous maps, with which she was obsessed.  I only wish I had a picture.  These tourist maps were just incredibly cool.  On said map-of-coolness, she found a Surinamese restaurant in Ghent and that became our plan for dinner based solely on the fact that it is the only Surinamese restaurant in Belgium and how could we not eat there!?  After some tram action and walking, we found the spot, which turned out to be even lovelier than I had expected and we were eventually treated to some live (English-language, confusingly enough) music.

Sadly the only thing we missed out on that day was a chance to meet another Fulbrighter in Brussels, William, who is also apparently from North Carolina.  I was so looking forward to the opportunity to wax poetic about the Tar Heel State.  Alas, he’s a real grown-up and for some reason felt it was unreasonable to meet us for a drink at 11 PM on a Tuesday after we cancelled dinner plans with him.  Utter silliness.

The next day we partook in some Brussel sight-seeing, purchased some expensive but delicious chocolate eggs, and headed back to Oslo.  Janet and I had a couple of quiet-ish days, and then Isa flew in from Belgium to join us there on Friday!  More quality time!

Oslo was fantastic.  Because I’m usually there for Fulbright things or just to hang out with folks that live there, I don’t often do the touristy stuff.  Last year, when I visited with Candace while we were living in Ireland, we checked some of that out, but with Isa as an excuse, we did more sight-seeing!  We saw the awesome sculpture park, visited the National Gallery, and spent a significant amount of time on Hovedøya, an island just off the coast of Oslo proper.  Guys, you can use a city transport card to pay for the ferry – like the ferry is equivalent to a train or a tram or a bus.  Oslo, I love you!

This statue man is very angry with babies.

Janet and I agree that this is one of the best things in the National Gallery.

On Hovedøya, we explored the ruins of a Cistercian monastery built in the 12 century.  We ate our lunch picnic style.  I enjoyed a few moments outside without a winter coat on for the first time in months!  And I discovered what a live mussel looks like!  I’d never seen a real live mussel in the ocean before!  I accidentally killed the one I found though, guys, and I legitimately feel pretty awful about that.  I got too excited in my curiosity  and I pulled on it and I killed it.  Lesson learned, guys – be gentle in your excitement about things.

No coat! Victory over winter!

And while our adventures all over Oslo were great, the highlight of the journey was our Easter feast!  We were joined by several of the other Norway Fulbrights and everyone brought delicious, delicious food.  The celebration was made even more amazing by two contributions from Isa, the first being delicious Belgian chocolate eggs that we hid around the apartment for a little Easter joy and the second being a game called papelitos, which is basically a combination of Taboo and charades.  It’s exactly as awesome as you imagine it to be.

FEAST!

The opposing team, Team Sassy Sauce, trying to appear non-threatening. Don’t let their cuteness fool you – they were fierce competitors.

Papelitos in action.

And guys, that was my whole vacation.  The next day I had a 9 and a half hour bus ride back to Trondheim, and I spent much of that time reflecting on just exactly how lucky I am.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve been thinking more and more about what the coming year will look like, and sometimes I can approach that with the calm and poise befitting a 25-year-old woman but at other times I’m filled with a panic about it.  How can anything look as wonderful as the last two years?

I’ve had the chance to meet amazing, thoughtful, thought-provoking people in Cape Town and Dublin and all over Norway.  I’ve gotten to travel and see the works of nature and the strivings of man.  I’ve found jobs that allow me the income and time to think about the things that are important to me.  I’ve had a pretty extraordinary experience in the world, and I feel so overwhelmed with joy for it.

Sometimes I look back to 15-year-old Rachael, who was a little scared to talk in class, who had never been on an airplane, who wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted out of the world and was terrified by that.  Sometimes I think about her, and I wish I could go back and say, “Ten years from now, you still won’t know exactly what you want out of the world, but Rachael, the adventure’s going to be so amazing.  Get ready.  Get excited.”  Right now, I’m trying to imagine 35-year-old Rachael telling me the exact same thing.

