Missing.

Today a colleague, Mandy, asked me about writing. She walked into my room at the end of the day, when things were calm, and asked the question, “How often do you write?”
The truth is, until she asked me that today, I really hadn’t given any thought to how much I write. If I thought about it at all before today, it had been to think, “God, do I have enough time between [this mandatory event] and [this other mandatory event] to jot this down?” I had never realized, or thought to realize, that I had anything resembling a routine of writing at all.

So when I answered her, “Everyday,” I said it with a hint of awe in my voice, even shock. I do write everyday. I couldn’t imagine not writing. We talked about blogging, how I’d gotten into it to begin with, and she asked me about the kinds of things I wrote about when I was writing for the Independent.
This got me thinking about how I began by writing more essay-like columns instead of diary-entry columns like I do now; and with the few seconds of reflection I allowed myself in that moment, I became sad for the kind of writing I used to do for NHI.

I wanted to show Mandy a few of the “Brinn” essays/posts, so I began searching. But the internet was slow and we both had somewhere to be, so I told her I’d e-mail them to her when I got home. So tonight, I have been sitting on my couch for an hour and a half reading my own writing that’s still on NHI from a year ago. And oh wow, do I miss those kids.

I mostly miss Brinn. The struggles she went through! The struggles I went through because of her struggles! I wouldn’t want to go through those again, but when I read all of those posts together, man, did I feel that anxiety and sadness come washing over me again…and I missed it! I wonder where Brinn is? I wonder how she is doing her senior year? I wonder if she and her boyfriend are still together? I miss her so much, that wide grin, those cautious eyes. I miss writing about her.
I remember sitting in my classroom and writing about all the ups and downs of urban public school life, about the triumphs and humor in a 9th grade Literature classroom. I miss having so much stuff to write about!
Mostly my writing was so plentiful because my students’ struggles were so plentiful, which I don’t wish for anyone. But here, if my kids struggle, they don’t wear their struggles on their sleeves for anyone to see and react to like they did in New Haven. Here things feel good. I couldn’t IMAGINE things happening at this school like they happened in New Haven. Guns? Fights? Talking back to teachers? Swearing to teachers? Pregnancies? All of those things at school? Here? No way. It just wouldn’t happen here.
And as truly thankful as I am for that, and as thankful as I am for the students here to be leading safe and happy lives, there is a part of me that is confused by the peace, by so little conflict. So often last year I wrote about struggle because it was all around me. Great for writing, great for finding things to “prove” in writing about my students: See? Look what my kids can do! Even when they’re dealing with all of these struggles….
And here? It’s like Easy Street. I am almost begging for something to go wrong or astray. The counselor part of me, the part that is accustomed to writing so often about kids whose lives are hard, who get kicked out of their houses in the days following the deaths of their parents, the kids whose family members are drug addicts, the kids who are in such conflict with their own identities that they cannot function normally in school…this part of me is at a loss for words.
I am just in a very different place now. I miss my New Haven kids a little bit more tonight than I thought I would.

If you would like to read the Brinn series as I read them to myself tonight, click on the link below. It will bring you to another page with a file to download. That file contains a Word document with the series in order.
Click Here to Download Links to the Brinn Columns

Busy or Getting Older?

Just trying to figure out why time is going by so quickly. Already it’s Thursday and it feels like it was just the weekend. Is time relative to my age? And if so, why is time choosing to seem so relative this week? It’s fine with me. The faster the time goes by right now, the sooner I will be in New Zealand.

AND HERE IS A COMPLAINT ABOUT NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT: My mom called yesterday saying I have FOUR parking tickets dating back to 2004 that I haven’t paid, aparently, that have now doubled. Maybe I remember one of those tickets, but four? No way. I have paid EVERY SINGLE ticket I ever got in New Haven. I paid the tickets I got with Dennis’ car. And trust me, I got a LOT of tickets; but I paid them, every single one of them, even if I paid late. I easily paid $500 in tickets in the two years I lived there, not including the time when my car was towed on a Sunday night and I had to go pay an arm and a leg to get it out and pay for the ticket on top of that.

So now they’re tracking me down. I live in Brazil. I don’t own my car anymore. I don’t own A car anymore. Why are they doing this now? Two years after the aparant violations? Why have they waited so long? I knew New Haven was cracking down, but it would have been nice to know I had these tickets so they wouldn’t go into some collections agency or something. At least I would have been able to contest them or cross check my check register for the paid tickets. Now there is virtually no way for me to contest them, because I believe you have to be present at court. That’s the way it was for tickets in Providence. They’re getting my money by default and this is one VERY not happy parking violator who USED to live in The City With No Parking Whatsoever.

