Inspired by Two Good Teachers: A Contest and a Picnic

The Contest Tallies at Mid-Way

The Display I created to make everyone WANT TO READ

My class at Oxford, picnicking along the Cherwell River

My 10/2 students, picnicking outside our building.

This week I had the fun of taking things I learned from two wonderful teachers and using them in my classroom.

When I was little, my piano teacher (let's call her "Mom") had a piano practicing contest every year. I loved it. Everyone got to choose the prize they would get if they won, and I just knocked myself out trying to beat that rat Alex Haines and the thousands of minutes of practice he put up on the chart every week. 

Over the summer, my Oxford Professor (Christine Gerrard) took our whole class punting along the Cherwell River and then for a picnic in the park. I loved that too. And so did everyone else. 

So this month I decided to have a reading contest - inspired by my Mom -  with my 10th graders. There would be prizes for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd top individual readers (special chocolate bars from Barcelona), but perhaps more importantly, the top class would get to have a day off from learning to go outside and have a picnic party - inspired by Professor Gerrard. 

I was amazed and thrilled when the top reader read over 3,000 pages in the month of May, and when the top class read over 15,000. What an amazing thing to read so much in your second language! And on top of everything else they have to do, too. 

So on Wednesday the winning class and I took off for the sunny grass outside Ostrander Hall, everyone carting their picnic potluck contribution. Amusingly, since I didn't assign anyone any type of food, we had about 7 kinds of pastry, 4 kinds of chips, 3 kinds of cookies, and 1 small tub of strawberries. No one seemed to mind this lack of attention to the food groups. We ate, we played frisbee, and there may have been stories about how Brett and I met, and how he proposed. They were all suitably impressed by the candles lighting our path through the woods to the flower-filled cabin, by the way. 

I felt a bit awkward at yoga class an hour later with cookies, strawberries, and caramelized nuts in my stomach, but it was well worth it. This will hopefully be the first of many celebratory reading picnics, and thank you Mom and Professor Gerrard for the inspiration!

Barcelona: Spring Flowers

Gaudi's Park Guell and the Olympic Park of Barcelona were both in full flower last month. But, revealing my new loyalty to Bulgaria, one of my favorite sites in either park was the tiny red and white martenitsa hanging from a tree in Park Guell. 

"Look, a martenitsa!" I said off-handedly to Brett. Then - "A MARTENITSA?!" That's right, Bulgaria's official sign of spring rode someone's coat tails by jet to Barcelona, found its way to the top of the city, and is currently hanging bravely from a low limb through all weathers, welcoming spring with every bright cheerful thread. 

Now on sale at Duty Free: Death

Would you buy a candle from a display with signs reading "50 % of fires cause severe injury", "Candles are the fast road to 2nd degree burns", "Light this if you don't care about any of your possessions", and "Stop burning candles now: there's help for you at your local fire station"?

Perhaps not.

Juliana, Brett and I were a bit flabbergasted over the new surgeon general's warnings on the cases of cigarettes at the Sofia Airport duty free shop. It is hard to believe these things still sell, considering they are basically advertised as tiny death sticks... at wonderfully low prices! They are put on display at duty free with the varied giant warnings facing out, so you can read all about how to quit and why you should. 

As we took pictures of the display, amazed, a man walked up to consider his purchase. 

Some things you need to see

The Matrix Ping Pong Video

Brought to you by Juliana Peterson. 




Cirque du Soleil's new show: Kooza, the "Wheel of Death"

Brought to you by Judy Baker.

And finally, check out this incredible video from Britain's newest talent show, if you haven't already. Susan Boyle has become so famous so fast, that Youtube is not allowing outsiders to embed the video in their website. So just click on the link and then hit play if you want to see this singing sensation...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&feature=related

Brought to you be Brett. 

Barcelona: The Complete Tour of La Sagrada Familia

Photos of sections of the cathedral in an exhibition outside the inner construction

Artists at work on pieces of the cathedral

One of Gaudi's sculptures on the Nativity Facade

An Exterior View

One of the doors inside the sanctuary, sculpted in many languages

Inside the main area, where Gaudi designed columns to represent the forrest canopy

Only two major stained glass window areas are done, the rest are just covered in clear glass right now. I can't imagine how incredible the light inside will be when they are all paneled in geometrical color shapes.

The cubist Crucifixion Scene on the exterior was designed after Gaudi died

Architects, carpenters, designers, plasterers, sculptors, masons, and visionaries have been constructing Gaudi's vision of La Sagrada Familia for 127 years. 

The Eiffel tower took 2 years. The Great Pyramid of Giza took 20 years. The Statue of Liberty took 9 years.

And La Sagrada Familia is only half finished.

Imagine the details on a monarch butterfly's wing, inside an orchid, running through an agate. Gaudi's vision is of a church which glorifies God with details this fine in every tiny element. 

As Juliana mentioned to me as we walked through the sanctuary with a couple of hundred other visitors, what a pleasant feeling of job security the artists and workers engaged on the project must have...

Barcelona: Fiesta de Canciones

The morning after the Fiesta de Fuego we were off on one of our usual city wanders, when we discovered a procession gathering at a church near our favorite bakery. Women of all ages were dressed in bright and varied Flamenco costumes, a giant cart carrying a colorful model of The Sagrada Familia cathedral stood in the street, and two enormous oxen were making their way down the street toward the cart. Soon the costumed women, joined by costumed men, were singing a rhythmic song and the whole crowd was clapping along. 