Sometimes it’s just important to take a step back and remember to be incredibly thankful.  So thanks, universe.  And thanks, everyone, for thinking and talking and doing good things and for letting me know you and for just existing in the world.  Really and truly, just thank you, thank you, thank you.  Life wouldn’t be nearly as joyful without all you wonderful humans in it.

I’ve Been Everywhere!

I’m sorry for the long, long delay in posting.  I have a good excuse.  I’ve been traveling like a wild person!  And not just around Norway like the previous few weeks.  No, no!  Instead I did a proper European jaunt, folks.  It was glorious!

Ireland!  Ireland was the first place I landed, and goodness gracious, that seems like a long, long time ago.  About two weeks ago, I woke up at 3:30 AM and flew out of Trondheim on St. Patrick’s Day and met up with Candace and our Irish friends in Dublin.  And it was fantastic!  We had such a wonderful time!

I related the story of my only other Irish St. Patrick’s Day last year, and I have to admit the crucial difference was in not working.  Insider tip: if possible, I highly recommend not working in a service industry job on St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland – it’s a much more pleasurable experience than working in a service industry job on St. Patrick’s Day in Ireland.  Look at all the brilliant advice you get from reading my blog!

So, on this gloriously un-work-related trip, upon meeting up with Candace, Mags, and Clíodhna, we stopped in at a little place for some brunch food, caught up, saw Clíodhna’s apartment, and Mags, Candace, and I set out for Cork, which we thought might provide a slightly happier St. Patrick’s Day environment than Dublin.  Mags, being a wonderful friend and driver, navigated us down some major Irish highways and tiny winding roads to her family home outside of Cork, where we met her family, who were delightful.  The two things I loved most about the experience:

1. Mags’s 3-year-old nephew, Gus, looking up at Candace and I at one point in our visit and flatly stating, “You talk funny,” before returning to some rather earnest Lego construction.
2. The fact that I understand Mags perfectly when I’m talking to her, but when she talks to her family, it’s like a different language.  I have to admit, the first time Mags’s mom asked me a question, I had a solid 5-second response time lag, trying to piece together, using context clues, what had been said.  An expert in the Cork accent, I am not.

That night, we went out in Cork with some of Mags’s friends and generally had a rollicking and only-slightly-overwhelming good time!

St. Patrick’s Day joy!

The next day, we woke up at a marginally reasonable hour and headed back up to Dublin. Why would we do that after leaving only the day before?  The Avett Brothers, of course!  Yeah, that’s right.  I saw The Avett Brothers twice in three weeks in two European cities.  In fact, upon reflection, I realize that I saw both the opening and closing shows for their European tour.  I’m ridiculous.  I don’t care.  It was amazing because they are amazing.  Also, I have to admit, the Irish concert attendees had a lot more spirit than the folks at the Norwegian show.  The experience was made even more spectacular by the fact that both Clíodhna and Mags are newly converted to Avett Brothers love, and they both seemed to super enjoy the concert.  It made my heart shiny.

Some clever concertgoers had the forethought to bring a North Carolina state flag with them. I wish I had a picture of that.

Our remaining days in Ireland were a blur of fun girl time.  There was walking and shopping and exploring and a perhaps absurd level of lounging.  There was also a birthday celebration for Claire, another friend in Ireland, which was a fantastic excuse to 1) praise Claire in all her glory and 2) see even more Irish or Ireland-dwelling friends while visiting.  I can’t capture the joy of those few days properly in words.

Candace departed on Wednesday (too soon), and Mags took me back to Cork with her for the evening as my flight was departing from there the following day.  We had a lovely time walking around, enjoying Cork and drinking some of the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had.  Also, just as a side note, I need to praise Mags for not only driving Candace and I all over Ireland but for waking up at 4 AM to take me to the airport on Thursday.  That’s a true friend, people.  A true, true friend.

Where was I flying to so early in the morning?  Amsterdam!

