Dreaming of Sunny Christmas... and other holidays...

Almost 90 degrees one day in LA... man oh man, talk about California dreaming on such a winter's day! Some nice time with family and even a rare smile on my grandfather's face for a photo! I toured the various strip malls in the area and did my part as well to watch my quota of Hollywood in this entertainment capital of the world. Actually did see "Munich" in the theatres which impressed me immensely. And also benefited from the good ethnic foods in the area-- a Jewish deli, various Italian and Mexican fares, lots of Asian restaurants too but somehow missed these. And finally got to some good games of chess as you can see in the studious photo below, where I found out my grandfather is far more aggressive on the chessboard than I've ever seen him in real life! He was chasing me all around and into so many corners that for nearly 30 minutes both games my heart was beating and throat was dry trying to figure out where he was going and how to get there just a moment before. Luckily in both cases I managed to escape the hand I felt slowly tightening around me, and elude it long enough for him to make some oversights of his own... a thoroughly entertaining time, and he was holding home court advantage!

And here is a last photo I life of the candles I took-- like the dynamitism of this flame and seeing the little hairs of the wick stick out-- try clicking on it to see a bigger view...

An interesting drive...

My mom and I left again from Colorado to make Los Angeles for the holidays. The weather just kept getting warmer and warmer for me! Illinois to Chicago to Colorado and now gradually, the southwest and SoCal. After all this time in the south, when it comes to time to leave a few weeks from now, I'll forget our globe is still in the winter season! Our first stop was in northern New Mexico, not a long drive, to the neat mineral hot springs of Ojo Caliente, where we met a family we know from Vipassana. There were about seven different kind of mineral pools to soak in, and one that was actually *almost* as hot as something you might find in Japan! (Waters in America, I find, can't really come close. Average Japanese pools most of my countrymen and countrywomen would wince upon setting their pinky in. The hot standard over there-- it almost burned the skin just to touch it... ahhhhh!)

Then as we were going through Arizona, we ended up taking a detour that took us over the old Route 66. It was really quite fascinating. We travelled over old dusty roads that narrowed and hung over cliff edges, roads like I've never seen in this country. Hairpin turns that cut its way through empty desert vistas and followed the track of a lost byways that once upon a time totally transformed this country. Can you imagine what the land must have been like before it had a highway system connecting it? The Route 66 that traversed from Santa Monica to Chicago was a first of its kind, prompting a multitude of old jalopies to take advantage of this new found freedom--and now abandoned but certainly not forgotten, not where there is a dollar to to be made, and today countless shops, restaurants, hotels, cafes, and anything else you can think of hawk just about any kind of "memorabilia" imaginable, even those built on the new expressways several dozen miles off the old route. Still, driving through the 66 style has its high points. Like there are a few towns that, for certain glances, really look fairly unchanged. Old style lettering advertise the cheap hotels, with dusy glass doors and a lazy breeze to boot. Or check out this shot in a small town called Williams of the left. In black and white here you'd hardly believe it actually came from my own camera! And here's a copy of an old gas station we passed by in one desolate area below...

Then we made another stop at the fascinating small town of Oatman. We even saw the old Oatman Hotel where Clark Gable's honeymoon sweet has been untouched. This town was thirty miles of equally untouched roads away from anything whatsoever, and yet there were a few other visitors and yes, again the ubiquitous hawkers. But there was something kind of neat about it too. Dirt roads and even an old-timer dressed in sheriff's uniform. It was an old mining town and burrows, which previous had been used for the mines, never quite left with the people, they stayed on and now roam the areas wildly (with signs warning the human visitors to their distance-- the animals have been known to kick and bite!) Here is a picture of three such creatures, with an equally authentic raggedly old shack behind them. (The photo above is of my mom in the dining room of the Oatman hotel, decorated with what is said to be 20,000 $1 bills-- the room extends quite a ways)

And finally-- here's a shot of that desert cactus. The photo is a bit deceiving, though-- this cactus actually grows at a ground level about five feet below where I am standing!

writings on india...

Here are a few short snipits of India... long but interesting (and sometimes funny) stuff!


Nashika Bus Angel

Picture this: you’re traveling in rural India as a white-ass, pink-nosed Westerner in a sea of tan-ass faces; some dark as coal – and it’s getting close to dusk. Problem # 1: you’ve gotta get from Nashik back to Igatpuri, and the only cabbies left this time of day are sharks – those shysters only too happy to quote you a 400 rupee price for the same ride that would cost 35 in the daytime.

