What I Think About

Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving

2012-01-25T19:23:00.000-08:00

My sister turned 30 over Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend so to celebrate we went to Disneyland. It was a blast. As we were getting ready in the hotel the morning of Lindsay's birthday she said, "I think I'm going to wear my good life experience shirt today." When she said that I assumed she was talking about a shirt that she wore when she had good life experiences, but when she put it on I say that it was just a shirt for the band The Goodlife Experience. We also created some new inside jokes. My favorite is dancing like a turtle. There are some turtles in the new Little Mermaid ride that have some really awesome moves and we recreated those moves daily. We got pretty good at it.

Lindsay and I were so excited to be at Disneyland that we clicked our heels. We're really just big kids.

Lindsay insisted that we get real Mexican food for her birthday dinner. I asked a Hispanic cast member at Disneyland where we could get authentic Mexican food near the park. She said, “Real Mexican food? By Disneyland? There isn’t any.” She recommended a place called Los Sanchez about 10 minutes away. We followed her sage advice and it was good (we were the only non-Hispanics in the place). They had the whole restaurant sing Happy Birthday to Lindsay and they even gave her a mug that just happened to say “Happy 30th Anniversay” on it. They also had a Mexican mannequin that we took our picture with. There was a sign on him that said: “My name is Mr. Sanchez. You can take your picture with me.” How could we resist?

We all love Splash Mountain (except for my mom) and got extremely wet the first time we went on it. That's usually not a problem because we usually go to Disneyland in the summer, but it was really cold and being wet was not fun. Lindsay decided to by a poncho to keep herself dry. I was far too cheap to spend $8.50 on a poncho so when Lindsay bought hers I asked the cashier for a big plastic bag. I cut it up with my keys and used it to shield myself from the water. It worked like a charm. Since it was so cold no one wanted to ride Splash Mountain and we rode it multiple times without waiting at all. Notice how wet we are in the picture.

My nephew and sister-in-law came too and it was so fun to have them there. Bowen had never been before and it was great to see how excited he was about everything. When we first saw them the first thing Bowen said to me was, “My birthday’s in five days!” I had expected hello, but that worked too. When you're six birthdays are a big deal. Bowen doesn’t like fast rides, but his mom does. She convinced him to go on a number of rides by saying, “Just try it once and if you don’t like it you don’t have to do it again.” She successfully got him on Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, but he wised up to her plan and avoided all the other fast rides. We sent Bowen off with grandma while we thrill seeking adults went on the fast rides.

Bowen and I waiting in line at the Toy Story Mania ride.

One of my favorite things we did was canoeing on the Rivers of America. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.

It was such a fun trip and I don't know how I'm going to top it when I turn thirty. Also, I wrote Lindsay a parody song for her birthday. I tried to upload it, but realized that I don't know how to upload videos. It's to the tune of Dynamite by Taio Cruz. Use your imagination.

On a completely unrelated note, my parents stopped by my house briefly yesterday. My dad tripped as he was going down the stairs, tumbled down six stairs, and crashed into the wall before hitting the ground. It was a frightening few seconds before we found out that he was okay. He was pretty lucky and escaped with only bruises. It could have been really bad if he had landed differently, but he’s fine. The wall, however, now has a huge hole in it.

Solving the hole problem turned out to be super-simple. Not only did I cover up the hole, but now I want to go to Brazil.

Bursting My Bubble

2012-01-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

BYU students often refer to Provo as “the bubble” since we’re somewhat isolated from the real world. I loved living in Provo, but it’s definitely not the real world. I would often go weeks without hearing someone swear or seeing a girl’s exposed shoulder. That is not the real world. Even though I grew up outside of the bubble I still tend to surround myself with Mormons thus creating my own bubble. A few experiences lately have helped me burst out of my bubble. On an unrelated note, on Friday night my roommate and his girlfriend told me they were going to a poetry reading. Jesse wasn’t excited to go and I agreed that it sounded super-boring. After expressing how I’d rather do almost anything than go to a poetry reading, I added, “However, I think a limerick reading would be awesome.” I’ve decided to write a limerick to go along with each of my bubble bursting experiences.

I have a coworker who lovingly and frequently calls me lazy, cheap, boring, etc. I was texting with her one day and she responded to my text by writing: lmao. When I saw that I thought she had misspelled the word “lame-o” because I could totally see her calling me that. I forgot about it for a few minutes until I suddenly remembered someone telling me that it stood for “laughing my *rear* off.” That made a lot more sense. Here’s limerick about that story:

Lol, g2g, brb,
All of these make sense to me,
But add in a swear word
And I’ll think I misheard
Cursing’s not my cup of tea.

On New Year’s Eve my friend Christian and I went to the YSA dance in Seattle. We were stuck in heavy traffic at 10:00 pm when Christian said, “Wow, look at that girl puke.” I looked at the sidewalk on the left and didn’t see her. I looked to the right and didn’t see her. And then I looked straight ahead and she was puking out of the backseat window of the car right in front of us. She puked a lot and for a long time. When she was done she opened the car door and stumbled into the street obviously quite drunk. She was covered in vomit as was the car door. Another girl got out of the same door to help her friend find her way out of the street. As they walked away the other back door of the car opened up and another girl got out. I quickly saw that that girl was not wearing pants or underwear and appeared to only have a jacket on. Then she just walked off down the street, still not wearing pants. Not the kind of thing you would typically see in Provo. And honestly, not the kind of thing I expected to see in Seattle. Here’s the limerick:

If you’re going to go to a dance
You need to plan in advance
Don’t get drunk before 10:00
Or puke in front of Ben
And always remember your pants.

I went to Starbucks with some coworkers a few weeks ago. I think it was my fifth time ever going to Starbucks. One of my coworkers ordered a tall something-or-other and the other ordered a grande something-or-other. I was very unfamiliar with the names of the different sizes at Starbucks so I said, “Can I get a medium size hot chocolate?” and the cashier said, “A grande?” and I said, “Uh, sure.” My coworker looked at me and said, “Not used to the Seattle lingo yet?” I replied, “Actually, I grew up here.” Somehow I managed to live in the Seattle area for two decades without learning how to order at Starbucks. I have since learned that Starbucks drinks, from smallest to largest, are: short, tall, grande, and venti. And the final limerick:

Should I order a tall or a short?
Will my drink be an ounce or a quart?
I stand here confused
And rather bemused
I need some Starbucks support.

And those are my bubble bursting experiences. Now instead of saying that I’m naïve, I feel like I could confidently say that I’m simply uninformed.

I Stand Resolute

2012-01-01T23:44:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve I got together with eight of my friends to embark on a quest to find the best French fry and shake in the area. We split up into teams of three and went to different restaurants buying fries and a shake from each one. My team was called the Crafty Stallions because Vu and I are stallions and Becky likes to do crafts. We all met up at Vu's house and tried all the fries and shakes to determine which one was the best. I feel that the best fry comes from XXX Burger in Issaquah and the best shake is the Oreo shake from Jack in the Box. We bought way too much food and could not finish it all. The main flaw in the plan was that we couldn't eat the food until we were all together at Vu's place and ended up with a lot of cold, soggy fries and melted shakes. It was still fun, though.

Time for New Year's resolutions. Every year I hear people say things like, "New Year's resolutions are a waste of time because no one ever keeps them." To those negative Nancys I say, "You obviously haven't met Ben Schilaty." For the last few years I've chosen three goals and then have done them all year. Last year my first two goals were to read my scriptures everyday and to write in my journal everyday. I was already basically doing those things so they weren't too much of stretch. My third goal, however, was quite a stretch. I decided to make my bed everyday which I knew would be tough since I never made my bed. There were a few days where I was running late and thought, crap, I still need to make my bed. I managed to stick to each of my three goals last year and I feel that I'm a better person for it (and my room always looks a little cleaner, too! And I have a very detailed record of my life in 2011).

I have three goals for 2012. They are 1) memorize one scripture a week, 2) cook a meal for someone else once a week, and 3) run a marathon. I decided to memorize a scripture a week because of Elder Scott's last conference talk. You can read it by clicking here (I find Elder Scott a little too soothing to listen to and prefer to read them). The cooking goal stems from my desire to learn how to cook. I can prepare food for myself, but I really wouldn't call it cooking and it's about time that I became a full-fledged adult and learned to cook. As for the marathon, I've wanted to run a marathon for years and now is the time to finally do it. I haven't gone running since May so it will take quite a bit of training. All in all, I'm super-excited about my 2012 goals.

In 2010 I decided to have a theme song and my theme song for that year was I Get Around by the Beach Boys ("getting around" referring to going places) and I sadly didn't pick a theme song for 2011. However, looking back I think the best song would have been Me Party from The Muppet Movie. I had a blast in 2011, but spent more time alone than usual. After much deliberation with my brain I've decided that Make 'Em Laugh from Singin' in the Rain will be my theme song for 2012. I picked that song because no matter what happens this year I hope it's funny and that I can make others laugh along the way. Making people laugh is pretty easy. Fart! Poop! Stink! See? Making you laugh (or cringe) was easy. Happy 2012!

O Christmas Tree

2011-12-16T19:07:00.000-08:00

After watching the Christmas devotional this year I got into the Christmas spirit a little bit more and wanted to set up a Christmas tree in my house. I emailed Kris to see if they had a fake Christmas tree in their house and she told that they did and that I could set it up. She did warn me, however, that they only have WSU ornaments. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but Kris and her husband are huge WSU fans (not huge-fat, but huge-devoted).

I invited my new friend Kelli over last Saturday morning to help me set up the tree and decorate it. Before she came over I located the tree and Christmas ornaments in the garage and hauled them into the living room. I didn’t see the tree stand right away, but everything in the house is so well labeled that I didn’t think it’d be hard to find. Kelli showed up while I was looking for the stand and we had delicious Belgian waffles for breakfast. We then started to look for the stand, but couldn’t find it. I eventually called Kris and she explained where she thought it was in the garage, but I didn’t find it. As I said before, there are labels everywhere and the box the tree came in had a sticky note on it that said, “stand in downstairs closet ’01.” It seemed that the note was telling me that in 2001 the stand had been stored in the downstairs closet, but was it still there or was the note outdated? The other problem was that there are multiple closets downstairs.

Kelli and I started snooping through the closets and we found some pretty interesting stuff. My favorite item was an ET mask. I also found a box that was labeled “Sacks: cutesy & handles.” I opened up the box and it was filled with cutesy sacks with handles which was exactly what I had expected to find. Like I said, everything is labeled. Kris was sure that the stand was in the garage so Kelli and I searched in there for quite some time, but it was really cold that morning and we couldn’t find it. I don’t know Kelli super-well and I felt like a total dork for inviting her over and then not being able to find the stand. She was gracious about the whole tree stand catastrophe and eventually had to leave leaving me with a treeless living room. I had hoped to have a decorated tree by the time Kelli left, but this was all I had.

That night when I got home I was walking through the garage and thought popped into my head and I thought, the tree stand is behind the shop vac. I walked over to the shelf that had the shop vac on it, moved it aside and there was that bleepity bleep tree stand. It was a moment of pure triumph.

Kelli’s usually busy when I invite her to do things so I decided to just set up the tree by myself. However, I feel like my life is more and more becoming the male version of this song so yesterday I decided to invite my friend Colleen over to help me set up the tree. She agreed to come over and while we were making plans through texting I got a text from Kelli asking me if I’d set up the tree yet. I had texted Kelli on Saturday right after I found the stand and hadn’t heard from her since so I assumed that she had moved on from the whole let’s-set-up-a-Christmas-tree thing and was no longer interested. I texted her back saying that I was going to set it up that night. I then received a text saying, “I’m on my way. See you in 10 minutes.” Thinking that Kelli had taken my mention of setting up the tree as an invitation for her to join me I panicked slightly thinking that I had inadvertently invited two different girls to my house at the same time. Also, I now had the awkward task of explaining to Kelli that I had invited someone else to help me do what I had originally invited her to help me do. This was the kind of mess that people like me don’t usually get themselves into. I looked at the text a little more closely and saw that it was from Colleen and was instantly relieved. I then got a text from Kelli that said simply, “OK have fun.” Awkward moment averted.

Colleen and I had a blast decorating the Christmas tree with WSU ornaments. Even the tree skirt says WSU on it. It’s a bit much, but if you don’t look too closely the tree just looks red and you can’t tell that everything says WSU. We decided not to hang up the little WSU footballs. That was just too much. We also ate two Cinnabons.

This is what the tree finally looked like when we were done.

Notice all the WSU themed ornaments.

Even the ornaments that weren't originally WSU ornaments were painted to fit the theme. Like I said, they are huge fans.

Now every time I look at my Christmas tree I'm filled just a little bit more with the Christmas Spirit. I also feel like shouting, "Go COUGS!"

A World of Pure Imagination

2011-12-07T21:12:00.001-08:00

For FHE on Monday we toured the Seattle Chocolates factory. A girl from church’s dad is the president of the company and he took us on a little tour. Lots of people, myself included, made lots of Willy Wonka jokes. Yes, I know that making Willy Wonka jokes in a chocolate factory is a bit cliché, but it was hard to resist. I later saw Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory playing on a TV in the tasting room and felt a little less guilty about my Wonka jokes. The factory does not employ any oompa loompas (that we were told about), but they do employ a number of people of Mexican descent who, sadly, did not teach us any morality lessons through song and dance.

The area of the factory where they actually make the chocolate wasn’t super-interesting and could easily be mistaken for a box factory, but the tasting room was awesome. The decor was very modern with white plastic chairs that swivel around and a carpet made of leather strips. We were told that we could eat as much chocolate and we wanted and I ate a lot. Since we were all Mormon the guy passing out the samples told us that all the alcohol flavored chocolates had no alcohol, but all the coffee flavored chocolates did have coffee in them. Good information. My favorite chocolate was the mimosa filled one and I’m convinced that if I were a drinker I would enjoy a tasting mimosa every now and then. Well, as long as it’s covered in chocolate.

The best part of the tour happened rather unexpectedly. The guy giving the tour told us a story about how some famous chocolatier had come to the factory and taken a pitcher of liquid chocolate and poured it right down his throat. The tour guide then said, “It’s a great experience that I want you all to have.” So he grabbed a pitcher of chocolate heated up to 115 degrees and one by one he poured some into our mouths. It was a little messy, but absolutely delicious. We also got to make our own chocolate bars and we were each given a chocolate bar that they recently invented that hasn’t hit stores yet. It was filled with peanut butter and was absolutely delicious.

Interesting fact: chocolate does not have caffeine in it; it’s added in.

All Aboard the Friend Ship

2011-11-27T22:19:00.000-08:00

My best friend’s name is Tori. We became best friends about two weeks ago while playing games at her house with a group of friends. The conversation went something like this:
Tori: I don’t have a best friend.
Me: Me neither. It’s sad.
Tori: We should be best friends, Ben!
Me: I can think of three good reasons why we shouldn’t be best friends.
Tori: Like what?
Me: Well, you’re 18, you’re dating someone, and you live far away. Any one of those reasons would be a deal breaker, and there are three of them.
Tori: Did you just reject my best friend request?
Me: … yes …

To placate Tori I told her that we could give it a one week trial. Instead of being Tori’s bff, I was her bffow (best friend for one week). The week went well so we decided we can be bfuslfcij (best friends until she leaves for college in January).

On Saturday some friends and I made gingerbread houses out of real gingerbread at Tori’s house. I’d never used real gingerbread before and it had been years and years since I’d even decorated a graham cracker house. We had loads and loads of candy options for decorating. I’m not very creative when it comes to decorating and I was a little overwhelmed by all the options. Tori, our hostess, does this every year and designed a very intricate house. I designed a peppermint path for my house which I thought was cool, but that Tori described as “cliché.” Not wanting to be cliché anymore I covered my roof in “terracotta tiles” and gave my house a nice “brick” façade. I think it turned out nicely although some of the other houses were much more spectacular than mine. It’s nice to have fun friends to do things with.

In January I will be without a best friend again. If you live in the Seattle area, have graduated from college, and are single, let me know and I'll let you fill out a best friend application. The application is quite simple, you just have to be willing to make me soup and keep me company when I get sick.

Tori's gingerbread house featured a murder scene on the front path.

Candy

2011-11-17T21:49:00.000-08:00

School has its ups and downs, but despite the downs I no longer consider quitting. I really like my job and I love the kids I teach. Lately I’ve been realizing that my lessons can be a little boring so I tried some activities today that an awesome, seasoned teacher recommended (she’s seasoned because she’s been teaching for so long, not because she’s been sprinkled with herbs). Today we tried “La U” which is where the students stand in a u-shape around the classroom. I ask them questions in order and if they get it right they get to sit down, but if they get the question wrong they have to stay standing until the next round. They can’t sit down until they get a question right.

I should have seen this coming, but I didn’t. The first period I tried it with started making fun of the kids that were getting answers wrong. Some of them even called one kid a loser while holding their hand to their forehead in the shape of an L. I didn’t realize that people did that in real life. I have loads of self-esteem and a great sense of self-worth, but what they were saying would have even hurt my feelings. I stopped the game and enacted the most severe punishment I could come up with – I removed their candy privileges for the rest of the month.

Taking away candy is a big deal to 13 and 14 year olds. One day in September I gave out fun size Twix as part of a lesson. Every day after that the kids would ask if I would be giving out more candy. It got a little frustrating. One such exchange went like this:

Student: Are we getting candy today?
Me as turn my pockets inside out: I’m a part-time teacher. I can’t afford to buy you candy all the time.
Student: What if we brought it in?
Me, slightly confused by the direction of the conversation: Sure, if you bring in candy I’d be happy to pass it out to you.

I wasn’t quite sure why she needed me to give her the candy. I figured she could just cut out the middle man and keep the candy for herself. But then again candy tastes twice as sweet when it’s also a prize. Much to my surprise and the joy of the other students she did bring in candy and I happily passed it out to even happier students when they did something awesome. Unfortunately I really love my students and it was so fun to see how happy they were to be getting a small piece of candy. So the day after Halloween I went to the store and bought bags and bags of Halloween candy for a generous discount. I’m hoping the candy will last all year.

