Expect the unexpected

March 26, 2019: Expect the unexpected

Now that our parent organization the Washington English Center is on break, Slavica and Jaume have returned.  As we have been doing for the last several weeks, we make short work of introductions and divide into three small groups where people will get to know each other better.   Each group will discuss three different articles from “The Week.”    With their sophisticated vocabulary, these articles are not easy.  Nor is their task easy.  While conversation in the small groups is casual, there is some pressure.  Towards the end of our two-hour session, representatives from each of the small groups will teach their articles to the large group. 

“My” group, from Brazil, Japan, Barcelona, Lithuania, and Serbia, spends most of our time on an article about the use of A1 to detect shoplifters in Japan.  Coming in late on the conversation, Natsu treats us to a discourse on, among other things, how the Japanese buy a lot of stuff to boost their economy with the result that they need organizers like Marie Kondo to help them contain their acquisitions.  Following up on last week’s conversation about a notorious French art thief, Sabrina mentions that shoplifting can result from kleptomania.  

Although they do not reach the level of kleptomania, there are confessions from shoplifters among us!  Most prominently, Jaume as a youngster habitually stole chocolate bars and greedily ate them in front of the store.  While both Slavica and Dana recount instances of overlooking items they should have paid for, Slavica differentiates between casual shoplifting and taking things in order to survive.  Not surprisingly Jaume, a Catalan separatist, brings up loss of liberty as the flip side of surveillance to prevent crime.  

We move on to the second article, which gets a strong reaction.  Priscilla, an au pair from Brazil, is comfortable enough not hide her horror at the Trump administration’s travel ban that blocks family members from entering the USA.

But once again, Natsu has the most unusual reaction, this time to a superficially funny story about how parrots have become opium dependent feasting on poppies in southern India. Natsu is outspoken about her grave concerns about drugs; she feels that the parrots in question are innocent victims of an immoral practice.  

Hoon surprises me when the groups came together: although I had arranged the stories on the basis of their length, Hoon has noticed that her group’s three stories are all about empathy and giving back.  A former wounded warrior is helping veterans at Walter Reed; a young girl who as a premature infant listened to Mozart sonatas in her incubator returned to the hospital where she was born to give a guitar performance in the NICU; and an adopted daughter felt that it was her fate to donate her kidney to the adoptive father who had saved her life 27 years before.  I remind myself to look for connections among the articles I will choose for next week, although I am always delighted to be surprised by my students.  

Doing the right thing: two views

Focus on Leonardo in the coffee klatch

Doing the right thing: two views

I

My mentor was always seven minutes late for our Latin class twenty-five years ago.  Unlike Jørgen, I arrive on the dot, but late in the eyes of Ellie, another volunteer teacher for our drop-in English conversation group at the Georgetown Neighborhood Library.  Ellie, a retired scientist, has already pushed two heavy library tables together for eager people still arriving.  I give her name tags and an attendance sheet and then suggest that the group talk about Spring festivals where they are from, Asia, Latin America, Europe, former Russian republics, and the Mid-East.   Ellie is a perfect match for them.  She will work carefully to correct pronunciation and explain new words and expressions as they read a short article I have prepared.

I leave Ellie’s group to join a second group, the “old faithfuls,” known also as the coffee klatch.  After we greet each other with kisses, I trade notes on the DC theatre scene with Micaela, a young Argentine actress who is wearing extravagant dangly pearl earrings. While Mark, another volunteer teacher, pulls two more tables together for the coffee klatch, I run to the information desk in the next room to get 20 copies of a short opinion piece I have chosen for both groups’ main topic, “Going to the Funeral,” a transcript from a 2005 NPR broadcast.  I hope we will focus on the subtext of the piece, positive aspects of doing the right thing, rather than its depressing subject.  I will ask them to make comparisons between funeral celebrations in their home countries and various funerary customs in the USA.

This second group, the coffee klatch, from Asia, Europe, Africa, the Mideast, and Latin America, which tolerates minimal intervention from Mark and me, know each other well, although there are a couple of unfamiliar faces.   I try to balance them, to get the Asians to talk, while reining in regulars from Egypt, Morocco, Germany, France and Italy. 

I can depend on Leonardo, arriving around 10:15 in his motorcycle helmet and black leather jacket that glint and shine like his dark eyes and straight dark hair.  Leonardo wakes us up with a slide presentation about Spring festivals around the world.  We have to laugh at how thorough his research has been, ranging from pyramids in Mexico to surfing in Wales, balloons filled with dye in India, to marital arrangements in Russia.

II

Leo is late to the Library, but brightens up when he sees Susan.  In Mexico drop-in means you come when you can.   His six-year-old son Dominic was dawdling over breakfast before the two of them walked slowly to the boy’s school.   Leo can’t conceal his worries about Mr. Trump’s weird ideas about Mexico, though, as he tells the group, the Mexican President Enrique Nieto Peña beat Trump in the scoundrel contest by plagiarizing his law school thesis and colluding with drug lords.  

Days can be long for a househusband, and Leo is grateful to have a project.  Finding out about Spring festivals around the world gave him something else to talk about with Dominic.  Since Dominic enjoyed the slide show, Leo isn’t surprised that the group likes his presentation. 