Problem #2: your sweetheart/spouse is at your side. This normally wouldn’t pose difficulties, but she ain’t got no saree or baby in her arms. Worse, her hair is stylishly close-cropped, making her out to be some kind of heathen.
In addition, she’s out there looking somewhat independent, thinking for herself: strike three. Hey, it’s India. The worst they could do is stare; not that they ain’t starin’ at the relative high luminance of your light complexions already.
The upshot is, aside from your obvious fears of being so goddamn foreign, is that, statistically, you’re much less likely to get mugged here than in the states – but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

So the two of ya start walkin’.

Soon, there’s a bus stop over yonder packed with those tanks they call busses – colossal, box-shaped, virtual rolling battering-rams crammed with cackling passengers. Your hopes start to sink, however, as soon as you begin attempting to decipher the hieroglyphics inscribed on the front and sides of each bus. Everywhere you look, the same baffling array of symbols is slopped on –with yucky paint – in bizarre patterns, but no English or anything even remotely resembling it can be found. Even the signs in the grungy parking lot sport the same nonsense. And once again, you’re front and center; you can feel the searing heat of the gawkers’ unrelenting starin’.You’re stuck, screwed....
Ouch! – better think about hoofin’ it, dude!

Suddenly, a bright young gentleman pops out of a scrum of idle passerby.
“You are from which country?” he asks politely. Immediate relief floods your body/mind as you get to talkin’. His English is impeccable, as can be expected from a senior in Indian college – while he explains the drill: in this area, only Marathi is spoken; many don’t even speak Hindi. English is, for the most part, or rather, the ALL part, “out of question.” On that note, he adds, with that trademark Indian nod of the neck: “no one is going to help you.” Implicit in this is that even if they could, they wouldn’t.
At that, he immediately turns and pokes his head into each bus, hammering away at the crew in fluent Marathi, sussing out, in short order, the proper tank-bus going to Igatpuri.

Our Angel had arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, and gone out of his way to help, with an abundant sweetness that bubbled over as we continued to talk.
We mentioned Dhammagiri, the Dhamma in general, and wished we’d had some pamphlets! He and a few listeners nearby seemed genuinely interested, their glassy eyes fixed on us and him as he translated what we said.
That hellishly noisy bus ride cost 25 rupees each. Pink-ass Westerners win round one.
Game over!

Oh, well, not quite. The bus driver, who spoke perhaps three words of English, including, but perhaps not limited to “twenty five”, and “rupees” let us off in Igatpuri proper, but well away from that market-laced part we all know so well, so we were left with a fair bit of walkin', but no matter.
Hey, this was ‘uptown’; still fairly rural, reasonably impoverished, eerily lit and mysterious. What the heck – a little sightseein’ wasn’t so bad after all.
Strolling without eyes downcast, we became awash in smoke that wafted from some partyin’ that was goin’ on in plain view – and this was indeed ‘dancin’ in the street’ – I mean, these dudes were circling a bonfire of scrap and who-knows-what else, jumpin’, chanting, singing and waving their arms wildly.
Who cares if they were chanting mantras?
The sheer joy they seemed to be experiencing – while engaging in the sensual pleasure of their choice – filled the night air and made us feel safer somehow.
We were still a bit uptight, of course, though closer to ‘home’, and this time, there wasn’t as much gawking; our glaring whiteness seemed to blend in, or at least not be as noticeable to the natives. Whew!
Best of all, there was a deep feeling of satisfaction at having told some possibly ripe individuals about the Dhamma, along with the hope that it took.
We can never forget that dude – a very special being in a burly, geeky-student fleshsack; a Deva or Brahma reborn to spread his wealth of metta and panna around on earth once again.
Perhaps a Maha Acharya who was awaiting the proper time to get that push, that tiny tweak, that would enable him to return within this Sasana to teach with gusto any and all waiting Devas, rupa-Brahmas and human beings – even pink ones.
May he get the Dhamma!




