Why We Learn Spanish

I thought I would spend my substitute teaching year trying all different subjects and grades. However, when I was asked to stay at a school which needs someone until March, I accepted. The teachers I have met have a hard line against having their free time exploited, refusing to take on uncompensated or minimally compensated extra duties, and insisting on taking their duty free lunch breaks. I am new enough and inexperienced enough that I am spending hours every day trying to get myself up to speed.

I supervise the kids at most of their electives, but one is designated prep time for me. It is at the end of the day on Friday, so I don't need the time to photocopy things or review my lesson plan. However, because the other teachers consider prep sacrosanct, I was taking it anyway.

 Last week my charges terrorized each other during my prep period so I offered to supervise them this week. While I was there I looked around and realized how lucky I was to get to sit in on a Spanish lesson. Prior to yesterday, if someone asked me to teach Spanish at a 65% English Language Learner school I would cry. (Not that I would sign up for it, but sometimes the listing is wrong. I have been put into a PE class before.) But now I know the secret to teaching 32 children with probably 10 different levels of fluency and 10 reading levels is to have them make duolingo accounts and take assessments.

In addition to attending Spanish to help the students settle in, I prepped them right before class. I vaguely planned all day to discuss Why We Learn Spanish but I made it all the way to the portable before I actually did it. Getting them to make a circle on the playground is hard and some were running and playing instead of listening to their classmates, so I asked the boys for a ball to use as a talking tool. They came up with a full size football. I had my purse and binder under my arm- the ground was wet so I couldn't set anything down- so I needed it lobbed to me. The children had to retrieve it when it fell through my hands, but it attracted the attention of the wayward ones. We answered two questions, "Why do we learn Spanish?" and "Where do people speak Spanish?" And honestly it was so sweet.

Kurbitsing a Hemnes Bookcase

 Comparing NYE plans with a coworker, I explained that I would be building a bookcase. She encouraged me to go out, even though it is cold, expensive, and crowded. At this point in my life, my favorite part of New Year's is getting everything in order. As it turns out, I couldn't save the project for New Year's Eve. I was too excited about building the bookcase to sleep, so I got out of bed and took a stab at putting it together. This morning, I had to reconfigure it a little bit and I painted it and now I am delicately putting my favorite things in it and my not favorite things in piles upon piles of paperwork.

I love kurbits painting. I kept this pretty delicate and clean... it barely coordinates with the bolder version on my bed.  

Jonas really wanted me to get a white bookcase to use as a fresh base for painting. I appreciate the impulse- translucent layers on white look great. But, since white furniture isn't my thing I would have to cover it completely. This is a formerly white particle board chest that I painted with a faux wood grain. It was fun to do, and looks great, but doing the same for a full size piece of furniture is daunting. 

Ornament Repairs

Unpacking ornaments, my Mom was giving me all the ones that need repairs. There was a large glass ornament with a small circular hole in one side. I started imagining how I would line the hole with clay, and as she handed it to me it shattered. Even though it was already broken, we both felt kind of sad. Ornaments are so sentimental and now another one was gone. But, as I swept up the pieces I found the very bottom, and put it with the top to try and salvage. I thought I would make sort of a smooth bulb shape but as I was pushing more and more air dry clay over the broken edges I saw that that would take two sessions. I wanted to get my ornament hospital picked up and put away! So I did more of a snowbank effect.

The Santa at bottom right is the same air dry clay. It's inspired by one of Nick's wooden ornaments. Black sticks were all that remained of his feet, but I think the shape looks nicer without anything sticking off so I took it back out of the repair pile.

How to Buy Paint

I went to Blick this week for some blue water based ink for my Christmas card, and since I had to sit in traffic for an hour to travel 10 miles it felt like I should stock up on whatever I need. I picked up a canvas for a series of aquatic dinosaur skeleton paintings I have been working on, researching, and sketching. I visualized the 3'x4' field of black and thought I probably needed more black paint. I took my new things home and put them away and found I already had two full tubes of black. That always seems to happen to me; I have a poor memory for which colors are running low.

