Savannah Memorial Day 2015

My friend Thomas came to visit for the long Memorial Day weekend along with Maya’s friend Noga from Chicago. I hadn’t checked out Savannah since going there with the Macalester tennis team before I was of age and had been meaning to get out there since we moved to ATL. I wasn’t sure we could top off the New Orleans jazz festival trip from a few weeks ago but we made a good effort.

Our trip’s theme song was Mark Ronson’s ‘Uptown Funk You Up’ and we listened to it at least 4 times a day. We stayed at the Thunderbird Inn (amazing retro. place) and enjoyed popcorn and lemonade upon arrival along with 1960’s-70’s soul music playing in the background. Besides Krispy Donuts for breakfast both mornings, we also enjoyed a short 10-minute walk or so to River Street and the nightlife.

The nightlife is surprisingly vibrant in Savannah. It’s a very good place to barhop. We started at Dubs, which had ping pong, and nice cheap beer, moved on the Smiles Dueling Piano Bar. I’ve heard of other piano bars and kind of doubted how much fun they would be with all of the bros and annoying sing alongs. But this place was fun and had a good vibe with some talented piano players. I also am sick and tired of getting a hard time from Thomas about drinking these girly drinks like the frozen strawberry daiquiris I ordered. I really don’t care about assigning gender roles to drinks and/or conforming to norms. If I like the drink than that’s all that matters right?

So we moved on from there to a cool dance club 500 feet away and then Chuck’s, a gay bar with $1 jello shots. We sang a horrible karaoke rendition of the horrible Meatloaf song: “I would do anything for love.” Our delusional friends thought it went pretty well though (I am pretty sure the DJ laughed us off) but that’s sort of the point of karaoke I think. We ended up a noodle bar with $1 drafts at about 2 in the morning, which was great. The nice thing about all of the nightlife in Savannah is that it keeps the prices down and if you know were to look you can find lots of great deals. By choosing to go on Memorial Day weekend though we also had to contend with 8 million bachelorette party’s: They all looked illegal.

We enjoyed Tybee island the next day and a day at the beach. We also checked out Skid-a-way Island which has a really cool little park with marshes and lots of overhanging Spanish moss trees. Along with our friend and dog who live in Savannah, we had our dog Sherlock who loved the park. They ran and played together and made all of the tiny little low-tide crabs scatter.

After a day at the beach with surprisingly warm water I think we had our Savannah trip down pat. It also reminded me that school is finally out. Let summer begin!

Photo Booth with Lola on previous trip to Minnesota

Historic Savannah with friends all in green

Skid-a-way Park

BBQ on Tybee

Maya and her friend Noga in Old 4th Ward Historic parc on our Friday night out

Teacher Appreciation

Two weeks ago was Teacher's Appreciation Week and every day that week different businesses had different promotions going on for teachers. The corporate shitty pizza buffet chain (I guess that idea sounds good...or does it?) Cici's gave me free dinner one night and I remember thinking, "wow, not bad being a teacher." There was never a 'salesperson appreciation week,' because that's not a job people appreciate. It kind of validates my decision to do what I am doing this year. One time earlier this year I was late for a doctor's appointment and when they found out why they were so much more sympathetic because everyone knows or has a child or family member where someone is in school. If not, at some point they themselves were in school and remember how teachers changed their lives.

Even more recently I had a similar experience. It was funny asking Maya and then taking Maya to prom at 30 years old (actually the first time she been 'taken' to prom) for my school. It was a little bit awkward being there as the adult seeing my students all dressed up and grown up. Add to that the music (trap: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_music) and our whiteness and we kind of stayed on the sidelines and ended up not staying that long. However, we stayed just long enough that we got back to our car at the meter 3 minutes late where a parking attendant was writing us a ticket. The woman was sympathetic and swore she couldn't change it once it was written but we could try to appeal it. We both knew that wouldn't work (since we were still in the wrong) and I pleaded with her and told her I was a teacher coming from our school's prom. Once she heard those magic words I could see her face change, soften, and she told me to give her back the ticket. Just amazing.

We are in the home stretch now and my job has improved for the moment somewhat but it's been a long year. One of the longest I can remember for a long time. As the school year winds down I've started to think about my options for next year. What type of place do I want to be if I am going to continue trying this crazy thing out? How can I make this thing more sustainable? How much do I really enjoy it? What age and type of students do I want to teach? Can I tolerate another year of having my students fail at watching a movie for example? I showed Selma recently and told my students that all I wanted them to do was watch the movie (I've actually not shown any full movies this year besides most of Glory and they always complain about not watching enough movies). They didn't need to take notes or do a worksheet, and they would get a 100% on a class assignment for successfully watching a movie. Most of them couldn't actually do this and a few of them failed even. I took 10 points off for talking, being on their phones, listening to their headphones, sleeping, playing cards, or causing disruption. I can't imagine this being a scenario back when I was in high school but this is a different world.