i lost my voice

I came to school on Monday with pretty much no speaking abilities excepting a straggly whisper. Every kid's reaction to this was "Whoaaaaaa what'd you do this weekend?" Um... acquired allergies? Cheered for the frisbee team? Sang too loud in my car on the drive to Hanover because so much Wicked played and I was super excited about that? It was a serious rager...

In all seriousness, though, this past weekend was awesome. The Lodge is finally open (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and it was beautiful and perfect to finally spend time there. I took a picture of my dinner because as always I was given way too much food and as always it was the most delicious.

A mysterious, wonderful kind of curry, and egg-free cornbread! SO GOOD.

While at the Lodge, I talked to a friend who also happened to do the same internship I'm doing now. She made me feel a lot better about the fact that I go back to Hanover a lot, because she had done the same thing during her internship. A couple of my friends on campus didn't seem to understand why I came back so frequently, because they took off terms in cities like Boston and New York, where they actually had people their age around to socialize with, and where they lived with their own families or with friends their age. Moreover, it's not that their work was more or less emotionally strenuous, just that none of them were in an actively emotional work situation from 7 am to 5 pm every day of the week. So I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't understand the necessity of an escape from work and to caring friends on the weekends, because they had that sort of escape when they returned home from their jobs each afternoon. It was truly relieving to talk to someone who did understand exactly what this is like and actually empathized with my desire to return to Hanover to get some emotional relief and comfort and actually relax on the weekends.

Speaking of emotional, this past week has been a constant reminder of the fact that the world can be a pretty messed up place. On Tuesday, someone came in to talk to me around 9 in the morning and asked, Hey, did you know what those police cars were doing outside of school earlier? During lunch, kids were talking about the girl who got jumped on her way to school. During the last period of the day, when I had brought a bunch of kids outside to study/play frisbee, another faculty member came out and gave me a letter from the principal to distribute to the kids so they could bring it home to their parents. It detailed the events of the morning - basically, this girl had been walking up the street to school with a bunch of friends when a car came speeding by. She shouted at the driver because he was going way too fast, and he stopped the car, got out, and attacked her. Her friends nearby fought him off, and she wasn't hurt, and then the cops came to school to discuss the incident.

Then, yesterday, I was talking to a couple of kids in the English classroom where I like to hang out when the school lockdown announcement came on. I was a little surprised because we had a lockdown drill in late April and all of the faculty had been alerted to the fact that there was going to be a drill. Turns out this lockdown was not actually a drill - someone came into the school with a knife to attack some kid who owed him money or something. Apparently the entire E wing was shut down. I was in the AB wing when this happened, so we locked the door like we were supposed to and just went on talking and watching Arrested Development on the projector. It was almost baffling to realize that somewhere else in this giant building, faculty members were trying to stop a guy with a knife from attacking a kid. Generally when you sign up to be a teacher, I feel like you don't sign up to stop armed attackers from infiltrating the learning process. The school is so big that when stuff like this happens, its effects might only graze you tangentially, but it's still pretty sobering to realize that not only does stuff like this happen in the world, it happens in schools, these places where we're supposed to be safe and learning.

The announcements just came on: "...We would like to remind you that tomorrow is prom day. Any student planning on attending the prom is reminded that tomorrow is a full school day. You must be in school until 11 am if you plan on attending the prom. Any student who is to be excused early must have a signed note from their parents..." Monday is going to be hilarious. I can't wait to hear about prom. If I don't go back to Hanover Friday afternoon, I'm going to stay here and go see the Great Gatsby with some of the kids who aren't going to prom, so that'll be cool too. But hearing about prom is going to be so, so, so much fun. Monday is going to be awesome.

Also, I didn't take a picture, but the other night I made a food! It was fun to cook because recipes are done and this is why I like playing with Legos, because you get the pieces and then it's entirely up to you to be creative, it's all up to you to do what you want with what you've been given, and that makes it interesting to be alive. I had a bunch of random canned foods that I had purchased, like sweet potatoes and corn and black beans, and I didn't really know what to do with them, but I thought it might be fun to put them all in a pot and throw some other stuff in there and heat it up, and it ended up being really stinking delicious, and there is a 100% chance that if I had tried to find some recipe and follow it, what I was making would not have been as satisfying or as good. This is why I will never take any sort of music theory or songwriting class. It's why I hated analytical subjects like AP Language and Composition. It's why I don't want to learn about things in steps, recipes, rubrics. It ruins the point of learning. If I have questions, I need to ask them. I don't want to be told what to do before I even ask! And if it's going to help me for you to tell me, well, don't tell me. Show me, and let me figure it out from there. The telling ruins everything.