I'm glad I'm here at dhamma giri,a safe refuge. Total immersion at this stage might be a bit much. Igot to my hotel in mumbai at about midnight after a nervous, smelly, chaotictaxi ride. on Sunday morning went straight to Victoria station and gota unreserved ticket for Igatpuri at 4.30pm. So I had a day to kill. Ididn't anticipate doing muc except loking at my watch constantly andmaybe nervously trying a popular backpacker restaurant from lonelyplanet. I strolled over to Marine drive to look at the bay. This 16year old youth called viki came up and offered to shine my trainers.We got talking and he started to teach me a bit of hindi. He's fromJaipur. His father shines shoes there trying in vain to pay off debts.Viki, his mother and two sisters live god knows where in Mumbai, vikitrying to shine shoes and the others begging on the street. He saidwhat he wanted was a shoeshine box, which comes with a licence toshine shoes at stations and so on… he was angling for money, but veryopen and friendly about it. He pointed across the bay to a hilly,foresty bit with tall buildings. He said there was a jain festival anda good park and he would show me, plenty of time before 4.30, so wetook a taxi. A nice part of town, gated, guarded apartment buildings,but with a woman collecting warm poo from a cow's anus outside,children playing cricket in a dusty square, a man walking a monkey.Viki was chewing paan and spitting red. He made an excuse while Ilooked at the jain temple and dodged next door to make a deal with asouvenir shop owner to bring me in. He then came back and persuaded meto look…I was obviously not buying and the salesman lost interest inme almost instantly. Viki explained quite openly what he'd done. Wesat I a park and practiced more hindi. He brought up the box again.900rupee. It would allow him to support his mother and sisters. Allthe advice I'd had went through my head: don,t, whatever you do givemoney. The worst mistake I made was giving money. You'll just make itharder for all the other foreigners. You'll push up prices. But Ifound myself asking more questions about this box. Maybe I am naïve,maybe I find it hard to say no, maybe I want the story to have a happyending. Where can you get the box? There was no way I was just goingto give the youth money. Ok, so let's go to the box-seller, justenough time to get there and back before 4.30. We took a taxi toMumbai central. Massive rusty warehouse of girders and struts, suncoming in through dust and smoke, crowds, smells and noise. Got onto apacked train with no doors, youths hanging out, past concretebuildings that had never been painted and never would be, out atBhandra, through the crowds and goats, into a tuktuk, out and into alabyrinth of alleys and gutters, women and children, families visiblethrough open doors, the sky a kinked strip overhead, up a rusty ladderanto a carpeted room where half naked children slept as India playedsrilanka at cricket on an 80s TV. The box-vendors: two brothers notmuch older than viki. They wanted 1600rupee. No way. Menga he. 800 mycounter offer. 1050. I take out a 1000 note. They smell money and takeit. Viki has the box. He's pleased. He says I've done him an honour.There's time to eat so we dip into a veg thali place In a bhandraalleyway. My first real meal in India. Not bad. Another tuktuk, thisone with a cd player and huge speakers, the driver in his nid-teens.Deep, mysterious Indian trance music almost drowning out the horns andengines. Viki sorts me out with a train direct to Victoria. We don'twait to buy tickets. It's a waste of time, he says, nobody will check,Nobody does. I get to Victoria and catch my train. I wish Viki well.It was a lot of money. It could even have been an elaborate scam, himin cahoots with the brothers, I don't know.

Hello everyone from India... Where to begin? I've been here only a week or so and I have to say I find it hard to believe that the outside world there is still existing as I left it. It's funny, you come here to see something exotic, something spiritual, to see people living their lives in different fashions than we know in the West or in the modern world, to see how people can live and even be happy without the very basic necessities... and then there's times when you just feel like forget that, maybe we've lost our relationship with nature but give me clean streets, comfortable beds, safe food, ventilated rooms... what times are these? Like when you're on a train crammed with too many Indian men than the uncomfortable cusions should allow, smoke all in your face and they're spitting betel and tobacco over me out the window, or on the floor... this is on a 20 hour trip that took 26 hours mind you, with just fans to help us and sleep only comes when exhaustion all but rocks you into a deep-rooted fatigue. Recovering from a bad case of heatstroke, no food, and a half liter of water left but the Indian next to me keeps swiping my bottle and takes generous sips. I took a walkman with me but have tried to use it as little as possible; I see music as an escape and would rather delve right into the atmoshphere and soak it all up, good or bad. But with my stomach in knots and throat dry, it is all too much, so I blast out some Tupac and try to take myself away from it.... when a man comes down the aisle hobbling, a bum asking for change, this is nothing uncommon because we are stopped at a train station. But when he is next to me he pulls up his pant leg and I see his skin eaten away at the shin, the flesh and bone open... Oh God how can this be? As if it can't get worse.... and traveling alone there is no Western friend around to share a sympathetic or even horrified glance, I just wanted to yell profanities out the window at having taken in such a reality. Or walking through the slums of Calcutta and Varanasi, the luckier families not on the pavement living 15 to a room-- a 'room' can we call it that? A hovel thrown together with brick and straw and you can see it before your eyes disintegrating, slime all over the floor... the streets filled with trash, animal and human waste, the stench totally and completely indescribable... and amognst all this children running around barefoot, food venders selling some greasy paste wrapped in day old newspaper, beggars and lepers, goats, cows, sick looking dogs, need I go on? I'll be damned if you don't feel the tears welling up to your eyes the first few days of this. I would go back to my hotel room (costing a whopping $2 for a single with shower/toilet per night) and collapse on my bed, and when I regained the energy I went back out to face this all again.

