Homeward bound

On the move

Santa Fe, Venezuela - A fishing town six hours east of Caracas on the Carribean coast. Boats head back to shore midmorning each day, riding low (nearly at water level) laden with loads of sardines (to be shipped in refrigerated trucks to the other side of the country and canned), groupers, dorados, barracuda. This picture is in front of my posada - my office for the past week . . .

Prior to beaching it, I´ve spent some time in Los Lllanos, a region draining the eastside of the Andes. Think Texas meeting Florida. This is a picture of me with a pirhana that I caught while there. Moments after taking this shot, the pirhana bit a chunk of flesh out of my finger. I got the last laugh, however, frying it up for dinner.

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Chavez is a lover, not a hater. El Libertador. Notwithstanding the dozens of submarines and fighter jets recently purchased.

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Walking in the North Andes. Didn´t see a soul this entire day, except for a riderless horse walking the opposite direction down the trail.

A new set of tracks

My time in Argentina is coming to a close - I fly out tonight. Student teaching has been a wild ride and each schoolday here has felt packed with opportunities to observe, question, and learn about this whole teaching business. I am excited to point my wagon towards Venezuela - we will see what adventures await me there. Saludos y hasta lluego.

Futbol at La Cancha

Saw a terrific soccer match this sunday - River Plate v Estudiantes. A sunny afternoon, drinking coca-cola and eating superpanchos, what a day. Baseball games are great but soccer is a million times better I must say. The action is buzzer-to-buzzer, the game is right there in front of you; a high class of play, oh boy. Scoreless the whole game on account of stellar goalkeeping. At the end, however, the visiting Estudiantes snuck a goal in, during the final minute of stoppage time (overtime). The audience was stunned, silent.
The visiting team is kept in a barbed-wire enclosure on the opposite side of the field as the hometeam superfans (Read: hooligans). During the course of the game, fans exchange chants and songs across the stadium. No-one could leave the stadium until the visiting fans left. The knifing of two River fans (by other River fans) in the soccer clubhouse a few weeks ago, combined with the arrest of 30 fans at a previous match means that this stadium is suspended from holding games for the next few weeks.
Even with a scandalous last-minute loss, folks were pretty jovial after the game. There was a clash with riot police on the way out, but there was kind of this "boys-will-be-boys" attitude by the people looking on. The police looked a bit more concerned.

Feeling testy

I love tests. They are such a precise, effective way to see what students know. I'm working on getting my in-class discussions and questioning strategies to emulate the sleek and calculated nature of a well crafted quiz, test or quest (quiz+test). All kids have an innate respect or fear of these instruments and it seems like a great way to hold students accountable for what we're doing in class. Maybe combining these with more pre-assessing would take the edge off the dread of test-time.
A couple classes are finishing week-long projects and these are awesome for the same reason. It's like having a long conversation with a student about what we've just been studying. It's hard to have this same dialogue in real-time, especially with time limitations and class sizes.

Las casas

A couple weeks ago I got my hands on a bike and have been cruising the neighborhoods. Many of the houses in this well-to-do 'hood are really swanky and grand but there's some really clever architecture around too, engineering hobbity little homes and smart living spaces.
Here's some photo's of the the casitas that I came across this morning. What a glorious Sunday!






Everybody was out today, walking, biking, rollerblading, brunching on sunny patios.


It is hard to get the mind around the fact that this city has just enjoyed their Summer and this season leads to the winter, rather than the Spring that is eventually leading to Summer in the Pac NW.

Industria Argentina pt 2

In this corner of the Buenos Aires provence, space is a precious commodity. Existing tracts of non-urbanized and non-used land is rare. This weekend I went up to the Delta region north of the city, where rivers drain the center of the continent and flow out into the Atlantic. I was stumbled upon an industrial district that specializes in furniture manufacturing. This section is grouped into a worker's cooperative: Los Mimbreros cooperativa de productores. 200 different business and artisans have agreed to jointly manage a section of forest in the Delta region, for the benefit of these workers and the forest from which they earn a living. This place was bustling on a Sunday, packed with eager buyers from the city. Argentines take a lot of pride in the quality and quantity of their goods that come from their country. These wares included rocking chairs, dining tables, armoires, all sorts of furnishings of wicker, wood, reeds, and more. Boats were out on the water, families and friends out enjoying a parilla, a beautiful fall day. For more info on the cooperative, here's their web address, in espanol: http://www.losmimbreros.com.ar/.