Look! There’s a boat! There’s a canal! There’s an old building in the background! Amsterdam!

Some of the other Norway Fulbrighters had chosen to attend a Fulbright conference in Berlin during the days I was in Ireland.  They’d managed to find some cheap tickets to Amsterdam from Berlin and took advantage of that opportunity!  I heard about this trip a few weeks ago when Amanda and Ida, two of the Bergen Fulbrights, were visiting Trondheim and invited myself along!

I’ll hit the highlights of Amsterdam because we managed to fit in a lot in just a few days, though I have to admit, one of the happiest things for me was arriving incredibly early in the morning and getting to hang out with our hostel owner for a while.  He had a lot of opinions on Dutch and American politics and about life in general.  He also runs a hostel boat.  What kind of special human runs a hostel boat?!  I love the idea of this person!  Needless to say, we had a delightful, educational conversation.  Best tidbit of information gleaned?  He claims that Americans only have a few words that can fit into the “name spaces” in their heads so that when they meet someone with a name that doesn’t fit, they just force that person’s name to become one that they do recognize.  Sadly, I think this is true, and I wish that weren’t so.  I feel pretty firmly that name words are important, and I’m going to work on being less American on that front.

In terms of actual Amsterdam-centric activities we participated in, there were many.  We saw the Van Gogh Museum, we skirted the Red Light District (my heart couldn’t really bear to actual give it a proper look around – it feels so sad to me – a brazen and hard betrayal of our better angels), we ate and drank and were merry, we talked and talked and talked – these fellow Fulbrights of mine are some pretty smart and interesting people.  I feel really lucky to know them.

In the midst of all that joy and all those interesting things though, I think the most affecting thing about Amsterdam for me was the Anne Frank House.  I have to admit, quite selfishly, I don’t engage a lot with Holocaust history.  It’s a moral failing, I think, to be so averse to staring unflinchingly into the horrors that humans inflict on other humans – this is how bad things happen, right?  If we can’t face those terrible things from the past, how can we believe we won’t turn away in the present?  I see this logically but my heart never feels whole enough to look at an unchangeable sadness head on.  This was a moment when peer pressure worked the right way though because the group was interested in seeing the museum, and I like to be a team player, so off we went.

The museum is the attic/house were Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II.  The furniture’s gone but the house remains much the same, and the exhibits are very well done.  There is reasonably portioned out information, personal glimpses into the experiences of the people living in that space for years, and video interviews with people who knew Anne Frank and people involved in keeping the family hidden.  It was the little human details that took me from a place of broad sadness to feeling the acute pain of this individual loss.  I suppose specifically what pushed me through the veil of the general, mass sadness to a pointed experience was seeing the marks on the wall measuring Anne and Margot’s height over the time they were in hiding.

That’s the danger I guess with tragedies on a massive scale like the Holocaust.  It’s hard to wrap your brain around that many individual sufferings.  Instead, you can only roll a huge, unfathomable number around in your mind, but that doesn’t have a face or tell the moment-to-moment hardship of one life in that time.  Numbers give your heart nothing to grab ahold of and inspire little feeling.  That’s a gift that only stories and experiences bring.  I’m incredibly glad we went, and I’m really glad I got to feel something about that point in time rather than just know it.

In a less serious act of emotional/historical education, the next day, the girls and I went out to a tulip farm.  Unfortunately, the Netherlands was experiencing an outrageous cold snap while we were there, meaning the tulips, which are normally beginning to bloom a little at this time, hadn’t even really started coming out of the ground.  We still went though because this was the Netherlands and goshdarnit! if we weren’t going to see some tulips!  There was a tulip and general flower show on, so we walked around the grounds, enjoying what we could of the outdoors between bouts of chattering teeth and dodged inside to greenhouses fairly regularly for an infusion of warmth and color.

So many flowers! But these aren’t tulips.

These are tulips!

These are tulips that are really, really excited about life!

This is Amanda and Lauren displaying the appropriate level of excitement about having a life with this many tulips in it!

