Me and Blanche Dubois

Okay - we have finally arrived in kuala lumpur - local time 1:40am. I can report that it is hot, humid, foggy, and at this moment dark.

United Airline's skies were not so friendly to us on this trip. Our first flight out was cancelled due to a malfunctioning gage. To their credit the airline did put us up in the Hilton and fed us well. Of course I would rather have been eating dimsum in Hong Kong, which was our original plan but fortunately I built in an extra travel day just in case something went wrong. Good planning on my part - unfortunately I did not plan on several things going wrong.

In order to save the schools we are working with some money on the cost of shipping a couple crackpot poets to their school I booked our flight to KL out of Hong Kong on a separate carrier. Air Asia - think back to the old days Peoples Express kind of outfit. Well since United's faulty equipment caused us to miss our flight we had to rebook that leg, at our cost. Not the end of the world we figured, we'll lean on United and get some flying coupons or something. So we miss a dinner in Hong Kong - we are going to be there in a week anyway. So I rebook the flight giving us three and a half hours to change planes at Hong Kong international. One thing Asia does well is airports, I was confident we were on our way.

That was until we got on the plane again in Chicago.

Our departure time was set to be 10am. We chat with air new acquaintances of inconvenience - see the post before this one - get on the plane and then we sit. We sit on the Tarmac 10:00 - 10:15 - 10:30... The captain comes on the intercom to let us know that since the flight number has changed because we are leaving a day late a new flight plan has to be entered into the traffic control system. 10:45 - 11:00 - 11:15... "Sorry for the delay folks - the computer isn't liking the flight plan - we have to enter it manually we will be in the air shortly."

Okay I am thinking to myself we still have over two hours, we can do this. 11:30 - 11:45... The plane pulls out of the gate to the cheers of the passengers. We taxi for ten minutes then we stop. 12:00 - 12:15 - 12:30... "Well ladies and gentlemen, it seems a smoke alarm has gone off in the back galley - there doesn't seem to be any reason for concern but procedure requires us to return to the gate so that maintenance can check it out."

Okay - we've missed our rebooked flight. "Maintenance has deemed us airworthy but unfortunately the cockpit crew has been in the plane too long to complete this flight and we are going to have to replace them."

By now folks are bailing, on Asian kid grabs his carry on bags saying "This is a sign - I'm getting out of here." and he does.

Another passenger tells me he overheard the maintenance dude grilling one of the cabin crew "You swear none of your people were smoking back there?" Seems it's possible one of the flight attendants might have thought the time spent entering the flight path by the captain was his or her opportunity to grab one last smoke before our 15 hour flight.

Anyway, we finally get into the air around 2:00 pm. No shot at catching or connector to KL.

Once we get to Hong Kong our luck changes a bit. There is one more flight leaving tonight and they have room. The nice young ladies at Air Asia rebook us for a very nominal change fee when they were under no obligation to do so. I think they truly took sympathy on us. The kindness of strangers.

So now here I sit in the back of a black taxi tooling the streets of Kuala Lumpur headed to our hotel. A little worse for wear - but still in one piece. Let's hope the stranger driving this car knows where he is going.

Hanoi Traffic

I've got some blog catching up to do. 

We've been to a great EARCOS conference and visiting the United Nations International School in Hanoi, snorkeling in Borneo and buying thread on zipper street and a whole bunch of other cool stuff - but today I have to drive to Connecticut. So in the meantime here is a short video from a ride with Mr. Houng in Hanoi.

The devil you know…

So here we are in Tasmania the island state of Australia down and to the right of the main land mass. Sara and I survived another marathon travel day of something like 30 some hours from doorstep to doorstep. it might be more, but my jetlagged brain is being used for more important tasks than math right now – like equilibrium.

We finally got into Hobart Tasmania around 6pm local time which is precisely god knows what time or day back home. Our goal when we get overseas and the time change is twelve hours or more is to try and stay up past 8pm local time before we pass out. Well we accomplished this - this time and right now I am not feeling too bad. We start working in schools tomorrow – we came in a day early in order to acclimate but then, lucky for us, Monday is a a bank holiday – the Aussie equivalent of labor (Spelled labour here) day so we get an extra day to get our heads straight and I think we’re gonna be fine.

We wandered around the artsy section of town grabbing  a cup of coffee then walked around the wharf where we came across the Bob Barker – a big black ship with a skull and crossbones theme. I couldn’t guess why the Price is Right host might have such an intimidating vessel named after him in the Hobart Tasmania port so I assumed it was some other bloke.

Well, as it turned out the boat was named after the US Bob Barker – mainly because he paid for it. The Bob Barker is operated by Sea Shepherd – a group of environmental activists who use the ship to basically harass the living hell out of Japanese whalers hunting illegally in the protected Antarctic. barker had heard of their missions and being the animal loving dude that he is, donated six million dollars to the organization resulting in this boat, a helicopter and enough fuel to completely screw up this year’s whale hunt.  Sara and I toured the ship which had just returned from a successful three month stint.

As often happens on our excursions across the globe this was a bit of serendipity as was our walking into the tourist information and booking center a couple blocks away from the ship. We saw that a shuttle to a wildlife rehabilitation and refuge center was leaving in approximately thirty seconds. We quickly bought tickets and jumped into the van and were speeding at breakneck speeds across a bumpy Tasmanian road.

At the Bonorong Wildlife Park we really got up close and personal with the wildlife. My past experiences with Tasmanian devils at other zoos was to see a sleeping pile of fur with its back turned to me. But here the little buggers were running around, chewing on bits of wallaby and sniffing the air in agitation. Seems the females were in heat and the males were rather bothered by that. We also got to get right up to and pet some koalas and, were jostled by kangaroos in search of the kangaroo chow we were provided with at the entrance of the park.

After this we went back to the room and did a quick internet search for a place to grab dinner which resulted in a half mile walk and a wonderful lamb curry that rivaled any I have had up to this point. So – so far so good – Tasmania is treating us well and I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

As you can see this kangaroo is checking to see  what Sara has in her pouch.

Pho better or verse

  Okay - Here we go again.

  Sara and I are hitting the road for three weeks. First off we start in Tasmania then we head north along the 140 degree longitude up to Kota Kinabalu, Borneo and then we end up in Hanoi, Vietnam.

I'll be trying to keep things up to date here.

Recently – like less than a week ago – we were working in Dallas visiting a school (see vid below.) It was a bit of a whirlwind trip – in and out in two days with lots of workshops with students and teachers alike. In order to be kinder and gentler to the schools budget we did not get a rental car on this trip.

This left our dinner options to whatever we could walk to. Well I have this nifty little app on my IPod touch called Yelp which uses the GPS in the device to scan for local whatevers – you can look for restaurants – businesses of any kind – local attractions. So I plugged in the word: Pho. Pho is a Vietnamese rice noodle soup that Sara and I have come to adopt as our out of town comfort food. It warms your belly and fills your soul with noodle-ishness.  Now the correct pronunciation of the word sound more like Feh than Foe – but it is almost never pronounced correctly here in the states and it isn’t worth the effort correcting folks who get it wrong so for the sake of expediency and the title pun of this post we’ll go with the American bastardization and call it Pho – (foe).

Anyway – I typed in the name of the soup and up popped Pho Chau Restaurant a mere .6 miles from our hotel. So we walked to the restaurant, enjoying the 70 degree weather while back home the mercury was looking up at the freezing mark. Well, we were not disappointed – the soup was good, so good we ate dinner there two nights in a row.

The first evening we were the only folks in the place sitting down – a busy carryout business was going on, we were kinda early birding it but the travel had given us an appetite.  Since we were the lone sit down customers the owner came by and began chatting with us. We told him we were headed to Hanoi soon and he told us his story of his escape from the country when he was just 14 years old 25 or so years earlier.

The saga was hair raising, involving smugglers, disappearing companions, traversing jungles at night, hiding in rainforests for two days waiting on a boat bound for Thailand and jumping from said boat and swimming to shore to become a refugee once off the coast Thailand.  Our host told us this harrowing tale with smile and “you do what you gotta do” aplomb.

Sara and I talked about this on the way back to our room. You know, you never really know what the person you’ve just met has been through. It’s so easy to get caught up in your own trials and tribulations – but no matter how bad you think you’ve got it there is someone nearby who has had it worse and is weathering through it with a better attitude.

