March Madness, in more ways than one…

The first week of March brought some gale force winds to our little island, causing bus terminals to blow over, rubbish to go flying through the streets, the streetlights to swing precariously above our heads, and most importantly – my hair looked like some sort of large monster had been ‘artfully’ ruffling it anytime I dared to venture beyond our front door.

Work continued as usual – classes with my secondary school boys, a new crop of Erasmus (aka non-Maltese) students in my Uni class, a few new students at the refugee centre, and some NASA talks (more on those in a minute).

The second weekend was busy – GG’s wonderful uncle was visiting and treated us to a nice dinner before he escaped and we headed down into Paceville (the nightlife/bars/small piece of hell area in St. Julian’s) to a farewell party for one of the Marines and his fiancé, both of whom we are good friends with. Sometime after 2 or 3 a.m., we walked the 2 or so miles home in the crazed wind because GG refused to take the taxi…oh well, stories to tell! The next day we met up with Uncle S again and I gave a tour through Mdina (proof that I read the guidebooks a little too much prior to arriving in Malta) and then we snacked upon the famous Fontanella cakes while enjoying the views across central Malta.

I also experimented with some new recipes – made baked baby marrows (a small green squash, not some sort of inner bone material from a small animal, as we originally thought) and mini meatloaves in muffin tins with ground chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, and feta. For St. Patrick’s Day, I made green scones, but all that required was green food dye, so it sounds more impressive than it was 
GG had somehow never seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, so we sat her down one dinner-time, fed her feta salad, and we laughed all evening. We half-joked when we got to Greece a few weeks later that 90% of our knowledge of Greek culture came from that film (the other 10% coming of course from our Greek unit in 6th grade – thanks to Mrs. Tyson, I can still sing-recite the Greek alphabet! Alpha, beta, gamma, delta….).

I also did a couple of NASA-related talks (being qualified from having taken one whole Astronomy course at WC – thanks, Dr. P!) at secondary schools across Malta. I prepared a 30-minute presentation with PowerPoint, covering a brief history of Astronomy and then moving into what NASA is and what it works on.  I really enjoyed these talks (probably because all the ones I did were at private schools, so the kids were much better behaved than the ones I usually work with! But then again, I didn’t see them in class, just for 45 minutes in a special setting…) Although I introduced myself at the beginning of the presentation, inevitably at the end when I opened the floor to questions, there were always a few that really would have required an actual NASA technician to answer, e.g. “Miss, how does the Juno Probe have enough power to get all the way to Jupiter and back?” “Great question – see nasa.gov for more details on everything I’ve mentioned here today!”

Another fun addition to my usual work was getting to substitute for a few classes at the Junior College (remember, not an actual JC but rather what they call 11th and 12th grade here). We did two sessions where we helped students who were about to take their A levels practice with native English speakers for the oral component, and then I substituted for two classes in literature, where I (attempted) to teach them Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” and explain villanelle form (note to self: foreign 12th graders barely know what a sonnet is, not to mention what ‘iambic’ means or why extra feet are significant). In case you haven’t read the poem, I’ll paste it here:

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright © 1979, 1983 by Alice Helen Methfessel. Used with permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.

The middle of March, besides the ever-green festivities of St. Patty’s Day, also brought St. Joseph’s Day on the 19th. Besides being a national holiday, and therefore a day off from work, we also got to have zeppoli, a traditional Italian/Maltese dessert for St. Joseph’s. They are kind of like a cream puff, but the filling is a sweetened ricotta (irkotta) with candied fruit peel (similar to a proper cannoli filling) and then it is coated in a light layer of honey. So much yum!

The next week I also made a panettone bread pudding (how very Giada of me) and shared it with friends and teachers at school – Maltese bread pudding is apparently much different, and GC has promised to make it for me before I leave.

March 25th brought one of my least favorite days, no matter which time zone I’m currently residing in, Daylight Savings – Spring Forward. Who came up with this “losing an hour” business? I’ll take just my “Fall Back” every October, and eventually we’ll be getting up in the middle of the night or something, completely circumventing Circadian rhythms, etc. It’ll be great!

The end of March brought some of PG’s family to visit – it was fun to meet them and to see her interact with her sisters.  GG and VF also had a ‘fancy dress’ aka costume party because they had some visitors that weekend as well – you had to dress up as something that began with the first letter of your name. Rifling through what I had here, I remembered the one euro golden crown I’d bought at the second-hand store in prep for Karnival but then not used – and decided to go as a “Monarch” – I’m not named Quinn, so I couldn’t go as a queen! I used a discarded long light bulb as a scepter and LW’s BellaBall as my orb…the things I come up with on a day’s notice! I actually don’t think there’s photo evidence (I just looked in my pictures folder and can’t find it) but it was well-received.

The next day brought our first refugee centre ‘graduation’ (the next is this week – the time this term has gone so quickly!) and we proudly presented certificates of completion to the students who had attended a certain number of classes during the three month term. We aren’t allowed to post pictures online from there centre, but there’s a funny one of my looking like a proud mum while one of our best students (in his Sunday suit) gets his certificate.

Although I appreciate and have learned from all of the work that we do here, the refugee centre is particularly special because I feel that there is where we have our greatest immediate effect. I really enjoy working with my students in all of my educational positions, but working with these men is truly a new experience each time.  At times, it’s been a bit stressful and naturally challenging, and it took some getting used to, but -- these days -- I feel really good about the learning that they are doing.

These students come on Wednesday and Friday nights from 6-8PM by bus to these lessons.  They come after working long days (some in hard manual labor jobs like construction) because it’s really important for and to them to improve their English.  I am so inspired and humbled by their intelligence, their dedication, and their commitment to learning English and to -- ultimately -- self-improvement and self-empowerment (to bettering their situation, to learning for the sake of their own satisfaction and interest). Some of the guys in our class can’t even speak each other’s languages (just think about how many languages and dialects there are all over the African continent), so the main way that they can communicate with each other and with Maltese society is through these bits of English we are privileged to teach them twice a week.


Next time on the bloggity:  MHT takes her road-show to other parts of Europe: Greece and Italy!