Do you ever have these moments in life when you look around and you question whether the world you’re experiencing is the real, actual way the world is?  As though it couldn’t be possible for the facts you know to jive with the reality you’re having?  I had one of those moments at the flower show.  We were standing in a glass house filled with dozens and dozens of different kinds of flowers which had been painstakingly genetically changed by people over years and years and years to have these special colors and shapes, and the specific flowers we were looking at had been grown by people whose job is to grow flowers for other people to simply look at and enjoy.  And isn’t that just kind of strange and miraculous?  How is that a real thing!?

In a cynical, sad way, I have to think about the fact that, you know, there are places in the world without clean drinking water or food, that children are sold into slavery and that men and women exist without the opportunity to have an education or even gain basic literacy, that there are murders and rapes and general environmental selfishness that can sprout and spread and make places hard and people cold.  That is the reality of things.  But then there’s also this part of reality, where people just grow flowers because they’re pretty.  It’s hard to make those things all fit in the same bubble.

In a magical, amazing way, I have to think about the fact that human beings want to make the world more beautiful and that once we sort of knock out those basic needs of food and safety for ourselves and our families, humans everywhere, always want to make something that only just barely has one foot planted on hard edge of the world.  We paint and write and grow useless, colorful things.  Sometimes when I’m reading or writing, I can feel myself pushing up against something big and eternal and overwhelming.  Sometimes I can touch that thing, and it’s a special thing in its own right but made even more special for the fact that I know people much smarter and brighter and more wild-hearted than me have touched it too.  There’s just this ineffable but very real beauty hovering over us and around us all the time, and artists work so hard to frame little pieces of it in such a way that other people can hold it in their hearts too.  What a spiritual, what a valuable thing to be able to pursue!  I can only imagine flowers speak to some people’s souls that way too and that makes me deeply, deeply happy.

Look at this magical flower!

Overall, I’d say both Ireland and Amsterdam were good for my soul, and guys, that was only just the first week of my two week journey!  Up next: Belgium and Easter in Oslo!

The Avett Brothers and Oslo

Last weekend was a great one!  After finally spending seven consecutive days in Trondheim for the first time in a long time, I hopped on a train and made my way down to Oslo.  What prompted this trip?  Clearly, Oslo is an interesting place and there are a whole bunch of lovely, fascinating Fulbrighters there, which was more than enough to merit a visit, but the true motivation was the fact that the Avett Brothers were playing in Oslo!

Who are the Avett Brothers?  If you’re asking that, I’m deeply, deeply saddened by the darkness that your life has been until this very moment, but don’t worry – I’ll enlighten you!  They’re a folk/rock kind of band from Concord, North Carolina, which is just a couple of hours away from my hometown.  I first started listening to them when I was in high school and saw them live for the first time at their 2005 New Year’s show.  I’m ashamed to admit the number of times I’ve seen them since.

Needless to say, the notes of their songs are buried deep in my heart and my mind, sandwiched between memories of art class and prom and a rainy graduation day and heartache and long nights in Davis Library and cleaning the kitchen floor of my first apartment.  Their songs are all mixed up in there and form part of the mortar that holds my foundation together.  I just love them.  They sound like home.

Seizing the moment to be transported to North Carolina for a few hours, I took the 7-hour train journey south to Oslo last Thursday.  The next day was a wonderful one – spring-like weather had descended on Oslo, and I took advantage of being there during a weekday for the first time in while to go grab lunch at the Fulbright office.  One of the Roving Scholars, Paul, also dropped in, and we had a great lunch with the Fulbright staff, talking about our experiences in schools and how the world is treating Fulbright Norway.  As it turns out, one of the Fulbright office folks, Sara, was also going to the Avett concert because she’s extraordinarily cool.