Here’s my quote – feel free to cite me: “What is truly amazing about life is what we manage to survive.” To which I might add the addendum – “and even more astounding are the folks who persevere with a positive attitude and no extra sense of entitlement for their tribulations” but that’s a bit longwinded and didactic.

Okay – gotta pack my bags.

Morocco

Like, totally Rad(ford)

In Australia a college is not somewhere students go after high school as it is in the United States – the term refers to any school. Thus, Radford College in the Canberra suburb of Bruce (insert Monty Python Australia sketch here) is a K - 12 campus.

This school is the first really foreign school that Sara and I have worked in. When we work overseas we have always been in international schools – places where ex-pats, and locals looking to send their kids to US universities, send their kids in countries where the native language is not English. This time we were in an honest to goodness foreign school – part of the local system. Thanks to our friend Dan Ferri – these Aussies took a chance on a couple of poets from Cleveland Ohio.

You can see they gave us a manageable but busy schedule. As happens quite often our dance card filled up as teachers began talking about our visits into their classrooms and those who were sitting on the fence with a “wait and see” attitude decided they wanted to get in on some of this poetry action. So our schedule became loaded with crisscrossed lines and penciled in times as it evolved during our stay.

Like I said this is fairly common and understandable. Teachers are busy people and have a hard enough time getting to all their lessons and curriculum objectives and sometimes don’t feel there is time for poetry in their schedule. What Sara and I offer is a way that teachers can integrate poetry as a tool in their classroom – so while the finished product may be some sort of verse it still pushes their classroom goals forward and might I add, at a quicker pace than a five paragraph essay, a report, diorama, book report or any other of the myriad text types used for assessment. Ask the teachers at Radford about the narratives we wrote about the water cycle or the definition poems on democracy and you’ll find some recent converts to poetry as a practical classroom addition.

The students and teachers at Radford were engaged and enthusiastic, we visited classrooms of kids from third through 12^th grade and only went to the wrong building one time during our week long residency. Thankfully a breathless fifth grader found us and led us back to the right classroom. It is a whiplash inducing experience to go from a group of eight year olds writing about the toys in their bathtub to a class of 18 year old young men and women studying Plath and Hughes one right after the other but it’s also what makes our job so much fun.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and met some really dedicated professionals; including a 7^th grade science teacher who was carting around a pair of orphaned possums in her bag. So thanks to Peggy, Claire, Dylan, Therese, Dan and all the other folks we met during our stay. In the words of the school chaplain, “God bless you mob!”

That’s all I Canberra

What the Aussies lack in pronouncing of syllables in their words – they make up with over the top down under hospitality. After our charmed respite in Sydney I figured things couldn’t get much better and I was wrong. People went out of their way to be hospitable to us at every turn during our stay in the capital city Canberra.

Sara and I got in on a Sunday and weren’t slated to start working for real at Radford College until Thursday (we did visit a few classes on Monday to introduce ourselves to the staff and visited a couple classes to get the lay of the land) so we had a few days to explore the sprawling park like city. Where Sydney piled up tall against its harbor – Canberra spreads out in a radius from the parliamentary building, embassies intermixed with residences and forested parkland. The place is a biker or runners paradise and I took full advantage of the fact borrowing our friend and host, teacher and former NPR commentary star – Daniel Ferri’s mountain bike. Dan’s a re-planted Yankee (Chicagoan really) who now teaches at Radford (this all fits together eventually – trust me.)

 

Anyway – Canberra is nothing like Sydney – in fact it is for the birds. Birds like I’ve never seen in the wild before – parrots – cockatoos – magpies – ravens – swans – crazy looking pigeons with hats on, not to mention the bushy tailed possum that stared us down from a tree during an evening walk or the giant fruit bats with three foot wingspans who darted out from the shrubbery during that same constitutional. Add the kangaroos and rabbits I saw while biking and you’d have thought we were in a wildlife refuge – not the capital city of a whole country the size of the United States.