But I met a sadhu (one who basically renounces his earthly life to seek out God) in Varanasi who told me money and happiness have absolutely nothing to do with each other. And it's true. Once you get away from your Western stomach and nose, you see the smiles on the childrens' faces, and the love of families, their togetherness.... life more at the roots. Even one's waste and death are there right for everyone to see... how many people did I see squatting in rice patties from the train, I lose count! We live lives of such material fullness that when something God forbid comes to make a small dent we grimace and grumble and curse everything... I see people living here and just accepting, not like fatalitism, call it a trust in life, or God, or whatever... like when a sleeping man dribbled tobacco juice all over the clothes of another, who just shook his head in a smile. Or another who went to the bathroom and when he came back his seat was taken, there were none other and it was a crowded long trip, but he just stood by the window and watched the scenery go by, not a look of bitterness in his face... such incidents would trouble each of us a little, some of us quite a bit!

From my oh so limited experience up to presence, this is a country of spirit. I have met Indians in which neither of us says a single word, we just look at each other for a minute or so smiling. This coming from a land where we don't think that life can be expressed in ways other than words! It's amazing the signs of faith I've already seen here among the people. Too many to describe....

Indians are very curious, and being the only white person among hundreds at times I feel many eyes on me, and when I return the gaze they don't look away embarrassed but instead keep on staring like I am an animal in the zoo. But instead of letting this affect me I simply look them back in the eyes with a wide pure smile, and they break into one too, and laugh, sometimes a conversation starts up, sometimes no. A fat greasy policeman sat down beside me on the train who only spoke Hindi, but he kept breaking into racuous laughter and shaking my hand. (though was he ever confused why I didn't accept his tobacco-- which I probably would have done just for courtesy if my stomach wasn't waging a war to the end with me)

But the world is changing, and high away up in the mountains I am checking my email... an act which, by the way, I am not so happy with, but I skipped taking my malaria pills for four days due to my stomach, so I wanted to see where malaria wasn't in India. Yeah, at the ghats on the sacred Ganges where they burn the bodies of their loved ones, painted on the walls of cement by the water are advertisments for hotels, internet, book stores, etc. Gotta love the exportation of good ol' American capitalism. The world is changing, and fast. A seven day hike up the Himalays and you can still buy a coke, thanks to porters paid a buck day to lug up crates of it. Some Indians see you just as a dollar sign and try to make as much from you as they can, they've already caught the 'me-first' virus. Capitalism is making these 'backwards' cultures see that they should leave their ways behind and follow ours, so rest assured in a few decades you'll be able to bite into a Mickey D's burger and stay at a Holiday Inn the world over. So better get out here while you still can!

I guess this letter is running a little long, and it's a little strange to write. Besides a few conversations here and there with some Israelis or Europeans (the bulk of travelers I meet here) I'm just looking at things, digging them myself and letting them be.... I brought a journal but for the first time am not using it-- I feel we lose too much when we believe that we can capture it in words. If you truly want to understand anything, let it be, don't grasp it...

For now I'm escaping the heat and humidity down below by staying up north near the Himalayas, though it's still hot, damn hot. I'm in a town called Rishikesh, which was actually where the Beatles followed their guru. Unfortunately the weather is too hot to do all that much in a day, and travel really takes it out of you. At the end of the month I head back for Tokyo, with a couple days in Bangkok so the shock isn't too much. Hope all is well for everyone else out there, hope I haven't taken too much of your good time to read my ramblings....

Puns

Take a look at these pictures below... this is where I stayed in the downtown Loop section of Chicago during my month of work there...