That evening, Alexis made a proper American dinner for a whole mess of us going to the concert, and from there we made our way into town.  Grace Potter opened for the Avett Brothers, and John and Alexis, being Grace Potter fans, stayed downstairs, but Paul, Brandon, and I headed upstairs, and thanks to Paul’s eagle eyes, we managed to stake claim to the corner section of a U-shaped balcony which put us super close to the band.  And, of course, when I say “we” staked a claim over that area, I mean that like a crazy selfish person, I ran to the spot and forced the boys to stand behind me.  Yeah – sometimes I’m a bad person.  I may have also occasionally screamed out North Carolina-centric phrases in the sheer excitement of being in the presence of other North Carolinians.  Super obnoxious, I know, but I just couldn’t help myself.  Somehow living abroad has made me more fiercely identify with North Carolina than I ever did while living there – ah, the gifts that distance brings.

Oh, hi, Avett Brothers!

After much singing and dancing and general revelry on my part, the Avett Brothers came back for not one but TWO encores despite the fact that the Norwegian concert-goers were on the whole amongst the most still, quiet group I’ve ever seen.  This perception could be influenced by the fact that my general level of excitement about life is pretty high and at an Avett Brothers concert is extraordinarily high, and thus almost no one can seem enthusiastic enough to my eyes.  Bias acknowledged.  But I’m still pretty sure Norwegians are way too stationary at concerts.  Regardless, the whole thing was so good!  Avett Brothers, I love you so much!  The only thing that could have made the evening better is if they had sung their illusive, unicorn-like song, November Blue.

With my Southern soul fed a bit by banjo twang, the rest of the weekend proceeded beautifully.  Janet, Phil, and I made a trip out to Ås to see Tiffanie, one of the other English Teaching Assistants here in Norway.  Tiffanie welcomed us into her cozy home that has a fireplace (Can you tell I’m jealous?  I’m incredibly jealous), and because she is a lovely host and human being, she made us pho from scratch.  It was delicious.  DELICIOUS.  Words cannot capture how wonderful it was.  And Phil and Janet had spent the evening before crafting us an amazing olive oil cake.  I’m very lucky to have such kind friends (and friends who cook so well)!

So much deliciousness.

That evening a bunch of us got together and went up to Sognsvann, a lake near where Janet lives, and had a bond fire.  There was coffee and marshmallows and chocolate bars and digestive biscuits (c’mon – graham crackers would have just been too perfect).  There was fire mania and talk of souls and time and ghost stories.  There were blankets and snuggles and warm words.  At the end of the night, we kicked the embers out with the intention of pouring water on them, but we all stopped for a while and just watched them send out their dimming glow on the ground – it was a little like we had captured a snip of the night sky there on the ground, and just then I had a moment of feeling extremely lucky to be alive.  It’s so nice when those things quietly sprout in your heart with a warm, spreading joy.  The world is wonderful and hard, and I’m just so, so glad to be in it.

The next morning, Phil treated Janet and me to an oatmeal-based breakfast buffet.  It was luxurious the number of toppings he had – literally, luxurious is the only word I can think of for it.  I ate a ridiculous amount in preparation for my 7.5-hour train ride (which turned into a 9-hour train ride) packed up my things and headed back to Trondheim.

The whole weekend was just an extraordinary treat – from the weather to the music to the food to the intelligent conversation.  And it was made even better by the fact that it was bookended by train rides that were mostly filled by reading or thinking about The Great Gatsby, which I’m teaching to my high schoolers now (and has become something that may merit its own blog post).  F. Scott Fitzgerald really knows how to make the whole world seem framed in shimmers and sighs, and what a soft way to come into and exit such a warm weekend.

Remembering Eve

I can’t claim Eve was a close friend.  I knew her though, and her life brushed up against mine occasionally in joyful ways.  While I fear claiming ownership of a personal grief too much because I know so many people who were touched by her so much more deeply than I was, I do feel her loss.  I think perhaps with a person so bright, it’s difficult to not feel darker when that light is extinguished, regardless of how far you were from its flame.

