Graduation II

My ESL class graduation was last night. I received a truly horrible Christmas present from one of my students. It's a Porcelain Angel with Fiberglass Wings. Thank goodness I waited and didn't open it in front of them, because I wouldn't have been able to conceal my crushing disappointment.

The graduation ceremony was wonderful, as always. It's such an ego boost to be recognized as a teacher with applause and cheers. Whenever I've taught for money the stress has been enormous, but doing it for free gives me stress relief.

The final Letter to Your Congressperson assignments were also entered last night. The topics were:

- Request to add Russian-language programming to the cable package at a subsidized housing complex for the elderly.
- Request for greater police presence in a certain neighborhood in order to prevent both armed robberies and domestic abuse, especially abuse against Latin-American immigrant women who are afraid to go to the police because they are illegal.
- Request for sweeping immigration reforms.
- Request to fix more potholes in the streets of a certain neighborhood, backed by an argument that too much transportation money is spent on rural highway systems instead of urban streets.

Recovery

I hate Vicodin! It's really nice as long as I'm just lying in bed sleeping or staring at the ceiling. But if I try to do anything else, like reading or watching Battlestar Galactica, it makes me feel disgusting and nauseous. I took my last Vicodin at 8am this morning, and so far the 600 mg ibuprofen pills are doing the job by themselves, as long as I move slowly.

I talked to our worker today. She said the agency is happy to work with us in our new expanded 0-7 age range, and our first homestudy appointment can come the week after next. I told her all about my fertility situation and the current state of uncertainty. My ideal situation would be to get a placement, have one year just bonding with the child and giving them 100% of the attention, then conceive a little brother or sister. But this is just impossible to plan. Neither time to conception nor time to placement can be known for sure. If I get pregnant before we get matched, we would probably have to postpone adoption for a year, and she says the agency would be fine with doing that.

My mother subbed for my ESL class last night; because of horrific traffic only one student showed up. I'd assigned a homework essay called "Letter to Your Congressperson". The students had to write a letter with three parts: personal introduction and why the issue matters to them, the problem, and then the suggested solution. I'd expected students to write about some of the big-picture issues we've been touching on all year, like immigration and the war in Iraq. But the student who turned his letter in for correction actually wrote to request that Russian-language programming be added to the cable package at his subsidized apartment complex. Now that's a local issue! She said the letter was quite logical and persuasive.

Mish-Mash Post: ESL, age range and genetic testing

I had another fun ESL class tonight. The topic was marriage in America. As outside reading I brought in an article on the FLDS and Warren Jeffs' trial for accessory to statutory rape. Not the most heartwarming marriage-related story, but it started off some great discussion.

My husband and I have settled on an age range, sort of. We're now at 0-7. Now I'm wondering about changing it to 1-7. If that range would make the home study and certification easier, I'd probably go for it, since the chances of getting an infant placement are tiny, and it's not an age we particularly want. On the other hand, if there's a sibling group and the youngest is under the age of one, I wouldn't want to rule out that chance.

Tonight a conversation at SOA reminded me of my on again, off again interest in genetic testing to find out all my ancestry. On my mother's side, I know where we come from. Just using publicly available web databases, I can go back to 17th century Virginia, and then back to England from there, with a few branches leading into Germany instead. But my father was adopted in Japan in the waning years of WWII. He knows some of the history of his biological family, but mostly it's a blank spot. His mother's family had connections in Hokkaido but he grew up with his adoptive family in Nagano prefecture, which is a mountainous and very beautiful place about three hours west of Tokyo. Because of the Hokkaido connection, and also certain anomalies of our appearance (height, squareness of face), I've often wondered if the family is partly Ainu. I asked my dad once but he put me off and obviously isn't interested.

One of those expensive genetic tests like they did on the African-American Lives show could tell me for sure. This was an absolutely fascinating show, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, that used a combination of genetic analysis and historical research to explore African-American geneologies. It was especially interesting to me that many of the celebrities who signed on to the project, like Oprah Winfrey, had family legends that there was Native-American blood in the family, but when tested, the only one who actually did (Chris Tucker) was the one who least expected it.

Other than this question of ancestry I have, I honestly don't feel a very strong connection to Japanese people in Japan... besides my father, that is. I do feel a strong connection to the land, especially the mountains and volcanoes. I'm not even a spiritual person, much less religious. But I get the feeling of spirits under the surface there. I also think a lot of my negative perceptions of Japan were shaped by Tokyo, a city I hate more each time I visit. It would be wonderful to go back to Japan on my own and visit other places like Hokkaido, Okinawa and Osaka.

Punishment for Cursing

I had a hilarious ESL class last night. We did part of a unit on Thanksgiving that talked about the Pilgrims coming to Massachusetts. The chapter mentioned that many of them were "Separatists" from the Church of England, a concept which I had to explain at length. I also mentioned that these people were very religious and lived by a strict code.

One of the students -- a young Brazilian woman who is both a fervent Christian and irrepressibly curious -- was fascinated and wanted to know lots more. "Like what?" she asked, which is her favorite question.

"Well, if they thought a woman had relations with another man outside of marriage, the woman had to wear a red letter on their clothes, and everyone would point at them. People were also punished for cursing."

"What is cursing?"

I wrote "curse/cursing" on the board. "Cursing means to say curse words or bad words. For example, we say 'damn' a lot nowadays, but back then the word 'damn' was a very bad curse word."

"Like this, 'damn'?"

"Right, you'd get in trouble for that. Maybe they would tie your hands."

"So what if I say 'shit'?" the Brazilian woman asked.

"Um, oh boy, maybe they would throw you into the ocean or something" I said (I make up stuff like this all the time in class).

"So what if I say 'c*cksucker'?"

The whole class explodes laughing.

"Hahahahaha, they would fall over dead I guess..."

The same day I was given a teacher form that asked me to note any really memorable events in the class so that they could be turned into little stories and put in the newsletter. Unfortunately, I don't think I can use this Thanksgiving story. I wonder if there are any historians out there that know the appropriate level of punishment for the word in question.

My Other Class

Last evening I had a particularly well-attended ESL class. Attendance at the program classes is always very erratic, since so many students get caught up with work and family.

Our chapter this week was on the rights and obligations of citizenship. We finished the chapter, had some discussion on the election and the Iraq War, then did some extra reading that I brought in from news website printouts. I'd found a really great news story to read through with the class, since it covered both war and citizenship issues... plus adoption!

Granting a Wish To a Slain Marine: Citizenship Conferred on Vietnam Native

To summarize the story, Binh Le was a young Marine killed in action and granted posthumous citizenship. The students were quite surprised to learn of our practice of posthumous citizenship. I told them beforehand I did not recommend it as a path to their own. Anyway, it's now become such a standard practice to grant posthumous citizenship that the newspapers don't report the cases as much anymore. But this case was different, because Binh Le was adopted in Vietnam. His parents gave him to his aunt and uncle to adopt and take to America. The adoption complicates the immigration issue. He himself automatically got citizenship, but now who in his family gets citizenship rights? His Congressman has promised to do whatever it takes to make sure that both his birth parents get full rights.

The article was challenging, especially with all the motion verbs like "careen" and the military vocabulary (Corps = "Core"). The students were fascinated by the story and all thought it was very sad. I wonder if both his birth parents got their residencies; I haven't found news of a resolution yet.