Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Here's what I've done so far this week

1. Spoke to one of my sister Kerry's classes about my Peace Corps experience. Kerry is a teacher at Framingham High School, our alma mater, and I go once a year to talk to her International Relations class. It's trippy to walk those same halls again, although most of my former teachers have retired- when I was in high school, almost all of our teachers were in their 50s and 60s, and there's been a ton of turnover since I graduated. I wonder how different the experience is for students who are taught primarily by teachers in their 20s and 30s. Probably not that different. High schoolers seem a lot younger and nicer than I remember them. I had a good time talking to Kerry's class- they acted like they were interested (the only thing better than a guest speaker is a movie, as far as I can remember) and asked lots of questions, my favorites being "So, what is the standard of living like in Nicaragua? Is it almost the same as in the US? Do people have computers in their homes and stuff?" (Ummm...not even close. Dirt floors, no indoor plumbing, etc) I also liked "Did you get hit on a lot?" (yes) and "What did you do for fun?" (I had to think for a minute to come up with a more appropriate answer than drank a lot of rum, partied at the disco, and smoked too many cigarettes).
2. Went to the Sox-Yankees game on Monday night. Johnny Damon was vehemently booed, the Sox won, and I had a blast, even though it was FREEZING. Damn this New England weather.
3. Got a cortisone injection in my heel. Didn't hurt nearly as bad as I had imagined that it would.
4. Attended a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert. My parents had a pair of tickets they weren't able to use, so Carolina and I pretended to be cultured for a night. They played a three part series: Schubert, Henze (a modern composer we hadn't heard of), and Brahms. We were proud of the fact that we were able to differentiate the three sections on sound alone.

7 comments:

Jon said...

Did you see my cousin?

Anonymous said...

Due, the high school kids thought you were hot!

eileen said...

No, I didn't see Mark.

p.s. I am hot.

Anonymous said...

Could you tell me more about Peace Corps. Only corps like that i know are UN Peacekeeping Forces, Red Cros, some disactern teams (volcano, earthquake..., medic and engineer teams) and some minefield clearing teams (in Finland). If you was in some other team i like to know more about it. Some links in you blog, maybe?

eileen said...

Jussi- I added a link to the text in the blog. Sorry I didn't explain- Peace Corps is a program run by the US government in which volunteers spend 2+ years in a developing country providing technical assistance to local communities. You have to be a U.S. citizen to participate (and I'm guessing that you aren't), but several countries run similar programs (Canada and Japan, for example), or you could always look into Oxfam, Unicef, or other international NGOs.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, that page is interesting. Yes, i'm not from USA so this
is not for me :-( (I'm a computer specialist and a military
engineer officer in the reserve, Crisis Corps sounds good for me). The whole Peace Corps system sounds very interesting.

Anonymous said...

Hey yeah I was one of the kids in that IR class, great presentation! You're right by the way, speakers and movies are the way to go...