I first met Eve when I was a senior in high school.  She was among the scholars who showed all us prospective students around when I came down to Chapel Hill to interview for the Morehead scholarship.  I was so intimidated that weekend.  There were lots of folks from private schools and bigger cities, and I felt unpolished and unprepared.  I think I had always assumed being enthusiastic about things was enough – I was excited about words, in love with poetry, wild about making people feel better when the world was sad to them.  That’s what I wrote about in my essays, and I thought that was enough.  But so many of the people I ran into at finals weekend were so professional.  I felt naive.

But then I had the chance to talk with Eve, and I saw the flickering of a kindred spirit there, only hers was so much more.  She was all joy and positivity and excitement.  I remember watching the Duke game at the Carolina Inn and I think her then crush, soon-to-be boyfriend came in.  Another girl was giving her a hard time about blushing, and I remember being impressed by how enthusiastically she embraced even embarrassment.  How beautifully she fell into that experience.  I admired her and was inspired by her in that moment.  I didn’t have to be embarrassed for the rawness of how I interacted with the world – there’s a beauty in that too if you can hold it without shame.  That’s a lesson I try to learn over and over, but she’s one of the first people who showed me that existing that way was possible.

My freshman year, my roommate Julia and I idolized Eve and her friend Anna.  We thought they were simply the coolest, most amazing people on earth.  From the outside, it looked like there was a verve there, a seize-the-moment-ness, a joy that was irresistible between them and around them, and I think that’s what we worshipped.  We were both going through the rough transition to college and seeing a pair who were just a year older flying wildly, happily about the university made the darker days of life in Ehringhaus seem a little more hopeful.

As I got older, most of my interactions with Eve were Student Government related, but even in that she was always a bright light, making the grind of bureaucracy feel less grim.  Most of my hobbies and habits took me in a different direction than Eve though, but I always felt a bond to her and to Anna for the simple goodness they had and for what that initial warmth during a cold transition had meant to me.  And though Eve had no similar bond to me, I remember seeing her around campus and always receiving a warm smile, the same smile she gave out so freely to everyone she knew.

In death, people are often praised for the goodnesses that they had.  Sometimes those gifts are highlighted or shaded differently in retrospect, in public, to make a more pleasing picture.  But even I, as a casual acquaintance, can vouch for the goodness that Eve held inside her.  The brief moments she danced into my life were inspirational, a reminder that you could be both joyful and capable.  Goodness simply poured out of her.  Her positive energy is exactly like how people describe it.  She was just a person who solidly made the world a better place.

Today, five years after her murder, I can’t help but dwell on who she was and legacy she has left behind.  Facebook seems to be a wall of tribute to her today, spilling over with pictures and quotes.  She touched so many people in my immediate community, and her spirit clearly continues to touch the UNC family.  I love that who she was and how she interacted with the world continues to ripple out, onward and onward.

“Learn from every single being, experience, and moment. What joy it is to search for lessons and goodness and enthusiasm in others.”

This week Eve has particularly been on my mind, but I will admit she comes to mind often.   Literally every time I use an exclamation point, I feel a little twinge in my memory.  In my communications with her in her capacity as SBP, I remember being happily surprised by her frequent use of exclamation points and only at memorial service held in the Dean Dome shortly after her death, when other folks talked about their communications with her, did I realize this was a common experience.  She loved exclamation points.  And when I paused to think about it, that completely makes sense.  No person and punctuation mark were ever better matched than those two.

Occasionally I have moments when I’m writing and I think to myself, “Alright, Rachael.  You might need to tone the level of love/excitement/joy/wildness down a little bit.”  But when I go to delete that fifteenth exclamation point, I always, always, always stop and have a moment where I think of Eve and her zest for living and how she was robbed of that, and I think, “No.  No.  There’s not enough of this in the world.  I should add a little extra!”  It’s a painful reminder, but a good one for me because it brings so many more important lessons to mind.