As for hospitality – on day one we went to the National Museum – the equivalent of our Smithsonian where we wandered about for an enjoyable couple of hours. The walk there was about an hour and a half and we were a bit tuckered out so we asked the lady at the info booth if she could help us obtain a taxi. She said she’s be more than happy to call but as she picked up the phone an older woman behind us poked her head out and said – never mind – I’ll drop them by. So our new friend Marjorie drove us home from the museum – giving us an impromptu tour of the embassies and a view of the gate to the prime minister’s house. In fact everywhere we went – museums – memorials – just walking on the streets – folks couldn’t have gone out of their way enough for us. This was certainly southern hospitality to the nth degree! Oh yeah – did mention that the bus drivers were just as likely to tell you to skip the fare as not?

So what’s up with the dropping of syllables in their words though? Canberra is pronounced Can-bra, Melbourne is Melb’n etc etc. Nobody could give me any explanations other than – that’s the way we do it mate. Of course this ruins the pun in my title but, keep on treating your visitors like you treated us and that’s good enough for me.

Haka this way…

One of the best things about my job is getting to travel all over the world and meet all sorts of wonderful people and places – one of the worst things about my job is leaving these people and places before I feel like I have really got to know them. This is the feeling I have leaving New Zealand. I know there is so much more that I would like to see in this country but time and obligation made that impossible. What we did see was astounding.

First off, it seems New Zealander’s will leap off anything, bridges and towers being a couple favorites – in fact they were having an off season two for one special for folks wanting to jump off the Sky Tower (the tallest structure in the southern hemisphere) unfortunately I couldn’t talk anyone into the adventure so this remains on my to do list. The country is the bungee jumping capital  of the universe as far as I can tell – and if there isn’t anything sufficiently tall enough to fling themselves off of nearby they will reverse bungee from the ground up.

Indeed New Zealanders exhibit more than a few traits that might be considered quirky by those of us who have not had the privilege of growing up on a collection of islands at the bottom of the world. Like Darwin’s Galapagos fauna – this bit of isolation has allowed for some interesting evolution. Considering the seed colonizing population was that of convicts I think things have turned out quite nicely. Today’s New Zealander not only respects the culture and traditions of their indigenous peoples (the Maori language being one of three official along with English and signing) they also have environment and human rights high on their list of priorities. The country is also renowned for their education system, especially their research and approach to reading and literacy, which brought us to Auckland in the first place.

Before the conference Sara and I took the opportunity to do a little sightseeing. We hopped a 9:15am ferry ride to Rangitoto Island, a half hour off the coast of city. Rangitoto is a new island – relatively speaking, having erupted from the ocean floor only 700 years ago. This event occurred much to the horror of the residents of the surrounding islands and may have played a part in the naming of the new smoldering land mass, Rangitoto means blood red sky, although the official story is that the island is named for a Maori chief who was injured on the island during a battle. Things have pretty much settled down on the island nowadays with the major conflict now being the eradication of non native species like wallabies and possums.

 

 
Speaking of Maori warriors though – I was able to catch the NZ Rugby team’s match against South Africa and the traditional war dance performed by the boys in black – a lively little spectacle called the Haka is a rather intimidating bit of choreography. Later at the opening ceremonies for the literacy conference Sara and I got to witness the Haka being performed by a bunch of twig thin bare-chested elementary school boys. I’ve got to admit – even they were a little bit scary.

Another spot we visited was Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter and Underwater Adventure. What had all the trappings of a tourist trap turned into one of my favorite excursions of my visit to Auckland. The aquarium and penguin exhibit wasn’t the grandest thing I had ever seen – but it was done very well and the whole complex was really geared for young folks and I think done in a very good way. What impressed me most about the joint was the man behind it. Kelly Tarlton – an explorer – treasure hunter- obvious proponent of education as well as a Jacque Cousteau aficionado had taken what were giant city sewage tanks snaked a Plexiglas tunnel through them – filled ‘em up with sea water and stocked the thing with sharks, rays, giant crayfish and dozens of varieties of fish with a slew of interactive and educational exhibits documenting ocean life, penguins and Robert Scott's doomed quest to the South Pole aimed at school aged kids. Like most dreamers Tarlton died before seeing his vision completely realized at the age of 47 and only weeks after the aquarium / museum opened.

 

The literacy conference that we came to New Zealand to speak at was one of the nicer conferences we have been to. We were well received and I think it is not going to be our last trip down under. One of the major highlights was the opportunity to hear David Pearson deliver a keynote address. His talk was on assessing – or grading – students work. The comment that he made that will stick with me as long as I work with kids is this, he said that The questions a kid asks after reading a text are more important than the ones that student can answer about the text.”

