Places I Will Never Ever Be

I don't remember how old I was exactly, but when I was a kid and we were visiting Chicago with family, I refused to go up to the Sears Tower Skydeck. My poor dad had to stay way down on the safe but boring ground with me while everybody else was whisked up 103 floors and had a jolly old time looking over Chicago and beyond. (Sorry about that, Dad!)

Thanks to a mash-up of modern technology and insanity, there are now horrible stick-out glass ledges at the Skydeck, open to all crazy people who happen to be in Chicago:

Thankfully for all involved, I am now old enough to stay on the ground on my own should I once again find myself in Chicago with cuckoo people who want to visit the Skydeck.

More nerve-wracking photos of these terror boxes here.

Be Every Time Lucky

This little shoe was hanging off a door at Aiete park the other day, yet another lost-then-found item that gets hung somewhere very near where it was found. The day before I took this photo, from my perch at a terraza, I watched a man spend 90 seconds or so hanging a lost baby bonnet on a bush at about eye-level, so the owner's parents would see it should they come back looking for it. One sees this sort of thing often, and it's one of those small gestures that reminds you that we're all in this thing together and that we should look out for one another at least a little bit. Thanks to this custom, Neds was able to regain a lost beloved sweater a while back.






Last weekend there was a loud wooooshing water sound, and being more focused on whatever Didier and I were doing, I sort of assumed that Iñaki was somehow taking a really loud shower--until he appeared in front of us, dry and fully clothed, exclaiming "Venid! Venid!" We followed him into the bathroom and from the window saw the nice impromptu geyser as per the above photo. Gallons upon gallons upon gallons of escaping water is not such a good thing, neither for the construction site, whose trenches filled with water, nor for the city, who I suppose has to pay for the lost water and for the police and then the fire department to come out and deal with it. But it was fun--water is always awesome, and it gave the neighborhood a show and some relief from the icky sticky humidity for just a short while.

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This summer I do not have the "luxury" of being unemployed or even underemployed, and so I am teaching. And this time around I'm actually quite glad of it. Getting up at 8am and teaching from 9am to 2pm is a downright pleasure (yes, I'm as shocked as you are to hear me saying that) as I am blessedly far away from the oppressive heat and the non-stop construction din that makes me cranky and frays my nerves. I am also happy that this summer my students are nine calm, attentive (mostly-)grown people and not ten loud, sweaty, whiny children, which means I'm not so overly taxed that I am useless for the rest of the day. I actually have energy to do other things in the afternoon, whether for bidness or pleasure.

This time around I'm doing an intensive First Certificate class with a group of seven more or less well-behaved teens in an air conditioned room, two hours per day. Then I hop on Beltxu and hie over to the center to do a private class with my chef student in another air conditioned room, two hours per day. Two other days a week, in my kitchen after lunch, I have class with a very nice and well-behaved 11-year-old boy who, with a few more years of English under his belt, will be giving his father's very good English a run for his money.

Tree/Castilblanco Visit

After becoming re-enamored with trees yesterday, I had time this afternoon to take a trek to the new park that's a hop, skip and climb from my house. The park is called Castilblanco and its development was part of a large housing construction project also called Castilblanco. I'd tried to get into it before a couple of times, but the security guard at the construction site always chased me off. This sparse but expansive park is not a fancy planned Frenchy park with beautifully arranged beds of flowers and rock-lined paths, nor is it an Englishy park full of flowery chaos at every turn. The few flowers to be seen are wild, and it is little more than paths and stairs winding through groves of trees and bushes and little open grassy areas, with benches dotting the way and a small playground at the top. It's a bit unkempt, and frankly I hope they keep it that way.

From the north side of the park here are spectacular views of the bay and the neighborhoods of Antiguo, Ondarreta and Benta Berri, and from the west you get to look at the mountains off in the distance and peer over the university and bits Berio, Igara and Errotaburu.

My first view of Seminario from the backside; usually it lords over me.

Honeysuckle! Very fragrant.

Trees! Not too many that are very climbable, alas.

This entrance off Aizkorri reminds me of Barcelona for some reason.

I was chatting with a lady who was also on her first visit to the park, and she told me that this huge park area used to have a big house on it that housed priests and apparently at one point the Bishop of San Sebastian (what with it being right behind the seminary). And there were animals that some guy called Pepe tended. This was all back some 30 years or so. Then for some reason it was abandoned and became a place for kids to play and hoodlums and indigents to hang out. One day there was a fire and the city closed it off, until it finally got rehabilitated into our lovely new neighborhood park. Nice to have it reclaimed for public use, and even nicer to have it so close at hand and just in time for summer.

The Secret Life of Trees

I've just started dipping into the TED theme To Boldly Go...; there's lots of great stuff to be had, but so far my favorite talk has been this one by Richard Preston about the ancient Giant Redwoods and the things we know about their universe and about the many things we don't know about it.

