La cucaracha
As I've said before, I try to focus mostly on the positive elements of our Spain adventure, but this morning there's nothing positive to be said (except the sun is shining and the purple trees--jacaranda is the consensus--are even more purple than before). Last night I saw a cockroach in the bathroom. Matt tried to do away with it, but it disappeared into a crack between the floor and the bathtub. Will, who had been mentioning at least once a day that he wants to go home, is now up to several times per minute with this message. I sort of see where he's coming from. We're hardly allowed to leave the apartment and now we have to share our space with this thing? (And who knows how many more there are down there...) The one good thing about the cockroach is it makes the silverfish look cute in comparison. We will deal with it. I had been sort of expecting this visitor since I noticed an almost-empty can of cockroach spray in the laundry room a couple of months ago. It's no surprise that it arrived with the humid, hot air of almost summer. So once everyone is done with the bathroom this morning we will spray it and buy more spray later today. I would like to caulk over that crack, but this isn't our apartment and I'm not sure if it's a good idea. We keep the apartment pretty clean (it's a global pandemic, after all), but I think we'll do even better from now on. Ugh.
Otherwise things here are okay. Ryan is completely done with school and Will has a couple of math lessons left. We have been using an online math curriculum that I like for its content, but despise for its digital assessment. If you don't get the exact answer that the computer wants, rounded to the correct number of significant figures, you get it wrong and have to do two more similar problems instead of progressing to the next topic. It has no way of knowing if you understand the concepts and just made a little error or if you have no idea what you're doing. Last Friday Will and I were working on the laws of sines and cosines, which he knows better than many of my UD students, and it marked us wrong on a rounding situation and I pretty much lost it and declared math over for the year. I have no patience for, or faith in, computer-based testing. I hand-grade my 160 students' quizzes and tests rather than doing them online because how else will I know--and give them credit for--what they really know? Anyway, we'll see if the math comes back out this week. Matt did not agree with my decision to end the math year with 3 or 4 topics left to go. If he feels that way about it, then he can do online math with Will.
This morning Barcelona finally entered into phase 1, so more shops will open and restaurants can have their outdoor terraces open at 50% capacity. I read in the newspaper that a lot of restaurants already have their reservations full for the first several days. It's interesting going out at night. I think because we still have assigned time slots for walking around that people are ready to bust out of their houses at 8 p.m., in many cases for the first time that day. The city closes several main roads to traffic for a couple of hours each evening, so there's sort of a street-party vibe in our neighborhood. Masks are required and there are a lot of police, but as long as you're not congregating they leave you pretty much alone. Honestly, it's fun. But I'm more of a morning person than a night person so I look forward to the end of the approved time slots so that I can leave the apartment any time I want. I'm not sure when that is coming.
I recently read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, which is a short memoir of his time spent fighting in the Spanish civil war, including a multi-day battle in Barcelona. The book took place in the late 1930s, but everything that he describes is still there and pretty much the same, including the description of a metro stop where people hid during the battle. That blew my mind. I didn't realize how old subway systems were (I just looked it up; Barcelona's started in 1924). Anyway, on my agenda for this week is to walk to this neighborhood and check out the hotel where he stayed and the cafe and theater where he found shelter, etc. I found a website that tells me exactly where these places are and it's about a 40-minute walk from our cockroach-infested place. So, that will be fun. Also, the book is extraordinary, if anyone is interested in that sort of thing. I know this sounds stupid, but I hadn't appreciated just how good of a writer Orwell was. I read Animal Farm in middle school and didn't really like it. I suspect it it somewhat lost on children. I can't remember if I read 1984 or if I just read so much about it that it seems like I read it, but it's also not really my taste in fiction. But I loved this memoir, the way he forms sentences and describes his experiences. He also goes into a lot of depth about the different political parties and military forces at play in the war and his views on their ideologies and behaviors. The civil war, as I understand it, was essentially anarchist and communist forces together against fascists (Franco's side, who eventually won). But the battle in Barcelona had nothing to do with the enemy fascists, it was an intra-team fight among factions of "the good guys." In describing all of this, one of Orwell's key points is that everyone who writes about anything is carrying some bias or even an agenda, which needs to be accounted for when you read their writing. He points out that he does his best to report clearly and cleanly on his experiences, but you could ask other people present on the same day through the same series of events and hear quite different stories. He also describes propaganda warfare. It's all very interesting and you should just read his book if you want to know more. I should probably read it again to understand it better.