I thought I was done with that place. I really want to know what will happen if I don’t pay. What can I do?

The Something From Brazil Contest: Round 2

Welcome to Wednesday, the day when Gina peruses her readers’ search terms to try to find the most bizarre terms that lead to this blog.

If you are able to find the exact post that leads here based on the given search term, you win Something From Brazil. Nate was our winner last week, and he should be expecting his Thing From Brazil in about a week and a half.

Alright, contestants, are you ready to play [Witty Name Here]?!

This week’s puzzling search terms are the following:

-belly ring armenian
-T

Find the post that either of these two search terms lead to and you win!
Cheers!

Over There.

Yesterday I called the States to settle a Comcast bill. The guy I was on the phone with asked where I was.
“Brazil, huh?” he said. “How are things over there?”
I answered him and told him things were nice and it was pretty and all that. Blah, blah, blah…the kind of answer I give to people I know don’t really care what I’m saying.
I thought it was funny that he said “over there” like Brazil is kind of nearby, or at least on the same latitude as Connecticut. It didn’t occur to me that he might not even know where in the world Brazil is until I told him it was springtime here.
“Oh! It’s springtime for you guys there?!” and he chuckled with a kind of fascination. “It’s fall for us here. Getting cold!”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied.
“Is it hot there?”
“No, it’s just coming out of winter so it’s still a little cold here. Not too bad, but it’s chilly.”
“Wow,” he said again. “Springtime.”

I think for a lot of Americans, any other country besides Canada or Mexico is “over there,” in this kind of nebulous place where there are “foreign” languages and “foreign” people. I think a lot of Americans don’t care about where other places are in the world and what goes on in those other places, unless they’re global hot spots–Iraq, for instance because of the war, or Japan a few years ago because of the Olympics. But for the quieter places on the globe, the ones without currently volatile relationships with the US–Laos, Brazil, New Zealand, any number of countries, really–I think many Americans can’t point their fingers to the countries’ locations on the map. General areas, maybe, circling their finger around South East Asia or kind of in the area of the South Pacific or kind of around–is it still called USSR?–you know, kind of in this area kind of right around here.
But I’m pointing the finger at myself, too, you know, not just at the masses of Americans who think Brazil is “over there.” I’m guilty of not knowing where things are. But being here has helped jostle me out of my US-centric thinking and US-centric perspective.

From Awesome to Axl.

Here is me on Friday after getting my first Brazilian haircut:

Yeah, that’s right. That’s me looking all good and put together and, dare I say absolutely gorgeous? Oh–I dared. I said it.
But it’s true. A woman knows when she looks good, even if it’s only for herself. And indeed, I looked damn good for myself on Friday, especially in that moment in the bathroom when I snapped this picture. “I am one classy girl,” I thought to myself. “One classy girl.”

I got my haircut with my friend Mandy who recommended I go to this place around the corner from my building. She made her appointment for a cut and color to begin fifteen minutes before mine on Friday afternoon and then actually didn’t even get her hair washed until almost two hours after I did. But that’s a story for another time.

Diego, a twenty-four year old tall gay guy, cut my hair and dyed it. He spoke a little English, but aparantly didn’t have the words in his vocabulary for him to understand: “Please, don’t layer it so much that I look like a member of an early 90’s hair band when I have to style it myself.”
Because the truth is, a girl’s hair looks SO good when she leaves the salon, but when it comes down to a Monday morning before work and she has to take care of it on her own, forgetaboutit.

I’m okay with the bangs. I haven’t had them since middle school, but now I guess since I’m back in it, they work. I’m great with the color…my other color was faded and gross. Take another look at the picture. See how smooth my whole head is? See how no hair, except for the hair that’s supposed to, sticks out, or curls up, or flips out? It was perfect Friday. And it was perfect on Saturday, too, because I didn’t wash it all day so it kept its salon style, albeit just a bit more limp.

And then there was Sunday. The First Wash. I knew Diego hadn’t used any product on my hair other than shampoo and conditioner, so I was psyched when he styled it on Friday. (Sweet! I can totally do this on my own and I don’t need to spend a million hours styling it or a million dollars on the products I need to style it! Awesome!)

Ah, but Sunday. Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Dried my hair, brushed it and whatnot, flipped my hair up and over and did exactly what Diego said to do. And what do I look like now?