NO, silly, of course that's not where I stayed. But it actually was in the Loop, very close to where I stayed, and I did see it. The only difference is, it was on exhibit in the Art Institute of Chicago, and each of these rooms are barely a foot in height and depth! Here is an actual photo of the condo where I stayed...

And here is another photo I took at the Art Institute I found very humorous (to the left). Usually in New-Age type magazines where they market the mystic Eastern yogic and meditative practices, they have these people in peaceful poses of relaxation and joy. When really truth-in-advertising meditation should show the sitter hunched over in some way... which is what I liked about this statue... and feeling like some limb is just about to fall off!

And finally-- this one below is one of the cooler photos I've taken in black and white, at Millennium Park, also by the Art Institute on one very cold November night. I took it first in color and it just seemed to cry out for B&W... just check out these contrasts of lights and darks...

The Middle Path: Trying to walk that razor's edge

I spent a little over two weeks after the Vipassana meditation center in Pecatonica, a very small town outside Rockford, Illinois. I served a ten day course and then stayed on an additional week, giving some Dhamma service. It is a really beautiful center and promises a new experience of anicca everytime one visits, if only for how radically it changes from one season to the next! I was there later in the fall season for the first time, around the middle of October, for a short three day course that I attended as a student. Then I worked a maddening but very rewarding four week intensive ESL Teacher Training course in Chicago before returning again.

I realize I'm coming out of a rather long and painful sankhara (I hope!) of the meditation seeming more like a duty than the dynamic exploration of self and mind that it promises to be. If there's even that tenth of one percent rebelling against the purification process, it can be just excrutiating to continue. But even this one tenth is also anicca, also arising and passing! (though it sure may not seem like that at times) To stop allowing one the indulgence of rolling in thoughts and thought patterns can be as scary as jumping off a big cliff and trusting you'll be taken care of-- it's like an escape from the comfortable and familiar patterns of the ego and the years and years of conditioning, that desparately don't want to have to accept what destruction and suffering they can produce on one's life. Like guests in a house that suddenly wish to be the owners, or spybots on a computer that force it to function in unproductive manners... but to see them for what they are, and then that freshness of the moment can get restored!

"O foolishness of man to seek
Salvation in an ordre logic
O cruel intellect that chills
His natural warmth until it kills
The roots of all togetherness!"
-- W.H. Auden, New Year Letter

Here are some pictures of the cold! The walk to the dormitory above, and the very frigid conditions reflected on my face below!!!

Question: I can understand meditation will help maladjusted, unhappy people, but how can it help someone who already feels satisfied with his life, who is already happy?

"Someone who remains satisfied with the superficial pleasures of life is ignorant of the agitation deep within the mind. He is under the illusion that he is a happy person, but his pleasures are not lasting and the tensions generated at the deep levels of the mind keep increasing, to appear sooner or later at the surface of the mind. When that happens, this so-called 'happy' person becomes miserable. So why not start working here and now to deal with that situation?"
--S.N. Goenka, modern teacher of Vipassana meditation

I think about how agitated I got during the Teacher Training course when I had to buy a plane ticket for 2006, and I became convinced the cause of this agitation must be the fact that I hadn't yet purchased the ticket. And then once I did, all that anxiety remained intact, only got shifted over to figuring out exact employment notes for spring 2006. Hours and energy I didn't have went in to this conundrum as well. And then I suddenly realized I had been bamboozled again! My own impurities within and here I was trying to rectify eveything outside. So I started observing sensation, respiration again, again...

Much of the last week I spent alone at the center, and it seemed about as long as the previous ten days. I had met such a host of very interesting and inspiring people, and now I was with myself again :) And watching the geese that came closer and the muskrat who would hit the graceful birds in the backside like a torpedo nearly had me doubled over in laughter. And the more I found myself being able to give, the greater depths of selfishness I began to discover! O dukkha, dukkah...

Now back in Colorado but leaving shortly for a drive through the Southwest (and a cool looking onsen in New Mexico) to Los Angeles. The weather keeps getting warmer!

Here are two more photos below, both of the mens' waiting area just outside the meditation hall. So beautiful that it pulled many a new student away from the timetable of the camp! The first is taken inside, the second outside...

Leaving the city again...