When the next period came in and I explained how La U worked I also told them that the other class had lost their candy privileges by being rude. One girl perked up and asked, “So if we’re good, do we get candy?” and I said, “If you’re good it’ll be like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in here!” I watched their eyes light up as they joyously contemplated this impossible dream. In this class, after each student answered a question all the other kids clapped ecstatically. They clapped and cheered even louder when someone got a question wrong. The classroom nearly exploded with goodwill and camaraderie. I know they were cheering because they wanted candy, but it made me so happy to see them encouraging and cheering for each other. They cheered and cheered and I couldn’t stop laughing. I wish every day could be like today. And every day can be like today -- if there’s candy.

Happy Lindsayween!

2011-10-30T17:27:00.000-07:00

My sister Lindsay and I have a good brother-sister relationship. She had to drive down to my neck of the woods on Saturday so I told her to drive down on Friday night and we could have a sleepover. There was also a Halloween dance at church that I told her we should go to. Apparently when I told Lindsay about the dance I called it a “party” and so she thought that we would only be attending a party -- no dancing involved. I’m not big fan of dances and Lindsay can barely tolerate them so she was disappointed by my accidentally misleading her. But still, she was a good sport and went anyway.

Since we were going to a Halloween dance we had to dress up. I dressed up as a planeteer (if you don’t know what that is click here), but Lindsay didn’t have costume so we started brainstorming what she could be. I have a closet in my bedroom, but I’m only able to use half of it because the other half has Kris’s clothes in it. I said, “Hey, I’ve a whole closet full of women’s clothes! I’m sure we can find something in there.” Not quite sure what she’d be dressed up as, we found a sweet green suit jacket and a hip skirt.

However, despite the awesomeness of the outfit, Lindsay decided to opt out of wearing it. I was then struck with another flash of genius. “Hey,” I nearly shouted, “Kris has a whole box of funny glasses. You could pick a pair and wear them to the dance. The only problem is I don’t know where they are.” After 10 seconds of searching I shouted to Lindsay who was in a different room, “I found them! Oddly enough they’re in a box labeled ‘funny glasses.’”

She tried on a pair and decided to go to the dance as diva. Even though I looked awesome, I decided not to go as Jimmy Durante.

Both Lindsay and I don’t really like dances, but we had fun chatting with people. I did feel kind of crotchety when people would say to me in the hallway, “Why aren’t you in the dance?” and I’d reply, “I don’t like loud music.” We did manage to dance for a little while, though and I learned what it means to Bernie and how to do the Dougie. And I was able to snag loads of free candy. Ever time I passed the candy bowl I’d furtively stuff a piece or two into my pockets so as not to arouse suspicion. I came away with quite the stash (not to be confused with a “stache” which I did not come away with).

Lindsay and I ended the night watching the new episode of Community while lying on my bed. It was the best Lindsayween ever!

That '70s House

2011-10-23T18:46:00.000-07:00

I moved about a month ago and I love my “new” house. Morning Kris and her husband winter in Arizona and they offered to let me live at their house while they’re gone for a very affordable price. I was extremely hesitant about moving in at first for a number of reasons. The first being that I would be sharing the house with their nephew Jesse whom I’d never met before. The second being that they wouldn't be in Arizona for the entire school year meaning that we would be sharing the house for a number of weeks. Also, when I first walked into the house I was very surprised to see how outdated everything was. The house is tidy and well kept, but everything looks like it’s from the '70s. Let me show you what I mean. There is orange shag carpet everywhere, even on the stairs. Also, note the stone floor in the hallway. I think the Bradys had a similar feature in their house.

My bedroom is in the basement and that's where I spend most of my time. I haven't used it yet, but we have a sweet orange pool table.

I spend most of my time lying on this couch reading. As you can see, the furniture is quite old, too. It's still comfy, though. While the basement floor is tiled, they managed to cover it with an orange rug.

Our bathroom is super-rad. It has double sinks, jungle wallpaper, and a vanity that's so old I'm pretty sure it's back in style.

Here's our lovely kitchen. Once again, notice the orange counter tops.

I've never used the dining room, but it has orange shag carpet and really neat gold wallpaper.

My room recently had some water damage so it was completely redone with nice new carpet, new dry wall and a fresh coat of paint. However, the color they picked for the walls was orange. Also, I had a goal to make my bed everyday this year and I'm still going strong.

Despite the fact that my house looks like it belongs in the '70s I still love living here. It really feels like home. Morning Kris and her husband were here for the first two weeks that I lived here and instead of it being awkward it was a ton of fun. We'd sit down and chat together every night and talk about our days together. It really felt nice to be living with a family. My first day there morning Kris said, "Would you mind telling us when you leave and when you'll be coming back? I'm not trying to be intrusive, I'm just a mom and I know I'll worry about you." I always made sure they knew where I was and it felt nice to be cared about. I love my house.

Note: I also thought about naming this post "Orange You Glad You Get to See My House?" but I thought the current title was better.

Sometimes Life Just Hurts

2011-10-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

The title of this post was meant to be overly dramatic. As I was preparing to leave Portugal this summer I made of list of the five things I wanted to accomplish when I got home. Getting a job and finding a place to live were numbers one and two and now that I had conquered those (in very unexpected ways), it was time to move on to number three: regularly exercising.

I worked out fairly regularly during college. I fell off the health band wagon frequently, but never for more than a month or two, but before last week I hadn’t worked out since April. Usually when I stop working out I go from thin back to my default body shape of scrawny. But slowing metabolism and two months of European pastries and inordinate amounts of cookie dough and brownie mix just made me go soft and it was time to fight back. I got permission to use the school gym once the kids left and went for the first time last Tuesday. I share a classroom with a lovely girl named Lindsey. We’ve spent many hours together preparing lessons after school and have become good friends. When I got back from working out Lindsey asked, “How did it go?” I responded by slightly elevating my sleeve, flexing my feeble arm and saying, “You tell me.” She wasn’t impressed.

When I had been on my mission for a little over a year I was assigned to work with an American companion. When I first saw him in the bus station I thought to myself, oh great, they sent me a jock. And he most definitely was. He had been captain of his high school football team and had played college football, too. He informed me that we’d be working out every night. I wasn’t opposed by the idea, but I wasn’t enthused by it either. Every night when we got home we’d work out for about 30 minutes. The first night we did tons of sit ups, push ups and curls. The next morning I was so sore that I literally could not sit up in bed. I had to roll over and then slide off the bed. I didn’t want to go through that again so I “went easy” this time. It still hurts, though. Even my neck muscles hurt which was very unexpected. I think the two things that are the most painful are laughing and getting dressed because they’re usually so effortless and pleasant. Still, I know the pain will subside soon and I’ll go from soft Ben to thin Ben again. I think scrawny Ben may be gone for good.

Success, Failure and Success

2011-10-10T22:02:00.000-07:00

Friday was a rough day at work. I had planned what I thought was a fun and informative lesson for my morning classes, but I was incorrect. My first class is very verbal and it can be difficult to keep them focused at times. On Friday they were particularly loud and obnoxious. Some of the kids were loudly complaining that class was boring, that Spanish was hard and then homework was evil. A lot of them had the same teacher last year who few of them seemed to like. She seems like a great teacher to me, but they all complain about her. One of the kids said to her friend, “This class is worse than [insert teacher’s name]’s class.” For some reason that comment really hurt. Usually I’m rubber and the kids are glue and whatever they say bounces off of me and sticks to them. But this comment wasn’t said to me, it was said to another student and I just happened to hear it with my teacher ears. I was the glue.

My second class is incredibly well behaved and they just seemed bored out of their minds. I thought to myself, maybe I am boring. When that class ended I collapsed into my comfy teacher chair trying to figure out what had gone wrong and why my classes had sucked so much. I packed up my bag and headed off to my next school.

I’m very lucky in that I don’t have two bad lessons in one day. If I have a bad morning I inevitably have a great afternoon and vice versa. I headed off to school knowing that the afternoon was going to rock. And it did. We’ve been singing this really silly song called "Billy la bufanda" about a scarf named Billy. You can listen to it by clicking here

. In the song Billy the scarf has all kinds of adventures and then the singer says that Billy really didn’t do those things because he’s just a scarf. It’s a pretty silly song, but the kids love it and want to sing it every day.

On Wednesday I was having problems with a kid who I’ll call Jared. Jared is a good kid, but he just has too much energy and annoys everyone around him. I called his mom to talk to her about some issues I was having with Jared and she said, “This is really surprising because he’s never had any problems before. No teacher has ever complained about Jared. I would like to come in and talk to you.” I hadn’t expected that to happen and unwilling set up a time for the first parent teacher conference I’d ever had. I was really worried because I now had to deal with a parent who thought her imperfect child was indeed perfect. I followed the sage advice of my parents and told the vice principal that I’d be meeting with Jared’s mom just in case the meeting went poorly and the mom complained about me. I then emailed all of his other teachers to see if they were having similar issues and they were. I showed up to the meeting with both barrels loaded and ready to support my claims with what the other teachers had said. It ended up being the most pleasant conversation I could have imagined. Jared and his mom were both there and we discussed what Jared needed to do differently and then quickly changed the subject to talking about how much we love traveling through Spain. It was awesome and I feel like Jared and I have a better relationship and that his mom trusts me.

A bunch of the teachers from one of my schools went to happy hour at Azteca on Friday. I hadn’t planned on going because I don’t drink, but the promise of inexpensive chips and guacamole got the better of me. While I was there the teacher who has Jared the period after me came up to me and said, “I don’t know what you and Jared’s mom talked about, but he was angel today.” It was true, he was. Then the choir teacher approached me and said, “I’ve gotta tell you something, Ben. Every Friday I let the kids pick a song to sing and then we assign parts and a harmony and just have fun with it. I have a bunch of kids from your class and they all wanted to sing “Billy la bufanda” so we sang it for the whole period and the kids loved it.” I said, “Everyone sang in Spanish?” and she said, “Yes, and even the kids that don’t know any Spanish loved it.”

I didn’t have a margarita Azteca on Friday, but I did get slightly tipsy from a healthy sense of accomplishment. I had started the day feeling like a boring failure, but I ended it learning that I had helped a student focus in school and that my kids loved what we were doing in class so much that they shared it with their friends. I wish that all of my efforts and hard work and preparation resulted in educational joy, but they don’t. And that’s how life is, too. We try and try and sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. But not every failure is the result of lack of effort (although plenty are), but that doesn’t mean that we stop trying because we’re bound to end up at Azteca during happy hour only to learn that we changed the world in a very small way. I like my job, I like where I’m living and I like my new ward. I feel very happy and content. I’m so lucky to be where I am doing what I’m doing.

I Sound Like a Grown-up

2011-09-29T21:11:00.000-07:00

School is going really well, much better than I would have expected a few weeks ago. I had my first observation a week ago and both the principal and vice principal were in the room taking copious notes. That usually would have made me extremely nervous, but I’ve been observed and critiqued by the subs for so long that being observed has become second nature. The other Spanish teachers had warned me that they always have to tell you something to work on and that I shouldn’t get down on myself because of their suggestions. I met with the vice principal on Tuesday to debrief and talk about the evaluation and he was overwhelmingly positive and the things he told me to work on were pretty small things. I was relieved. He even hinted that they will likely offer me the job for next year as well. No decisions can be made for some time, though. I felt pretty good about that. Mostly because four weeks ago they picked someone else for the job.

Today I had to stop by the district offices and I ran into the district’s sub coordinator who I’d never met before. She came right up to me and introduced herself. She told me that since I had had no time to prepare for the year she sent me the three best subs that the district has. She had asked them all how I was doing and they had told her that I was doing phenomenal things, that I had a good report with the kids and that they were really impressed with me. She ended by saying, “They all think you’re doing a great job and had nothing but great things to say.” Not only did this warm my heart, but I also got the sweet feeling of revenge. You see, I was a little disappointed and even a little more vengeful when the district didn’t hire me the first time. I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but when someone makes a decision that hurts me my reaction is usually to make them want to regret that decision. I feel like the best way to make them regret not hiring me is to do an awesome job just to show them what they could have missed. So take that, school district, I’m doing a great job!

I moved into my new home on Monday and it’s great. Morning Kris and her husband spend their winters in Arizona so I’m going to housesit for them with their nephew Jesse. I’d never met Jesse before and I was a little worried about living with a stranger. Especially someone that Kris had described as “froo froo.” Before I even met Jesse I walked into the bathroom that we’d be sharing and saw his retainers soaking in a denture cleaning solution. I know this sounds weird, but I clean my retainers the same way and knowing that we have that one thing in common put me slightly at ease. Jesse is really easy going, tall and thin and we get along great so far. A grown man that still wears his retainers can’t be that bad. His teeth are straight and so is he. On Tuesday I told one of my classes that I was moving into town from Everett and they were all unusually happy for me. One girl in particular, who I will call Lola, was worried that I’d never met Jesse before. Trying to be funny she wrote a letter for me to give to Jesse. This is what it said:
Dear Jessie,
Please be kind to Señor Schilaty. I like him and if you hurt his feelings he will get sad. Also, do not murder him, that would be kinda bad. Finally, don’t take his clothes, he is very stylish! Thank you! Please write back.

The next day she asked me if Jesse had written back and I said, “I’m not a mailman and I’m not going to help a 13 year old communicate with a grown man.”

Later that day we were reading a story in class about a boy and his girlfriend. During the story Lola did what all middle school students love to do: exclaim that their class last year was different from the current class. Every day I hear things like, “Señor Schilaty, we didn’t do this last year. Why are we doing it now?” “Señor Schilaty, we had class outside last year. Why don’t we have class outside?” “Señor Schilaty, our other teacher didn’t teach us this. Why are you?” Lola exclaimed, “Why do we always talk about boyfriends and girlfriends in this class? We didn’t do that last year.” She was right though, we do talk about novios a lot. I think it’s probably a lingering habit from teaching at BYU. I looked straight at Lola and in the most serious voice I could muster while making a joke I said, “Lola, as you get older you’re going to start seeing boys in a way that you haven’t before.” At this point another kid yelled out, “You sound just like my dad,” which was exactly the point. The class burst into laughter and I pulled a Jimmy Fallon and laughed a lot more than I should have in front of a large group.

Later that day another student was complaining about the group he’d been assigned to work with. He wasn’t being serious and was just trying to be funny. I feel very strongly that a silly comment deserves a silly response. So I said, “What?! You don’t like your group? But you have the best group! Look at Pedro, he is such a good student. And Victoria is so helpful and kind. And you’ve got Nadia who’s so small and adorable.” Nadia is a 7th grader, but she really is tiny. She looks like and reminds me of the young version of the old lady from Up. Once she realized what I had said she said, “Hey! That’s harassment.” Then she paused and said in a very matter of fact way, “No, it’s true, I am very small… and adorable,” and she flashed everyone a big, adorable smile.

Teaching isn’t perfect and I’m working more than 10 hours a day on a part-time job, but I’m enjoying it.

Kris Cross Applesauce

2011-09-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

The last two and a half weeks of teaching have been quite the whirlwind adventure. Since my teaching certificate is still being processed I have to have a sub with me in the room at all times. The subs just sit in the back and I do all the teaching. The kids seem to have forgotten that there is always an old lady sitting in the back of the room and have just accepted her presence as being normal. I have a morning sub at one school and an afternoon at the other school and they’re both named Kris. They’re both great, but very different. Morning Kris wears jeans, has pigtails and does crafts while she subs and afternoon Kris dresses up like a business woman, works part-time as a realtor and does work in the back of the room that the office people give her.

After class on the second day of school morning Kris came up to me and said, “Ben, as a veteran of 40 years of teaching I feel like I should tell you some things.” She quickly complimented me on the things I was doing well and then told me all of the things I was doing wrong and warned me that things would get bad really fast if I didn’t fix them in the beginning. When she was finished and left I collapsed into a chair and just felt like barfing. Not because I was mad or disgusted, but because she was right and I knew it. I felt overwhelmed with all that I had to do. I knew going into this that I wasn’t prepared and having morning Kris expose my fears was like a kick in the pants. I felt physically ill for most of the first week of school because I knew I was in over my head and I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

To her credit morning Kris kept giving me advice. Everyday she’d write up a page of notes about how I was teaching and discuss it with me at the end of the day. She could have just sat in the back of the room and done nothing, but she decided to help me. And luckily I was smart enough to listen and do what she said. My room went from being on the verge of out of control to being orderly and organized. She pointed out all kinds of things that I would have missed. Morning Kris saved me from a terrible year and gave my kids a good classroom and I’m so grateful for her.

Afternoon Kris is very different. Morning Kris is pleasant, but afternoon Kris is incredibly pleasant. Morning Kris spent years teaching high school math and afternoon Kris spent years teaching elementary school and their differing experiences are evident in their personalities. Afternoon Kris has a soft, soothing voice while morning Kris has a commanding, authoritative voice. I’d ask afternoon Kris for advice hoping that she would help me like morning Kris did, but typically she would just praise me for doing a great job. While I appreciated the boast of self-esteem, I didn’t need that so much as I needed honest feedback. My afternoon classes are going well, but not nearly as well as my morning classes because I haven’t had someone advising me on how to create a better classroom each day. So here’s what I’ve learned: even though it makes me want to vomit, I’d rather be told how to be better than just be told that I’m great.

I will now poke fun at my students. On the second day of class I had my students fill out some information cards so that I could get to know them a little bit better. Here’s what two of them wrote when I asked them to tell me a little about themselves:
“I’m Mexican. I have a dog. My dog is fat.”
“I am Chinese. I take gummybear vitamins.”

I asked my students why they wanted to study Spanish. Here’s what one kid said:
“Since my friends also take Spanish, I want a special way to communicate together without our parents being nosy and asking ‘who’s this? Whatcha’ talking about?’”

My students were supposed to write any fears or concerns they had about Spanish class, but they apparently didn’t read the part that said “Spanish class.” Here’s what a few of them said:
“biggest fear: creepy ppl, sharks.”
“highly terrified of spiders and slugs.”
“Sometimes I forget the forms of Spanish and like I’m bad at writing sentences so I always get docked off points on tests.”
“I’m allergic to peanuts, but not deathly allergic.”
“understandance of speech.”
“I hate being sick, so I try to stay away from sick people or ya know and yay.”

