Nathanael has moved into Grinnell. He then goes on to his outdoor orientation activity, in which about 25 students chose to participate. I will go up to visit him next weekend- parents' weekend. You can get on his blog. Currently he and his friend BJ are discussing Thoreau and some essays written by, well I don't remember his name, on the merits of agriculturalism...so feel free to jump into that one...BJ goes to Brandeis and the knot in my stomach twists ever more as he details how Finneytown did not prepare him for Brandeis. They didn't offer enough calculus and he didn't feel challenged in any of his classes, even the AP classes. For the first time at Brandeis he had to really study and think HARD and things aren't coming as easily. Sounds exactly like what Nathanael had to say, from correcting his trig teacher jr. year (you can go back and read it in his blog)...maybe it's just academic standards in general...he got five 5's in his AP classes this year. That's like, 20 hours he does not have to take at Grinnell. 20 hours of something more advanced. So he learned well enough at Finneytown to get 5 5's (and a 3 his jr. year in an AP class). A 34 on ACT. And extremely high SAT's. OK OK we know he's smart. Now we have just moved to a school district and this public school system is rated (Newsweek, I think) #12 in the whole US. That is #12 from, what, a hundred thousand school systems...? I could kick myself that Nathanael didn't go to this school, though I didn't want him to leave his friends at Finneytown. He and Matt R. and BJ and the rest seemed to muddle through and make great strides despite the mediocrity around them. The median ACT here was 23, and the median at F-town was 21.5, though, so what difference would it have made? He'd have been unchallenged even here. NOW I have Micah coming up in these schools, and I hope he makes every effort. He is such a younger brother in this whole thing. He has lately become the anti-Nathanael. Everything Nathanael likes, he doesn't. If Nathanael doesn't like it, he does. Music, sports, books, friends, games, EVERYTHIING. Now that they are not in such proximity, I HOPE Micah develops into what he wants to do, regardless of Nathanael's opinions. He continues to say "I'm not smart like Nathanael...." Well, he ISN'T smart like Nathanael. He's smart like Micah. I'm not going to get all touchy-feely and say we're all so suuuuper special. But Micah thinks that because he's not like Nathanael, he's just average. Um, he is pretty high functioning. Extremely creative and can do anything with his hands. Not to mention his ability with math and science. He has a lot of ability, actually, but in his attempt to be the anti-Nathanael, he stifled some of it. Now I hope that emerges again. I would buy into his "I'm just average so lemme alone" bit, but his achievement tests and even final exams tell a different story. No, he's not interested in spelling and fonts. He's interested in skating and video games. What's NOT smart about that? Now maybe he can get more into his art and the talents he has (fixing anything...like dozens of bikes...mechanical ability...likes doing this because, well, his brother doesn't do it...and the truth is Nathanael could have done THAT had he been interested in it, but he wasn't nearly to the extent Micah was.). OK OK I just want him to develop his skills and his talents and do the BEST he can. We're 2 miles from where we lived. But sometimes it seems like 200. Other times like we haven't moved. Wyoming and Finneytown share a border. Every day I want to kick myself again for not having moved to Wyoming earlier. The truth is, when we moved to F-town, it was renouned for its schools. It had achieved some "excellence" ratings which they proudly displayed on their marquees. They still have the "school of excellence in 1987" marquee stored in the school warehouse somewhere. I was pleased with the elementary school- the gifted program- Gail Siefert and Tom Gugeon and the other teachers there- what they did with Nathanael and then Micah. It was so wonderful. Nathanael was out of the mainstream class for half the day. I didn't think everything they did was perfect. Both had their moments. And both had bullies. Nathanael had bullies and then something happened. He won his first school spelling bee. He kept competing in spelling bees. He was written up in the papers. Then, when he went to DC, it was a highlight. He rose to the top of the peer heap. He never had another problem from that moment on. Micah has had no such defining moment. He is not interested in learning a lot about spelling. He's just a different person. He's a pretty good speller but it's just not his hobby. So he's trying to make his mark like the rest of us do. Most of us don't have a defining moment of fame which we ride for years. I'm hoping Micah will leave an indelible fingerprint on his Wyoming years in a different way. I just offer encouragement and want him to leap at the chance.
posted by Ann @ 7:25 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
Ann, I wouldn't worry too much about Nathanael's high school not being good enough. It looks to me like he did very well indeed, and he's in a place now where he can test the waters a lot more. Just think if he and his friends hadn't had each other. Have you seen Time Magazine for August 27, '07? There's an article about schools failing the brightest kids. I'm not sure I agree with it, but it's interesting.