I know. I’m just as shocked as you are. Maybe you’re amused that I’ve compared myself to a late 80’s, early 90’s rock star man. I am too. I would love to have compared myself to Selma Hayek on a bad hair day, or Penelope Cruz, or I mean, even Sigourney Weaver, for crying out loud. But no. The truth of the matter is, when I looked at myself in the mirror after styling my new haircut for the first time, my first thought was this:
“Jesus Christ. I am Axl Rose.” No matter how hard I tried to pull at my hair, fix it up, and style it with product, I couldn’t escape from looking like Axl Rose and his terrible, terrible stringy, layered hair.

So now I heart the ponytail. It swings, it’s girly, it’s out of my face when I am working…Plus it’s springtime; it’s getting warmer outside. Who wants stringy sweaty hair in their face all the time?
Yep. Rockin’ the ponytail. A hundred and nine dollars for exactly what I had been doing already. Awesome.

40% Chair = Nasty Teacher

This is what I’m working with.

This is my chair at school. Out of a possible five pillars of strength (or rollers of strength, really) I’ve got only two. That’s only 40%. How do they expect me to be an outstanding teacher when I have a less-than-outstanding chair?
The more comfortable I am, the better teacher I can be. Discomfort =  Cranky Ms. Coggio. And Cranky Ms. Coggio = No Fun For Anyone. I think everyone involved (me, my students, their parents, President Lula, and you, dear readers) would be happy if I could get a new chair. As it is, my little rollers fall off so often that it seems I am constantly sitting on an angle and scraping up the floor every time my Brazil-sized rear end plops itself down to sit down at my computer.
I think maybe it’s time for an chair upgrade–one that reclines, has a cupholder in it to store a mid-day caipirinha, and is covered in a plush chocolate brown velour with a nice throw on the side. On the days when I am tired, I could easily nod off during a free period, or on days when I am feeling particularly kind, I could offer it to my students as a reward for excellent behavior.

My students will not get over the facts that I am neither pregnant nor addicted to drugs. They believe both of these life situations would have been cause for my recent apparent tears in school last week, and no matter what I say it seems there is bound to be some rumor like this spread around the 7th grade. They also learned some new words today. One of the words they learned was “sagacious,” which, when I attempted to use it in a sentence so they could understand it, sounded like this:
“Ms. Coggio is a sagacious person.” Because I speak so frequently about myself in a positive manner, I figured they would somehow get a clue from this first sentence that “sagacious” had something to do with being smart, or beautiful, or talented, or any of the other adjectives I so often use about myself in their presence. The real definition means “wise,” so I figured the sentence I’d created about myself with a coy smile was just par for the course. Of course they’d get it.
Two–not one, but TWO!–girls, looking in the book at the choices for synomyms of “sagacious” said, simultaneously, “Nasty?”

I looked at a girl next to me, who covered her mouth with her hands as if she had just said a bad word and started giggling. The boys in the room laughed out loud and the girls who said “nasty” also chuckled.

“So I’m a nasty person, huh?” I said, laughing and then providing the correct synonym. And then thought to myself, “Just you wait. You’ll see nasty when I don’t get my new chair.”

Absence makes the heart…blah, blah, blah.

I talked with Dennis today. I mention this only because, since he has been in Hawaii with his cousin, the opportunites to hear his voice have been markedly fewer. This is due to the seven-hour time difference and the fact that he is with his cousin in Hawaii; and who wants to talk to their girlfriends on other continents when they’re in Hawaii surfing and drinking with their cousins?!

So we talked. I think there are no words to describe how it feels to have my heart jump up into the back of my throat when I hear his voice on the other end of the phone. I have to swallow it back down to get out the words, “Hi Den! I miss you!”

Don’t get me wrong. I can totally function in his absence. I feel wonderful here; I totally, totally love Brazil, totally love my friends, totally love my kids and my job. This is such a cool experience and I’m thrilled to be here. But I think it’s completely fair to be at a loss, at times, realizing that I am missing the person I have come to love more than anything. (Except my mom, of course. She wins because I came out of her womb and it’s rude not to love that person the most. But Dennis wins for the Person Whose Womb I Did Not Come Out Of.) My friends here are all dating people, they’re speaking Portuguese left and right and understanding it up and down. They have people they can curl up with at the end of the day.

In my own country, I have that too. In my own country, I can understand everything (except algebra and why Bush was not only elected, but re-elected) AND I have The Person At The End Of The Day. So being here in a new place, where I get the words “outside” and “I’m hungry” confused with each other, AND being without The Person At The End Of The Day is difficult. It is made even more difficult because, when I first arrived Dennis and I formed a routine of talking to each other every day, and we now have to do mental math for each other’s respective time zone. I’ve already established math is not my power zone, so I’m pretty much starting in the red. I would attribute most of my shitty week to this sudden disruption of communication due to Dennis’ trip. Now more than ever, talking with him is not only a surprise treat, it is also good for my very soul.