The Wright Decision

2011-09-13T20:34:00.000-07:00

Please allow me to make a very long story condensed and readable because I know that no one wants to spend more than five minutes reading a blog post. In March my quickly approaching graduation started to weigh on my mind which prompted me to start looking for post graduation employment. I applied to a few universities and community colleges during my last semester at school, but it wasn’t until I got to Portugal and had loads of free time that I really started to get serious about finding a job. After hours of and hours of searching and filling out applications and dozens of emails with my résumé attached I still had no job. And then a high school teaching job in Washington became available. They seemed really excited to hire me and I was pumped to work with them. Unfortunately, just hours before my graduation from BYU they told that I didn’t get the job. It was a little upsetting, but mostly just surprising.

The night of graduation my mom and I immediately started looking for other job possibilities. My mom found a middle school position available in a city in the Seattle area. I called the district offices, told them that I was awesome, but wasn’t certified to teach and the kind lady on the other end told me that I had very little chance of being hired, but that she’d patch me through to someone else’s voicemail. The old “don’t call us, we’ll call you” routine. I expected never to her from that lady. Three weeks later I’m in Washington and I get a call from a number I don’t recognize. I answer and the lady on the other end said, “Hi, this is Jackie returning your call from a few weeks ago regarding the Spanish position we have available.” I was then expecting her to say, “Thank you for your interest in this position, but you’re not qualified for it so how dare you waste my time?!” What she really said was, “We’ve had trouble filling the position and were wondering if you would still like to apply.” I was shocked, stunned and nearly speechless. I told her I’d apply.

The position was to teach two periods of Spanish at two different middle schools. Later that day one of the vice principals called me in for an interview for the following day and I accepted. As I pulled in to the parking lot for the interview my phone rang and it was someone from the MTC calling me in for an interview for a job I’d applied for there. They wanted me to come in the next day, but I told them I was in Washington and they kindly agreed to let me come in the day after Labor Day. I was mostly stalling the MTC people because I wanted the teaching job in Washington more and was actually qualified for it. You see, the MTC job required being fluent in Portuguese. Am I fluent in Portuguese? Well… that depends on your definition of “fluent” and I wasn’t sure what the MTC’s was. So the MTC job became a backup plan if I didn’t get the teaching job in Washington.

The interview was the Wednesday before Labor Day and it went well. Later that day the school district started calling my references which is a VERY good sign so I was confident that I’d get the job. School started the next Tuesday so I was expecting to hear from the district really soon so that I could get to work preparing. Thursday passed in agony as I waited for a phone call that never came. On Friday I started to get really worried because if I didn’t get this job I’d have to go to Utah and I just wanted to know what their decision was. Friday afternoon around 2:00 pm I got a call from the vice principal informing me that there had been four applicants, I was one of the final two, but they picked the other guy because he was certified and I wasn’t. He went on say that blah blah blah I was awesome and that blah blah blah I should apply in the future and that blah blah blah they were impressed with me. I didn’t really want to hear it. I thanked him for his consideration and hung up. Once again I was stunned that I hadn’t gotten a job that I was sure I would get. However, my disappointment didn’t last long because I was thrilled to be going back to Utah.

I made plans to stay with my friends the Wrights when I got to Utah and I was pumped to see them. I was also pumped to see my grad student friends, friends from former wards and just to be in Utah again. I was sure that things would work out they way they were supposed to. So Labor Day morning I packed all of my belongings into my car yet again and started on the 14 hour drive to Provo. As I was ascending the Blue Mountains in eastern Oregon I got a phone call from Jackie the HR lady informing me that the guy they offered the teaching position to ended up not being certified either and they would like to offer the position to me instead. Once again I was stunned. I said, “Can I call you back?” and she said, “Of course.” I then entered the mountains and for 40 agonizing minutes I didn’t have cell phone service. I really had to talk this decision over with my parents and yet they were unreachable.

I really didn’t know what to do. I had wanted the Spanish teaching job, but I was already over it and had moved on. It’s like how you really want to eat chocolate after eating Mexico food, but if you wait for an hour the craving goes away. I didn’t really crave the job anymore and I was set on going to Utah. I finally entered a place with cell phone service and stopped at a McDonald’s in La Grande, Oregon to call people for advice. Everyone gave me the same advice: take the job, you dummy! I called Jackie back and accepted the position. I then got in my car and drove back to Washington.

This decision was tough to make because I knew it meant that I wouldn’t see my Utah friends for a long time. I was going to spend that night in Orem at the Wrights’ house and I was particularly bummed to not be able to see them. You see, when I left Utah for the pie party I was fully intending on returning to Utah. The Wrights were the last people I saw and I said something to them like, “Goodbye! I’ll see you in a few days.” Jackie had told me that I could continue driving to Utah and start work a few days late. That seemed really tempting. I was then faced with two decisions: the right decision and the Wright decision. On the one hand, it would have been great to see everyone in Utah, if only for a day. But I knew that they right thing to do was to head straight home so that I could be there for the first day of school the following day. It was the right thing to do.

After 30 minutes of internal conflict at a McDonald’s in La Grande, Oregon I got back in my car. I looked at the odometer and I had traveled exactly 360 miles from my home in Washington. It seemed like the perfect mileage to turn around. On Labor Day I drove about 720 miles to end up where I started, I gassed up twice at the same gas pump in Prosser, WA and I finally got a job. To all my Utah friends, I’m sorry that I didn’t make the Wright decision because I would have loved to see you, but I did make the right decision.

Oh, and thank you for indulging my love of puns. And that’s the story of how Ben got dental insurance.

Uncle Ben

2011-08-25T17:25:00.000-07:00

On Monday night as I was driving home my brother Jessen called me and asked me if I could babysit his kids for four hours the following day. Jessen and Laura have three kids: Bowen, age six, Boyd, age five, and Ryan, age 14 months. I responded by saying, “I can watch babies, but I don’t know how to take care of babies.” I was hoping he’d say something like, “You’re right, you’re not qualified for this. I’ll ask someone else,” but he didn’t. When I told him that I’d never changed a diaper he told me that it was easy and I had to learn eventually anyway. I gave some other examples of things that I didn’t how to do and he said, “Just ask Bowen, he knows what to do.” Of course, direct all questions to the six year old.

When I got to the house on Tuesday morning Laura showed me some things that I’d have to do. For example, before putting Ryan down for a nap I should say something like, “Ryan, it’s night-night time,” and read him a book or two. I said, “Read him TWO books?!” and she said, “they’re baby books, they’re short.”

I had told Jessen that I don’t know how to entertain children for four hours and he said, “Just ask the boys what they want to do and do that.” I did just that. The boys wanted to play hide-and-seek, make things out of paper, jump on the trampoline and watch Kung Fu Panda so we did all of those things. I had never put a baby down for a nap before so Bowen offered to help. He read Ryan a story and then explained to me that I needed to give him his binky, lay him down and tuck him in. I did all this and Ryan started crying like crazy. Bowen said, “Don’t worry, he’ll stop in a minute.” Bowen and I left the room and closed the door and 60 seconds later Ryan had stopped crying. I’m now convinced that Bowen is a genius.

While watching Kung Fu Panda I texted a few people. I know, how neglectful of me, right? Every time I pulled out my phone Boyd would say, “Ben, this part is so funny. You’re missing it!” He really wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. It was adorable. I was sitting with Ryan during the movie and at one point he decided to jump off the couch. Seeing this happen out of the corner of my eye I quickly stuck out my arm to block his jump. He had jumped with more force than I had expected and instead of stopping him, my arm made him do an artful flip towards the floor. He landed on his back on the carpet and gave me a startled look as he realized what he’d just done. Sensing that I had roughly one second before he started to cry I scooped him up and said, “Wow, Ryan, you’re pretty tough,” and he just smiled and forgot that he should have been crying.

Laura called me to tell me that she’d be home by two. Bowen asked me when his mom would be home and I said that she’d be home by two. He said in his cute six year old voice, “She’ll be home at 2:03 then.” I responded with, “Oh really?” and he said, “She’s always late.” Sure enough, Laura pulled in at exactly 2:03. That kid knows his stuff.

While I didn’t have to change a diaper, I still learned a lot from watching my nephews for five hours. And I didn’t even mind that it lasted for an extra hour. I kind of felt like Uncle Jesse and Uncle Joey the first time they watched baby Michelle by themselves. Click here for the clip. I don’t know much about caring for children, but I think I can learn. Especially when there’s a six year old who knows the ropes.

Thanks for the Pie

2011-08-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I got an email from my aunt that said, "See you at the pie party on Thursday!" I had told my aunt that I would be attending her wildly popular pie party before I found out that I didn’t get the job in Washington. I had neglected to tell her that I had decided to stay in Utah and wouldn’t be attending the party. My aunt makes really good pie and I really wanted some. When I got home to my unfurnished apartment on Tuesday night I reviewed my weekend plans in my head. Realizing that I didn’t have any I decided to surprise my family by driving up to Washington the next day.

I got on the freeway around 2:30 pm the next day and started on the 14 hour drive home. As I was driving away I regretted leaving so late in the day. The only reason I’d waited so long to leave was because I hadn’t decided if I was going until noon. The sun was setting as I was leaving Boise at 8:30 which created an unhappy problem because I was driving directly west. I've heard songs romanticizing driving west towards the setting sun, but let me tell you that there is nothing romantic about it. That life giving, burning ball of gas was right over the road blinding me for a long time. I don't own sunglasses so the only way to protect my eyes was to block the sun with my hand. For about twenty minutes I held my fist in front of my face in a pose that would make any passing cars think that I was saluting some imaginary dictator. The sun finally lowered behind the hills and I was glad.

The next seven hours were spent driving in the dark which isn't so bad if you have these essential items: two bottles of Coke, two small bags of Sun Chips, a box of Whoppers and an IPod. Unfortunately my IPod died at 1:30 am just when I needed it most. I was in the middle of the mountains and had no radio reception. In an effort to entertain myself I started singing out loud. For some reason I started singing a duet which sounded so awful that I quickly gave up on singing. I searched through my car for entertainment and found a few books on tape that I had listened to on previous road trips nestled up against some old fireworks. I wasn't interested in either item.

I came across a tape called "It's a Miracle" that I decided to listen to. It's an old LDS musical from the eighties that I listened to as a kid and I'm not quite sure how it got into my car. That’s not completely true because I obviously put it there, but I have no idea of when or why. The best part of the tape is a song about two missionaries that don't get along. My favorite line was, "You really needn't be so stinky every time I buy a tweenkie." LDS musical artists from the eighties really knew how to encapsulate the struggles of missionary life in song. When I got home, exited the car and stood up I felt rather dizzy. It may be because it was 3:30 in the morning, it may have been due to the Coke and candy, but I suspect that it was caused by all the blood suddenly rushing to my rear end.

I slept for quite a while and was glad to be home. My cat seemed happy, too. I had a blast surprising everyone at the pie party the next evening. My sister-in-law was so excited to see me that she hugged me multiple times. The pie was delicious and that coupled with seeing my family made the drive worth it.

Come What May and Love It

2011-08-15T12:20:00.000-07:00

My mom and I arrived in Utah on Tuesday night and it’s good to be “home.” I had mentioned to her a few times how excited I was to go home always adding that I wasn’t quite sure where home was for me. While I was in Portugal I applied for a teaching job in Washington that I was confident I would get. On Thursday morning, just a few hours before graduation ceremonies, I got a phone call from the school district informing me that I didn’t get the job. They decided to hire someone that can teach French and Spanish. While I have lots of experience teaching, I can’t compete with someone that has more skills (although I’m pretty sure I have more skillz).

The timing of the news was not good. I was hoping to hear that I had gotten job so when everyone asked, “What are your plans now?” I could say, “I have dental benefits,” but instead I said, “I don’t know.” As my parents and I drove to commencement I lamented in disappointed frustration, “How did I let this happen?” You see, I’ve been applying for jobs for the last four months and was sure that I would have found something by the time I graduated. I just couldn’t believe that I’d become "one of those people” who get graduate degrees and then end up unemployed and living with their parents. It just wasn’t a good time to celebrate my graduation.

When I got to the Marriott Center and found the line for graduate students I ran into Erin Shaw who I had taught in the MTC years ago. She was graduating as well, had a great job lined up, and told me how excited she was to be able to go to the dentist again. I was happy for her and felt more like celebrating. I apologized to my parents for being such a grumpy bear and decided to just enjoy graduation. President Samuelson was the first speaker at commencement and he talked about how things will work out. They don’t always work out in the way or time that we expect, but things always work out. During his talk I reflected on my own life and felt the truthfulness of his words. I thought about my internship in Bolivia, living with a 71 year old lady in Mexico, my previous job teaching high school Spanish, deciding to go to grad school and my summer in Portugal. All of those things hadn’t been in my plans, had happened rather unexpectedly, and had been awesome. I decided that President Samuelson was right. My life has been so awesome and it’s only going to get better. I think Nephi was right we he said: “if it so be that the children of men keep the commandments of God he doth nourish them, and strengthen them, and provide means whereby they can accomplish the thing which he has commanded them…”

After feeling sorry for myself for the few hours before commencement I changed my attitude and decided that things will work out better than I could have imagined. I watched a video yesterday that helped me be even more optimistic about the future. It’s called Come What May and Love It. It’s only three and a half minutes long and you can watch it by clicking here. I don’t have a job, I don’t have dental coverage, I don’t have a bed, and all of my earthly possessions are currently in my car (please don’t steal my car right now), but I have hope for the future. Life is awesome and it's only going to get more awesome. Come what may, I’m gonna love it.

Leigh, unemployed man and Dr. Martinsen.
Quick funny story: I took Allison out for lunch at El Gallo Giro on Wednesday which I paid for. We then got ice cream cones at Macey’s that Allison bought. They were delicious and cost less than 50 cents apiece. Allison said, “Less than a buck! What a cheap date!” to which I responded, “I had to pay $12 for lunch. But I like this set up with the guy buying the meal and the girl buying dessert.” Hearing our conversation, the teenage boy working behind the counter said, “Girls should always give you dessert at the end of the date.” Since he’s a teenager from Utah the “dessert” he was referring to is probably a goodnight hug that last 6 to 8 seconds.

Don’t Gimme That Bull!

2011-08-07T14:55:00.000-07:00

As a Spanish teacher I felt in my duty, nay, my obligation to attend a bullfight in Spain. Sevilla is the capital of bullfighting and while we were there I looked into attending a bullfight. Not only are they super-expensive to attend there, but there weren’t any fights during our time there. I wasn’t too disappointed and was easily consoled by the visiting the Museum of Bullfighting.

My mom and I are in Madrid now and we stopped by the bullfighting ring to see when the next fight was and there was one tonight. For €12.30 we got great seats in the shade. A nice Asian family from California sat next to us and after briefly discussing where we were from the dad looked at me and said, “So I take it you’re not a vegetarian?” I was grateful for the reinforcement of my funny Asian stereotype. As we were leaving the bullfight he said, “Headed out to get some stakes?” and I said, “You know it!” We got ice cream.

As part of the bullfight they have men come out on horses who stab the bulls with long sticks. Horses used to get gored all the time so now they wear a lot of protective padding. Each round the horses got pulverized by the bull which was especially sad because the horses were blindfolded (that way the horse won’t react to a bull running at it). One horse even got knocked over. This was my least favorite part of the show because I was so worried about the horse’s safety. During the show I realized how odd it was that I was worried about a horse when I didn’t really worry about the men fighting or the dying bull. The horses are just so darn loveable.

At the beginning of the show the men participating (I don’t know if they’re all considered matadors) did some warm ups with their capes which seemed similar to the drills sports teams do before games. They were all wearing brightly colored uniforms covered in fancy ornamentation with pants so tight you’d think they were the Jonas Brothers. The matador had a red cape, but all the other guys had pink ones. One of them was wearing a pink uniform and as I watched him holding his pink cape and twirling around on one foot with the other foot gracefully out to the side I couldn’t help but think that he looked a little gay. At that moment I remembered the comment that the Asian man had made and inspiration struck.

The idea I had was to write a story about a gay vegetarian matador. Of course he’s wildly famous and if it got out that he was a gay vegetarian he’d be ruined. I haven’t decided if it should be a drama or a comedy yet. If it ends up being a drama the plot will revolve around the importance of being yourself no matter what others think, sort of like High School Musical. I’d call it something like When the Steaks Are High. Jorge, the matador, is faced with a tough decision when a television show is going to tour his house. Does he show them his favorite part of his house, his organic vegetable garden, or does he hide from the truth like he’s done for so many years? The comedy would involve hilarious situations in which the matador would do a poor job of pretending to be someone he’s not, like The Parent Trap. I think When the Steaks Are High would be a good title for this one too. It would involve many hilarious situations. For example, Jorge is invited to an important state dinner and is served a steak. He must figure how to make everyone believe he ate the steak without actually eating it. Either way, it’s bound to be more popular than The Hunger Games. And the best part is the surprise ending when the reader learns why he’s a vegetarian.

I enjoyed the bullfight, but I don’t feel a need to go again and my mom will definitely not be going again. At the bullfight I also realized that I will probably reference this experience in every Spanish class that I ever teach so I’ll have to come up with some more exciting details.

Also, I thought of a joke as we rode the metro to the bullfight. What do you call someone who falls asleep during a bullfight? A bulldozer.

Mamma Mia!

2011-08-02T14:28:00.000-07:00

My blog has kind of fallen by the wayside recently and I blame my mom. She flew into Lisbon a week ago and we had a blast together and I had so much fun showing her around. My mom is great and she’s fun to be around. Funny things happen when we’re together, too. For example, halfway through class each morning we have a 30 minute break which consists of everyone buying coffee and eating pastries. Since my mom didn’t have anything to do in the morning I brought her to school to meet my friends. During the break I bought her a piece of cake and brought her over to the table that all my friends were sitting at. I said, “This is my mom,” and my mom said, “Hi, I’m Ginny, “ at which point she accidently let the cake slide off of her plate and onto the ground. I quickly gathered it up and cut off the part of the cake that had touch the ground so we could eat the rest. Actually, after picking it up none of us remembered which part had touched the ground so we may have eaten the ground side.

My mom is pretty spry for being 62 and my classmates were shocked when they found out her age. Someone said, “But she looks so much younger,” and I said, “She uses a lot of facial cream.” That’s not true, but it seemed like a good explanation.

