Thoughts on Eat, Pray, Love

Image from here

 I went to see Eat, Pray, Love with two of my friends over the weekend.  I have to say I had really high expectations for this movie.  It's not that I loved the book that much, more that I loved the idea of the book.  The idea of traveling to Italy, India, and Indonesia (or more specifically Bali) as a single women without much of a plan was intriguing to me, especially because I'm someone who always has a plan.

I also find it interesting that Elizabeth Gilbert's book has received all of this attention when there are other books that are extremely similar to hers that have been completely ignored.  The main one I'm thinking of is Tales of a Female Nomad by Rita Golden Gelman.  I read her book before reading Eat, Pray, Love and thought it was amazing that she was able to truly live with and learn from the people and places she was visiting.  The experiences of these women are so different and, in a way, I think that Elizabeth Gilbert's book has received more attention simply because it is easier for people to picture themselves traveling to different countries, living there, learning what they want to, and then leaving.  That seems much more accessible to most people than the way that Rita Golden Gelman truly embraces the culture she is living in, which is an extremely scary thing to think about.

Honestly, I find the experiences of both women intimidating because I am not someone who is good at being away from my family and friends.  The month I spent in India was the most time I've spent away from anyone I've known and, even then, I was going with a group of students led by a professor from Hope.  I am in awe of their ability to step (or more accurately leap) out of the comfortable lives they had created for themselves and embrace what the world had to offer.

As it turns out, I really wanted to get my thoughts about the books out instead of writing a review of the movie because I don't really know what to think of the movie.  Were parts of it good?  Yes.  Could parts of it have been done better? Yes. Did it show India the way that India is?  Yes and no.  Yes in the scene where she's in the taxi in India traveling from the airport to the ashram because they made a point of showing the chaos that overwhelms you and the children that are constantly begging you for money/attention/love.  No because she spent much of her time in India in the ashram.

I think the main reason I had such strong feelings about the movie is because my experiences in India have had such a deep emotional impact on me that the thought of other people experiencing India in a different way is difficult for me to grasp.  I know it happens, but I'm not always ready to acknowledge that it happens.

Sorry if these thoughts don't make sense.  They don't really make all that much sense to me.  But I thought I needed to try to get some of these thoughts out of my head before I spent too much time there thinking about India and traveling and all of the other things that these books and the movie bring up for me.

Book Review: Rooftops of Tehran

I just finished Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji.  It has been a long time since I read (or in this case listened to) a book that I absolutely could not wait to have other people read.  (I think the last one I felt this strongly about was The Book Thief, which you should definitely go read if you haven't already...)  Rooftops of Tehran is set in Iran during the early 1970's when the country is ruled by the Shah.  The main character, Pasha, is seventeen and dealing with typical things such as getting out of high school, figuring out how to tell his parents that what they want him to do with his life is not what he wants to do with his life, and thinking about girls.  But obviously, things are different for Pasha because of where he is growing up.

The author does a wonderful job of making the story realistic, which still making it easy to relate to the characters while they experience the hardships of living under the Shah, most of which we can't even imagine.  The Iranian history and terms are explained extremely well, so don't worry if you don't know a lot of your Iranian history, I didn't either. The plot is suspenseful and surprising.  I can't tell you much else about the book because I don't want to give away any of the plot, but I would DEFINITELY recommend this book.

And a few thoughts on listening to books.  I listen to a lot of books in my car while I drive to and from work.  It lets me feel productive, even when I'm just sitting at stoplights.  There are two problems with listening to books instead of reading them:

1. I usually end up getting really into the book I am listening to, so by the end of the book I end up listening to it whenever I can.
2. I am one of those people that loves to mark passages in books.  I never write in my books with pens, but constantly mark passages with pencil so that I can find them when I am looking for them later.  That is something you can't do when you're listening to the book.

A quote

"Kids need to think that you care before they care what you think."

What a fabulous quote.  The mother of the author of The Other Wes Moore said this when she was being interviewed on Oprah.  The truth of her statement completely struck me.  My students (since those are the only kids in my life at the moment) only care what I think because I care about them.  And that's why our school is different than other schools because every single student knows that the staff cares about them.

Things that are making me happy at the moment

• The abundance of hot air balloons that have been out and about
• My cats who always want to sleep next to me
• Having time to knit and read without worrying about anything else
• The familiarity of getting back into a routine
• My wonderful husband who makes quesadillas for me, even though I'm fully capable of making them for myself
• The weather finally getting cooler.  (And by cooler I mean less than ninety!)

Today I'm featured in the Friday Favorites series at A Few of My Favorite Things!  Be sure to check it out!

Devotion to my students

Today was the start of another school year.  Technically, the teachers started school on Monday, but this was the first day with students, which is why I consider it the actual start of the school year.  School isn't school without the students.  Even though I've taught at this school for four years now, I still get nervous about the start of school.  This year I was even more nervous because we had so many changes going on.

We have a new schedule.  The past four years we've been on a block schedule, which meant that I only saw my classes every other day.  But this year I'll have the same classes every day for nine weeks.  That doesn't sound bad until I remember that I used to have a bad day of classes and a good day of classes on block scheduling.  With the same classes meeting every day, what if my nine weeks ends up being on long bad day of classes!?!

We have a new math teacher.  For some reason, our school has a really hard time keeping math teachers for more than a year.  This is our third new math teacher in three years.  Not such a good record.  It's not that I don't like her, it's that I don't know her yet.  And I've always been more comfortable with the known than the unknown.  But I'm definitely excited to see how she works with the students and to help her out along the way since I'm not one of the "oldest" teachers in the building (obviously based on experience at the school, not on age).

We have a bunch of new students.  This comes from the fact that we had a really big graduating class (for our school) last year and from the fact that we raised the number of students we're accepting because we have a new staff member!  We added a Spanish teacher this year who will rotate between the two schools opposite of the PE/Health teacher.  This will be an awesome addition to our program and should (fingers crossed) bring our class sizes down a little bit too.  But again, I've always been more comfortable with the known than the unknown, so new students are always harder for me.  That's one of the things I love about teaching at my school - that I get to teach the same students year after year.  I just have to remember that some of my favorite students (I know, I'm not supposed to have favorites) were new students just a few years ago.

And I apologize for the excessive amount of parentheses I used in that last paragraph.  I'll try not to make it a habit...

Book Review: The Happiness Project

That's right.  I've been reading it for months and I finally finished it!  It took me a while because I really loved this book and because there was so much in it!

I loved this book!  I originally borrowed it from the library and renewed it as many times as I could before turning it in.  I decided I liked it enough that I couldn't wait to borrow it from the library again so I bought it.  A few of the things I loved about this book included:

1.  The author's name is Gretchen!
2.  She decided to do this project and devoted an entire year to it.
3.  During the book, she's constantly changing her opinion about parts of the project.  If she wasn't enjoying something or it stopped working for her, she stopped doing it.
4.  She packs so much inspiration into this book that I really think it would be impossible to read it and not get anything out of it.  I already plan on reading it again to make sure I didn't miss anything.