Things might be different if I were single. Of course things would be different if I were single…there would be no one for whom I would feel this “saudade”–this “longing.” It’s not like this longing is debilitating–clearly I am active and busy often, probably more often than I want to be. But maybe I would be able to feel more…permanent…here. It’s hard to describe. Wait.

So…sometimes I feel like I am only a visitor here, like I will only stay for these two years, and then I’ll go home to the US and do whatever. But then there are other times, yesterday for example, when even in the very depths of my despair about not being able to understand anything here (which is a gross overexaggeration), I still want to consider this place my home. I was in the middle of sobbing and dialing the US, trying multiple numbers to no avail, when I thought to call Dennis’ mom to cheer me up (AND YES, MOM, I TRIED YOU FIRST BUT YOU WEREN’T HOME, DON’T WORRY). But then I stopped because I didn’t want her to convince me to leave Brazil! There are times when I am so happy here, so comfortable even WITH the language mess, that I think to myself, “Man, how will I convince Dennis to move here forever?” (AND NO, DENNIS’ MOM, WE HAVE NOT TALKED ABOUT THAT AT ALL, DON’T WORRY.)

But back to being single. Maybe if I were single I could just go out and date people. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t know how to “date” and I don’t find the guys I see here in Campinas to be particularly attractive anyway. Lots of them are short and I can’t handle that…(let me be the one to contribute the short genes to our future children, not the both of us, please.) They’re petite–their appearances are, anyway–and so nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to what I’ve already got.

Whenever I am surprised by Dennis’ phone call, I know more and more I am with the person I want to be with. A day passes, two days, three without talking and during that time, I have more and more saudade, more longing. It’s a cliche, yes. But as far as I can tell, it’s only cliche because it’s so damn true.

On Clicking.

I have been reading blogs now more than ever, mostly to get ideas about how to write them and about what kinds of things people are interested in. I read three blogs religiously:
www.alleyesonjenny.com
www.tellhimfred.com
www.nothingbutbonfires.com
(Click them! They’re fabulous!)

Recently, on All Eyes On Jenny, the writer posted a piece like I have posted twice already–examining the kinds of search terms people are using that eventually lead to clicking on the blog. (It isn’t until a person clicks on the blog that a search term can link to it. Make sense?) It got me thinking about how just a simple click from one site can lead to my being able to reach more people. Once I find out which sites lead people here, I can interact more with those sites to further establish a relationship and increase the number of people for my own site, which of course, is what I would love to do. It’s about a give and take, really. It’s about cooperation and it’s about showing support through just the act of clicking.

Last night, I got an e-mail from a reader of this blog who is asking for a click. Here is the e-mail:

“I am fowarding something to you because it is a simple request for an important cause. A friend of mine, Britton John Broatch, passed away as a result of a massive stroke a few years ago. He was a young, healthy man in his early twenties with a bright future ahead of him. He leaves his parents and 3 brothers as well as a huge group of friends and family. His family quickly developed a memorial foundation in his memory and every summer we all help run a wiffleball tournament to raise money for his foundation. The money goes to a high school senior in the form of scholarship money for college. As successful as this has been, we all would like to see even more money dedicated to Britton’s foundation,and here is where you come in. NO DONATION neccessary, just a quick e-mail search on Yahoo!…

Click on this and enter The Britton John Broatch Memorial Foundation.

Evidently, Yahoo! will donate one penny for every search done on the Britton John Broatch Memorial Foundation. So, all you need to do is copy and paste Britton John Broatch Memorial Foundation in the search box on the Yahoo engine and you will have contributed. See, easy!
So if you don’t mind spending 3 seconds helping out, I would really appreciate it…and his family would too!”

After receiving this e-mail, I thought about what it means to support someone or something, how easy it is to show support, and how “support” comes in so many different forms. To show support for this memorial foundation, all you have to do is click above, then cut and paste (by clicking) the name of it into the search box, and then click again. SO easy.

If only all things were that easy. If only I could click away and somehow feel better than what I am feeling now. But I guess, in a way, writing–all of this clicking on my keyboard–is a form of self-support. I guess I am realizing now more than ever how writing is the best therapy. And so now, I will click and publish this piece, and then I will sit down and do the work I have been avoiding all week. How nice it would be to click all of that away!