My mom and I flew to Barcelona on Friday and while we were waiting in the security line I said, “Oh shoot! Our water bottles are full!” We didn’t waste any time and I quickly chugged down all my water. My mom chugged down hers, too just as a college sophomore would chug a beer at a frat party. I’ve never been to a frat party or seen a college sophomore chug a beer, but I can imagine that it is very similar to what my mom was doing. Her bottle was bigger than mine and she didn’t quite get it all down in one breath. She had chugged valiantly, but there was still a little left so I said, “just dump it in the trash can,” and she throw the whole bottle in. I immediately said, “Not the bottle! The water!” She retrieved her bottle from the trash can and dumped the water in.

My mom doesn’t speak Spanish at all so she just talks to people in English even when she knows that they don’t speak English. She doesn’t seem to realize that she really needs to dumb down how she talks when she speaks to people who know very little English. For example, last night we ate at a delicious restaurant in Córdoba in a building that was four hundred years old. Our waiter didn’t speak much English, but he was kind enough to show us around the building and point out the historic features. My mom started to explain that she had a friend in Tucson who lived in an adobe house and she was going to talk about the benefits of living in an adobe house, but the waiter cut her off and started talking about something else. I’m sure my mom was talking too fast and when she mentioned exotic places like Tucson that our waiter had probably never heard of he decided he was better off changing the subject.

Traveling with my mom has been great and I’m so glad she’s here. She’s glad I’m here, too because I can talk to people.

Welcome to My Home

2011-07-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Since most of you won’t ever get to see my apartment in Lisbon I decided to give a brief tour. When you enter my apartment you walk into a horseshoe shaped hallway that leads to the living room, bathroom, kitchen, laundry area/turtle habitat, and a storage room. The hallway is a haven for unexplainably odd knickknacks. I will only show you a few. The hallway has no windows so it’s always a little dark and I apologize for the poor quality of some of the pictures.

I think the oddest thing in the hallway is a large painting that dominates one of the walls. I call it Snooze Button. As you can see, it’s a painting of a woman lying on the floor. I have deduced that the time of the painting is roughly 7:30 am on a Tuesday morning. The woman’s alarm went off at 6:30, but she repeatedly hit the snooze button on her alarm clock wanting to sleep for a few more minutes. She is now running an hour late and is struggling with the realization that she no longer has the time to do her hair in that cute way that she likes. She’s managed to roll out of bed onto the floor, but has yet to gather up enough strength to stand up and start the day. I can relate.

This is one of the many unexplained knickknacks. Obviously I expected to have ceramic animals in my apartment in Portugal, I just didn’t expect it to be an elephant. On a side note, furniture randomly appears in the apartment sometimes. One day a large chest filled with blankets appeared in the hallway and due to the darkness of the hallway I walked right into it. It was on the right side of the hallway so I turned the corner hugging the left wall assuming that I would miss any other items of furniture only to immediately stumble into a chair.

This mirror is in the hall right outside my bedroom. Every day I ask it who’s the fairest of them all. The only time it says that I am is on the days that I wear the clothes Ashlee and Ariel picked out for me.

This shelf is in the hallway and I think I'm the only person tall enough to notice how dusty it is.

After walking through the hallway you arrive at the living room which has no outside windows, but only one window that opens up to the laundry room. It’s always dim in the living room. When you turn on the light it is super-dim at first and takes about a minute to be fully luminescent. I didn’t even know light bulbs did that, but most of the lights in my house are that way. It must be a Portuguese thing.

Another oddity of my house is all the doors. Every area that could possibly have a door has a door. The only other time I’ve seen more doors in one place was on Monsters. Inc.

The living room has some random little tables and they all have drawers. One day when I was snooping around I decided to see what was inside. And they all had the same thing – keys. I couldn’t figure out why on earth there would be so many keys everywhere, but then I remembered the doors.

We have this weird table in our bathroom with gold and silver painted rocks inside of it. I understand the need for having a place to set things in the bathroom, but the painted rocks elude me.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the toilet tank is actually over the sink.

My kitchen is a pretty standard kitchen with a stove, plates, a sink, a message on the refrigerator written in permanent marker by the landlady reminding us to keep it clean, etc. However, for reasons that I have yet to understand we have a picture of a French girl flirtatiously eating a cracker. It must be an advertisement or something.

I have a chandelier in my room. Kind of tacky, but it serves its purpose (making me feel high class).

By far the weirdest thing in my house – the massage table. For more info on this weird room please refer to my previous post.

And that's my house. Feel free to stop by whenever you like.

Évora

2011-07-17T17:01:00.000-07:00

Having descended from Schilatys and Smiths I have very good genes. From my mom I inherited my wonderful height, but that came with a price – my feet. I’ve always thought that my feet were ugly, but I think that feet are generally that way. I was so self-conscious about my feet that when I was 14 I wore my socks into a hot tub not wanting my friends to see them. It was a pretty ridiculous thing to do, but that’s how much I was embarrassed by them. Luckily I’ve out grown that feeling and I’m mostly just glad that my feet keep me mobile. My dislike for my feet (toes in particular) led me to not like open toed shoes. I think I’ve only ever owned two pairs of flip-flops. The point of all this is that I caved in and bought some open toed shoes on Friday. It’s not very hot here yet, but I still get a little over heated walking around for hours with a backpack on. I often just want to sit down on a bench and kick my shoes and socks off so that my feet can cool down. My new shoes were bought for this functional purpose. I wore them all day on Saturday and they’re awesome and led to hours of comfort.

Speaking of Saturday, I went to Évora with three girls from my class: Aurora, Cecilia, and Angélica. It’s only 90 minutes outside of Lisbon so it makes a nice day trip. Évora was a lot smaller than we had expected. We picked up a map at the bus station and walked straight to the main plaza and were pretty surprised when we arrived there after only ten minutes of walking. We saw everything we had wanted to see in a few hours, but had hours to wait before our bus left so we decided to check out a park we hadn’t seen yet. I led the group through the winding streets and when we arrived there I pointed to a very unimpressive park and said, “Well, here’s the park. It’s not very exciting.” Cecilia pulled out her map and said, “Everything looks so much bigger on the map.” Évora is very small and even though they're pretty, all the streets look pretty much the same.

My main reason for wanting to go to Évora was to see its famous bone chapel. Apparently a few hundred years ago some monks thought that building a room out of human bones would help them to contemplate life and death. An obvious conclusion, right? The chapel is decorated with the bones of thousands of people that they dug up from the local cemetery. It’s kind of morbid, well, really morbid, but cool to look at for five to ten minutes. I think that when I get home I’m going to decorate my room with pictures of obese people to help me contemplate the importance of exercising regularly.

A bunch of people from my class went on another excursion today to Mafra. They invited me too, but I went to church instead. And honestly, the idea of going there always made me laugh. No one else seemed to think that the name of the town was funny, but every time someone said “Mafra” all I could think of was the Japanese monster Mothra. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Mothra is a giant moth that attacks Tokyo when Godzilla is on vacation. Whatever Mothra is, giant moths were all I could think of as people talked about how excited they were to go to Mafra.

From left to right: Me, Aurora, Cecilia, and Angelica. Angelica does have a left arm, she just moved it as the picture was being taken and it disappeared.

Hugo and Paulo

2011-07-15T15:42:00.000-07:00

I have three roommates: Hugo (pronounced: OOO-goo), Paulo, and Maurice. Hugo and Paulo are from a Portuguese island called Madeira and Maurice is from Cameroon. I don’t see Maurice very much, but I see Hugo and Paulo rather frequently. When I first met Hugo and Paulo I didn’t realize that they were homosexual, but little hints started to pop up here and there: Paulo’s slightly feminine voice, Hugo’s love of theater, sharing a room that only has one bed in it, etc. As clues would start to emerge I’d discuss them with Ana during class which was really quite fun, but inconclusive. I’ve never seen them kiss or hold hands or even hug. However, I finally decided that they were gay.

Two weeks ago Hugo and I were chatting in the living room and he told me that he and Paulo were gay, but I wasn’t surprised because I’d already used my expert sleuthing skins to reach that conclusion on my own. Hugo has a twin brother who is also gay. I asked him when he found out that his brother was gay and he told me the following story. As a side note, Hugo is a very good actor and he told this story with a lot of great comedic timing so please try and image that. One day when Hugo was 18 or so he was out and about and someone that he didn’t know started talking to him on the street like they were old friends. The man mentioned something the indicated that Hugo was gay which was surprising since Hugo had never met this person before. Not only was Hugo confused, but the random man was confused that Hugo didn’t recognize him. He finally said to Hugo, “What’s the deal, Marcos?” and Hugo replied, “Marcos? I’m not Marcos. Marcos is my twin brother.” At this point I was laughing uncontrollably. I don’t know what went through the strangers mind at that moment when he realized his horrible mistake, but I can imagine it being a swear word. Hugo went home, talked to his brother, and they both admitted that they were homosexual and had a touching moment together. You know, the kind of moment that would happen on Full House or a Lifetime Original Movie. Side note: funny things are always funnier in a second language because the humor is magnified by pride in one’s self for understanding the joke.

A few weeks ago my friend Ashlee was in town. She had to catch an 8 am flight to the US and was just going to sleep in the airport. I told her to just stay at my place for the night and she slept in my bed and I slept on the living room couch. I had told all of my roommates that Ashlee would be staying the night, but I hadn’t told them that I would be sleeping on the couch. A little after midnight Hugo and Paulo walked into the pitch black living room without seeing me. I thought they might turn on the light which wouldn’t have bothered me, but I didn’t want them to feel bad for disturbing me. I decided to make my presence known and said, “Olá,” at which point Hugo took the Lord’s name in vain. Apparently my deep voice unexpectedly greeting someone in a dark room is cause for alarm.

Hugo and Paulo invite me to do all kinds of things, but I rarely go. A typical invitation usually goes something like this: At 10 pm, “Benji, do you want to get a Kebab with us?” “I’d love to, but I had dinner three hours ago.” I feel bad rejecting their offers so much, but it’s just bad timing. We planned to go to the beach together and I’m not much of a beach person, but I agreed to go. Their purpose in going to the beach was to get tan. As we were setting out our towels and lathering on sunscreen I rather politically incorrectly asked, “So, why do want to get a tan if you’re already brown?” and Paulo responded, “Because we want to be black!” and we all laughed.

Hugo and Paulo flew to London today and they come back the day after I leave so I won’t be seeing them again. I’m bummed that they’re gone and they’re bummed that they won’t get to meet my mom. They, more than anyone else, have taken care of me in Lisbon. They always asked me how I was doing and offered to help me all the time. When I asked Paulo where I could buy a DVD he printed out a map and gave me detailed instructions on how to get to the store. Honestly, I would have gotten lost without the map, but with Paulo’s help it was a cinch. Hugo speaks English really well, but when he found out I was here to learn Portuguese he only spoke to me in Portuguese and corrected me when I’d make a mistake which most people don’t do. I’m grateful for their kindness and their friendship. They made moving to a foreign city a lot easier for me.

Awesome Eighties Movies

2011-07-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

I all too often fit the European stereotype of being an uncultured American. I met up with Stephanie and Sofía last night for dinner and Stephanie took us to a miradouro that she really likes. A miradouro is essentially a little park with an excellent view and Lisbon has a ton of them because there are so many hills. Stephanie and Sofía love them and are always talking about new miradouros they’ve found. Last week I met up with the gang for dinner a block from my house and Stephanie took us to a miradouro that is only four blocks from my house. I didn’t even know that it was there. She was shocked to learn that I hadn’t gone up there and said, “Didn't you see the trees,” as if they would have been enough of an incentive to climb a steep hill. I said, “Well, yeah, but you have to climb up this huge hill to get to them.” We then trudged up the hill and I was instantly converted to the find-as-many-miradouros-as-possible crusade. Here are some pictures from the one we went to yesterday.

The three of us sat down to eat dinner at a delicious hole-in-the-wall restaurant. We were talking about what we had done during the day and their day consisted of visiting museums, and taking scenic boat tours, etc. while my day mostly consisted of going to the zoo and then slowly backing away from the entrance because it was so expensive and reading Harry Potter. Not wanting to seem uncultured I told them about a cool park I had found. I was describing where it was and they were a little confused because there isn’t a park there. And I said, “Well, it’s not a park, per se. There’s some business or something there and I just walked about the outside." A light clicked on in Stephanie’s head and she said, “Oh, you’re talking about the museum. Didn’t you go inside?” Apparently, I stumbled onto the lawn of the best free museum in Lisbon and hadn’t even gone inside. Stephanie has already been there twice. And so, the uncultured American stereotype lives on. Here are some pictures of the museum lawn.

At dinner, Sofía, Stephanie and I briefly complained about our classes. It appears that our teachers haven’t taken a second language pedagogy class in a decade or two because they teach us in a way that I would consider "antiquated." My teacher is better than Maria de Jesús, but still a little lacking. He talks for most of the class and we listen and take notes. Sofía brought up how on the first day of class Maria had talked about the importance of pronouncing words correctly. She said that we all needed to learn to roll our r’s. She then went on to describe how this sound is produced saying that it’s a bilabial sound. For any non-linguistics reading this, a bilabial sound is one made with both of your lips. When she said this I cocked my head to the side wondering if I had heard correctly and then I giggled inside as I pictured what a bilabial rolled r would sound like. Sofía and I had some fun at dinner trying to produce just such a sound which basically just ended in laughter.

Sofía went on to say to that as a university professor Maria shouldn’t be making such horrific errors in her teaching. I then said, “Yeah, after all, the only bilabial sound in Portuguese is the m,” to which Sofía responded, “No, Benjamin, there’s also the p and the b.” I quickly realized that she was completely right and that in one simple statement I had lost all credibility as a linguist.

Usually when I speak Spanish I’m speaking with people that speak English as well and I’ve developed a bad habit of throwing in English words when I don’t know the Spanish one. For some reason at dinner I wanted to mention the flux capacitor from Back to the Future. Stephanie speaks English alright and Sofía doesn’t speak much at all. So here I was trying to explain what a flux capacitor is in Portuguese with the two girls giving me polite, but confused looks. I finally just changed the subject because my flux capacitor comment wasn’t that interesting to begin with.

As we were leaving the restaurant, one of the girls commented that the restaurant owner was probably laughing his head off right now because of how odd our little group is. We spoke our broken Portuguese the entire time each of us with our own accent: Sofía with her clear, Spanish vowels, Stephanie with her French r's, and me with my schwas. We’re quite an unlikely group. As I thought about how we all have our different backgrounds and languages and nationalities, I was reminded of The Land Before Time and how five dinosaurs formed an unlikely group and made it to the Great Valley together. In our group I’m Little Foot, of course, because of my long neck. I don’t know who the others would be, but whomever we my represent we’ll all trying get to the our Great Valley together (the Great Valley being a metaphor for fluency in Portuguese, obviously). I'm glad that movies from the eighties are still relevant in my everyday life.

I ♥ being Mormon

2011-07-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

This post isn’t funny, but I promise the next one will be. Last Thursday there was a huge welcome party at school for everyone participating in the Portuguese summer courses. I went and I had a good time, but I left feeling lonely and pitied. Since I’ve been in two classes now there are about twenty people that I socialize with and hang out with outside of school. They’re all great and friendly, but we’re just… different. My classmates will often get beers or coffees and I’ll simply get an orange juice or a water and no one seems to mind.

At the party there were free beers and whenever someone from my table went over to grab another they would offer to grab me one. They weren’t trying to make me feel uncomfortable, but I did. I think I felt uncomfortable because their offering to get me a beer meant that they were unaware that I was LDS and thus didn’t really know me very well. Stephanie and I have eaten meals together multiple times and she saw me decline multiple beer offers and finally asked, “Do you not like beer?” and I respond, “I’ve never tried it, actually.” She was visibly surprised by my response and proceeded with the obvious question of, “why not?” and I said, “for religious reasons.” I told her that I’m Mormon and don’t drink and then she asked me a question that I hadn’t expected. “Do you enjoy being Mormon?” The question caught me off guard because obviously if I didn’t like being Mormon I wouldn’t be, right? Stephanie’s question and they way she said it made me feel pitied, like she felt I was missing out on all kinds of fun because of my beliefs. Several people invited me to the “real” party after the party, but I declined. I walked home through one of my favorite parks thinking about what had happened and feeling rather alone.

My school runs on Portuguese time which means that class starts about 10 minutes late every day, but I still show up on time. My teacher, who arrived late, asked the few of us that were already there this morning what we had done that weekend. I said that I had gone to the beach and rented a bike, talked to my parents, etc. When I had finished saying all of this my mind flashed to when I was in Bolivia in 2006 and when my neighbor Walter asked me what my plans for the weekend were. I told him that I was going to church and invited him to come if he wanted. He said he liked to learn new things and would come. I’d invited my fair share of Hispanics to church at this point in my life and for every 20 people that say they will come, only a handful actually do. I then tried to talk him out of coming by telling him that it started at 9am and he’d have to be ready at 8:45 and that he’d have to get dressed up, etc. I was surprised when he was ready to go at 8:45 the next morning, I was even more surprised when the missionaries asked if they could come to his apartment and teach him, I was shocked when I went to his house with the missionaries and he was receptive, and I literally jumped for joy when he joined the church four weeks later. And all of that had happened because I begrudgingly and unenthusiastically invited him to come to church.

After remember this I realized that my favorite part of the weekend hadn’t been the beach, but when I taught Gospel Principles on Sunday. Hernan who has only been a member for a month thanked me after my lesson saying that he had really enjoyed it and that he was learning a lot from me. And that moment at church had been the highlight of my weekend. Back in the classroom, since it was still my turn, I quickly added, “Oh, and I went to church,” and we moved on to other people.

During our break halfway through class a bunch of us went out for coffee and I bought my favorite pastry, a bolo de Berlin. I eat one almost every day because they’re so delicious. While we were chatting, Patricia brought up that I had mentioned going to church and asked me which church go to. I said that I was Mormon and the generally reaction at my table was, “There are Mormons in Portugal?” which honestly isn’t a ridiculous question considering that according to an article I read, 97% of Portugal is Catholic. Patricia brought up the Book of Mormon musical and I was glad that I had read numerous articles about it so I had some informed comments to make. Sofía’s only knowledge of Mormonism was from the series Big Love which is quite good according to her. Once again, I was glad that I was informed and had things to say that weren’t just criticisms.