Afterwards, don't be surprised if you suddenly have an urge to go climb a tree. Heights give me the heebie jeebies, but the idea of climbing back up into a tree as in the days of yore is still comforting and excites the sense of adventure I had as a tree-climbing kid.

Timing

I've had an impeccable sense of timing lately, I've discovered.

For example, I decided to start my own business and try to live off my own wits and wherewithal just before the big worldwide financial crunch struck. Pretty astute to get in at the beginning, eh? I'll get to say that I rode the whole wave!

When setting up my home office, I also anticipated the gigantic construction project (the new ultraswank Venta Berri plaza) being built right behind my house (first day of construction in photo above), and now I get to enjoy hours of noise as various machines engage in diggery, cement breakery, and buildupery. All very jolly! It's done wonders for my auditory acuity in addition to being a reliable wake-up service. Before, I'd sleep like a losery lump right past 8am, never hearing a sound. But now I am attuned to the minute sounds of workers preparing their equipment at 7.45am, pre-waking me so I will fully enjoy their letting loose with the cacophony at 8am on the dot. Front row seat in the orchestra pit! Pretty, pretty, pretty good. (I'd say my jackhammer and backhoe give your cats a run for their money, Walaka, for morning wake-up fun.) Another benefit of the construction is that it's allowed me to economically add a sauna feature to my home office. It is très simple: Window is closed to ward off construction noise and dust, afternoon sun comes pouring in window and hey presto, I get for free what people pay tons for at the local spa. And there's more! Already looky-loos are traipsing through the rear yard to get a gander at the site, so Iñaki and I figure we can turn a buck by kitting out our windows (all of which overlook some aspect of the site) with butacas/theater seats and rent them out to those who want to observe in comfort and style.

I feel pretty lucky these days, and am mindful of all the benefits my timing has brought and will bring. It's really too bad that the other giant construction project in front of the house is winding down--I could've had stereo.

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On a totally unrelated note, this weekend will see a second attempt at achieving guiri - euskaldun parity. Amassing more or less equal numbers of foreigners and Basques (beyond 2) in the same social context at the same time is rather a challenge. After almost 4 years, for the first time last month near parity was voluntarily achieved at 2 - 3. This time the ante's been upped and we're going for 4.5 - 3.5!

The Fear Method

A local euskaltegi (Basque language school) has had this rather strange ad up for almost a year. It starts off all very well: saber Euskara es útil ¡apréndelo! (knowing Basque is useful ¡learn it!). But then your eyes move down to the image of the boy doubled over in pain because he apparently drank from a fountain dispensing undrinkable water, and suddenly you see that not knowing Basque can make you violently ill if not outright kill you! If only that unfortunate boy had known Basque, he would have understood that the ez edan sign on the fountain means "don't drink the damn water" and he would be happily taking photos like his oblivious, perfectly healthy sister instead of ALMOST DYING because he DIDN'T KNOW BASQUE!

I am amazed that this seemingly respectable language school would find it effective or desirable to motivate potential students by scaring them. Wouldn't it be more effective to show the nicer consequences that come from learning Basque, like talking to people, enjoying and/or participating in traditional events, watching/being on the Basque Survivor-type show on the Basque TV channel, getting a nice public sector job or a government grant, or even just the fun and beauty of learning a language and the courtesy of learning at least the basics of a language spoken by many who live around you?

 
I've been so busy for these past many ages that my own attempts to learn Basque and save myself from certain doom have languished. Still, every now and again I log in to my study program; I'm definitely understanding more, though my production still lags far behind my comprehension. Yesterday I got online to pound out a few fun exercises but instead I was asked to write sentences such as "Mikel's mother is going to her son's office today." Alas, I immediately gave up because I didn't have the time or mental wherewithal to do ten such sentences. Things are no longer terribly difficult structure-wise, but my inability to whip out the appropriate endings ([[Mikel+possessive ending mother]+absolutive ending]+ [[her son+possessive ending office]+destination ending] + [conjugated go] + [today]) in rapid succession and without checking my declension chart made it a too-long exercise.


With the looming arrival of summer and presumably more free time and some promised excursions about the Basque Country, I hope to pick up the pace as I am now worried about the otherwise avoidable harm will befall me if I don't!!

More TED Love

Just found out that, via their Open Translation Project, some TED talks are now available with translations/subtitles (with new ones being added daily), including English, which from my perspective is super sweet for teaching. Equally awesome is the interactive transcript wherein you can read and then click on a sentence and the video automatically goes right to that point.

Further awesomeness:

• So far, there are translations for 42 languages; 32 talks have been translated into Spanish and there's even one in Basque, like so: (Update: ruh-roh and dang it, it seems the subtitle and transcript features are not available for embedded vids, so to see Basque subtitled talk clicky this linky instead)
  
• Being an open project and all, there's a legion of volunteer translators, and you can be one, too. (Sure would be nice to have my beloved Siftables talk with, say, subtitles in Spanish and Basque, hint, hint...)
  