Everyone is invited to speak about Spring festivals back home. He can’t understand when Ikumi talks about Spring festivals in Japan.  Argentina and Italy have the same traditions about giving children Easter eggs that contain presents, which Dominic would enjoy.  Youssef tells about a three-day festival in Kelaat Mgovna, in a valley of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, famous for roses, and an international music festival in Gnaowa.

After finishing with Spring festivals, there’s a short article to look at called “Always Go to the Funeral.”  What a downer to hear the others talk about doing the right thing, like filling out forms, waiting in line, and enduring unpleasant work environments, but even worse to hear details about funerals, except for Youssef who accepts death as part of life.  Anna, whose husband is at death’s door with cancer, looks like she will pass out.  At the end of the meeting the mood perks up again: even the usually restrained Julia from Germany gets excited talking about Mr Trump.

Leo knows he makes many mistakes but he gets few corrections because he is fluent.  He’s frustrated enough to be talking of leaving the conversation group to take classes at the Washington English Center to get his English straightened out.  He’s heard that he will learn a lot there and also make more friends.  After the two groups break up, Leo begins to talk to Baur, a smiling young guy from Kazakhstan, about going to the Center together.

Smiling for Slavica

Smiling for Slavica: Polyphony in English – by Susan Joseph

I am farthest right in the snapshot Slavica took yesterday at the end of the English Conversation Group before the bookshelves in the sunny second-floor reading room of the Georgetown Neighborhood Library.  My whiteboard is loaded with American expressions six young women have been perfecting.  We are smiling for Slavica.  A moment later Hayriye comes from the other small group to ask me, “Where do I bring my cucumbers?”

 The conversation group began three years ago with six wives of diplomats from China.  In the last several months, thanks to social media, there have often been four times as many participants speaking only English.  We start slowly before they take turns reading a news article that will help them learn unfamiliar words and expressions along with grammar.  As they read, they will compare American culture with their own.

Today the atmosphere is relaxed. Many students and teachers are comfortable enough to arrive late.  The group takes shape gradually around a large table.

“Please tell us your name, where you are from, and your favorite and least favorite food,” I begin.  Remembering each other’s names should be easier for all of us if we can associate them with foods.

Beata, from Poland, speaks slowly with heavy consonants.  “I like everything except ananas.”

“Pineapple,” I translate.

“But I cannot live without rice.” From now on Beata’s pale skin, gray eyes, and light brown hair will remind me of rice.

Slavica arrives with her three leggy dark-haired pony-tailed teenaged nieces who tower over their diminutive aunt.

“How did they get so tall,” Mariella wants to know, as Slavica presents twins Nevena and Ana and their cousin Ema.

“They are visiting me this month from Belgrade.”  Slavica draws out her vowels and sounding more Italian more than Slavic.  Could Slavica’s Italianate accent reflect the digraphia of Serbian, which is written in either Cyrillic or Roman letters? 

“I love American food,” drawls Slavica.  “Especially Waldorf salad.”

Once we have agreed on the salad ingredients, I draw out a description of the Waldorf Hotel with the savory detail that I attended a banquet there when my husband’s cousin’s wife was inducted as president of the New York City Bar Association.  Thousands of attendees politely pushed around on our plates traditional banquet fare of rubber chicken and vegetables cooked to death.

“I’m so sorry,” apologizes Aileen, another teacher, who enters as we finish stating our food preferences. 

I ask the participants, only women today, from Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Central America, and China, to plan a potluck dinner, forgetting to say that it is imaginary.

 “I can bring rotisserie chicken,” twangs Aileen representing New York.   

 “Since the potluck is at my house I can barbecue chicken,” I intone.  Flattening out my Midwestern vowels I riff on a recipe for beer-can chicken.

“You shove a half-full can of beer to bubble up inside a spicily seasoned chicken cooked upright on a grill.”  Everyone laughs at the naughty recipe.

Our potluck continues to take shape.  Beautiful Russian Masha’s treat is fried calamari. Out of Olga, the tongue-tied mother of two small children raising a ruckus in another corner of the room, come paella and sangria from Spain.  When Costa Rican Marite brings refried beans she will see four of her colorful small paintings hanging in my entrance hall. Beata will fashion fruit salad, and Solenne promises ratatouille. 

I had thought that the physicist Hayriye understood that each person would suggest a favorite native dish, but now she seems confused.  I suggest a Turkish mezze with cucumbers and yogurt.   “And garlic,” she adds.   The high point will be Sue’s golden line shrimp, fried, in a bowl.  Sue is too modest to mention that as the wife of the chief military diplomat from China she is so busy that the shrimp must be prepared by a chef from the Chinese Embassy.

Now that there are 13 participants and three teachers, we divide into two small choruses to review a news article about healthy eating.  Of the three Serbian cousins who began learning English by singing Sesame Street songs when they were five, Ana is advanced enough that I ask her to coach the others.  I refrain from asking them to perform their favorite song. 

“How do you stay healthy eating croissants,” Marite asks Solenne.

“We have toast, jam, and fruit for breakfast, Solenne answers.  “We save pain au chocolat for once a week.”  I am ravenous. 

Following the conversation’s turn to art, low-voiced Zina rhapsodizes about Taras Shevchenko, poet and founder of Ukrainian literature, whose statue stands nearby at 22^nd and P Streets NW. 

As we finish, Hayriye comes from Aileen’s small group.

“Where do I bring my cucumbers?”

“My house,” I answer. “But we need to set the date and time.”