I have an old painting I started a year ago that doesn't really fit into the series. It is a plesiosaur as discovered on site, before restoration, so it is twisted up and dead rather than animated. I don't really remember why but I thought it was a neat way to follow the boxy shape of the canvas and I had taken a million photos of interesting rocks thinking I would explore those in oil paintings, so maybe I intended to render the rock bed in an interesting way. I want to get this painting cleaned up and done because it has been languishing so long. I took stock of my remaining oil paints and chose a cool red for the background, but it wouldn't open for anything so I used warm orangey red (cadmium red light). It was smoother and easier than I remember and I had a nice time defining the shapes of the bones for a session.

Then I put away my paints and made an inventory list so I would stop buying duplicates Artist's grade paint is sold in tiers called series, which are determined by cost and concentration of the pigment. Series 1 will be white, black and brown, and might be $25 for 6 ounces while blue and red from the same brand in the same brand and grade can cost $100. The cost, and in the case of acrylics the lack of longevity, is why I don't just keep a lot of everything on hand. Also, you can't really layer or mix different sorts of paints freely and I have never settled on one. Oil paints make better paintings because they are luminous and have a long working time but if you want to paint any little sculpture like a brooch or an ornament or a little figurine acrylic is nice because it doesn't leach oil into the thing or need a base coat. You don't have to baby it. So I need both sorts for different projects, and then when I travel or sketch on location I use watercolors because they don't ruin anything and you can leave clean up for never with no harm done.

Since it has been so long since I worked on this painting I don't recall all the little decisions I made about placement and color, and outlining it has been a nice way to rediscover them. Even if it is very rough it is sort of charming. I am planning to leave the background layer as translucent as possible without losing the vibrancy in order to display the different planning stages that are still there, in pencil and what I think is watercolor but might be watered down acrylic. You can see in the top photo at bottom right I started to paint a shoulder or a wrist and then decided to move it so just crossed it out with paint. I thought it would be covered by a thick, detailed layer of paint but I am learning not to control things so much. 

Ueno Station

This was taken on a pedestrian footbridge above Ueno Station. The art in glass cases here was the only contemporary art I saw, because I didn't know where to go and ran out of time.

Here is the Museum of Western Art. The building at both ends was billed everywhere as a potential world heritage site because Le Corbusier designed it. But, if you read its pamphlet it has been turned down as a world heritage site twice.

These panoramas were taken with photosynth. They have a lot of artifacts. The app automatically takes shots even in manual mode so it catches my shoes or pedestrians. On the photosynth website you can look at the version of this that you can pan around. You can see The Gates of Hell more clearly. That sculpture is what caught my eye and brought me over to the museum, because there are other casts of it all over, like in Palo Alto.

pliosaur, ichthyosaur, and archelon reference photos

 Taking panoramic pictures is a good way to get an entire indoor specimen into view, as I discovered  with this Kronosaurus at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. However, that room had natural lighting which always gives a better result.

 I took a ton of reference photos of the specimens or casts in the  National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. I like to do paintings of skeletal monsters and I never understand from the limited photos I can find online what the shoulders, ribs, and fins are like. The photos are usually of the still crushed fossil and from limited  perspective. My paintings are of an animated monster that makes viewers feel a thrill of fear. like ichthyosaurs like the one above as subjects because the sclerotic rings suggest eyes.

 The detail in this is not great (I haven't learned to compensate for indoor lighting in an iphone photo) but I like it because of the huge wingspan it shows.

Literally every decent meal I had in Japan.