Letting my friends know that I’m LDS was very liberating and I’m glad I was able to do it. I didn’t feel pitied this time and I’m glad that they felt comfortable asking me questions. I feel more comfortable and at ease now. I remember a lesson we had at church once about how every Latter-day Saint is responsible for maintaining the reputation of the church and that people will view our religion by our actions. I took that to heart and have tried to live accordingly. Few things would make me happier than to know that years down the road two missionaries knock on Patricia’s door and she thinks to herself, “I knew a Mormon boy in Portugal and he was very nice. I’ll let these two Mormons in.”

I started out today like I start out every day in Portugal. I woke up early and took the metro to school. I got off a stop early, walked through a beautiful park, found a nice bench to sit on, and read my scriptures in Portuguese in the morning sunlight. It’s a great way to start the day. I love being Mormon.

Here are some pictures of my scripture park.

Cascais. Pronounced "Cashcaish"

2011-07-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

I got moved up to the Advanced 2 class! I really like it. My teacher’s name is David and he’s tall and thin so I already feel a special bond with him. Are bond would be even stronger if he didn’t have a goatee. I also like his teaching style more than Maria’s, but I still get bored in class. What can I say, it’s hard to be as good as Ana. I do, however, really like hearing a man speak because I feel kind of dumb trying to use a Portuguese accent sometimes and it’s nice to know that men actually do talk like that. Here’s what makes me feel dumb: every syllable final s is pronounced like sh in European Portuguese. That means that the word estás is actually pronounced eshtásh. I hate it because it’s more work and sounds silly. But that’s how they talk and I have to do it. Sometimes when I’m listening to David talk I just want to say, “Really? That’s how you say that?”

Stephanie, Evelyne, Camilo and I decided to meet up this morning to go to Cascais. Cascais is a beach town about 40 minutes outside of Lisbon that I’ve wanted to go to for a while. Camilo partied a little too hard last night and decided not to come. Evelyne was out partying until 4am, but she still came despite being a little hung over. I went to bed at midnight after going to institute last night and woke up feeling like a champ.

I loved Cascais for one reason – free bikes. I love to go bike riding (giving away my Utah bike that was given to me last year was actually kind of sad). Cascais “rents” bikes for free to anyone and they have an awesome bike path along the beach. It was so much fun. The bikes were surprisingly nice considering they are free city bikes. Before we rented them, I told the girls that people always speak to me in English even if I ask them to speak to me in Portuguese. The bike lady was no exception. I told her right away that I’m here studying Portuguese and that she could speak to me in Portuguese, but she continued talking to me in her English that I would define as “comprehensible” despite the fact that I was talking to her in Portuguese. I just started talking to her in English because I try to follow the “respond in the language being spoken to you” rule. She even talked to Evelyne and Stephanie in English even though it isn’t their native language and they both speak Portuguese very well. Eyelyne and I by our bikes.

Once we got our bikes we hit the road and the weather was perfect. We had an awesome snack of fruit and cake that Stephanie brought along. Evelyne had heard that Americans don’t really eat fruit unless they’re from California. This led to my making frequent jokes like, “A plum, I’m never had one of these before,” or “wow, this is the first time I’ve had fruit in two years.” I’m a fan of David Sedaris and I particularly like two of his stories: one about the Dutch Santa Claus and one about Easter in France. Since I had a long bike ride with a Dutch girl and a French girl I decided to find out if these stories were really true. It turns out that the Dutch Santa Claus does live in Spain and arrives every year by boat and instead of the Easter Bunny, French children are given candy by a bell from Rome. I would like to discuss how ridiculous these traditions are, but unfortunately a flying sleigh, the North Pole and bunny might even be more ridiculous.

Stephanie said to do a swing dance move. I wasn't quite sure what to do and the 10 second timer didn't give me much time to decide.

I Miss Ana

2011-07-05T14:33:00.000-07:00

Much to my horror I found out last week that Ana is not going to be my teacher this month. She’s going to be teaching an intermediate level class and I’m going to be in the advanced class. We had our last class together on Friday and it ended with a tearful embrace. Well, not really, but I was bummed. What really bummed me out is that Ana is my best friend here and I’m really going to miss chatting with her every day.

We started class yesterday and I’m in class with about 10 other people and there isn’t anyone else in the class from North America. My new teacher is Maria de Jesus and I like her just fine, but she’s no Ana. She reminds me a lot of the aunt from My Big Fat Greek Wedding that can’t believe that the finance is a vegetarian and finally says, “Okay, I make lamb.” You know, the kind of person that doesn’t always listen. For example, there’s a guy in our class who goes by his last name. I can’t remember his name because it’s African and unfamiliar to me so I’ll just call him Steve Holt. After saying that he goes by his last name, Maria responded like this, “Your last name? No, in Portugal a last name is only to distinguish your family. We will call you Steve.” And she’s referred to him as Steve ever since.

We took a test yesterday to see if we were in the correct class. The test was harder than I expected and I was worried that I was going to get sent to an intermediate class. And now the awkward part. Maria asked for volunteers today to find out the results of the test. So in front of everyone she told us how we did and talked about our weak points, etc. I wasn’t quite expecting that especially since I volunteered first. The first thing she said, “I don’t know, Benjamin, I think you’re in the wrong class,” and I was instantly bummed and said, “I want to stay in this class if I can,” to which she said, “I think you should be in the advanced 2 class.” I hadn’t expected that. You see, there is a lower advanced and a higher advanced class and she wants to send me to the next one. No decision has been made yet.

And now for the fun part. I really like my classmates and have made some friends finally. We have a 30 minute break every day and today I got some food with Sofia from Spain, Stephanie from France, Evaline from Belgium, and Camilo from Colombia. Stephanie is really tall and quite pretty and was even kind enough to offer to share her beer with me (I politely declined). We all went to lunch together and went out for coffee, too. I had a Sprite and a piece of cake described as the best chocolate cake in the world. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty delicious. Four of us even met up for dinner and it was a blast. The most surprising part is that we only speak Portuguese together. I haven’t spoken so much Portuguese since I got here and it’s really helping me even though none of us is fluent. We all speak Spanish so we throw in lots of Spanish words, but we all know what’s going on.

I would call us a group of friends, but I hope we become a clique. We’re too awesome to not be exclusive. All kidding aside, it’s nice to have people to spend time with. While I’ve met a lot of people here, they already have their establish friendships and my Portuguese isn’t great so we rarely get past pleasantries and discussing the weather. It’s nice to finally know people that are as bored as I am and want to do stuff with me. I’m glad I have people that want to hang out with me.

Portuguese Is Hard!

2011-07-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

I’ve been asked to teach the Gospel Principles class at church. When I was asked to do it I was a little surprised because I don’t really speak Portuguese that well, but I love to teach and I knew it would help me speak better so I agreed to do it. Gospel Principles is a class for people who have been a member of the church for less than a year or who aren’t members. I’ve taught this class before and it’s a blast.

Today was my first day and the topic was the law of chastity. This is always a delicate topic to teach especially when you’re teaching people who may be unfamiliar with the concepts. Add to that the fact that my Portuguese is subpar and you’ve got a nervous Ben at 10:30 on Sunday morning. Before class I made sure I knew how to say words like procreation, sexual relations, pornography, etc. They were all pretty simple. I also tried to learn everyone's name but most of them are from Africa and have names that I'd never heard before. After asking them to repeat them twice, I would just smile and nod and act like I'd understood, but just refer to them as brother or sister because I still had no idea what there name was. I asked a woman who was baptized two weeks ago to say the closing prayer and she said, “Me? But I’ve never prayed at church before,” and I said, “That’s okay, I don’t know how to pray in Portuguese and I said the opening prayer in the first class.” She agreed to do it and did a fine job. On a side note, I get asked to pray all the time and I still mess up a lot. I really need to learn the subjunctive form of the verb to bless because it’s not close to the Spanish conjugation at all.

Class went well and my nerves went away once we got started. I asked lots of questions and people were surprisingly participatory. There were a couple of times when someone would make a comment and I wouldn’t understand what they were saying and when they were done I’d just say, “Thank you very much,” and move on. Hopefully I didn’t thank anyone for sharing blasphemous comments. There was one point where I tried to share an analogy, but I didn’t know the words I needed and it ended up just being confusing. After class, an American in the class told me that he could tell where I was going with it, but I just got blank stares from everyone else. Next week’s lesson is about temple work and eternal marriage and that will be much less daunting.

Learning Portuguese has been much harder than I had expected. I pride myself on picking up languages easily, but then I remember that I’ve only even learned Spanish (besides English, of course) and that was incredibly difficult. I remember when I was new in Mexico and my companion didn’t speak any English and no one we talked to spoke any English and I really just wanted to give up. I remember thinking, “Is it really this hard for everyone else?” and I assume it is. I just thought that it would be a lot easier. I remember trying to communicate in Spanish and the blank stares of people trying to understand me and how my companion would explain what I had tried to say and then understanding would dawn on their faces and I would feel useless. I remember praying almost all day long sometimes because I just wanted to talk to someone and God was the only person that could understand me. I remember getting home at night and spending every extra moment I could reading my scriptures in English and how good it felt to finally understand something. I remember for the first time in my life really needing the scriptures and feeling their power as I was reminded that I wasn’t useless and that I just had to be patient.

During my second week in Mexico I decided to use my poor Spanish to my advantage. We knocked on a lady’s door and my companion started talking to her and she was not at all interested. I jumped in and said in my bad Spanish, “I don’t speak Spanish very well, but if you listen to me I’ll let you laugh and me.” A smile crossed her face and she said, “Go on,” and I went on to tell her about how we are God’s children and He calls prophets to teach us, how Christ paid for our sins, how we have prophets today and modern day revelations, and how she could know for herself if what I was saying was true. She didn’t laugh at me, but she did agree to read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and let us come back again. She didn’t join the church, but I learned from that experience that I could do missionary work in Spanish.

I am not in the same boat I was in eight years ago when I started learning Spanish. I have the blessing of experience and language training on my side which makes learning Portuguese much more simple than learning Spanish was. However, I still thought it would be easier. I guess I thought that seven weeks would be enough for me to dominate this language, but now I realize that while I’ll be good at Portuguese when I leave Portugal in four weeks, I won’t be great. And that’s okay, I just want to get it the best I can.

On a completely different note, Ana and I went on a field trip to the coast on Thursday. We had an all-you-can-eat fish lunch which was … delicious. All the fish still had skin and eyes and Ana had to teach me how to eat each one because I was pretty lost. It was fun, though and I wish I’d taken a picture of my plate. Since I don’t have pictures of the fish, here are some pictures of the coast.

Coimbra

2011-07-03T06:46:00.000-07:00

When Ashlee and Ariel were in Lisbon we decided to go see Cristo Rei which is a huge statue of Christ across the river. It's not as cool as the one in Brazil or as big as the one in Bolivia, but it's still worth seeing. It was a hot day and after we took a ferry across the river and a bus up the hill we were so tired that when we arrived at the statue we laid in the grass for 10 minutes before we even looked at the thing. I had trouble centering the camera.

The view of Lisbon from the other side of the river was awesome. Also, the girls helped me pick out some clothes and I proudly sported one of the shirts that day. I'm glad I have friends who will pick out clothes for me.

Last weekend Ashlee, Ariel and I went up north to Coimbra. We had originally planned on going to Braga, but it is considerably farther north so we changed our plans. Arriving in Coimbra last Saturday was awful because it was so hot, like 100 degrees hot. After waiting a very long time for our bus we got slightly lost looking for our hostel and went up an extra hill. I really liked our hostel, though because it had a great view and free cereal whenever we wanted it. I wanted it often.

The only thing I knew about Coimbra was that it’s home to the oldest Portuguese university in the world and is one of the oldest universities in Europe. I was excited to see it and had envisioned a place resembling Oxford or Hogwarts. Contrary to the graffiti on campus, it looked nothing like Hogwarts and looked like most of the European universities I’ve seen – in need of some paint.

However, it did have some funny statues like this one that looks like it’s going to slap you.

We attended the ward in Coimbra on Sunday and it was a blast. Everyone was super-welcoming and I got asked about 10 times if I'd served my mission in Portugal. I ran into a friend of a friend who helped me find a place to live in Lisbon and we met a really nice British couple that's living in Portugal for 10 months. The wife, Cathy, asked the three of us what we were doing for dinner and since we didn't have any plans she invited us over. After chatting for a few minutes she said, "I should probably ask you what your names are," and we realized that despite the fact that we were acting like old friends, we didn't really know each other. We ended up chatting with them at their apartment for a few hours and it was a blast. They're the kind of couple that reminds me of how awesome it's going to be to be married.

After walking up and down lots of hills in the heat we headed back to the hostel. There was one part we hadn't see yet that I wanted to see, but the girls didn't so I went there by myself. There was no one else in the park so I decided to sit on a bench and read my scriptures. While I was sitting there a white guy that looked a lot an American I had met in my ward in Lisbon walked by to take a picture of a fountain. I thought it was him, but he had looked at me, but hadn't said anything. I finally said, "Calvin?" and he said, "I thought that was you!" Neither of us knew that the other was in Coimbra and we laughed about the randomness of running into each other in a deserted park. He ended up hanging out with Ashlee, Ariel, and me for a few hours that night.

All in all, Coimbra is a beautiful place, but it can be seen in a day. Here's my other new shirt by the river in Coimbra.

Here's a picture of Ana and me at the Castelo Sao Jorge in Lisbon where we went for a field trip.

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Snooping around

2011-06-29T08:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday marked the third time that I was walking from my shower to my bedroom and I encountered a woman unexpectedly in my in my hallway. The first time was a woman that I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since, the second was my landlady’s mom (whose name I really need to learn), and yesterday was my landlady, Margarida. I would expect a woman who encountered a man in a towel in a house that she didn’t live in to react by saying something like, “Oh my goodness, I’m sorry!” and promptly leave. However, they usually go something like this: “Oh hi, Ben! How are you? How was your trip? Boy, the weather’s sure getting warm, isn’t it?” Yesterday I responded enough to not seem rude, but got away from the situation as quickly as I could quite puzzled by the fact that I had felt super-awkward while Margarida didn’t seem to care that I was nearly naked.

I was explaining this to Ana at school yesterday and she thought it was way weird that Margarida and her mom were in the apartment so much. I explained to Ana that there is a bodega in the hallway. She responded by saying, “They store wine in your apartment?” Silly me, I thought bodega meant storage room, but it actually means wine cellar, apparently. I then explained to Ana that my apartment has four bedrooms and four tenants. I originally thought that each of us had our own room, but I have since learned that Hugo and Paulo are gay and share a room. That leaves one extra and unexplained bedroom. Maybe they have two storage rooms, but that seemed like a bit much. Ana told me that I should sneak into the room to see what’s in there. I didn’t really want to because it’s not my room, but she insisted that I live in the apartment and deserve to know what’s in there.

Today, when I was home alone, I decided to find out what was in the mystery room. I turned the knob expecting it to be locked, but it wasn’t. For those of you who haven’t seen my apartment, it’s a little old. I wouldn’t call it rundown, it just has a lot of character. Everything in it (except for the Ikea lampshades) is old and all the walls could use some paint. When I opened up the door to the mystery room I was greeted by a room that looked brand new. It has new flooring, new cabinets, and a nice coat of paint. In the middle of the room is a massage table covered in a nice white sheet. I was more than a little surprised because a massage parlor was the exact opposite of the dusty furniture filled room that I had expected to find there. I snooped around a bit and saw oils and a robe and all the stuff I’d imagine a massage parlor to have.

As I was snooping around I remembered a conversation I had with Margarida when I moved in. I asked her what she did for a living and she told me that she’s a massage therapist and wants to take classes learn to do people’s nails and stuff like that as well. Being a massage therapist is all well and good, I just hadn’t expected her massage parlor to be in my house. But now I know why they come over so much and I assume that the girl I saw that one day who I didn’t recognize was probably just a client. From now on I’ll just get dressed in the bathroom. I should snoop around some more and see what else I can find.

P.S. I went to Coimbra over the weekend and Sintra on Monday. I’ll upload pictures and stories later.

My Fairy Godmother

2011-06-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

Before I left for Lagos to meet up with Ariel and Ashlee my landlord’s mom told me that she would be cleaning my room on Tuesday. I told her that I would be gone and that my bedroom door would be lock. She said that that wouldn’t be a problem since there are extra keys to everyone’s bedrooms in a drawer in the hallway. I considered explaining to her how keeping an extra copy of everyone’s bedroom key in the hallway completely defeated the purpose of locking our doors, but I decided not to.

When I opened my bedroom door upon my return on Wednesday night not only was my bed made with clean sheets and the floor swept, but there were a lot of unexpected surprises. For example, I keep my loose change in a pile on my desk. What had appeared when I returned? A coin dish filled with all my coins. I keep a mug in my room for drinking water. What had appeared when I returned? Not only was my mug still there, but an extra glass was on my desk, too and they were both placed on nice little saucers. I read a lot in my chair and somehow grandma knew that. What had appeared when I returned? A little table to set my books on and a reading light. I don’t have a drawer to keep my socks in so I just put them in a pile on a shelf. What had appeared when I returned? A shoebox covered in puppy wrapping paper filled with my socks. And not only that, but she lined my shelves with Lightning McQueen wrapping paper.

After finding all these new things that I hadn’t even realized I wanted, I had a thought. I had hung up a few shirts that needed to be ironed that I planned on ironing in the future, but hadn’t yet. I opened up my closet to find that they were all ironed. What a pleasant surprise. However, my pillow case was oddly absent and after a lot of searching I decided that it wasn’t in my room. It didn’t return until the following day. All of this was nice and all, but I was still a little weirded out that grandma had gone through so much of my stuff. Still, none of it is missing and my room has never been tidier. I came home tonight and there was a new dresser and a new bookshelf in my room. I can’t imagine what will turn up next.

On a completely different note, I’d like to explain my biggest Portuguese blunder so far. The problem with my learning Portuguese is that there are so many Portuguese words similar to Spanish words so when I don’t know a word I just throw in the Spanish word. It often works, but sometimes doesn’t. Last week I was explaining to Ana how I love to read in the parks around town, but that the pigeons there bother me while I read. The word for to bother in Spanish is molestar, but it can also mean to molest someone. However, in Portuguese, the verb molestar only has the sexual meaning while the verb irritar means to bother. So I told Ana that the pigeons were molesting me in the park and her confused expression informed me that I had done something wrong. I won’t make that mistake again.

