I Moved To Oaxaca

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

I realize I have been less than diligent -- crappy, really -- about posting photos. So this morning I had some extra time and was reading Greg's travelog, which has a lot of photos. So I'm going to be lazy -- or smart -- and link to them in my sidebar.

One more note before I log off: for my Monday adults class I brought a picture from the night Jason graduated from high school, as the topic that day was families. The picture shows Noah (in a suit), Jason (in cap and gown), Alisha and Brian. Off the cuff I asked my students to identify who the people in the picture were in relation to me. It was quite a stumper! They all thought that Brian was my brother -- he is, after all, the only white person in the picture. The others got votes for uncle, friend, cousin. They were pretty surprised to learn that they were all my step-kids, and only in part because of the age thing, I think. (In class today, the topic was Describe Yourself (And Others), and let me tell you, describing skin color was very interesting. So interesting that next week I'm going to do a little review devoted entirely to the topic. They were interested to hear that white people can be pale or tan, but not light or dark, but black people are light or dark, not pale or tan. I choked regarding Hispanic skin tones: the four people in the class today ranged from very dark to Oregon white. Three of them tried to use "tan" to describd their skin color, and I told them, "I gotta tell you, to most Americans you're not tan, your dark-skinned," which the two dark-skinned students did not want to hear. And when I asked them how they would describe their skin colors, they both said tan, but the Oregonian-white student, shook her head and smiled, and wouldn't say. Should be a fun class next week.)

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