I knew going into this that I don't like Japanese food, but I just thought I would be able to find at least instant ramen and rice and I would just be so happy to be there that I'd make do. That worked for two or three days, and then the endless saltiness of everything and the difficulty of anticipating which menu item would be ruined by salt or mayonnaise or fish or sugar wore me down. I don't usually eat at restaurants at home. I wasn't fluent enough to understand everything on the menu in time to order, so I would either use the English menu or sound out something from the set menu I might kind of like. Then I would piece together the menu for something to do while eating alone. I am not the type who likes anything that's put in front of me, and I didn't prepare enough for this. If I go again I will bring a lot of food, and I will bring sriracha. I wanted sriracha so much, and I would always look for it in the grocery store, but I couldn't find any. There was shichimi available everywhere but it tasted like nothing. I know I am particular about food, but one day I swelled up unbelievably from all the salt, so it really was objectively too salty. However, service was excellent absolutely everywhere, everything was very inexpensive, and there was no tipping.

Yoshinoya- Beef Bowl
The best Japanese food I found in the area I was staying, Iriya, was the fast food place Yoshinoya. I would get beef and onions and rice for ¥680. This came with a little sprouts and shredded things salad with corn on top that I ate the first time and then stopped eating.

Pizza Hut-  I went to Pizza Hut and the pizza was pretty good (which, keeping in mind that I was eating as infrequently as possible and only when very hungry, means... not very good) and it came with a tube of green chili sauce that I liked. Mine was ¥1280 but studying the menu it looks like that was half price for some unknown reason.

Satkar- Spinach Curry and Naan
The fact that the Indian food was great in Japan was a lifesaver. The naan was a bit sweet but also huge and fluffy. I had Indian food several times but Satkar in Fabric Town (Nippori) was the standout. Lunch was only ¥900 which is half price compared to home.

The National Museum of Western Art -Charred Salmon, Salad, Minestrone (about ¥1900)
I am a printmaker, and the Ukiyo-e prints are very good, so I thought I would see some while I was in town. As far as I can tell, they aren't rarefied enough to be in an art museum in any great quantity. I determined this by walking all through the museum district looking at brochures to see if any had a collection of more than a few. This took a fair amount of time and walking. By the time I was through the National Museum of Western Art I was emergency level hungry so I went to this little cafe inside the museum. It was so cute in a British pastiche. My soup bowl had two handles, the tablecloth was baby pink, and they brought me so much silverware. My salad was incredible. I don't know what the other, mayonnaise salad served with the salmon was, but it was better than all the other mayonnaise salads at every turn.

Shabu-shabu in Chigasaki- On my last day in Japan, I found a new food I like! Yay! I went to the seaside, and because I had already checked out of the hostel I had my luggage so I carried it out onto the beach and went for barely a swim. There were windsurfers, so I knew it was okay to swim, but I was alone and since I was pretty sick and run down I thought my endurance would be awful, so I just ran out and did head up breaststroke for a moment. It was a bit of a beach town with tons of joggers and I felt very at home. The ocean was way warmer than at home. Anyway, I was headed right to the airport after so I wanted to try something local and I was a little weird looking from the way the wind kept pulling my hair out of its pins so I picked a very casual looking all-you-can-eat-in-80-minutes hot pot place. This was probably one place I should have definitely spoken Japanese instead of letting people practice their English, but after I resolutely said I didn't speak Japanese I felt painted into a corner. So I had a simmering pot of water and broth on my table and a buffet of vegetables and tofu and they brought me a tray of meat. I assembled a little salad and started to eat it while I waited for more diners to arrive so I could copy them, but several staff came over to coach me. They kept saying "shabu-shabu" and pointing at the pot. So it turned out there had been no salad, the jicama and radishes and greens were soup ingredients. However, the broth was so salty it even made things too salty if I left them in, let alone trying to consume the broth itself. Anyway, the barely cooked meat was excellent (sometimes I dropped it and it got too cooked and wasn't as good) and I finally got some garlic that wasn't pickled and buffet style is the right way for me to be choosy without imposing on anyone.

Oh yes, and I bought grocery store mochi and it was terrible (like a sugar cube, not creamy or milky) so in an enormous faux pas I would peel the mochi and put two in my coffee in the morning.