I think that’s where I am at with New Zealand – I have more questions than answers, the least not being, how does one keep from running away when they see this…

Look up in the SKY!

It's a BIRD




It's a PLANE


Yep - It's a Plane.

Greetings from Houston where Sara and I currently sit waiting a flight to LA La Land to be followed by a little jog across the pacific – landing in Auckland, New Zealand. There we will be speaking at the International Reading Association’s world congress. After that we head to Australia where we visit a school for a week.

More to follow…

Oak Island, North Carolina

Just back from a week at the beach in Oak Island North Carolina – that’s Scottie up there with a couple tiny sharks he caught fishing in the surf – I think they may be dogfish I’m not sure. I do know the little buggers have got some tiny but sharp teeth.

I’ve been going to the beach NC almost every year now for over a decade – Sara has been going longer than that – in fact she’s the one that got me started. This is our one vacation of the year – even though we travel so much for our jobs we are still working and coming back to the beach annually is something we can look forward to where we really can just relax without having to worry about classroom exercises or PowerPoint presentations.

I brought my bike down and put on just under 200 miles during the week there. My longest single day ride was about 52 miles and it was kind of on accident as are a good majority of my adventures. I got up each morning with a target distance in mind and would ride half that distance then turn around. One morning right near my target half distance of 20 miles I came across a brand new stretch of road closed to traffic with a sign that read “ Oak Island 6 miles.” This would have brought me back to our beach house after a 26 mile ride or so – but if there were any reason I had to turn back the ride would be double that length.

 

The road felt as smooth as an endless basketball court. I whizzed past mowing tractors and a couple guys driving heavy equipment who waved at me as i flew by in the morning heat which has already climbed into the nineties.  Even though I was riding into a headwind – the pristine road surface and the fact that i could just take the whole lane made the ride almost effortless. That was until I came to the bridge that connected Oak Island to the mainland. More accurately I came to the edge of where the bridge would someday be.  I kinda knew my shortcut was too good to be true  and as I headed back I ruminated on how this little diversion was another life metaphor – that when things are going too smoothly – when there is no traffic and the road is smooth and even though all signs say you're headed in the right direction chances are there is an insurmountable obstacle up ahead.

On the positive side – this little misadventure did prod me to my longest ride of the season and the 12 miles on the brand new road was a great experience – even if it was out of the way. Like a certain Cleveland performance poet who shall remain unnamed said while driving in the wrong direction on the freeway in Chicago, “At least we’re making good time!”

Taejon Christian International School

Had a great visit with the teachers and students at TCIS. Extra special thanks to Connie and Sungmee our librarian  and Chantal queen of the High School English department. We spent three days on the campus working with grades K through 12. Once when I was taking a break I even got roped into reading a picture book to an elementary class visiting the library.

 

During our residency we had a family literacy night where Sara and I did some poems for the students and their parents. We really like to have these evening gatherings when we visit a school because it gives us a chance to let the parents know what a couple poets are doing visiting their students. It gives us the opportunity to show the people paying tuition how bringing in a couple teaching artists is a good investment. We get to demonstrate how writing and performing poetry in the classroom has great practical benefits for all their kid’s communication skills. Of course we all have fun and many more times than not – we get a parent to come up on stage and recite a piece that they had memorized from their school days.

Connie warming up the crowd before the start of our Family Literacy Night.

Appreciative audience members.

A couple boys take to the mic to read a poem they wrote in the car on the way to the event (get that paper down from in front of your faces!)

A parent reciting a Robert Service poem.

Sara leads some ankle biters through a poem they wrote about soccer.

A very special part of this school visit was the fact that we stayed with a family in their home rather than a hotel room. This is always a daunting proposition because you never know what is going to happen. Well – if anyone had tried to tell us how welcoming and gracious the Choi family was going to be we would have thought we were being sold a bridge.

It was so nice to be a part of a family in the middle of this long road trip and as much as all the dinners out are special to us – that one meal before the Literacy night of home made spaghetti with sauce out of a jar and the kids around the table is probably the one I will remember most. Thanks TCIS and extra super duper thanks to the Choi family.