Lagos

2011-06-21T14:11:00.001-07:00

I remember very clearly the first time I met Ashlee and Ariel. I met Ariel the first day of Spanish syntax class. At the time, if you had told me that we’d become super-good friends I would have said you were crazy. Who would have thought that I’d become friends with a 19 year old who takes syntax classes for fun? I met Ashlee around the same time in an Old Testament class. We were both going to audit the class, but neither of us ended up going much. In short, the three of us are great friends. I’ve had almost all of my class with them for a over a year and we share an office together and seeing them again has been great.

We met up on Monday in Lagos on the southern coast of Portugal. I got there a day early and did a lot of reading. Once we met up we made lots of linguistic jokes that few people would understand and fewer people would laugh at, but we did. The best part of the trip was the swimming. Lagos has some awesome sea cliffs and we went swimming around the cliffs and under arches and a man driving a boat blew a conch shell at us and it was spectacular. Definitely the coolest thing I’ve done in Portugal so far and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I wish I had had a waterproof camera so you could see what I saw.

After swimming we went on walk along the cliff ridge. We thought it was going to be a leisurely walk, but it ended up being more of a hike and we were pretty tired at the end. We walked down this long staircase to the sea and there was a sign advertising grotto tours in four languages. Apparently the way to say “grotto tour” in German is Grottenfahrt. That has become our new favorite word of the trip. That, and the fact that I say “kabab” like a British person and they say it the “right” way. The timer on my camera was a little quicker than Ariel.

This morning there wasn’t time to go swimming so we just wandered around town. All the sights cost money and we didn’t feel like paying because nothing was interesting enough to warrant payment. But we did get a funny picture outside of the slave museum.

All in all, I’m so glad that Ashlee and Ariel are here and I’m glad that we have even more Portuguese adventures planned for the rest of the week in Lisbon and Braga.

Ana Margarida

2011-06-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

I don’t have a picture of Ana Margarida yet, but I’ll post one when I get one. She’s my teacher and she’s so awesome. One of the requirements of the scholarship from the Department of Education that I got was that I attend 140 hours of language classes this summer. The program I’m attending is only 80 hours long and begins in July. To complete the 140 hours requirement I arranged to take 60 hours of private lessons from the university. The university charges 27 euros an hour for the lessons which is far more than a normal person would ever want to pay, but the Department of Education agreed to pay it.

While I was worried about finding a place to live in Portugal and not being able to talk to people, the thing that worried me the most was spending 60 hours one on one with someone that I didn’t like. When I first met Ana Margarida I was immediately put at ease. Not only is she kind and funny, but she is a fantastic language teacher. I know lots of language teachers and I would say that she’s just as good as a Leigh Cherry or a Rob Martinsen which is really saying something. We do a lot of different activities to break up the day and it’s a blast. We start out every class with me telling her what I did the previous day and asking questions about things that I didn’t understand. Like, “Is it normal for my landlady’s mom to do my laundry?” or, “My waiter didn’t bring me my check for 40 minutes. What’s up with that?” We usually end up chatting and laughing for the first 30 minutes of class before we get to any real work.

On the first day of class I was a little jetlagged and started to get really tired after three hours of class. She asked me if I wanted to end early and I did. I said, “I’m sorry, but five hours is just such a long time,” and she said simply, “Yes it is.” The next day I told her how relieved I was when I met her because she was so fun and such a good teacher. She confessed that she was relieved when she met me, too. You see, she didn’t realize that I had a scholarship that was paying for the private lessons. She thought I was some uppity American that was willing to pay 27 euros an hour for private lessons and she was worried that I would complain if we didn’t have five hours of perfect language instruction. She was incredibly relieved to learn that I didn’t want to be there for five hours either and that I was just filling a requirement and we’re both glad to have a laidback atmosphere. So since we have to be together for five hours a day, we’re going to start sightseeing together next week and I’m super-pumped. I’m so glad she’s my teacher.

I really enjoy how we just chat in Portuguese every day. I’ve shown her pictures of my family and she’s shown me pictures of hers. On the second day of class we were talking about how I learned Spanish and I told her that I was a missionary in Mexico. She was surprised to learn I was Mormon because she thought Mormons lived in isolated communities without electricity and wore bonnets. She’d never met a Mormon before and didn’t even know that there were Mormons in Portugal. She asked me what the Book of Mormon was and, in Portuguese, I explained how it was written during the same time as the Bible, but in the Americas, how it was written on gold paper, how Moroni buried it in the ground and Joseph Smith took it out of the ground and rewrote it in English (those are the actual words I used because I didn’t know words like “plates” and “translate”). My vocabulary was really limited and it took so much effort to say it. Ana could tell that it had been difficult for me to explain everything in Portuguese and when I was finished we looked at each other and in unison we each took a deep breath and leaned back into our chairs.

Reflecting on this experience, I realized just how long it’s been since I’ve told someone about the Book of Mormon and how much I miss doing that. And I left out so many important details like Christ’s visit to the America’s and the First Vision and just the fact that the Book of Mormon has changed my life. I’ve spent the last two years at BYU where I go most days without ever even seeing someone who isn’t LDS. And now here I am, on the other side of the world, and my only friend is someone who’s never met a Mormon before. I’m glad to be here and I’m glad to be in a place where I’m reminded that I don’t live my religion just because everyone else is, but because I want to. I hope I get the opportunity to explain to Ana the important parts that I left out of the Book of Mormon because I didn’t do the book justice. And I also want to explain the Joseph Smith story because if she’s heard of Joseph Smith, she’s probably just heard a lot of incorrect and negative information. As much as I love the safety of BYU, I love being able to teach people, too and I’ve missed that.

Here’s a story that I had to write for class. I had to use some vocabulary words (try and guess which ones). And, of course, the original version is in Portuguese. As I read the story to Ana there were a few times that we were laughing so hard that I had to stop reading. That’s how we spend most of class—laughing.

Once upon a time a girl wanted to be the Queen of Spain. The problem was that she was from Portugal so she couldn’t be the Queen of Spain unless she married the Prince of Spain. She didn’t like him very much because he was ugly and a bookworm. But she had a goal so it was all good. She went and talked with the Prince and he liked her and asked her to marry him. She thought and realized that he was so ugly that she couldn’t marry him. But she didn’t want to give up on her goal so she said to him, “Wait one minute,” and she went outside. She went looking for a miracle. She found a beehive and asked, “Is there anyone there that can give me a miracle?” but no one responded. Then she ran into an anthill and asked the same question. An ant came out and said to her, “I can grant wishes.” She replied, “Very good, magic ant. I want you to make me blind so that I never have to look at the Prince.” And so it was and she never looked at the Prince again, but she married him and they lived happily ever after.

And lastly, here of some pictures of the places I studied today. Since it was Saturday I went all over the city and read for an hour and then went to a new place. The first picture is my failed attempt to stage a picture. I doubt I'm the first person to forget to set the timer on my camera.

Fitting in

2011-06-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

I felt very out of place when I first got to Lisbon, but now that I’ve been here for a few days I’m starting to feel more like I fit in. However, I can’t escape the fact that I stick out like a sore thumb. I was talking with Margarida, my teacher, today saying that I was getting frustrated with so many random people walking up to me and speaking to me in English. Do I look so American that people can tell my nationality just by looking at me? Apparently I do. I told Margarida that I’ve seen people here just as tall as me, just as white as me, with my same hair color, and with blue eyes. She responded, “Yes, Benjamin, there are tall people in Portugal, and fair skinned people in Portugal, and people with brown hair in Portugal, and people with blue eyes in Portugal, but you’re the ONLY person in the whole country that has all four traits together.” I’ve been paying more attention and she appears to be correct.

Lately when I’ve looked at myself in the mirror I’ve thought, “Whoa, I am tall and my limbs are so unnaturally long.” I’ve gotten so used to seeing mostly short people that seeing a tall person like myself reminds me of looking at giraffe. I remember when I was on my mission and I was getting ready in the morning one day and noticed how blue my eyes were. I was so used to seeing dark brown eyes that seeing how blue my own eyes were was kind of surprising.

Yesterday I finally got my metro pass and I’ve been using the metro like crazy now that I don’t have to pay for each individual ride. I’ve gotten off at random stations and walked around just to see a different part of the city. It’s particularly fun because Lisbon is such a diverse city that I’ll walk out of the metro at one station and I’ll be at a super-modern mall and at another station I’ll be surrounded by crumbling buildings older than the US. It’s fun to be able to do that. But this is the main reason I like my metro pass—it makes me feel like I fit it. Almost everyone has a metro pass and people typically keep them in their wallets. Instead of removing the pass from their wallets, they just slide their entire wallets across the scanner to get on the metro. I do the same thing. It may sound weird, but it makes me feel like I fit in.

Even though I like my apartment, I don’t spend much time there during the day. The weather has been so nice that I usually just go to a random park to read for a few hours. When I get, I eat. When I get thirsty, I buy some water. When I get tired, I go home. I really do love all the time I have to read here and it’s so refreshing to read for fun.

I love my Kindle so much!

Crumbling buildings.

I was going to wait for that lady to walk out of the shot before I took the picture, but my impatience got the better of me.

This picture is just to prove that I'm actually in Portugal.

A Home for Ben

2011-06-14T13:01:00.001-07:00

I found a place to live! And I did it on my second day in Lisbon, too. I live with three students: two from Portugal and one from Cameroon. We each have our own rooms and I haven’t seen much of my roommates because they mostly just hang out in their rooms. Hopefully we’ll become friends soon because I don’t want to spend my summer alone. The apartment is obviously very old, but I like the character it has. My landlady was super-worried that I’d be too long for my bed. I fit okay.

Margarida, my landlady, is so nice and I can understand her pretty well which is great because Portuguese is much harder than I had anticipated. Unfortunately, I’m still a little slow and don’t always get her jokes. She was showing me how to lock my bedroom door and apologized profusely because to lock it, you have to pull the door pretty hard. As she was showing me how to lock it she said, “This happens to new doors.” I just responded with an “uh huh,” but then realized that she had made a joke and pretty funny one at that considering the fact that my door is probably older than Mao Zedong. The two big keys are to my bedroom door and the front door. I didn’t know that such big keys still existed in places outside of Narnia.

My house has some other quirks. For example, I used the toilet for the first time last night and was going to flush, of course, but I couldn’t find the handle. It was nowhere to be found. I examined the entire area around the toilet, but still, no handle. I was about to timidly ask one of my roommates for help when I realized that about four feet from the toilet there was a water tank over the bathroom mirror. There was a chain dangling from the tank and when I pulled it – whoosh! For the first time the sound of toilet flushing signaled my success.

Overall, I love my apartment. I have a hamper that looks like a penguin, a chair in my room that promotes good posture instead of being comfortable, and a mirror that’s high enough on the wall for me to see my face. I think the placement of the mirror in my room is the weirdest thing since the Portuguese are typically small and there’s no way they’d be able to see themselves in that mirror. I’m enjoying being here and the “what the heck have I done?” and the “why did I think going to Europe alone would be fun?” feelings have gone and I’m pumped to settle in and feel more at home here.

P.S. I was going to upload more pictures, but the internet is my house is so slow (like, dial-up slow).

Take an item, leave an item

2011-06-09T23:40:00.001-07:00

My good friend Jordan drove down from Salt Lake for one last visit before I head off to Portugal. We went to this cool art exhibit at the HFAC where you take one of the items on display and replace it with an item of equal value. That’s the idea, but people apparently are a little cheap since some of the items there now are candy wrappers, pieces of paper, and half used bottle of Pepto Bismol. We took my old license plate.

We exchanged the license plate for a VHS that didn’t have a label. We took it over to the library to watch it and Jordan noticed some posters that she designed a few years ago. They’re pretty faded, but they’re still there.

We had no idea what was on the video.

When we played it, we discovered that it was a tape of a boy asking a girl to prom. It was kind of weird and he did a lot of random impressions. I don’t know if Tyler and Kimberly went to the dance together, but I’m assuming that they’re not together now since Kimberly gave the tape away.

With the mystery of the unlabeled VHS solved, we headed back to the exhibit and traded the VHS for a slightly tacky hair clip that Jordan wore with style.

We then went to Starbucks to use a $10 gift card that I’ve had for five years. I would have used it sooner, but I didn't know of any Starbucks in Utah Valley. It turns out there's one in Orem. While the hot chocolate and pumpkin bread were delicious, I don’t think they were worth $10.

Portuguese, Please

2011-06-07T20:41:00.001-07:00

As a language teacher, I often warn my students that they will say something embarrassing without meaning it. Everyone does it, everyone feels silly, you just accept it, don’t make the same mistake twice, and move one. I’m going to Portugal in five days and I have accepted the fact that I’ll make a few blunders while I’m learning Portuguese. However, I didn’t expect that I would make a fool of myself even before leaving the US.

I’ve been in contact with the program secretary, Teresa, for a few months now. Teresa recently put me in contact with Margarida who will be tutoring me for three weeks in Portugal. Margarida told me that Teresa would be reserving a classroom for our lessons, but she wasn’t sure if Teresa had yet. I emailed Teresa this morning and asked her if she had reserved a room for Margarida and me. And that was my blunder.

You see, I used word “quarto” which I thought meant “room,” as in an enclosed space with four walls, but actually only means “bedroom.” The word I should have used was “aula” which means classroom. I basically asked the secretary if she had reserved a bedroom for Margarida and me. Teresa is a funny woman and she wrote back, “I haven’t reserved a bedroom for you, but I have reserved a classroom ;)” The winky smile eased my embarrassment and made me glad that Teresa knew I had made an honest mistake and wasn’t some American creeper. I’m sure I’ll embarrass myself much more frequently when I’m actually in Portugal.

Saturday Night Shopping

2011-02-13T21:46:00.001-08:00

I don’t enjoy shopping. When I shop for clothes I’m never sure what looks good or what’s in style. Grocery shopping is just as bad since I don’t cook much and I’m never sure what to buy. I went grocery shopping by myself on Saturday night which makes things even worse. I inevitably run into people I know and end up saying things like, “Hi, former roommate, I’m glad you’re shopping with your wife while I buy frozen pizzas alone,” or, “Hi, current student, it sure looks like you’re having fun on your date. Can I squeeze by you? You’re standing in front of the pre-shredded cheese.”

This particular trip to the supermarket wasn’t so bad. I stopped there on my way home from a friend’s house and needed to use the bathroom. As I walked into the bathroom at Macy’s I was expecting a public restroom as clean as the ones at BYU, but was instantly disappointed when I walked into a tiled room that reeked of air freshener and other less-fresh odors. As I walked up to the sink to wash my hands I was startled by my appearance. You see, I have once again moved into an apartment where I am too tall to see the majority of my head in the bathroom mirror. I got a haircut on Friday morning, but hadn’t seen the top of my head since then and had forgotten that I’d gotten a haircut. It’s kind of startling to realize that your hair is shorter than expected while standing in a stinky public restroom.

My next moment of fright came from the reality of inflation. Easter is just down the road and so the grocery stores have started selling my favorite Easter candy – Cadbury Cream Eggs. I remember when I was a kid I could by five eggs for a dollar and I did (and then promptly ate too much and felt sick). Macy’s was selling the delicious chocolate eggs for 59 cents apiece. Wow, the changes that occur in 20 years. The British get to eat those delectable treats year round and we only get them for a few months and have to pay 59 cents for a shell of chocolate filled with sugary cream. It got worse. I turned down the frozen food aisle and glanced at the price of the generic brand frozen waffles. A box of waffles that I used to pay 89 cents for now costs $1.99. And that’s the generic brand!

My trip to the grocery store ended pleasantly enough. The checker and I briefly discussed the weather, whether or not I’d found everything alright, the kind of bag I wanted my groceries to be placed in, and how terrible it was that she had to work until midnight at which point I left with my items. When I got home I watched a rerun of The Office while eating a bowl of Reese’s Puffs that only cost me $2.50 (plus tax). All in all it was a successful trip and I now have milk for my cereal.

I'll be the nose, you be the hand

2010-12-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

I love teaching and feel that I’m good at it. I’ve had jobs before that I didn’t feel like I did well and instead of leaving work feeling invigorated I left feeling stressed and discouraged. Luckily, that isn’t the case for my current job – usually.

As an intermediate Spanish teacher I mostly help my students develop communicative competence (i.e. speaking, listening, and writing). However, for the last few weeks of the semester my class is reading a play called “La dama del alba.” It’s a great story, but I have no idea how to teach literature. I have a teaching guide that goes through the points that I’m supposed to cover, but even with that I run out of things for us to discuss. A few days ago I ended class ten minutes early because I didn’t have anything else to say.

To make my life just a little more difficult there is going to be a Christmas fiesta next week for a bunch of the Spanish classes and each class is going to sing a Christmas carol in Spanish. I didn’t know any Spanish carols so I asked for suggestions and a bunch of people recommended “Fum, fum, fum.” I listened to it on Youtube and liked it and told my class that we’d be singing it. However, when we tried to sing it in class it was surprisingly fast and hard to sing. Most of my students didn’t want to sing it and I was at a loss for what to do.

That night I tried to figure out the song on my own, but I couldn’t. The timing was weird and I couldn’t figure it out. Not only could I not sing the song, but I had no idea how to teach a song to my class. I didn’t feel like I could do it and that stressed me out and frustrated me. Since I didn’t know what to do I decided to do nothing. I thought to myself, “I have a class full of people that are musically talented; they don’t need me to teach them.”

When I got to class the next day I passed out the sheet music to the song and asked who knew how to lead a choir. Two girls raised their hands and I said, “Great! You’re gonna teach this song to the class.” They looked a little surprised, but they came to the front of the class and within ten minutes had the class singing beautifully. Seriously, it sounded so good. We also rolled in a piano and someone brought their violin and it all flowed together. I couldn’t believe it. I had done nothing to help them sing (except for interrupting the music directors occasionally to make witty comments), but I was so proud of them all.

This experience reminded me of 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul teaches that each member of the body is important. The foot isn’t more important than the eye or the eye more important than the ear, but everyone is needed for the body to function properly. Those girls couldn’t have taught the class grammar and I couldn’t teach the class music, but together we ended up with a Spanish choir. There are a lot of things that I can’t do and I’m very grateful for the many people that do those things well because without you I couldn’t experience them. It’s nice to know that when we work together we end up with a spectacular result.