Micah's grandma knows what it's like to have a bright elder sibling go off to Grinnell. She might be a source of comfort. And she had her own wild and woolly times. I had to follow her! (And everybody else.) I got really worried in seventh grade when I had to take sewing -- my sister's reputation as a non-sewer went ahead of me and got stuck on, so I had to prove myself an interested and able seamstress before the teacher would take her kid gloves off.
Can you believe that sewing and cooking were required courses for girls in those days? The boys took shop and woodworking. Except for one forward looking classmate and friend of mind, Maggie, who insisted on taking shop instead of the domestic arts. They let her do it.
I've sent a letter to Leah telling about my youthful experience in Peru. But I don't know how to get it on a blog, so David is sending an earlier, printed out version along with a care package. I could sent you a print version. Would you like it?
Love, Aunt I.
Sure, I will read it. Thanks for all the comments, too.
My jr. high offered the choice of home ec (cooking & sewing) or industrial arts. You could choose, but most girls chose home ec and most boys chose industrial arts anyway. I kind of liked it. I think I could learn to sew better if I had the equipment. I don't have the ambition right now but I still do a lot of crafts. My MIL and SIL are experts and professionals in the field. Steve is pretty handy with a sewing machine. One year he made all the guys in both families shirts and they turned out really nice. He also made me a skirt and cape almost 20 years ago that I still like and sometimes I still wear the skirt.
I lose patience with the sewing machine. If I had an easy one to use, I'd give sewing half a chance.
Which sister was a non-sewer? Mom always said she couldn't sew but that's not true. She sewed doll clothes for me and some for Dan's stuffed animals when we were kids.
Hey cooking and sewing are important stuff! I see a lot of the famous chefs these days are men so men and women both seem to enjoy cooking.
Ann
My and Steve's best buddy Karl is a chef and for years he's used my kitchen more than I have. For Nathanael's party he made ribs and everyone, about 35 people, said they were the most succulent ribs they had ever had. He is a genius in the kitchen. My parents will verify it!
Look at that! I got it in here!
August 13, 2007
Dear Leah,
You may remember me – I’m Dave’s aunt, Irene. I thought maybe you would like to hear of a trip I took one summer when I was 20 and in college.
In the summer before the trip I had worked as a waitress in a restaurant on a major highway, a job I loathed. It was physically demanding and people yelled at you. But my dad allowed me to keep every penny I earned – he paid the income tax on it for me. So I had a tidy sum to spend on something worthwhile, like to travel to Europe, which I badly wanted to do.
Back at school in the fall, I saw a notice about a homestay program for college kids. Much more than just travel, you would go with a group of students to your country of choice and stay for five or so weeks in private homes, and then be the hosts for your families and travel a little with them around the country.
It sounded good to me and I had just the right amount of money to do it. I applied for Switzerland, Peru, England or Israel, not limiting myself to Europe so to have a better chance of getting in. It worked and I was accepted, but not to Europe. I was going to Peru!
Wow! It was exciting, but scary. Peru was such a different place, and my Spanish was not all that good.
The time came, and by myself I got on a train to Chicago and from there flew to Miami where I met the rest of the group (12 of us). We had a couple of days of orientation in the Miami mid-summer heat and then we all boarded a flight to Lima.
I remember getting off the plane and thinking, “Wow, I am in Peru! I am in Peru!”
The group stayed a day or so in Lima and then got on a bus to go part way up into the Andes for a two-day stop in Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. That would help us get acclimated to the high altitude and the even higher altitude where we would be going – the town of Puno, on Lake Titicaca, 13,000 feet up and a long way from anywhere. (Altitude sickness is no joke and a real possibility at 13,000 feet.)
Finally, the train we took from Arequipa pulled into Puno. It was late in the day – after sunset – and it was very cold. July is mid-winter down there, and our bodies were set for summer. (No snow, but it did get cold enough to freeze water overnight. Days were always sunny, but with the high altitude even the daytime was cold. I never got entirely warm on the whole trip.)
We were all scared. Remember, we had no cell phones, no laptops, no email, no long-distance phone service, limited mail service, and sometimes no electricity, so contact with home was days, or even weeks, away. We were scared enough so that the group spontaneously formed a prayer circle. This did not help me at all – my religion was not the same. In fact, for me it made things worse. I was really frightened – far from home, in a strange place with people I hardly knew, and even they were about to go off with their own “families” and leave me with mine – none of whom spoke a word of English. I was completely on my own. And I knew that the only way out was straight ahead and right on through as planned.
