Vignettes of El Paso

Since I try to have as many French examples as Spanish examples in my seminars it seems appropriate to have a bi-lingual title! During these two days I've also had a variety of unrelated experiences so vignettes it will be.

THE SEMINAR....
was excellent and oh so typical of teachers. The teachers had orientation meetings in their buildings on Monday and Tuesday, went to a departmental seminar today, and tomorrow they will finally get to work some in their buildings...provided their principal doesn't want to have more meetings. Into this environment I walked! One hundred foreign language teachers who were required to spend all day in a seminar when they really wanted to be preparing for the first day of school. I've been there!

The excellent news is that the vast majority of the teachers were delightful, enthusiastic and respectful. They wrote wonderful comments and filled in an overwhelming number of magic sevens on the evaluation form. Hurray.

I recognized some of the teachers, however, because I've worked with people just like them. Some obediently put away their laptops when their supervisor was in the room. (She had actually threatened to take away their laptops if out!) Those same teachers, however, took the laptops out the minute the supervisor left the room. A few sitting in the back chatted instead of doing whatever activity I had asked them to do. A couple left early. I'm sure these are the same teachers who get super irritated when their students commit similar sins.

TECHNOLOGY...
is annoying. The hotel was super organized and had my mic and the sound system set up by 7:30. The supervisor arrived later with a brand new LCD projector. She and her assistant then messed around with it for half an hour but couldn't get the image on the screen. She then went to her car to get the other older projector. Same problem. Several times I said that I've always had to use a dongle cord to connect the LCD to my MAC but was assured that it wasn't necessary. Finally a minute before starting time, I asked if we could try it with the dongle and, guess what, it worked.

It worked EXCEPT I never could get it totally focused. Except the image was too small for people in the back half of the room to see. Except the image was trapezoidal. Except the color was off. Except the bulb burnt out mid-morning and the supervisor had to go to her office for a new bulb. Except I tripped over a plug that wasn't taped down and lost power to both machines.

Miraculously, no one complained about tech problems!

TEXAS HIGHWAYS...
are also annoying. They have highways that parallel the expressways. They are one way. The highway on one side of the expressway has a different name than the highway on the other side. When you make a left turn under the expressway you have to be in the second to the left lane. If you are in the far left lane you are forced to make a U-turn. It took several detours before I remembered these Texasisms from a Dallas trip last summer.

STELLA...
is our GPS. She traveled with me and made it possible to do some sight-seeing which was cool. When I traveled with a speech pathologist friend to see a pastoral candidate in Indiana we laughed about how Stella pronounced "ninety". The computer referred to Interstate 90 as "nine tee" rather than the colloquial "nine dee". That was nothing! Let's just say that Stella found Spanish street names challenging. I can't even pronounce what she did to "Socorro".

STELLA....
did take me to a very interesting place this afternoon. "We" went to the Socorro mission. This is one of the oldest of the missions built along the "Camino Real" from here west. It was built in 1683! What was most interesting was the cemetery. Loads of flowers on every grave....all plastic since a real flower would die in seconds in this heat. Some very simple graves - wooden crosses with hand-lettered names - some with stone markers, some with elevated ornate stone memorials. I found it touching. Somehow the testimonials, simplicity, and location in a desolate dessert area made all these deceased strangers and their families seem very real to me.

MEMORIES...
came back. The plastic flowers made me think of a friend (thankfully I don't remember who the guilty party was) who once asked me if Mexicans really like plastic flowers. We were in an inexpensive Mexican restaurant in the middle of winter when this question was asked. And, yes, there were plastic flowers on the table but NOT because Mexicans like plastic. It was just the option in mid-winter Chicago.

That memory reminded me of the seat mate on a bus tour in Spain who commented. "Isn't is strange that every town has a 'peatones' street." Peatones means pedestrians. She had seen the word next to the lit up stick figure of a walking person on the street lights.

On that note, I go to bed. Have a 5:55 AM flight to catch!