As usual I think my students have taught me more than I’ve taught them. Thank you, students. I’ll be the nose and you can be the rest.

Someday...

2010-08-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been a very organized person, but I do love to set goals; especially when there’s a lesson at church about setting goals. I attended one such lesson in May 2009 and everyone in attendance was invited to make two measureable, achievable goals. Since I was going to be starting grad school soon I decided to make a goal to get straight A’s. And since I was single I decided to make a goal to get married in August 2010. Both goals seemed like practical, doable goals and so I set out to achieve them. I’m happy to say that I’ve been extremely successful with one of my goals and a little less than successful with the other. To be funny I later specified my marriage date as the 9th of August. That way my marriage date would be 8/9/10 and whenever anyone asked when I got married I would wittily reply, “On eight nine ten,” which would be funny at first, but my poor wife would later confess to me that she never thought it was funny, that it annoyed her, and that I should just say August 9th because as it turns out no one thought it was funny.

Eight nine ten is tomorrow and I’m more single than ever. I’m not too upset about missing my goal and I’m now planning on getting married on nine ten eleven. Even though I didn’t get married this weekend, a friend of mine did and I went to her reception.

When I was younger and before all of my friends were married I used to attend weddings with single girls who would often talk about (in slight snooty tones) how their reception was going to be different from the one we were currently at. While at the wedding reception this weekend I decided to come up with some things that I will do differently at my wedding reception.

I’ve always thought that cutting a cake was an odd tradition. I mean, yes, the cake does need to be cut. And having the bride and groom do it is kind of cute, but they only cut enough for themselves and then let someone else do it. And for that we clap?! I just don’t get it. At my reception my wife and I will do something more utilitarian. For example, we could toss a salad together. It’s healthier and if my wife and I get in a mini food fight as newlyweds are wont to do at least lettuce doesn’t leave a sticky residue on your face like cake does. Or we could fill up cups of water, DJ a little, plant a tree, or write a check to a charity; all of which serve a purpose and actually deserve applause. Or we could do something that’s actually difficult for two people to do together like throw a dart at a bull’s-eye, walk around with our legs tied together, or co-compose a poem on the spot. I think the guests would be excited when someone announced, “The bride and groom will now compose an origin poem for their guests.”

Instead of having a slide show of the bride and groom for people to watch as they wait in line we will have a slide show of digitally generated images of what our children will look like. It’ll be a good conversation starter. We will have pictures of ourselves too, but only ones from Facebook. Below the pictures we will have random Facebook updates from years past. I think my friends and relatives will really enjoy seeing a poorly taken picture of me at a ward activity with a caption that says “Ben has the best roommates ever!” or “(fill in girls name) just finished her last test of the semester!” or “Ben just updated his blog,” or “(fill in girls names) could eat Thai food every day.” It will be a good way for people to reminisce and a good conversation starter.

I don’t really enjoy wedding lines and haven’t quite figured out how to avoid it. I’m thinking that maybe I’ll stick with the line tradition, but make it a line dance. I think I’d enjoy mingling while doing the Electric Slide or the Boot Scootin’ Boogey. We’re also going to have all of the guests take a picture with us in front of a green screen and we will include the picture in their thank you card. That way the wedding will have taken place at the beach, on a ski slope, in front of the Taj Mahal, on an African Safari, at the White House, and on the Moon.

The most enjoyable part of the reception will be the murder mystery. Every guest will be assigned a part to play with a short bio of their character. Of course most guests will be given unimportant roles and the main players will be in the wedding party. Clues will be given throughout the night that will help the guests figure out who the murderer is. The game will be rigged and the murderer will end up being the mother-in-law as that is the funniest possible outcome. When it’s revealed that she’s the murderer she’ll wittily say something like, “Treat my daughter right or I will be a murderer,” and the place will erupt in laughter. I, however, will be a little wary of her from then on because I will know that she really isn’t joking.

Keep nine ten eleven free ‘cause it’s gonna be a hoot.

Viva the USA

2010-07-12T16:15:00.000-07:00

Joleen and I had a splendid, platonic date a little over a week ago. We went to Freedom Fest in downtown Provo to check out the festivities and assorted random booths. Joleen and I both indulged in an impulse buy: a new frilly bag and a tie. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out who bought what. One of the booths was advertising the "Constitution Party." We weren't sure if the constitution party was a political party or some kind of gathering where people sit around eating apple pie and discussing the constitution. I would have asked what the constitution party was all about, but fear of being given a pamphlet kept me in ignorance. Whether it's a political party of a social gathering, I was able to ascertain from the both that it involves old people and lots of knickknacks with the American flag on them.

As we wandered around a vagrant looking man approached us and asked were he could buy some cigarettes. Joleen responded first saying that she didn't know where he could buy cigarettes (although I have my suspicions that she did know where he could buy some). He politely thanked us and left. As the vagrant walked away I noticed that he was carrying a large piece of cardboard with writing on it. It said, "Why lie? I need money for beer." I appreciated his honesty, but gave him nothing.

I've wanted to buy a bike for some time, but am always too cheap (frugal, maybe?) to buy one. The last bike I had was given to me for free and it is so hard to spend more money on a new bike than I paid for the previous one. Today I was looking up bikes on Craig's List, but I quickly got distracted and instead searched employment listings in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Not because I'm interested in working there, but just out of pure curiosity. I found the following listing titled "teach me spanish on skype":
"i want young pretty mexican girl to teach me spanish on skype i will western union you the money if we can make a deal i will pay 20 dollars for each 1 hour lesson i want young pretty mexican girl to teach me you will have to teach me like a 5 yr old very slow only at night ok thx."
When I first read this ad I was little creeped out by the man (most likely in his forties, overweight, and smelly) wanting to Skype with a pretty Mexican girl only at night. Then I was a little curious wondering if anyone would respond to this ad. My last thought was being disappointed in myself for not being a pretty Mexican girl. I would love to make $20 an hour teaching someone Spanish, but I don't meet this man's only requirement. However, I'm considering responding to him anyway with an offer to teach him punctuation and capitalization rules in English instead.

Checking out of the Hotel California

2010-06-27T16:39:00.000-07:00

I moved into a house called the Hotel California last June and spent a good 10 months living there, but I was ready for a change. In fact, I already moved. That means that I said good-bye to the Hotel California. Overall, it's been a great place to live. I loved having two fridges, a washer and dryer, and always having a parking space. I also loved my enormous bedroom and the extremely comfy couch on cinder-blocks. However, there are a few things that I do not miss.

The first is the hallway to my bedroom. As I was moving my stuff in I quickly noticed that while I am 6'3.5", the entry to the hallway is about 6'3". That means that every time I wanted to go to my room I had to duck. I was pretty peeved about that for a few days and complained profusely to my friends. I got used to it pretty quickly, but unfortunately developed the habit of ducking every time I walked through a doorway. Now when I walk through a doorway I briefly resemble a Muppet due to my slumped shoulders and bouncy walk.

The Hotel California discriminated against my height in another unfortunate way. When I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror I could only see from my shoulders down. This meant that I had to bend down if I ever wanted to see my face. Although annoying, this has had a pleasant side effect. Since I rarely saw my face I started to care less and less about my appearance and I think I even became a little less vain for a brief period of time.

The Hotel California has a weird golf picture on the wall in the living room. Not only is the picture weird, but it's hung about a foot off the ground. Not a typical place to hang a picture. One day I decided to take it down only to realize that it was covering up a large hole. I left the picture there.

My new place is great and also has a name, but telling the internet where I currently live just doesn't seem like a good idea. I like that I can see my face in the bathroom mirror, I don't have to duck to enter any rooms, and there aren't any holes in the wall covered up by pictures (that I've discovered yet). It's nice.

Adventures in Substitute Teaching

2010-05-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in Washington for the last few weeks working as a substitute teacher until Summer term starts at BYU. Today I subbed at Everett High which is fun because it's where I attended high school. Also, my brother is a counselor here so the kids that know him automatically think I'm cool (and with good reason). The funny thing is that almost everyday I'm told "you look just like your brother" and "you look nothing like your brother." I'm not quite sure how I manage to look just like my brother and at the same time looking nothing like him, but it's a feat that I've achieved nonetheless.

Class elections were today and I was assigned to go to the sophomore class assembly. One of the kids who was running for class treasurer started his speech by saying, "Um, this probably isn't gonna be very good and I'm probably gonna screw up a lot." He looked at the floor during his entire speech which included him saying, "I want to be the treasurer because I like math and I'm good with numbers." I felt sorry for the kid and realized that a class in public speaking would do him a world of good.

Last week I subbed for a 6th grade class and it was awful. Probably the worst day I've ever had subbing. I'm subbing for a different 6th grade class today, but I have many of the same 6th graders as before. My biggest issue with 6th graders is that they don't seem to understand that I understand what they're up to. For example, one kid, I'll call him Luke, said he couldn't do his work because he didn't have a pencil. I gave him a give-me-a-break kind of look and told him to borrow a pencil from his neighbors. He said that no one would lend him a pencil so I bent over and picked up a grey colored pencil that was lying on the ground and handed it to him. I came back a few minutes later and he still hadn't written anything. When I asked why he hadn't done any of his work he said that the pencil didn't work. I took it from him and with it wrote in big letters on his paper "Hi Luke =)" and said, "Seems to work just fine."

Many of the 6th graders remembered me from last week. One of them said upon entering the classroom said, "Dude, Mr. Shality, remember me." It might be because I was tired or it might be because he pronounced Schilaty wrong, but I responded truthfully and said, "I meet 150 new kids everyday. Sorry, but I don't remember you." He looked rather crushed and said, "Spaghetti. Spaghetti! Don't you remember spaghetti?" "No," I replied, "I'm really not sure what you're talking about." He then sat down with an incredulous look on his face that seemed to say "How could he forget spaghetti?" However, once class started I remember him as being the loud mouth from the previous week.

Slightly awkward

2009-09-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

Graduate school is more or less what I expected: busy. However, I’m enjoying it very much. While I enjoy the classes that I’m taking I much prefer the classes that I’m teaching. Not that I’m a better teacher than my professors, I just really enjoy teaching. I teach two sections of Spanish 105 and the vast majority of my students are freshmen. That means that while I can still remember the 80’s, they were born in the 90’s. I realize that being 25 does not make me old, but age is definitely relative and I’ve felt a little old lately.

A fellow Spanish teacher approached me today and asked me how to say “awkward” in Spanish. I told her that I didn’t think there was an exact word and the closest I could come to saying awkward would be to say incómodo (uncomfortable). I overheard her ask a native Spanish speaker the same question and she recommended that my friend use the word extraño (weird/strange). I personally feel that my word is more appropriate. However, if I’m ever asked that question again, instead of answering by simply saying a word I’ll respond by sharing a story such as the one that happened to me tonight.

Tonight was BYU’s annual Fall Fest. That includes free food, dancing, magic show, laser tag, and salsa dancing. I generally feel like I outgrew dances about six years ago, but I went to Fall Fest anyway. You know, for the free food. Within five minutes of being at Fall Fest I spotted four of my students. I reacted by pretending not to see them as I figured that they were probably not too interested in hanging out with their teacher whose seven years their senior. One girl was only feet from me and she obviously saw me, but was polite enough to simply ignore me as well. With the risk level of feeling like a peer to freshmen being extremely high, I told my friends that I had gone with that I wanted to leave and we left.

Seeing my students and other freshmen at Fall Fest reminded me of being at an EFY dance. Something I’m definitely too old for. I felt uncomfortable, strange, and weird. I felt awkward.

The Purple Dinosaur

2009-08-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be teaching SPAN 105 at BYU this fall and I'm stoked. However, I realized that I might need some more clothes that look a little more professional for this job. Since I have very little style or fashion sense I recruited Joleen to help me pick out some new clothes.

Our first stop was the Gap. We found a nice yellow shirt for me to wear (don't worry, it looks good) and proceeded to look at some sweaters to wear with it. Some guy working at the store wearing a purple shirt recommended that I try on a purple sweater. I think he was biased. I looked at the sweater he was referring to and it was a shade of purple that you might expect to see on a blanket that your grandma would buy. Being open minded I decided to try it on. I had a surprisingly hard time getting it on and emerged from the dressing room with a crooked sweater on which caused Joleen to erupt with laughter. She helped me straighten it out and to everyone's surprise it looked great! I was the most shocked of all. However, the yellow shirt with the purple sweater made me look like a preppy Huskies fan so I just left the sweater in the dressing room.

Our next stop was American Eagle. A little too trendy for my taste, but if a girl tells you to go into a store, you go. While Joleen was trying some clothes on I decided to try on a purple polo shirt just for laughs. Imagine our surprise when it looked good too! I couldn't believe it. Me, looking good in purple? I briefly considered buying it, but I bought the gray version of it instead for fear of looking "metro" or "light in the loafers."

We ended the evening by going to Jamba Juice where Joleen ordered a drink called the "purple dinosaur." I tried it and it was delicious. I guess I like purple more than I thought.

Nicknames

2009-08-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

I had originally planned on writing about all my adventures in Europe, but the task was so daunting that I gave up on blogging altogether. Now it's been six months since I went to Europe and blogging about Europe now would just be silly. So I'll just write about current events in my life instead.

I moved back to Utah in June to attend BYU yet again and it has been exactly as pleasant as I had suspected. I moved in with some random guys that I didn't know and much to my horror one of them is named Ben. What makes matters worse is that we get along and hang out! Having two Bens live together and hang out caused instant problems and confusion.

The other Ben is currently in a movie for which he had to grow a beard. To remedy the confusion caused by us having the same name we decided that he would go by Hairy Ben and I'd be Tall Ben. That's all well and good, but Tall Ben was promptly shortened to TB. This is the normal reaction when my roommates introduce me to people as TB: "TB? Doesn't that stand for tuberculosis?" to which I reply, "Yes, and it means Tall Ben too." I like being called TB.

I have a super awesome teacher from the Dominican Republic whose English isn't perfect. On the first day of class he was struggling trying to pronounce my last name and finally settled on guessing that it was pronounced "Swahili." Since then I've been known in that class as Swahili. One day in class we were discussing one of the many differences between English and Spanish and at the end of the discussion my teacher said, "In the end English and Spanish are both good languages...and Swahili too." It was very endearing.

The girls from the Relief Society in my ward recently had a Relief Society sleepover (a.k.a. gossipfest) at the Bishop's house. I was latter informed that at one point the girls were gossiping about me and decided that my last name reminded them of the song "Shipoopi" from The Music Man and they have now started calling me Shipoopi.

I've never had so many nicknames in my life. So if you randomly see me walking down the street feel free to shout TB, Swahili, or Shipoopi and I'll probably turn my head.

Europe! Pronounced: your up

2009-05-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I was kindly reminded by two of my friends that I haven't posted for a while and they were interested in hearing about my trip to Europe. I hope this post makes up for the long hiatus.

One of the reasons I haven't posted for so long is that I fill up my free time with things other than posting my life on the internet. Most of those things are complete wastes of time. One of my biggest time fillers which is definitely NOT a waste of time is Lost. I don't know how many of you watch Lost, but it's pretty great. A few years ago I spoke with some people at BYU who were absolutely addicted to the show and they lamented that they had to wait three more years for the show to end and for everything to finally be explain (Lost is very confusing). Thinking that I was smarter than the average bear I decided to not watch Lost at all until the right before the last season was to start. My plan was to watch the first five seasons on DVD and then to watch the sixth and final season on TV. My plan is working out splendidly. I’m currently in the middle of the 5th season and the 6th season starts in a few months. Turns out I’m smarter than the average human too! Sad fact: I once watched 20 episodes of Lost in 24 hour period. Not my proudest day.

When I got back from Europe I had loads of free time. I filled it by looking for jobs and watching TV. A friend of mine works as a substitute teacher and she recommended that I do the same. My initial thoughts were, I’d rather sell my plasma, but I signed up to be a substitute teacher anyway. The way I get sub jobs is through an automated phone message. I get a call from a machine, the job is described and I can push 1 to accept and 2 to decline. As soon as I signed up to be a sub I started getting job offers all the time, but I was too afraid to accept any of them. One morning I was awakened at 5:00 am by a sub call. Just as before I was too nervous to accept the job, but it was dark and I was only mildly coherent and I accidentally pushed the wrong button and accepted the job. I angrily rolled out of bed, got ready, and drove to work. Now I sub all the time and it’s fantastic. I think that everyone should get paid to take attendance and read a book.

The automated sub message is voice activated so when I answer the phone the machine doesn’t start talking until I say something. For a while I just said hello like a normal person. But I quickly learned to recognize the sub finder number on my caller ID and sometimes I’d answer the phone and wait 10 seconds and then say hello. Now I answer those calls by making noises. Most of them are grunts that sound like uh, duh, muh. So if you ever call me and I answer the phone by grunting I just thought that you were the sub finder calling me and I was trying to make myself laugh by grunting into the phone.

I’d like to think that I’m the “cool sub.” The fact that I’m a cool sub goes without saying since I am a sub and I’m most definitely cool. But being cool and being a sub does not simply make you a “cool sub.” That takes a little something I like to call “picking your battles.” It works fairly well. I was subbing in a middle school math class and a girl who was supposed to be doing a worksheet was talking to me about something that I didn’t care about and I feigned interest. At one point she asked, “Are you making fun of me in your mind?” I leaned in a little and replied, “Yes.” Then she said, “I’m going to tell on you” to which I replied, “Fine, tell the principal that the sub was making fun of you in his mind and see what happens.” She laughed and I won and then I got paid for doing it.

I was subbing a few weeks ago and after introducing myself one of the students asked me what my first name is. At first I made it seem like I wasn’t supposed to tell them just to add to the fun. Then I said, "Guess! I’ll give you a clue, my name’s in the Bible." The first guess was Joseph and I said, "Close, I'm named after Joseph's youngest brother." That was followed by perplexed looks. Then people started guessing names like John and Jesus and a boy even guessed Joseph again which was followed by many other students informing that boy of how stupid he was for guessing a guess that had already been guessed. I finally gave up and said, "I have the same name as the leader of the Others on Lost," and a girl instantly shouted "It's Ben!" I guess teenagers are more familiar with pop culture than biblical genealogy. Who’d of thought?

I’ll write about your up in my next post.