To conclude, here is a picture of Ryan, who has designed a full-head Covid-19-protection system out of his stolen American Airlines blanket.
Otherwise things here are okay. Ryan is completely done with school and Will has a couple of math lessons left. We have been using an online math curriculum that I like for its content, but despise for its digital assessment. If you don't get the exact answer that the computer wants, rounded to the correct number of significant figures, you get it wrong and have to do two more similar problems instead of progressing to the next topic. It has no way of knowing if you understand the concepts and just made a little error or if you have no idea what you're doing. Last Friday Will and I were working on the laws of sines and cosines, which he knows better than many of my UD students, and it marked us wrong on a rounding situation and I pretty much lost it and declared math over for the year. I have no patience for, or faith in, computer-based testing. I hand-grade my 160 students' quizzes and tests rather than doing them online because how else will I know--and give them credit for--what they really know? Anyway, we'll see if the math comes back out this week. Matt did not agree with my decision to end the math year with 3 or 4 topics left to go. If he feels that way about it, then he can do online math with Will.
This morning Barcelona finally entered into phase 1, so more shops will open and restaurants can have their outdoor terraces open at 50% capacity. I read in the newspaper that a lot of restaurants already have their reservations full for the first several days. It's interesting going out at night. I think because we still have assigned time slots for walking around that people are ready to bust out of their houses at 8 p.m., in many cases for the first time that day. The city closes several main roads to traffic for a couple of hours each evening, so there's sort of a street-party vibe in our neighborhood. Masks are required and there are a lot of police, but as long as you're not congregating they leave you pretty much alone. Honestly, it's fun. But I'm more of a morning person than a night person so I look forward to the end of the approved time slots so that I can leave the apartment any time I want. I'm not sure when that is coming.
I recently read George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, which is a short memoir of his time spent fighting in the Spanish civil war, including a multi-day battle in Barcelona. The book took place in the late 1930s, but everything that he describes is still there and pretty much the same, including the description of a metro stop where people hid during the battle. That blew my mind. I didn't realize how old subway systems were (I just looked it up; Barcelona's started in 1924). Anyway, on my agenda for this week is to walk to this neighborhood and check out the hotel where he stayed and the cafe and theater where he found shelter, etc. I found a website that tells me exactly where these places are and it's about a 40-minute walk from our cockroach-infested place. So, that will be fun. Also, the book is extraordinary, if anyone is interested in that sort of thing. I know this sounds stupid, but I hadn't appreciated just how good of a writer Orwell was. I read Animal Farm in middle school and didn't really like it. I suspect it it somewhat lost on children. I can't remember if I read 1984 or if I just read so much about it that it seems like I read it, but it's also not really my taste in fiction. But I loved this memoir, the way he forms sentences and describes his experiences. He also goes into a lot of depth about the different political parties and military forces at play in the war and his views on their ideologies and behaviors. The civil war, as I understand it, was essentially anarchist and communist forces together against fascists (Franco's side, who eventually won). But the battle in Barcelona had nothing to do with the enemy fascists, it was an intra-team fight among factions of "the good guys." In describing all of this, one of Orwell's key points is that everyone who writes about anything is carrying some bias or even an agenda, which needs to be accounted for when you read their writing. He points out that he does his best to report clearly and cleanly on his experiences, but you could ask other people present on the same day through the same series of events and hear quite different stories. He also describes propaganda warfare. It's all very interesting and you should just read his book if you want to know more. I should probably read it again to understand it better.
To conclude, here is a picture of Ryan, who has designed a full-head Covid-19-protection system out of his stolen American Airlines blanket.
I pretty much hate those roaches too. They just give me the creeps.
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