I followed my family out of the train station and up to their home – a new four-story townhouse (if you can call it that), near the main plaza. The señora was the hard-working proprietor of the clothing and jewelry store on the ground floor, and the family lived above. The señor was a Japanese businessman who was in Japan at the time, so I never met him at all. There were three children – a young woman of 26, a girl about 14 and a boy about 12. Juana, Martita, and Jose, who was called Chamaco.
They showed me into a nice, but rather small, bedroom, which I later found out was the señora’s own master bedroom. They were treating me like royalty! I had lucked out and gotten a very good family. Some of the other kids had it a bit harder.
My family did their best to make me feel welcome, but I was still quite uncomfortable for a long time. For instance, the next day, in my honor, they served a very fine soup before the main meal – it was all kinds of seafood, which was very difficult to get way up there in the mountains. It must have cost them big bucks, or an astounding number of soles (a sol was worth about two cents American at that time) and I couldn’t even begin to eat it! My stomach was way too nervous, and anyway, I had no idea how to eat the stuff. It had shells!
I remember at first being shown around town a little, trying to speak Spanish and failing pretty miserably, and then counting the days until we had our first group meeting and I could hear and speak English again.
Our families had planned some wonderful things for us to do. They put an enormous effort into trying to make us comfortable and happy. I always hoped that we gave them enough appreciation. I tried to, but there was no way to adequately thank them, which made me feel a little extra unsettled.
Anyway, over time we did a lot of cool stuff, getting deep into Peruvian life, and we became easier with our situations, if not totally comfortable. We had some gatherings with all the families, and a few meals together, and were invited to a concert performed by a local man who played piano well. He wore half-gloves, with the fingertips left open, to keep his hands warm enough to play but to let his fingers feel the keys. (There was no heating in any of the houses.) At the parties we learned the Peruvian version of the dating game. (One of the girls in the group later married a Spaniard she met in Puno.)
We were invited to a roasted meat picnic on one of the families’ finca – a sort of ranch/farm. We went to a native fair in a nearby town and haggled for souvenirs that not many foreigners ever had a chance to buy. We visited Inca ruins and marveled over the builders’ engineering abilities.
I visited a little grocery store near the house and met the proprietor, a German exile, who seemed very lonely. We spoke Spanish together as I knew no German and he knew no English. And I was given a tour of the maids’ quarters in our house – there were two live-in servants who had a steep spiral staircase directly from the second floor kitchen to their fourth floor rooms. Later I tried baking an angel food cake for the family – I beat the egg whites with a spoon for what seemed like hours, but the cake was more like a thick sponge cake than angel food. It was that 13,000 feet of altitude making a big difference. I hadn’t figured on that!
We were invited to, and were the only other Americans at, the wedding of an American Peace Corps volunteer and a Peruvian girl. It was, of course, all in Spanish, and I wondered what it felt like for him to be making those lifetime promises in another language.
We got on small boats and went out to visit the man-made floating reed islands on which the Uros Indians have lived since fleeing a conquering army long ago. With our families, we got on a large steamer, crossed Lake Titicaca to the port at Guaqui, and rode a train down through the barren and scrub-filled mountains into a kind of bowl or basin that contained the entire city of La Paz, Bolivia.
It all turned out to be a truly amazing experience. I was unaware even for years afterward what a profound and life-changing summer/winter I’d had. It woke me up and made me aware of an enormous number of things I had never noticed before, and it made me humble.
I am SO GLAD I had that experience, even if it was kind of hard at the time. My mind opened and I became a better person – not to mention much more mature! I would not trade it for anything.
Two years ago M. and V. planned a trip to Peru that would actually include a visit to Puno, and they asked if I wanted to go along. Did I? You bet.
I had long ago lost touch with my family there, but I was able to find the house again, and learned that they had all moved back to Arequipa many years before, and that the señora had recently died. She had donated the Puno house to be a shelter for battered women. That’s the kind of generous person she was.
And in the nearly forty years since I’d been there before, Puno had grown beyond recognition! I could hardly believe how different it was. What a great feeling, though, to realize that I did, in some way, belong there. It was my home too.
Hang in there, Leah. You’ve got something really great going on.