Basque Flamenco

Here are two boys of Romani descent (aged 17 and 7) from Bermeo (small seaside town in Vizcaya) flamenco-izing Basque songs. Or maybe they're Basque-ifying flamenco songs. Ni flores, but either way it sounds pretty great.

Geekosity: Siftables

Here are two videos I've been using in my classes lately, both with my engineers and my PR/ad mongers, and they--the videos--have been an all around big hit and a great opportunity for going over synonyms for 'amazing'. Siftables are my new favorite tech devices, birthed by the mighty folks at the Media Lab at MIT. This first video is of one of the creators presenting siftables at TED*; I've seen this at least 8 times, and each time I'm astounded anew.

Here's a LabCAST** showing other nifty, sifty applications:





I would really love to have some of these; they make me a bit swoony. Clearly they'd be great teaching and learning tools, and I already have a long list of how I'd use them to teach language, especially to those who are, like me, visual and kinetic learners. And if they could get them to talk to web pages...

Their appeal is also tremendous for other contexts: I often find myself thwarted by the limitations of 2D digital space, as my extremely disorganized iPhoto library and messy computer folders will attest. I do try to be organized and use a system, but nothing beats having 3D stacks of papers/photos/whatnot and being able to shuffle though and visually check them. Siftables might well help manage all that digital data, though.

Me want.


*I highly recommend other TED talks; they're all pretty darn astonishing, though another recent favorite is Evelyn Glennie's fantastic talk on how to listen.
**More LabCASTS worth a gander here.

The Good and NotGood of Spring

The Good

• be-yoo-ti-ful flowers everywhere !
  
• lots of lovely light all day long !
  
• people full of energy and out in the streets !
• the return of terraces !
  
• children and dogs happily running about and being very cute !
• riding the bike almost everywhere !

The NotGood

• allergies
• people on streets paying no attention to bike path and walking right in front of me and Beltxu
• people wearing fewer layers of clothing and thus decreasing absorbent buffer zone between stinky bodies and my nose, especially on buses and in lines at government offices
  

Animal Whisperer Moi

I spent Easter weekend at Didier's parents', a wee place hidden among the hills and fields between two wee Iparraldean towns about 20km from Bayonne. In many ways it reminded me of my grandparents' small ranch in central California (in the middle of nowhere, lots of oaks and fields everywhere, not much to do except eat, sleep, and go for walks; after a nice relaxing weekend you're ready to go back to civilization) except it was greener, Basque-ier/French-ier and animal-ier.

Almost all the outings over the weekend involved animals, and I discovered I am some kind of animal whisperer! I say, they obey! It was pretty awesome, for a city girl such as moi.

On our first outing, I called some dotted-about-the-field sheep over to come see me, and they did, en sheepy masse:

Salut les moutons!

Given that they were sheep, getting them to come over was probably pretty easy and not really a skill. Later we came across this horse, who we dubbed Marilyn Zaldia due to her stylish, peroxided mane and curvaceous rump. Innit she gorgeous? She shadowed us from her side of the fence as we walked along. After a bit of talking to her and her shaking her mane at us, I asked her to run, and she did!

Quelle coquette!

D and I had a little coffee and chocolate snack on the terrace, with a view of one of the nearby wee towns in the distance--consisting mostly of a church, the frontón, and a factory--comme ça: 

Café, chocolat et une vue magnifique

Off in the distance were some trees, where some big birds of prey (we think it was a peregrine falcon) were flying about. We asked them to come over, and one obviously heard us--he winged his way towards us, pretty much buzzing us à la Tom Cruise in Top Gun, then settling into some trees not too far from the house. Very graceful our falcon friend was, and fast.


Next to the house was a paddock where six cows stood/lounged around doing their bovine thing. One cow, though, was a little more attentive to what was going on around her than the others. We watched her a bit, and then I waved her over, and--you guessed it--she came to say hi. I don't know from cows, so I had no idea how she was feeling: Was she being friendly? Was she sad? Happy? Lonely? Did she have something to say? (She was rather moo-y, chattering up a bit of a storm every now and then, especially when a dog got in her field: she seemed rather excited and trotted over to the dog, but the dog left and the cow mooed in what seemed to me plaintive manner, la pobre.)

Sad (or just placid?) cow

Slideshow of outings (includes non-animal photos) to be had in my Chez Didi set.

 
I would be remiss if I did not mention the très yummy food that was eaten. Standouts were axoa, a (possibly-only-north-of-Pyrenees-)Basque minced veal stew, which I will be making once I get some piment d'Espelette, and homemade foie gras and grilled lamb (among other green things) for Easter lunch. All was very yummy, but also very rich and meaty.