I am a scared person.  Almost all the time.  The world can be a sharp, hard place, and I don’t know if perhaps I am simply made softer or if I just talk about it more than other people, but regardless, the bruises that can inflict make me want to invoke my inner turtle and shell up.  Traveling, loving people, interacting daily with high school students – these are all just things that can make life bite so much deeper.  But I’ve opted into all of that.  Why?

I won’t chalk that all up to Eve.  There’s certainly a fair amount of personal choice, a willingness to be uncomfortable that plays into that.  But I will admit that her ability to dive in was and continues to be an inspiration to me.

The day that Eve died, I was notified that I had been accepted into an honors study abroad program in Cape Town, South Africa for the following semester.  I had applied to the program in a fit of bravery, but as soon as the application was submitted, I began to doubt.  I liked home; I liked my boyfriend; I liked comfort.  Studying abroad meant a break from all those things, and I wasn’t feeling particularly confident enough to take advantage of all the opportunities that come from going beyond where you feel safe.  I wasn’t sure I was going to go.

Then the news about Eve came.  I found out in an email from the Morehead Foundation while I was sitting in an English class.  I don’t quite remember what happened – I don’t remember leaving early from class or walking across campus – but I do remember stepping into the Foundation and seeing a sea of stricken faces.  We were all shocked and hurt and broken.  Eventually hours passed and days and then weeks, and after the initial hole was punched in our hearts, it began to scab over, pushed to heal with memories of her goodness.

I actively remember thinking, “I don’t want to to South Africa.  I don’t want to go.  But Eve would go.  Eve would have gone.”  I remember thinking that wasting a single moment was a deeply offensive thing to do to her memory.  And so I went, and that trip changed my life for ten thousand reasons that I can’t entirely contain in words.

Primarily it gave me some wonderful friends.  Truly, deeply inspirational, supportive, beautiful friends.  And it gave me confidence in the validity of my perspective in the world, the idea that my voice mattered as much as anyone else’s.  And it made me braver – sure, the world’s a scary, hard, sharp place, but you have to wage a battle of joy against it all!  You have to stare down the darkest things around you and believe it can be better.  You just have to.  There’s no other way to do life that doesn’t feel unbearable.  And that idea – that’s Eve.

Eve gave me that gift of that example she set, and I will forever be grateful to her for that.  In dying, Eve gave me another far more painful gift.

The men who took Eve’s life were young men, 17 and 21.  And I can’t believe those men were born into the world with this darkness in their hearts, with the burden of this future act already written on their souls.  I can’t live in a world where people are born into that heaviness.  Something failed them.  Something had to have failed them along the way to let them reach a point where the ties that bind us to each other in common humanity were so easy to sever.

That is unacceptable.  It is unacceptable that we live in a world where life can be flicked out so easily, so violently, so thoughtlessly, and it’s unacceptable that we can so fail one another that we become capable of such terrible acts.  But it happens every day, all the time.  Eve’s death made random acts of violence, senseless murder, a reality.  You can listen to the hardship of teens in Chicago, the ravages of revolution in the Middle East, the battles of women in India all day, but I think the round whole realness of that horror can’t bury itself in your heart completely until someone has been stolen from your life.

I have always wanted to be a teacher.  Always.  But for most of my life it was simply due to a love of words and a desire to be nice to children.  As I’ve gotten older though and as I’ve worked with more and more students, I see that school is more than just a place for learning.  School can be a safe haven.  School can be a place where adults care about you, show up everyday, hold you accountable for your actions, and maybe teach you to expand your boundaries through empathy.

I’m not saying that a better teacher in the lives of the men who killed Eve would have changed their course, but several better teachers, better social supports, better outlets, better opportunities – those things might have made things might have altered their trajectory.  I can’t do all of those things.  I can’t fix every problem.  But I can show up in a classroom every day and ask kids to talk about hard things because it makes them better, more aware, whole people.  I can do that, and I will do that for as long as I can because that’s the only way I can see to make things better.

So, thank you, Eve.  Thank you for making the world warmer in life and for inspiring so many of us to push harder, think better, engage more, and love bigger.  Just thank you.