on typical development [Wednesday, December 16th, 2009@ 10:39pm] poesian I'm watching Zombieland (thanks to Benoit, who posted about it), which is actually pretty funny. One of the characters is a 12-year-old, and one of the running jokes (it's a comedy; it's only "runnning" in that it comes up multiple times) is that she doesn't know who anyone famous is -- not singers nor actors nor politicians. And of course the answer is: "She's twelve." Of course she doesn't know. When I worked with Maria at FLENI in Argentina, with autistic kids (see: the beginning of my newer journal; entries from last summer), she sometimes commented about how hard it was to remember what normal kids were like. Where should these kids be in their development? Because of course diagnosis comes based on how people differ from what is normal. A child who is language-delayed and can't use sentences at age six is severely delayed -- but not if every child does that, and then begin to speak normally by seven. Right? But you need to know the points of comparison before you can make these judgments. So in some sense I'm thinking of this year teaching as me setting a yardstick of "what children should know." Of course, it's not really true (besides that I'm also doing some psych work on the side) -- but at the same time, I'm definitely taking note of the wide variety in learning styles, of where these kids are developmentally. For example, my three-year-olds have a lot of trouble with even the simplest things. They don't pay attention well, they have a lot of trouble learning more than one word at a time. Because they're three. The five-year-olds, on the other hand, are almost ready to enter primary school; of course they're able to repeat, even if they can't really speak English. So with three-year-olds I speak a lot and get them to repeat sounds; I work on familiarizing them with English. With five-year-olds we can do some vocabulary, even if not all of it sticks. And sounds -- it's not as though they're learning in the same way as, say, thirteen-year-olds. But I notice things where I have to step back and say to myself, "Justin, they're only ten." Which is why I started as I did. I was telling two of the girls I give a lesson to about Chanukah (which is now -- Happy Chanukah, folks), and asked them if they knew any Jews. Nope. So I explained to them that there weren't many Jews in Spain because they were kicked out five hundred years ago; they understood that. But I explained also that many Jews came to the US after WWII. That, not so much. They had heard of WWII, but they didn't really know what the Holocaust was, nor who Hitler was. Which surprised me until I reminded myself: they're only ten. They've never studied history. Of course, I think many ten-year-olds do know what the Holocaust was -- but it's just not important to people here. When would it have come up? These girls are watching Twilight: New Moon, not Inglourious Basterds [1] You set my wings ablaze.

music [Sunday, December 13th, 2009@ 9:30pm] poesian Another music post on justindb.com. You set my wings ablaze.

amsterdam [Friday, December 11th, 2009@ 5:31pm] poesian Well I already discussed what I did in Amsterdam, but I hadn't bothered with the photographs. Well, now I have; here are seven. Some bell tower we ran into while wandering around to the east of the center. We went to the Vondelpark, which was really near our hotel. Despite supposedly being gorgeous in the summer, it was just kind of dreary. Oh: I don't think I'd mentioned this. It rained the entire time we were there. Dan says the Dutch must be amongst the few people who think the weather is better in London than it is at home. So, like I mentioned, we went to the Tropenmuseum, the Tropical Museum. We saw some cool stuff, but I photographed the weird things. There was an exhibition of works by Henri Dono; this is one example. I have no words to explain this. This is a replica of a woman, in a glass box. We didn't read the things about the people in the boxes (I think they were just in Dutch, although a lot of the museum was in English, too), so I have no clue who she is or what she's doing. The parts that are shiny and look over-exposed are glass or plastic. Why are her ear and hand plastic? I don't know! We went to the New Church, as mentioned. This is Dan. I really like the wooden pulpit behind him. There's a name for those, right? I forget it, regardless. And here's a door I liked that I saw there. And that's it. You set my wings ablaze.

some pictures of my travels [Friday, December 11th, 2009@ 3:17pm] poesian I've been really bad about this recently; I've been completely forgetting to upload photographs. So here are four photographs from Salamanca, a while ago: You set my wings ablaze.

food I have cooked recently [Friday, December 11th, 2009@ 3:08pm] poesian Yeah, yeah. Boring post, especially without good photos of most of it. Shrug. I took photos. They just were blurry. 1. One of my favourite recipes: Chocolate-almond biscotti. In Spanish, they call them cantuccini, which is also the word in italian. They burned very slightly (I don't know why -- bad pan?) but they were delicious anyway. I brought them into school and had almost every teacher at my school tell me they were delicious. Although they all thought of them as brownies. Weird. 2. Sandwich: freshly-sliced chorizo iberico, brie, and tomatoes. This is what I'm eating right now. It's delicious. I kind of got sick of chorizo, but then I realized that the solution was to on occasion buy good chorizo and to avoid the cheaper supermarket-bought stuff. So I went today on my way home from work to the butcher, and got them to slice me some. It's not cheap, but it's quite a bit better. Less gross-and-fatty, for one thing. Not as spicy, though -- probably I should ask for a spicier version next time. But yes, chorizo goes well with brie. 3. Dulce de leche. I used, as ever, a slight modification of thekitchn.com's recipe for dulce de leche. It's quite good, by my standards. For whatever reasons, it doesn't come out as well here -- not using a good pot, since we only have a bad one, is my main excuse -- it just never thickens all the way. Oh, also the fact that I don't know how much baking soda I'm using, since I don't have measuring spoons. (Should bring some back from the States with me...) But delicious nonetheless. Tasted right this time. To redux the recipe (and misuse that word): 1 quart of milk 1 cup of sugar 1/2 tsp. baking soda (dissolved in 1 Tbsp water) You bring the milk & sugar to a simmer, add the sodium bicarbonate when the pan's off the heat, and then simmer for an hour-and-a-half or so until it's the right color and the right thickness. The baking soda thickens the mixture; the milk slowly browns (Maillard reaction!), and eventually it looks like caramel, and tastes even better. Yep. 4. Ginger snaps. I used a recipe from the Homesick Texan, another foodblog I really like, but honestly wasn't so impressed. I mean, I like her recipes; I've used her quite often actually. But I dunno. I found these kind of boring. Also, mine were ginger snaps even though they weren't supposed to be. I guess I can blame that on the oven, again. I think I'm going to give Clotilde Dusoulier's recipe a try this weekend, I think. I even bought candied ginger for that purpose, although I've found that it's fucking delicious on its own, and I want to try making it myself. 5. Finally an perhaps most excitingly, I made the recipe from Mark Bittman's Minimalist column: Pasta with mushrooms, risotto-style. It's a really good recipe. I altered it quite a bit, as he suggests; I used oyster mushrooms (because that was what I could find -- I'm not actually a big fan of them; they're too spongy) and no chicken, and added in frozen spinach at the last minute. I was going to use some raisins, too, but decided I didn't want to. I definitely do recommend using the white wine, though: it makes it smell amazing. Then again, cheap white wine is really cheap here. Anyway, I was a big fan. I had it for dinner for two nights, and for one day's lunch. You set my wings ablaze.

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