Camp: a wrap-up

Camp finished last week. I suppose I should have been updating more often; letting you all in on the inner workings of the summer camp lifestyle, but I didn't. Honestly, I could have cared less about this camp than any of the previous ones I have worked at. In previous years I found myself stressing out and making an effort to be liked by the children and to teach them english properly. This year, camp was just a means to an end, and that end was the paycheck. About half-way through the camp I realized 2 things: 1) I really didn't like this batch of kids. 2) Yelling all day was starting to take a toll on my voice. I admit that I freaked out a bit about my voice. After a year of not being able to sing, my vocal therapist had finally told me that I was doing well enough to start again. A month later, because of some stupid kids, I was running into a sore throat. If the children had had any interest in learning English then perhaps it would have been a different story, but they didn't. I had a lazy, uninterested class and it wasn't worth ruining my voice over it. So after considering leaving the camp to save my voice, I opted for staying and doing a half-ass job at it. I began putting on 4 hour movies in class, punishing them more often, using boring written exercises, having them write journals and playing games that didn't really involve speaking english that much. Ryan stopped being the "cool teacher" that he was in previous summers and became a worker that merely clocked in his hours and left once the whistle blew at the end of the day. I think it is safe to say that I should find a different job next summer.

On the upside, one of the things that kept me from quitting a week early was the group of teachers we had this year. Other years I was stuck with teachers who were not like me at all. The first year I taught at camps, all the teachers were much older than me. I was a fresh faced 21 year old and they were all in their late 30s. Last summer was a bit different, since I did 3 camps in 2 months. However, other than two high school friends that were with me for part of the time, I did not make any lasting friendships. In fact, there was a lot of tension and conflict within the staff. This summer was different, there were 12 teachers/counselors my age and I got along well with most of them.

I was really happy to have Daniel Perez there again this year. Some of you may know his brother David, who went to high school with me. Daniel is a truly unique individual (or snowflake, if you will). We had to share a room for three weeks. I hadn't shared a room with anyone since junior year in college. He was easy to live with though, and I actually enjoyed having him around. In addition to him, I met several people with whom I really hit it off. I connected with the Irish people the best. I don't know if this was for cultural reasons or if it merely had to do with the 3 particular ones that were at camp. For some reason, these irish girls thought I was the funniest person they had met in a long time. This is odd, because usually I am amusing at most, never hilarious. So it felt nice to be of high comedic value for once.

But anyway, camp is now finished. And I am in madrid for the rest of the summer. Hopefully writing music and such. Expect some recordings by the beginning of september. Peace (out).

Hormones on fire

13-15 year old boys should be confined to prison cells made of cold shower stalls. I would tell you all to lock up your daughters, except that the girls are equally inappropriate, though in a different way. It's odd. guys will tell you comments about themselves that you wish they would keep secret (I have heard the word "masturbation" more times here than the rest of my life combined, and lets remember that most of my friends are celibate 20-somethings...). The girls don't comment on themselves as much as they do about others (half-joking with guys about the aesthetics of their posteriors or that they want to bear their children). So maybe we just need to lock everyone up in individual cold shower stalls... miles and miles from each other.

Having a large group of pretty female camp counselors doesn't help things. This is mostly because they equate small stature and beardlessness to innocence. But then at night I can hear the boys rating the counselors'... various body parts. Our nurse is a beautiful, 22 year old, spanish girl... and suddenly all the boys seem to suffer from a lot of scratches and bruises that need treating. Perhaps I am equally naïve about the girls, but I doubt it. After last summer, I can see that girls are just as bad as boys though in different ways. Most male counselors have felt a bit stalked by a girl camper or two at some point.

And then of course, hormones also affect these kids' emotional discernment. Girls swing from mood to mood, and I never know what to expect from my class. When I come in in the morning, I have no idea if they will be chirpy and cooperative, or bitchy and irritable. Girls seem given to tears quite easily. One day they are all best friends and the next day they hate each other. Boys just become aggressive and taunting. I've already had to drag one kid out of a classroom when, arms swinging, he tried to get at another boy.

Sometimes I just wish I had fire-hoses like the riot police. I can picture myself saying, "ok, thats it!" and pulling the nozzle out from under the desk and letting it loose. Gallons of water per second rush out of the mouth of the hose, spraying over desks and chairs. Kids yell and duck for cover behind the coat racks. The stream of water leaves a swathe of destruction across the back wall; wet posters and progress charts crumble and fly. And then I turn off the pressure and stand there holding the hose as it dribbles the water left in it. The kids slowly come out from under their desks, soaked from head to toe. They stand there, shivering in their soggy clothes. They wipe their wet hair out from in front of their bewildered eyes and look at me. "Please turn to page number 45 in your exercise books, and let's have no more of this nonsense."

Summer is here....

