Too many things left to be unsaid

So, I'm Mexico. It's true.

Today, instead of tagging along with some Carhartt folks, I stayed in bed kind of late. (By "kind of late" I mean late enough for the maid to ask me if I was sick. Mm, no. Just lazy.) I don't have the means -- or the balls, honestly -- to meander about the city by myself, so sleep seemed like the best answer. I'm getting picked up at 1:00 so I can go sit in on five hours' worth of Spanish and English classes. The English teacher is the craziest Grammar Nazi known to man. During his smoke break yesterday, we debated the pretentiousness of impeccable grammar and the differences between American and Canadian English. My kind of fun. Things: So far, so good.

Along the lines of language: Holly had mentioned the author Bill Bryson to me a while back. Well, during my most recent tryst with Barnes & Noble, this guy's name was spied out of the corner of my eye in the philosophy section. With much interest indeed, I picked up one of his books called Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. Oh, what a perfect pair, me and this book. I enjoy it so much that I even put in some quality reading time during the flight down here. That's saying something.

Rumor has it that I will finally have my car back when I return from this little jaunt. These two months without the Buick have been trying times. It will be nice to have it back.

Time for the shower, but before I go, I have a comment or two on the land of Mexico: Tell me, what is up with it being 70 degrees? I mean, I am eternally grateful, but something about this doesn't seem right. And the sky is big. I mean, huge. I had no idea how little the sky is at home. I hate to sound as cheesy as John in "3x5," but there are clouds and mountains for as far as the eye can see, and here, that's pretty dang far. But I do have my camera, so let's hope for some photos.

A simple phrase hard to put into words

So this might be the first entry not really focused on music in, well, a freaking long time. Maybe, I did have a neat thought as I was driving down 641 yesterday...

I did my last microteaching thing today. It was okay. I really have mixed feelings about being a teacher. There are moments when I feel like I have a certain knack for it. And then there are moments when I am certain I have definitely gotten in over my head. Too bad those moments alternate like a strobe light in my head. Is that called manic depression? Ah, dear.

However, one thing I know that I have a knack for is creating really cool manipulatives to use in the classroom. (What am I? A kindergarten teacher?) Last night, I made some things I am calling "conjugation cubes." Basically, they're a set of three cubes that you can move around and, by so doing, make Spanish sentences. What I like is that they are sort of, um, interchangeable. Right now, they are covered with pronouns, regular -AR verbs stems, and present -AR verbs endings. I realize that none of that probably makes any sense, but here's the point. They could be covered in something totally different. They have Velcro covers that you can take off and replace with different Velcro covers. I have to say that I am pretty dang proud of them. You should ask to see them sometime, and I'll let you have a look -- as long as you promise not the steal the idea. A patent could be in the works...

So I know I am weird and all, but I got a little something for you. I had something like reverse deja vu this weekend. Maybe that's not the way to describe it, but I'll try. For who-knows-how-long, I have had this sort of "flashback" to a place that I've never been. Weird, I know. Well, this weekend, I was finally there. That's all I am going to say. I know that dreams and dream-like states are the hardest thing to talk about. It is so fascinating to the dreamer, but when you try to explain it, it doesn't make a lick of sense. So there.

Well, I have to go give up the rental car now. I suppose I could get all of my stuff out of it first. It's back to the ol' Taurus for me. It drives like a tank. It will definitely feel like that after driving a little tumble bug for a couple weeks.

Hmm. Yes, I think the music-related posts tend to have more substance. Therefore, I'll let you in on my 641 musings.

Music -- all forms of creative expression, really -- is like an imprint of the soul. I had heard some lyric -- could've been "I'm bigger than my body gives me credit for" or "I hope you can feel me in the air" or something else of that nature -- and I began thinking about the separate entities of body and soul. You know, questioning it, considering the magnitude of its implications, what have you. And it ocurred to me that art, namely music, is a way of extracting soul from the body. We can use our mouths to put forth a voice or our hands to write a story, but what is left on paper or in the air isn't our body. It's something intangible. And I have a hard time believing it's just particles in the air bouncing against one another. Maybe it is. You know, I really have no idea. But it's through those airwaves or rearranging molecules or whatever that people are able to connect with one another. Here's what I am saying. Sometimes knowledge -- specifially, really knowing someone else -- seems so inaccessible. Even attempting to comprehend the concept of "soul" boggles my mind. But there is something about creative expression -- be it a painting, a dance, a song, a poem, a nicely turned phrase in a conversation -- makes knowledge a little more accessible. It puts the soul in a language we can understand.

hoopla

They're having a showing of Napoleon Dynamite at the BSU tonight. I'd like to have stayed to see it, but I have a lot to do as far as homework goes: read on The Republic for philosophy, read whatever it is that we won't talk about in women's lit, and all kinds of Spanish hoopla. (I know hoopla isn't the right word there, but it sure is fun...) And I over-achieved and went ahead and did my advanced comp stuff. BarbCobb's a crazy woman having us email her two assignments with two different deadlines between two classes. But whatever. I wasn't about to wait until the last minute (being 7:59 tomorrow morning) to email her the second assignment. I'm going to try to go to bed at a decent hour tonight and sleep until at least 8:00. That'll be glorious. (Note that this is the only reason I didn't go and get a Caramel Macchiato after TNT.)

Now for more Spanish hoopla. I was extremely bored in the library today--though I'm not sure why because it seemed everybody was having a computer problem--and I was looking up the suggestions that dictionary.com returns when you search my name. No. I don't know why. Anyway, it turns out that my name is very similar to the scientific name for plants, usually flowering ones. Way to go, botany. But I also noticed casita, which I thought was pretty and looked rather Spanish in nature. And I was right. It means little house. So I looked up the word for prairie, and discovered that yes, Little House on the Prairie is La Casita de la Pradera on Spanish-speaking television. I felt much better after I settled that. Then I thought on the fact that adding -ita or -ito as the ending to lots of nouns makes them little. So at my favorite translating site, I began making my own Spanish words to see if they meant small this or small that. I had both successes and failures.

So ladies and gentlemen, for your multilingual pleasure, here is my presentation of

Words That Do and Do Not Mean

What I Thought They Did in Spanish

Cuadernito does mean little notebook.
Pezito, pesito, pescito, and pescadito do not mean little fish.
Librito does mean booklet.
Hombrito does not mean little man.
Gatito and gatita do mean kitten.
Vacita does not mean little cow.
Mesita does mean small table.
Carrito does not mean little car, but it does mean cart.
Perrito does mean little dog.
Estafadorito does not mean little racketeer.

Yes, so that was very fun and enlightening, no? No? No. It wasn't very much fun at all. So now that we're done not having fun, let's begin the real fun with Plato and Socrates and social justice.