City Exploration

Today is my last day of Easter break, so I had to take advantage and get out and about a bit despite the coolish temperatures and partly cloudy skies. I took Didier on one of my little about-town expeditions, exploring new nooks and crannies and seeing familiar places with new eyes. A click on any photo will take you to other pics from today's outing, if you care to take an extended gander. In the meanwhile, here's the short & sweet version.


The spring flowers everywhere are always a delight:

Not all that is new is welcome, sadly; both the "book fridges" in the Palacio de Miramar park have been trashed:







A mystery house:







Sweet little stone donkey, hidden away is some garden:







This view spans multiple times and spaces. During my first stay in SanSe way back in the day, I lived very near this street, and would always take it on my way to and from Spanish class; now it also reminds me of Paris:







Hang glider over Monte Urgull; my first attempt at doctoring photos for "artistic" effect:

Amazing Wolf and Pig

Wonderful stuff:

Geekosity: Misguided Grammar

This one's especially geeky! Grammarphobes, stop here.

Linguist Geoffrey Pullum has penned a funny and spot-on little rant entitled '50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice' in honor of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, the go-to writing advice book in the US lo these many years (50!).

A taste:

Notice what I am objecting to is not the style advice in Elements, which might best be described the way The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy describes Earth: mostly harmless.

[...]

But despite the "Style" in the title, much in the book relates to grammar, and the advice on that topic does real damage. It is atrocious. Since today it provides just about all of the grammar instruction most Americans ever get, that is something of a tragedy. Following the platitudinous style recommendations of Elements would make your writing better if you knew how to follow them, but that is not true of the grammar stipulations.

"Use the active voice" is a typical section head. And the section in question opens with an attempt to discredit passive clauses that is either grammatically misguided or disingenuous.

We are told that the active clause "I will always remember my first trip to Boston" sounds much better than the corresponding passive "My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me." It sure does. But that's because a passive is always a stylistic train wreck when the subject refers to something newer and less established in the discourse than the agent (the noun phrase that follows "by").

As a teacher of grammar and writing, I've long had to deal with students (and even colleagues) who have such Strunk & White axioms in their head, and it's really difficult work to undo them. Never mind that I've spent a lot of years studying linguistics at the postgraduate level while my students and colleagues have not; in these cases I am virtually powerless, a non-expert expert. And as Pullum points out, Microsoft's grammar checker feature is full of these silly S&W rules, spreading bad advice the world over. (I myself never use the damn thing, and I generally urge my students to ignore it as well since it causes as many problems as it solves.*)

Even people who should know better, say people who write and/or work with writing for a living, often don't. I remember one of my grad school professors had to fight with some editor over his use of the passive voice, as if he were the one who didn't understand exactly what the passive is and how to use it. It was astonishing. And sad.

Still, I'm sure S&W will continue to be held up as a serious style and grammar guide in the US for the foreseeable future. 'Tis unfortunate.

One advantage to teaching grammar and writing abroad is that I rarely have to combat the S&W mindset. Unlike the grammar instruction that Americans get, modern ESL/EFL books (often overseen by series editors who are linguists) are generally quite good at presenting grammar in a way that reflects a good understanding of how English actually works and promotes good usage. So now the trick is to get this same sound approach into the/a premier American style guide...




*One of my recurring professional fantasies (I warned you this was an especially geeky post) is to write some sort of grammar checker plug in/script to give (hell, sell!) to my Spanish speaking professor types for when they write in English, one geared for the kinds of mistakes they tend to make (especially those darn entrenched ones that no amount of correcting and explaning will undo). And while I'm at it, I would remove a good chunk of the standard S&W-type rules.

Geekosity: Facultad and Library Works-in-Progress

While I am normally quite opposed to face lifts and other plastic procedures for purely aesthetic purposes, when it comes to buildings, I am currently enjoying the new face lift that has been given to the School of Chemistry at the public uni. It's now covered in matte grey, gunmetal grey, and Donostia blue. Though I think it'll eventually look sort of cheap and I was worried about it for a while as I watched them putting up the new siding every day, for the time being it's a huge improvement on the previous sand-colored block that it was. Here's a WiP shot; the markedly less pretty building to the right of it (the IT building) gives you an idea of what it looked like before.

The front of the building turned out pretty nicely, what with its rightward-rotated periodic table of the elements.






With Chemistry's beauty upgrade, it's a toss up as to which building on the campus is now the ugliest, Information Technology or Law, though I lean towards the IT building only because it sticks out like a sore thumb due to its color scheme:








A trip up a hill today showed how far they are in the construction of the new uni central library (check out the red cranes on the left; it looks like so far there's been some leveling and pouring of foundation):



I continue to be excited about the idea of such a place, but as I previously ranted when the project was announced about a year ago, I hate the exterior design.