april 12, 2001. I need this 4-day weekend. Every day before class I wonder how long I'll be able to last before I disintegrate into a charmless and ineffective croak. Each day I've found myself at the end of the lesson, only slightly hoarse. But I need to truly rest my pipes, not just between classes but for hours at a time. We had debates today and that was fun. They almost exploded when I told them that they only had 40 minutes preparation time. "But miss! That's not fair!" "It is so fair," I replied evenly. "Everyone gets the same amount of time. That's fair." "But I don't know what to say!" And the fact that they can't synthesize knowledge out of the novel we've been studying for 2 weeks is, of course my fault. Or the universe's fault. It's somebody else's problem and thus isn't fair. Cute little whiners. Spontaneity gives them hives. I was made extremely mellow by my wonderful schedule. I taught first period, thus getting it over with right away. When lunch rolled around I went out with Petra to investigate the restaurant that Poly is always talking about. Good lord. This may be the best food in the Valley. I just might have to force my parents to drive out one day when they're visiting. I had a grilled potato salad with feta; obviously the food eaten with the nectar of the gods. I wanted to keep that taste in my mouth forever. mmm, grilled potato salad...ahhhhhhhggggurrgle... And the conversation with Petra was more than adequate; we seem to be pegging along civilly and nicely this practicum, despite the ridiculous amount of time we spend in each other's company. She is definitely one of my favourite parts of practicum - so sharp and witty; kind without being indulgent. I don't need indulgence, I need banter. In fact, I was slightly dismayed when I found myself falling in love with the Boy, because I had seen no evidence that he had any ability to banter. At the time I decided to make the best of it, and go talk to Dirk when I wanted to banter. And then I discovered that he did in fact have a sense of humour, it was just buried under a desire to impress me. Boys are so strange... Tonight we skipped supper so that we could arive properly prepared for the church service and the Seder Dinner planned for tonight. As it turns out, I was naïve when I interpreted "Seder Meal" as a full dinner. 'Twas rich in symbolism, aye, but 'twas meagre in substance. Very beautiful, tho'. I remember reading about Jewish traditions many years ago, although I can't remember the name of the books now. (They were a series about a Jewish family in New York in the early part of the century, the father was a rag peddler and there were something like 5 daughters. You probably know what I'm talking about.) So after the service a small group of us walked on over to the local café to sit & sip & talk. During this walk I began to appreciate the small town in a way that I had previously been blind to. It's hard to explain, but suddenly I just understood, or thought I did. As we strolled in the cold spring wind, we passed a huge knot of teenagers doing what teenagers do best - hanging out in public. I tend to be intimidated of such groups, which makes my choice of profession odd, I suppose. I mostly ignored this adolescent flock (would you call it a surly of teenagers?) as our group walked past, but I did notice that one of the teenagers was the son of a man in my group. We all called out greetings and waved as we walked past. The place I grew up was big enough to get a fair distance away from my parents when I went out at night, and I'm sure that at that age I would've been mortified to seem my parent walk by my friends. The whole thing made me smile. It was very cute to be there & see everything work itself out counter to my intuition.