Random Observations

This was, on the whole, a great week presenting my foreign language seminars. We dodged the mid-west part of the big February snow of 2010, arriving in Detroit before the snow and going to Minneapolis after the snow. In between we worked through lunch in Chicago on Tuesday and were able to end the seminar early and drive to Milwaukee through the blizzard without too much difficulty. Actually, the worst problem was that the rental company failed to put a snow brush in the car and my poor program manager had to clean a foot of snow off the car on Wednesday morning using only her hands!

This weeks random observations include:

The funniest evaluation ever: Paraphrasing a bit...."This was a terrific seminar. Actually some of the ideas I've seen at previous BER seminars, but it was a good reminder to see them again. Oh, wait a minute, I think I saw Alice before. Oh, yeah, I came to Alice's seminar last year. That must be why it seemed familiar."

I'm sure glad she didn't criticize me for using my own ideas again :-)

Cultural differences: I ask teachers of different languages to stand and greet the group early in the day. The Spanish, French, and Italian language teachers stand and enthusiastically say good morning in their language. The German teachers are a bit more formal. The Japanese teachers quietly stand and bow to the group as they greet us. Teachers of Arabic are usually dressed in Muslim style. It's fun to see each day what kind of miniature United Nations is in the room.

More cultural differences: Occasionally a mistake shows up no matter how carefully I've edited my PowerPoint or handbook. French teachers usually come up quietly during a break and point out my error. This week a German teacher found an error and she immediately raised her hand and very seriously explained my mistake to the entire group. She wasn't being unkind, but was just being a bit more direct as would fit her culture.

Native Spanish speakers come from a wide range of countries. I've learned to preface Spanish examples with a statement such as "This is the version of this poem (song, rhyme, whatever) that I learned in Mexico (Spain, whatever). I know there are other versions in different countries, so don't feel that you have to use this exact version. This is just an example, use the version you prefer." If I don't go through that long-winded explanation, I'm going to hear five or six different versions...and, meanwhile, the French, Portuguese, German, Japanese and Latin teachers have fallen asleep!

Goofy Annoyances: When you often stay in hotels and usually arrive very tired, it's easy to become crabby about really silly things.

• Alarm clocks: I do believe that whoever picks out the alarm clocks for a hotel looks at all the possible brands and deliberately picks out the one that is the most confusing to set. Thank goodness I set the alarm on my phone and just use the hotel clock as a back-up. Half the time the hotel clock alarm doesn't go off in the morning.
• Televisions: Hotels rarely give you a list of station numbers. You have to surf through the entire sequence to try to figure out what is ABC or NBC. If you happen to do this when a commercial is on, you still don't know what channel you have after you've clicked on it. Every hotel television has the major networks, but depending on what part of the country you are in, the other channels are often ALL business reports, all wrestling, all evangelists, or all cartoons. And then, of course, everywhere except in the highly sensible Central Time Zone, the 9:00 p.m. dramas that I like don't come on until 10:00 p.m.! Is the rest of the country chronically sleep deprived or does no one get up at 6:00 a.m.????
• Internet Access: Inexpensive hotels provide free wi-fi which requires no effort to use. Moderate price hotels provide free wi-fi but make you jump through some special code hoops to access it. Fancier hotels make you pay for internet and make it difficult to access on top of that.
• Outlets: The bathroom outlet is always on the wrong side for left-handed hair dryer users. There is almost never an outlet near the bedside table so that one can charge one's phone and also have it nearby when the alarm goes off in the morning.
  
• Closets: Here more expensive hotels win. They evidently are not afraid that people will walk off with the hangers and provide hangers that one can actually remove from the bar.
  
• Yogurt in breakfast buffets is almost always Strawberry-Banana. Does Peach cost more?

In the total scope of things, do any of the above comments have the slightest import? Probably not, but today I needed to write them.

I just hope I don't come across a blog where someone else points out all the weird things I did in a presentation or a blog where a friend or relative complains about all the "goofy annoyances" in my house!