Summer is here again. The air is heavy with the kind of heat that distorts distant roads. Those hot roads that slowly seep through the rubber soles of your shoes and roast your feet. Then you walk around barefoot on cold tiles or shady grass, or plunge them over the side of the pool. The landscape, once made of growing grass is now a snare cockleburs and sticker-patches, waiting to hitch a ride on the unsuspecting passerby. And as the season implacably moves into July, I have entered my own sticker-patch. I have entered a world of pubescent passions and anxieties, of linguistic impossibilities, of being overworked and underpaid... I am at summer camp, once again.

Last year I was in Burgos, land of blood sausage, cathedrals and unseasonable cold. This year, as I was two years ago, I am in Ciudad Real; in the middle of La Mancha, and I am beginning to see why it's most famous resident, Don Quijote, was doomed to go mad. All is dry and hot. Your sweat dries on your skin before it finishes seeping out of your pores. Your tongue is a dry and sluggish lump. You contemplate trying to work your foamy spittle into words, but realize that there is very little to say about Ciudad Real. It is, perhaps, the ugliest city in Spain. There is nothing beautiful about this town. Even the local Cathedral, normally a town's pride and joy, is dull and brown, like the landscape around us. The best thing you can do here is to pour food and drink down your dusty throat. This city is well known for the size and quality of its tapas. But that requires money, and it was my lack of money that brought me here in the first place. My aching pocketbook forced me to swallow the "never again" that I uttered after last year's camp and get back in line with the other ranks of disgruntled summer teachers.

At least this year the ranks are larger and made up of younger people. Last year there were five of us doing the work that 12 of us are doing this year. Most of my work will take place in the morning and in the classroom. New beginnings always make me wary. The idealist inside me wavers between hopeful optimism and the knowledge that nothing could live up to my ideals. Of course, ideals and expectations are quite different, and after last summer, my expectations are more than able to be met. As long as no one is banging their head against a wall...

So, this is what winning is like...

the setup
It has been an exciting couple of weeks. The Eurocup has been in full swing once again. For my foreign readers who live under rocks and have no concept of european sports, the Eurocup is essentially the same thing as the World Cup except that, well, you got it, it is only among European nations. Recently, some mexicans friends of the family were here, and they said that they actually favored the Eurocup more than the World Cup and certainly more than the American Cup because they said that the overall quality of the teams was better. It makes sense, in the Eurocup you don't have to limit the number of European teams to make room for crappy teams like Saudi Arabia or Trinidad and Tobago.

Now, in these kinds of competitions, Spain is always one of the favorites numerically, but not in reality. Spain always ranks among FIFA's top 5 teams in the world. And yet, it is notorious for getting booted out of any competition at the quarter finals stage (if that!). Despite being home to some of the world's best football clubs and having some of the best players, Spain has never won a World Cup. In fact, the Eurocup that it won in 1964 was the one and only international competition it has ever won. Spain, to put it in American terms, has always been the Red Socks of international football.

the outcome
So imagine our surprise as Spain won every game in its group... then passed the quarter finals... then passed the semi finals... and raised the Cup over their heads after the final game. We kept not trying to get our hopes up as we progressed through the different stages. I mean, we were playing difficult teams: Sweden, Italy, Germany, and the Russian team that crushed Holland's beautiful game. And somehow, we outplayed them all. Spain won the cup, it scored the most goals in the tournament, it had the top goal scorer and made one of the 5 hat tricks in Eurocup history.

the celebration
When Spain won the final, fireworks exploded outside our apartment window. The whole city roared out in triumph. Literally. People stormed the streets with flags and horns. Cars drove by waving the national colors. And for some reason, everyone went to their nearest fountain. I still don't know why spaniards do that, but they do.

Now, we watched the game at my house, with 17 people crammed into my living room. Madness ensued when we won and everyone scrambled for a red shirt or flag and we ran down to the nearest plaza/roundabout/fountain to join in the revelry. I took my trumpet with me. I walked down the street blasting out the national anthem or any other football related tune I could think of as my friends sang along with me. When we got to the fountain, half of the water was already gone, splashed out by the hundreds of fans that were jumping in it and splashing it all over each other in glee. Firecrackers were tossed. Buses were stopped and pounded on as they tried to get by. Cars were rocked back and forth and nearly tipped over. Motorcycles were "toreados" by people with Spanish flags.

The trumpet was definitely a good idea. You automatically become "el más grande" (as some random guy called me) when you show up playing the national anthem. And that is what I did. In fact, at one point my friends and I started a conga line around the fountain with me at the front playing the anthem. The line ended up folding back on itself as too many people joined on, singing the traditional lyrics, "lo lo lo lo," to a song that doesn't have any. Check out the video below for proof of the madness. As you can tell, I had a hard time keeping from laughing.






SIDE NOTES:
-why in the world do people have giant cups as trophies? Wikipedia doesn't say.
-Isn't it odd that people say "we won" "we outplayed the other team" "they beat us" ... as if sitting at home or in a bar munching on potato chips and sipping beer had anything to do with the actual outcome or progress of the game.