With love,
Aunt Irene
Thanks for sharing your experience. I know about the altitude. I was not as high but probably 10-12K feet in Bogota. Fortunately I didn't have a problem with that or with my appetite. But I also quite fortunately didn't overeat! I had some really great people I stayed with too. One semester one place, and another semester a sweet lady named Jahel. She was just too adorable. I feel at the time I was too young and goofy to really appreciate her and all she did for me, and I feel I took too much advantage of her hospitality. The lady I stayed with before, Luz, was a pretty neat person. She was a professional and very, very stylish and beautiful. She was separated and I lived with her and her daughter Carolina, her empleada Rosalba, and later on one of her best friends Jorge who moved in for a while (they were platonic and maybe he was gay, nothing going on there). At the end of my stay Jorge gave me his favorite Moody Blues LP which meant so much to me!!! I tried not to take it but he insisted. I still have it.
YES, it was an actual RECORD, the kind you play on a turntable. :) Remember those! I'm seriously dating myself!!
I am hoping Nathanael goes someplace, too. He opts for colder places, or at least places with a whopper of a winter. So I imagine one of the following: Russian, Finland, or Nunavut. He has studied Finnish/Suomi on his own and is taking Russian Year I. He's reasonably competent in Spanish and has tested out of the first few years of it. If he goes to a Spanish-speaking country, I imagine it will probably be someplace with a piney forest and brisk air, so maybe Peru again. :) I seriously thinks he does like Arctic regions best, though, though he prefers trees to just white tundra. I digress! Thanks so much for sharing your view of Peru with us. I'd like to visit someday. The Peruvians I have known are all so elegant.
PS I did take Industrial Arts (had to) in fifth grade summer school in McGuffey (it was school but mainly fun stuff, not actual "summer school"). I made a planter for this huge plant my parents hung in the family room for years. And a potholder holder. Is that a word? Napkin holder. Thank you. LOL
I remember being kind of freaked out by the machines. I did not like getting my hands near electric saws. But I did like the macramé part of it. I still like macramé. And I'm still not crazy about electric tools that are bigger than I am or that could conceivably cut my fingers off.
Sorry, that was me (Ann)above.
I probably forgot to mention that sewing was one of the most useful courses I ever took. Sewing and typing and Spanish. But I do love to fool around with building stuff. I tried to invent a Hershey bar dispenser when I was a kid. And I have built (bad) furniture for the stage, and bookcases for Jack, and I was always the handyman/plumber at our house.
Darlin' you can't age yourself with me. I'm too old.
I don't think you'll find any pine forests in Peru. It's a cold, dry climate, except for the jungle. And it's always misty along the coast. One of the things that impressed me about it was that it seemed so barren. Of course it was the winter... I don't know!
It seems odd to me that Nathanael likes a cold climate. And it's amazing that he could teach himself Finnish. He will no doubt find an unusual thing to do!
Love, Aunt I.
Colombia is misty and cold in the tierras frias. (By "cold", I mean rainy and 60's.) Then there are tierras templadas, and finally tierras calientes. All mixed together since it depends on altitude, not latitude. There are very lush jungles, plains, and more arid areas closer to the north and east. Cartagena's a great vacation city- did it twice. Would love to see it again. I know Bogota has changed. It used to be dirty and sprawling and now they say it's, well, less dirty and it's probably still sprawling. There were a lot of panhandlers when I was there, and now they say there are fewer. And the parks and greenery are much, much nicer. I remember people all had such beautiful, spotless homes, big or small, but, kind of like parts of Cincinnati, it seemed like people threw a lot of trash to the ground. They say that's better now in the same way they improved NYC and Madrid.
I remember going with some friends camping in some piney, lakey area near Bogota. I for the life of me cannot remember the name of this place. It was very cool, fresh, and Oregon-ish.
One of the best places I went was Paipa, which has an incredible mineral hot bath. If you ever get to Colombia, DEFINITELY go there. NOT crowded or touristy and not expensive. PERFECT weather and the water's AWESOME.
Ann
Gosh, now you're making me want to visit Colombia too. And I've always wanted to go back to Quito, which I saw only from the plane window as we stopped at the airport.
Reading the OAT propaganda has gotten me thinking about Chile, Patagonia, and Argentina, too. And I'd like to go back to Spain.
Australia, New Zealand, the Danube, more of Switzerland & Germany & France & Italy & Eastern Europe &...
How about Colorado? I could manage that. And I hear some of them speak Spanish.
Love, I.
You're in the prime of your life and you should do every one of those things. You have the means and the ability. There is NO REASON whatsoever not to. Go schedule a trip TODAY.
Bless you, thanks for those good words. I think, though, that I'll wait to schedule a trip after I come back from England in two weeks!
Glad Micah had a good first day -- that will set him up the whole year. It probably helps that he's forging his own, new path.
Love, I.
Didn't know you were in the UK, I assume with my parents and Ellen and Chuck? I guess you beat me to it. :)
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