Probably Paris

2009-03-11T14:33:00.000-07:00

After a few days in London Ezra and I took the Eurostar train to Paris. It was fast. Arriving in Paris took me out of my comfort zone. I couldn't understand what people were saying or read signs and I was unfamiliar with the public transportation system. It all worked out just fine and we rarely got lost and confused. Ezra and I aren't really that interested in art, but we still felt an obligation to go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa. I'd heard that it wasn't too excited, but felt compelled to see it anyway. We arrived at the Louvre a little after 6:00 and were delighted to see that there was no line. We walked around the main entrance for a few minutes and then found out that the exhibits closed at 6:00. I was disappointed, but not heartbroken. The only thing that bummed me out was that now my only opportunity to see the Mona Lisa would be by looking at the millions of recreations of it around the world.

We visited Versailles palace which was absolutely stunning. It was filled with art and is probably the most ornate building I've ever seen. My reaction to the first room I saw was, "WOW!" and the second room, "WOW!" and the third room, "Wow" and the fourth room, "wow..." and the fifth room, "This looks like all the other rooms." There is no denying that Versailles is incredibly spectacular, but it all kind of looks the same and it's difficult to be blown away by the same thing over and over again. I really enjoyed touring the palace, but I think I would have really loved it had I been an art lover or a lover of French history. However, I am neither of those things.

Laughable London

2009-03-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

My teaching contract ended on January 26th and all of a sudden I had tons of free time and more money in the bank than I'd ever had before. Time+money=loads of fun. At the end of January I over heard my good acquaintance Ezra telling a friend that he wanted to go to Europe and was going to go by himself because he had no one to go with him. Not wanting to miss a chance for adventure I burst into the conversation that I wasn't a part of and said, "You wanna go to Europe? I wanna go! You going 'cause I'll go!" Ten days later I was in Europe. I didn't blog whilst in Europe so I'm going to blog about the amusing things that happened while I was on vacation. This is the first installment.

Our first stop was London. London had just had a huge snow storm the week before we arrived and was very, very cold. I had brought warm clothes with me, but I hadn't packed a hat or gloves. Neither had Ezra. We met up with Ezra's friend Heath and went to a 99 pence store to buy some. Ezra was eying a hat that didn't have a price tag and he said, "Hey Ben, ask the store clerk how much this costs." I grabbed the hat, walked up to the cash register and said, "How much does this hat cost?" The man at the cash register said "99 pence" very smugly and Ezra and Heath burst into laughter. I must admit that it didn't immediately dawn on me what had just happened. Then I realized that I had been tricked into asking how much something costs in a 99 pence store where everything is 99 pence. I reacted to this situation just as any normal person would -- by feeling stupid.

The following day we went to Greenwich park to have a look at the Prime Meridian. I took a picture standing over the Prime Meridian with one foot in the eastern hemisphere and another in the western hemisphere. I even jumped from one hemisphere to the other saying, "I'm in the western hemisphere; I'm in the eastern hemisphere." Being in one hemisphere and then another really isn't too terribly exciting. In fact, I think it's more exciting to be standing on carpet and then standing on linoleum, but for some reason doing that just doesn't warrant taking a picture.

To be continued...

The Schilatypus

2009-01-22T19:53:00.000-08:00

In my fourth period class some of my students believe that I can hear everything that's being said in the room. It's not true, although I wish it were. One girl in particular gets really peeved when I comment on what she's saying to her friends or tell her that what she's saying is inappropriate. My ability to hear what's going on has little to do with my ears and a lot to do with the stupidity of high schoolers. When they want to say something private to their neighbor they will often hold up a piece of paper or put their hand in front of their mouth. I've told them many times that hands and paper do very little, if anything, to muffle sound. Yet they still get annoyed when I can hear them.

A few days ago I had given the kids an assignment to work on and I was doing something at my desk. All of a sudden I heard one of the kids say something about crack and something sexual. I immediately said that that was inappropriate and that he needed to stop. As soon as I said that half the class started laughing. Now, if there's one thing I've learned as a teacher it's that it is really bad if everyone is laughing and you have no idea why. It was quickly explained to me that they had made a beat to see how quickly I would stop the conversation and they had started laughing because I had stopped it much sooner than expected. Apparently my ears lived up to their reputation.

Last week I heard another conversation coming from the nether regions of my classroom. All I heard was, "....BYU t-shirt...." and I said, "What did you say about BYU?" I worked my way over to the group of students that I had overheard and they promised that they were behaving. I let them continue what they were doing and a few minutes later they unveiled the Schilatypus. The conversation I had overheard was them discussing if the Schilatypus should wear a BYU t-shirt. The students were pretty pleased with their creation and are hoping to make an entire Schilaty zoo that could include such animals the Schiliger and the Schiloctypus.

This post is as funny as a funny story

2009-01-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. I thought everyone might enjoy reading them.

Here are last year's winners...

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell twelve stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21 The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

National Women's Suffrage Day

2008-12-21T16:15:00.001-08:00

It's not very well known, but today is National Women's Suffrage Day. Although it sounds bad, suffrage is actually a very good thing. Exactly ninety years ago on December 21, 1918 congress passed the 18th amendment allowing women the right to vote. Since December 21st is the shortest day of the year some congressmen who voted against the 18th amendment said that just like the day, the amendment would be short lived and would soon be repealed since women would just vote for who their husband voted for. The bill was passed largely due to the efforts of Winifred Banks whose landmark speech Our Daughters’ Daughters Will Adore Us is credited for rallying thousands of women to the cause. Winifred, along with over a thousand women, marched to the US Capitol building shouting “Votes for women” and “Cast off the shackles of yesterday.”

One of history’s greatest ironies is that Winifred banks ran for the US Senate in 1920, but lost to a man. She ran again in 1926 and lost to a woman. She never ran for a political office again.

Despite all the progress that our country has made in the last ninety years there is still a lot of gender inequality. I deal with it on a daily basis and I am suffering due to a lack of suffrage.

At work we have men’s and women’s staff bathrooms. The men’s room looks just like any other bathroom: toilet, sink, and a random table for setting things on. I assumed that the women’s bathroom looked the same until one day when one of my colleagues forgot her key and asked me to unlock the bathroom for her. Oh the shock that filled my mind when I beheld the wonders of the women’s bathroom! The following pictures should illustrate the lack of equality in places where men and women do their business. I think that Winifred Banks would want me to have a framed picture and tablecloth in my bathroom too.

The men's bathroom

The women's bathroom

Historical note: All historical information in this post is false and is the invention of the author. Any similarities to real historical events are complete flukes. Actually, most of the above information is based on events from Mary Poppins. The pictures were taken by the author at H. M. Jackson High School and represent true inequality.

Mr. Schilaty say what? part 2

2008-12-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

A girl in my sixth period class got wind of the write-down-funny-stuff-that-Mr. Schilaty-says thing and started her own list. I don't say things so that students will write them down - this is just how I talk.

"I'm not profiling."

"And they got really mad, so I'm not gonna do it."

"Whoa, you're like tigers."

Student: "Can I punch the next person who makes fun of me?"
Me: "Yes."

"It helps you be smarter."

"You made me look like a fool, now I get to make you look like one."

"I think you're big enough to handle it yourself"

"Whoa, whoa! Don't yell at me."

"If you were talking about Spanish you need to stop. If you were talking about anything else, you are wrong.

"I just owned you."

New Family Search

2008-11-30T18:02:00.000-08:00

We had a lesson at church today about the new Family Search website. It's really cool and I'm really excited to start using it. We were all challenged to log into the website today. I did and they have this neat feature where you can see your own family tree. Next to my name there was a button that said, "Add or find a wife." If I had known that it was that easy to find a wife I would have stopped going to dances tried Family Search a long time ago. Who should I add?

If you're interested in doing genealogy visit new.familysearch.org. If you're interest in finding a husband visit benschilaty.blogspot.com.

Mr. Schilaty say what?

2008-11-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

Unbeknownst to me (at the time) a girl in one of my classes has been writing down funny things that I say in class. She showed me the list and I was so amused that I asked for a copy. Here are some of my favorites:

“I would say ‘encantada’ if I were an enchanted woman… I am NOT an enchanted woman.”

“What were you just doing…? Were you PRAYING?”

“I said attractive… it’s less… offensive.”

Mmmmm… quien es ella??? … Sorry I didn’t mean to sound so creepy.”

“So I… AS A MAN… will never ever ever ever ever ever say ‘nosotras.’”

“Oh, that is an ugly ‘Y’!”

“Will everyone PLEEEEAASE be quiet? Brooke is asking a wonderful question about the homework!”

“How about you smile more so I feel better about it.”

“But…I don’t like people to go potty during learning time.”

Me: “Oooh! Is that your girrrrrlfriend??”…
Student: “That’s my SISTER”

“Socorro! NO BARKING!”

The first amendment states: “freedom of speech, religion, press… Not in my class”

Me: “Oh sorry… my bad…”
Student: “IT IS YOUR BAD”

“I don’t want to have to do that … BUT I WILL”

“I don’t want to be the nicest teacher… I want to be the BEST teacher.”

Me: “What should you be doing in my class?”
Student: “…choosing the right…?”
Me: “I LIKE that one!”

Me: “Come on up!”
Student: “I feel sick! My stomach hurts!”
Me: “I don’t care, c’mon up!”

Me: “You can go to the bathroom when it’s passing time.”
Student: “But that’s a really long time!
Me: “…yes.”

Student: “I like your tie.”
Me: “Me too. It was free!”

Me: “Oh no, what have I done.”

”You guys are best friend? Aww, that’s so cuute!”

“When I was a child, I fell on some rocks at the zoo.”

“Actually, I can’t. That’s really illegal.”

Student: “How do you say Edmonds in Spanish?”
Me: “…Ed-monds...”

“You have a headphone and you must take that out!”

“I’m not going to a dance! I actually think that might be illegal!”

Student: “That’s racial discrimination!”
Me: “We are the same race.”
Student: “No we’re not!”
Me: “…Okay.”

“That’s *air quotes* plagiarism!”

“Let’s all discover the secret word!"

“Y’know what, Madison? …Stay at your level, but don’t drag others down with you.”

Student: “I’ll give you a piece of Hubba Bubba gum!”
Me: “No, but thanks for your Hubba Bubba offer.”

“I am not trippin'.”

“…My name’s not Ben.”

(ecstatically happy) “And I’d be like ‘Mrs. Gunter! Mrs. Gunter!’ And she’s like ‘Who’s got a gun?’”

“I’m not a big sweater.”

“Just because they’re girls in my life doesn’t mean I date them or love them.”

“This is not a scary movie. It just has dead people in it.”

“I’m not gonna get the job; I’m not qualified for it. But I’m not qualified for this job either, so…”

Me: “Devin is now known as ‘Boss Dos.’”
Student: "What does that mean?"
Me: “I dunno, probably something offensive.”

Me: “….Dominican Republic.”
Student: “How do you spell that?”
Me: “…DO-MI-NI-CAN RE-PUB-LIC.”

“I’m gonna get rich selling toilet seats and paint.”

“Just because you’re communist doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

Student: “Mr. Schilaty, do you hate Dana?”
Me: (turning to Dana) “Why would I hate you? You’re Mormon!”
Dana: “But I’m loud and obnoxious!”
Me: “Mormons tend to be like that.”

Student: “Can I sit by someone who doesn’t not like me?”
Me: “That would be hard in this class.”

Me: “Ohh noo, that’s wrong!”
Student: “This is outrageous!"

Student: “If we write this down, can we use it on our test?”
Me: "Do any of you know how to go to school?!

Cookie dough, etc.

2008-11-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

My long lost friend Sean showed up this week. We were best friends when we were in elementary school, but the summer before 4th grade his family moved to a neighboring city. We kept up the friendship for a few years, but through no fault on anyone's part we slowly drifted apart and basically haven't spoken for the last 10 years. Now Sean is getting married and he wants to buy a house so he called up my dad and was sitting at my kitchen table when I got home from work on Friday. An unexpected surprise (like most surprises I suppose). We reminisced about the good old days and had a fun time catching up. Anyone who knows me knows that I prefer cake mix to cake, brownie mix to brownies and cookie dough to cookies. I counted and I have eaten cookie dough six times in the last two weeks. During our conversation Sean randomly said, "Do you know what I liked about coming over to your house? There was always cookie dough." I laughed pretty hard at that as I realized that some things never change. What's the moral of the story? If you want to be tall and skinny eat insane amounts of cookie dough.

Joan, the old lady I lived with in Mexico called me this morning. I had so much fun talking with her. Who would've thought that talking to a 71 year old woman on the phone for an hour could be such a blast? We talked about hip replacements, back surgeries, pain medication, the ills of society, and cats. The usual. While I was in Mexico I became pretty good friends with the girls that Joan and I worked with and I enjoyed petting Joan's cats. At the end of our conversation I said, "tell the cats I say hi," and Joan said, "okay and I'll tell the girls you said hi too." I replied with, "uhh.....sure." I later felt pretty stupid for thinking of the cats and forgetting about the people.

I'll try and make this next part as anonymous as possible. I'll use letters instead of names to facilitate this. Here's what's going on: my friend A used to date person B. Person B and friend A broke up and person B later dated C. Person B and C later broke up and person C started dating D. Their relationship did not last very long and now D has asked out friend A. This completes what I will call the "love square." It's pretty much like a love triangle, but a little more complicated. The good news about a love square is that unlike a love triangle everyone can end up happy in the end because there are an even number of people involved. However, it looks like A likes B, B might like A, D also likes A, but A doesn't like D, and C likes anyone who isn't involved in the square. Let me sum this up with an equation: A+B+C+D=? or ([A+B]-D)-C=happiness for every except D. Got it?

P.S. I haven't taken a math class since 2001.

High Schoolers Say (and Do) the Dumbest Things

2008-10-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

I am constantly amazed at some of the things that happen in my class. Some of them make me laugh, others make me cringe, and sometimes I just shake my head at the realization that some people are just dumb.

I have a Mexican in my class who speaks Spanish fluently. On the first day of class I asked him why he was taking Spanish if he already knew how to speak it. He said, "I just want an easy B." What ambition I thought. He currently has one of the lowest grades in the class.

A kid in one of my classes has pretty long hair and is the "tough kid" type. Last Friday he got a haircut and when he came into class he just look plain weird and I couldn't figure out why. I finally figured out that it was his eyebrows that looked weird. I asked, "Are your eyebrows drawn on?" and he replied with a resounding no. A well spoken girl next to me said, "Mr. Schilaty's right, they do look drawn on." He was a little annoyed at this point. The girl and I both leaned in for a closer look and we realized that his eyebrows hadn't been drawn on, but they had been shaped. Not the kind of thing I would have expected from a tough kid as they made him look a little feminine.

One of my other students had my brother as a basketball coach. He thinks that Jessen and I are pretty cool. Since he thinks I'm cool he also thinks that we're friends and that he can get away with anything in my class. Not true. He used to call my brother "Big Daddy Schilaty" and asked if he could call me "Pimp Daddy Schilaty." He was really surprised and perplexed when I said that he could not and that such a title was offense. Today in the middle of class he asked me how far I'd gone with a girl. I was floored. How could he be so inappropriate and disruptive at the same time? I quickly shut him and said that that was a ridiculously inappropriate question and we later had a little chat about propriety and respecting women.

On a happy note, I have a girl in my sixth period who sometimes hangs around for a few minutes after school to help me clean up. We've talked about religion quite a lot (it's okay after school) and she has some pretty weird ideas. Last week we had a discussion about how delicious curry is. The next day she told me that she thinks that all Mormons must love curry because she had run into two missionaries that day who had also mentioned that they love curry. She's a good student, but she often reads during class. Today I caught her reading the Book of Mormon. I said, "I'm glad that you're reading that, but you can't do it during class." Apparently the missionaries have started teaching her family. That makes me happy.

Mistakes of a first year teacher

2008-09-10T20:26:00.000-07:00

Now that I have one week of teaching high school Spanish under my belt I'm beginning to realize just how unqualified I am for this position. I've made a lot of mistakes, but I'm learning. Today I prepared a homework assignment for my first year students. I just copied some pages out of the workbook that goes with the text book. I ran out of time to give it to my first class and had to hand it to them as they walked out the door. I planned a little better next period and handed it out before the bell rang. After I handed it out one of the students chimed in and said, "Mr. Schilaty, this already has all of the answers." I examined the worksheet and I had accidentally copied pages from the teacher addition of the workbook and had handed it out to 60 students. I felt like such a dummy.
I thought that one of the teachers I work with is a lesbian. On the first day of school I was talking to her in the lunch room and another teacher walked up to her and asked her about the girlfriend situation. She said, "I'm so glad the summer is over and I don't have to worry about that anymore." I was a little caught off guard but I thought to myself, I work at a public school, why shouldn't they hire a lesbian? She's very nice and we became good friends and I was kind of proud to have a lesbian as a friend. Today I heard her talking about some guy and when I asked who she was talking about she said, "my husband." I was really confused and finally realized that the other teacher wasn't asking about her girlfriend, but her son's girlfriend.

Operation Sweden

2008-08-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a blog. Joleen and Aubrey were the ones that gave me the idea. They told me that they would enjoy reading my blog so I promised to write one. At least I know that two people will read what I write. I plan to just write about the funny and inspiring things that happen to me and leave all of my philosophizing and whining to my journal.

I recently heard some friends planning a mysterious outing known as "Operation Boulder." They refused to tell me what it was about (even though I later found out) and I was jealous enough to plan my own operation - Operation Sweden. On Monday Megan and I braved 45 minutes on the freeway to go to Ikea to buy a chair that I've been coveting for years. Ikea is HUGE, but miraculously the first piece of furniture that we saw in the store was the exact chair that I wanted. Despite finding it so easily it took us nearly twenty minutes in the warehouse to figure out how to actually buy the thing. I now have it at home and it's great. Operation Sweden was a monumental success!

I took a girl on a date to Deception Pass (a very large bridge) on Saturday. As we were getting out of the car to walk across the bridge she asked, "Should I wear my hat?" and I told her that she should. I really had no opinion and just answered the question with the first answer that popped into my head. As we were crossing the bridge a very large truck zoomed by causing enough wind to blow my date's hat off. Together we watched it gently drift into the ocean. I didn't know how to appropriately console a girl who had just lost her hat. The first thing I managed to say was, "I can't believe that just happened." Actually, I CAN believe that that happened.