Well, the intensive month is over, and I'm on my way again. Not much to say since pretty much all of my time the past month has been totally monopolized by the course. It's been a great time and I'm definitely glad to be moving in this direction of doing even more of them. One thing I realize from this is the great maxim that you don't really know how well you know something until you have to teach it to someone else. I found that out over and over again this course! Some things I surprised myself with how well I knew and could talk about, a whole bunch more that I thought I knew pretty thoroughly, but when it came time to plan a session around it, all kinds of holes and gaps showed themselves. The participants gave me a lot of motivation and even some insight as far as the ESL classroom goes, and I'm excited to experiment with some of the recent things I've learned. This particular group rather spoiled me, they liked each other so much and made the classroom like one big community where everyone was so interested in learning and, what is more, making sure their co-learners were also doing fine. It is remarkable how much better people learn when they are in this community and cooperating, rather than competing under a system imposed by the Teacher.

Now the travels continue, alas, and Wednesday I move on to the Vipassana center (again) in Pecatonia, near Rockford, Ill. I will serve the upcoming course and possibly stay on the site an extra week before getting to see some family for the holidays. It will be another case of some extreme culture shock moving from one kind of world to another, even though there is so much in both environments that is similar.
Here are some pictures below of the course, taken on the last day. The first picture is of the class participants, just before we all went our separate ways (although in fact everyone still couldn't stand to leave each other so went to a nearby Chicago landmark restaurant, Exchequer's, instead...) and the second photo is of me with Ron and Ellen Bradley, the wonderful husband-and-wife team trainers who helped me out immeasurably this last month. Here is the site where they run their own SIT courses... http://www.globaltefl.org/

Chi-town!

I left the center and came back to the bustling city on an early Sunday morning... boy, city and country contrasts are always so interesting, no matter where in the world it happens to be. Here is one last shot of the Illinois Vipassana center, showing the dilipidated birdge leading over the small pond amidst the fall leaves, with the meditation hall behind. So, after waking up at 4.30 a.m., finishing the morning, I stepped out to a much colder Chicago just past 11 a.m., went to the condo, changed from meditation to work clothes, and exchanged bags, went to DePaul, and met the Trainers I'll be working with for this course. From then on, I had what has probably been the busiest six days of my life. The only thing I can recall that would even come close was the month intensive English course I taught in Japan to government employees. So busy, in fact, that I felt if I had a little bit more commute time it would come close to making two hours daily sitting nearly impossible... yikes! And such a different world to go out of come back. This ESL Teacher Training course is incredibly wholesome work and very inspiring to see the participants grow not only as teachers but also as individuals, but no matter how productive it is, it is just a completely different space than being aware of your sensations and not reacting to them. So it was challenging for a few days, trying to adjust as best I could from one to the other, and doing so with some pretty awful sleep nights thrown in! I don't know if it was the commotion of the city or the busy-ness of my course, but I could barely sleep and then was exhausted all day-- sometimes I found myself so busy I couldn't tell if I needed to start or stop eating! It's an urban existence... go down 15 flight of floors, walk through human and vehicular traffic, go up 17 floors, and start the work day.

But on the bright side, it has been a really fantastic experience to be involved in. I am training to be a Teacher Trainer, meaning I'm basically shadowing this course, moving more from a role of watching and observing to getting my feet wet and leading some sessions. It's the first time I've actually worked with fellow teachers, and after the Master's Program in Vermont, I feel like I have just a slightly greater insight than the class as far as the field goes, but still with loads to learn. It's also challenging-- but also quite enriching-- to be with participants who are so inquisitive and motivated to learn, and to find the best way to serve them, where there is still so much I feel I need to learn! Much different than a room of ESL students with varying motivations...

The most interesting aspect has been moving from being a student in the SIT mode just a few months ago, to having to portray this unique perspective on education myself. In some ways I feel like I'm an SIT missionary! Pushing forth the benefits of reflective teaching, the experiential learning cycle, classroom as community, and asking the infamous helps/hinders (that is, What do you find is helping your learning in this class? What is hindering it?) From almost Day 1, I felt like the classroom and the participants were almost identical to the particular style that existed in my own Master's program. It was such a curious feeling. The type of people who came to this course were so similar to those attracted to SIT, like any one of them could have switched places and fit in perfectly. It was really like watching the recreation of my whole experience in Vermont, but watching it from scratch, and seeing the same dynamics begin to form. They start their practice teaching before real ESL students on Monday, and after a Way Of Council, many of the same feelings were voiced I remember hearing before our internship period last winter.

And the White Sox! A ticker tape parade just outside my workplace... what a time to be in Chicago!!! The whole town is going wild, you can't turn a step without seeing some logo somewhere...

Here is a photo of my view of the lake from the 15th floor condo every morning...