What were they singing? What were they celebrating? Where did the oxen take the miniature Sagrada Familia? We may never know, but it was all part of the fun of being in Barcelona during a big Fiesta. 

Barcelona: Una Fiesta de Fuego

Back in the olden days, my high school team mates and I referred to a tennis player in the zone as "en fuego" - on fire. But on Saturday night in Barcelona, Juliana, Brett, and I discovered the true meaning of the phrase.

We were walking home, stuffed, from an all-you-can-eat Japanese buffet (yes, I'm aware of the irony of eating Japanese in Spain, but you have no idea how good this buffet is), when suddenly we heard loud crackling snaps and saw arcs of sparks down the street. Ignoring the stir fry protesting in my stomach, I sprinted down the empty avenue separating us from the action, only to discover one of the strangest sights of this year of travel: a pack of men dressed in red suits, some wearing horns, spraying the streets with sparklers and firecrackers as their audience looked on with admiring excitement and a bit of fear. 

I stepped out of the audience to get a better angle on the scene with my camera, only to be shooed away from the empty space of sidewalk by a huge horned and caped man. A few minutes later, the man and his partner touched their lit sparklers to the area where I had just been standing, which turned out to be thickly covered by fire crackers. How could I have missed that? The entire street seemed to explode, amping up many of the onlookers' bit of fear to barely contained terror. 

Afterwards, I asked a nearby man with his ears covered who was slowly shaking his head what was going on. 

"The Fiestas" he responded. His wife agreed.

"The Fiestas" she told me.

 Ah yes, those two little words that can explain every kind of fabulous  craziness in Spain. Every city has its Fiestas, and they rival any party I've seen elsewhere in the world. 

I still haven't been able to ascertain what exactly Barcelona was celebrating last weekend, but it was definitely something. This exploding street corner wouldn't be our last encounter with "The Fiestas." 

More to come...

Reading through the World

I find that travel makes me want to read books about other people traveling. I also find that not traveling makes me want to read books about other people traveling. Go figure. Perhaps I just enjoy the genre, so here is a list for all of you out there who enjoy it too.

Betsy's Top 10 Highly Varied Travel Reads

1. Eat, Love, Pray (Elizabeth Gilbert) - Italy, India, Bali
   
2. Notes from a Small Island (Bill Bryson) - Britain
   
3. Almost French (Sarah Turnbull) - France
   
4. Betsy and The Great World (Maud Hart Lovelace) - Germany, Italy
5. The Sun Also Rises (Ernest Hemingway) - France, Spain
   
6. Postcards from Europe (Rick Steves) -
   
7. On The Road (Jack Kerouac) - United States
   
8. Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer) - United States
   
9. Dave Barry Does Japan (Dave Barry) - Japan
10. Walden (Henry David Thoreau) - United States
    

Check out World Hum's top thirty travel books and Brave New Traveler's top fifty for more ideas.

Brave New Traveler includes quite a few I wouldn't have thought of as travel literature (like Life of Pi, A Little Prince, Letters to a Young Poet), but I like how they are interpreting the genre.

Brett Betsy Juliana Barcelona (not produced by Woody Allen)

Juliana's Guest Post: Plovdiv

Plovdiv, a historic city located a small walk and two bus jaunts from Sofia.  

Easily reachable even by those unfamiliar with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Though my incredible hosts would have liked to accompany me, schedule-wise it worked best, if I went on my own while they were at school…so my hostesses with the mostesses described where I could walk to see the highlights, led me to the nearest bus stop, told me how to recognize the word Bus Station in Cyrillic, wrote down the numbers of buses that would lead me there, wrote down the identifiers for reliable taxis, gave me bus tickets and described the little orange box in which you validate your ticket, left me with their travel guide and a Cyrillic-to-Roman alphabet translation sheet so I could match things up to the Roman maps…I was set up to succeed.  

And for those of you in the Betsy and Brett fan club, I just want to say how thoroughly and wonderfully they will welcome you.  You might even get chocolate cake after they pick you up from the airport...

Observations from a hapless wander…

A luscious park fragrant with wild daisies where stylish new moms push their babies in strollers with attached sun umbrellas.  

A man in a white t shirt with a red  hammer and sickle enter the central fountain plaza and join one of several animated groups of men cheering on chess games (I didn’t even know that was possible).  BYO-Digital-Chess-Timer.  

Puffed up pigeons trying to impress a potential mate.

A velvety field of royal red tulips or poppies.

A cherry tree heavy with fruit.

Winding cobblestone avenues. Church towers, domes and columns.  An ancient bath house.  

Gypsies (or, to be pc, Roma people) doing the thankless dirty work...groundskeeping, toilet duty, garbage picking.  Clear segregation.  

High school kids dressed and primped to the peak of fashion joking and flirting after school.  

A man resignedly or even angrily doing a simple puppet show on the pedestrian walkway.  

Graffiti.  

The ruins of a coliseum, where workers were laying and mopping marley for a dance concert.

Chewy breads akin to pretzels but in circle form with sesame seeds.  

  

 

The Great Balkanski Circus: Coming to an empty lot near you

She is standing on a pole that he is balancing on his forehead (I just thought you should know). 

The Great Balkanski circus arrived in Mladost this week, just about the same time as Juliana. So, OBVIOUSLY, we went to see it together and enjoy its astounding acrobatic acts, its absurd magic show, and its very odd clowning. We had a fabulous time, and strongly recommend that if the Balkanski ever arrives in your neighborhood - setting up on an empty lot just two blocks away from your house, as it did here in Mladost - you GO! 

For those among us...

...who like to see faces: