Is there anybody out there?

December 23, 2009 at 11:11 pm (China Chronicles, ESL Lead-Learner)

Pink Floyd echoes through my brain tonight.  I am attempting to help some of my students make contact with someone, anyone, outside of China.  There over 4 billion qualified people.  How could it be so difficult?  My students e-mail me, “Teacher – I’ve sent so many e-mails, but no one will reply.  Where is a foreign friend I can depend on?” 

“Is there anybody out there?”  The strains from “The Wall” album linger.

I question myself, my ability to teach, my sanity.  Is it really so hard?  Why can I find ways to communicate with people outside China in seconds?  What am I not telling them? 

A friend of mine, a senior English major from another university, was visiting our home tonight.  I asked him, “Is this really such a hard assignment?” 

He laughs and says, “No.  It’s not.”  Our other friend, an engineering major, concurs. 

Some of my students have succeeded, even with flying colors.  In class today, a student says she got tourism predictions for New York City up to 2014 from her contact for her restaurant business idea today.  I asked her how she chose the contact.  She says she found a website that helps small businesses, from which she found much of the information she included in her presentation to investors several weeks ago.  Continuity.  Resourcefulness.  Fantastic.  Why do others struggle so?

I resist going to the obvious answer – laziness.  I know there are some who will succumb to failure because of the persistent student nemesis.  But the one who sent me this mournful e-mail today is not lazy.  She is just not thinking through her actions.  She e-mailed Amazon.com and expected an answer to the statement, “I have a question about this skirt.”  No product  reference number included.  And it is Amazon.com!  

Her thinking exemplifies a problem that is the very reason I assigned this task.  There is a persistent lack of awareness of how the world outside of China works. 

I am not advocating that China conforms to some imagined higher standard.  I just want to foster a sense of curiosity, and the ability to analyze a situation and work a problem all the way through to its resolution.  Some students have done it.  So I’m encouraging them to pass on their experience. 

Others?  Well, I think part of the issue is just plain fear of the unknown.   I feel that “Is there anybody out there?” in their pleas for help.  I want to reassure them that there is.  If you’d like to communicate with one of these forlorn and lonely English majors, shoot me an e-mail at amaliacarmel@gmail.com.  Let’s see if we can’t break down some of these walls…

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Lessons for Teacher

December 4, 2009 at 11:31 pm (China Chronicles, ESL Lead-Learner, Uncategorized)

Click to see a simple VoiceThread in action

It began as a mistake.  I hadn’t prepared.  But a great idea was born, and I ran with it.  The assignment was to create and develop a product or service for an English-speaking market.   The great experiment has run for almost a month now, and I have learned many lessons.  Here are a few of the highlights…

  1. Chinese students can be very creative.  The first day, we had a brain-storming session.  I gave them two instructions: First, generate.  Second, connect.  To get them to generate ideas, I wrote “Products people use” at the top of the black board, then started saying and writing whatever came to mind, “comb” “toothpaste” “watermelon”.  Then I prompted the students to join in.  They started like a sprinkling, but I reminded them that it’s called a “storm” for a reason, and they started getting into it. Soon the blackboard was filled. For the second part, the connections, I had them work in groups of three to make connections.  “How could we combine chocolate and mittens?”  “How could we combine a blackboard and a computer?”  Ideas started to pop up.  We did the same for “services people want.” Eventually, each person presented a product or service idea to the whole class, and we all chose the best idea of the group for them to persue in their project.  Best ideas were: a compressible dust bins, electronic whiteboards, an animal service center, an online nutritionist service, a new accessory bag for athletes called the iPocket, and a consulting company for entering the Chinese market. 
  2. Repetition, repetition, repetition.  Though I teach English, and I am constantly reminding my students to speak “ENGLISH ONLY” in the classroom, they forget the part that the project is for an English-speaking market.  They come up with great ideas for a Chinese market.  Then I remind them that most foreigners in English-speaking countries…have a car, use air conditioning, don’t use chopsticks, etc.  It’s very interesting to see them automatically apply their experience to the rest of the world, instead of questioning how things work in other places.  One student, very bright and well-read, wanted to describe her market as “families in the upper-middle-class”.  She said their income would probably be about $500-700 a month.  I suggested she do a bit more research.  When she found out what the poverty level is, she was shocked.  Most middle class families in China make about two-thirds what she thought would be upper-middle in America. 
  3. Make them do the research, don’t assume they will just be curious.  Two or three students (who had already adjusted to using the Internet in English) have done independent research online.  Every other student has required a lot of encouragement and grade-based assignments.  “Find three companies that are in your industries, or which could supply your company.  Send me the links.  This is 10% of your grade.”  It will also help them find the one person OUTSIDE China with whom they have to communicate.
  4. Push them over the edge.  They will fly.  Next week the are presenting business plans to “investors”.  I gave them a lot of research to do to include in these presentations.  In addition to the summary of their product or service, they have to do a market analysis, create fictional biographical information for their team that includes appropriate education and experience, financial information and convincing conclusion.  The kept asking “do we have to include ALL this information?”  Yes, I told them.  Look for it.  If you can’t find it, then just think about it a bit, ask me for help, and then if neither of us can come up with a good answer, make it up.  They are flying with it.
  5. Be adaptable and flexible.  And never rely on technology!  A good friend, David Truss            , suggested that we use VoiceThread.com to develop the presentations and rehearse.  As it is a tool that allows participants to record their voices as “comments” and allows for collaboration, I became an instant enthusiast.  I pushed and pushed my students to register and upload their presentations.  The most eager students were the first to try.  And try.  And try again.  But their university Internet connection is just too slow.  I was heart-broken.  But I got over it. (My next lesson is going to be about how to write a letter of complaint to officials.)  Now I’m asking them to record their presentations using their cell phones, which all have recording devices.
  6. Go in with an open heart and no expectations.  This has been a lesson throughout my experience in China.  This coming week I will see the fruits of their labors at the half-way point.  I know some will soar and some will flop.  But I know that none of them will go away without learning anything.  That is what keeps me going to work.  Watch in the next few weeks for me to post the best PPT presentations here.  I will even get them to record themselves on VoiceThread so they can get feedback from the world.

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Going out on a limb

November 7, 2009 at 12:59 am (Building a better world, China Chronicles, ESL Lead-Learner)

Yesterday I walked into class as no teacher should ever walk into a class- unprepared.  I had forgotten that my Thursday class is a week ahead of everyone else.  Out of sheer necessity, I went to “extreme creativity” mode.  I had twenty minutes to come up with something that would fill two 45-minute sessions of Conversational English for these sophomore English majors. 

So I went out on a limb.  When the students came into class,  I gave them the assignment:  In groups of 3, over the next eight weeks, develop and launch a product or service (realistic or imaginary) for an English-speaking market.  They will have to give 4 oral presentations, one to pitch ideas, one to get funding from investors (me), one progress report and an final advertisement.  I told them we were going to start using everything they had learned in the previous eight weeks, and  it would require them to talk to each other for most of the rest of their classes.  Not only that, they would have to collaborate with someone outside China.  Someone who doesn’t speak or read Chinese.   That was the limb.  The idea freaks most of them out. 

It freaks me out a bit, too.  If they decide to make a new kind of thermos, they have to find someone in the thermos business to talk to.   Will they be able to manage the kind of research it takes to find people?  Will people out there in the world want to interact with these nervous Chinese students?  Will my nervous Chinese student begin to realize how much the world wants to know about them?  They have been hidden behind a veil of mystery for so long, they don’t know how much the eyes of the world are on them.

This is a bit nerve-wracking, asking others to jump into this digital world with me.  A few weeks ago, I had them surfing the ‘Net in English, some for the first time.  Am I asking them to jump into the deep end before they can swim?  I tell myself they are English majors.  They NEED to know how to do these things.  They no longer have only two options for work when they leave school.  Honestly, many of my students believe that their only career choices are teaching English or interpreting.  That was true for most of their teachers. 

Collaboration is strangely lacking in this collectivist society.  Critical thinking skills are not part of the Chinese curriculum.  Creativity and initiative are not prized attributes here.  It is so easy to look at these things with my critical Western eye.  But then I remember the purity of these kids, their genuine sincerity, their curiosity – those characteristics that often seem to be missing in their Western counterparts.

I want to help them connect with the rest of the world, not just because they have things to learn, but because they have so much to teach.  

Going to class unprepared is never recommended.  But this time I got lucky.  I found a way to get my students engaged in creative thinking, and in collaborating with others in the world all in ENGLISH!  Now I’m scrapping the rest of my traditional ‘conversational’ curriculum, and we’re going to learn how to do something together.

We often need to go out on a limb.  That’s where the fruit are.

(Thanks to Yemi for sharing the ‘limb’ idea with me today. Your hot chocolate was also fabulous!)

Yummy pears

Go out on a limb once in while, that's where the fruit are...

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Amazing Grace

October 26, 2009 at 3:19 pm (Building a better world, Personal Development)

Bono is singing “Amazing Grace” on YouTube.  I am listening to a live broadcast of the U2 Rose Bowl concert.  He is in LA, and I am in Dalian, China.  And I’m thinking that he understands this ”amazing grace.”  We are connected.  He has touched me, and it’s because a new friend, Sabrina De Vita, is following me on Twitter.  I started to follow her after she commented on my last post, mentioning the power of collaboration.  She teaches English in Argentina.  And she is also watching Bono sing.  Right now.  She tweeted that the concert was being broadcasted live, so I found out about it, too.

A month ago, I didn’t understand Twitter.  I didn’t have a blog.  And now I have a new friend in Buenos Aires who also teaches English and loves U2, and we’re watching a concert “together”. 

Grace is raining down on me.  Serendipitous events abound.  Friends give me the right books, (The Alchemist, The World is Flat).  My husband and I re-ignite our dream of  a school on the same day a much-admired and well-loved educator friend (Eloy Anello, who started a university),  passes on to the next world.  A chance conversation leads to an assignment to write about a new local principal (David Truss), who becomes a mentor at the exact moment when I am shifting my professional activity, and am in need of one.  “When the student is ready, the master will appear…

I am not new to the world of grace.  I strive for a constant sense of gratitude for its continual flow.  But I am noticing something new.  These connections are re-awakening dormant passions.  As a writer, I am most in love with the transformative power of stories.  But I come from a background in communications and administrative management.  Much of my coursework has been in instructional technology and sustainable community development.  Now, because of these new connections, I am seeking ways to combine my passions to help build a better world.   I see the power of collaboration more than ever, because I have a platform upon which to stand and can ask for FEEDBACK!

And in a broader context, I can see that my personal development does impact the world.   The more connected I am in the world, the more my belief in the power of unity in diversity shifts from an ideal to an operating principle.  As Bono sings, we are “One,” and the more we act within that reality, the more empowered we are to bring that grace to other’s awareness.

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A Digital Coup in my ESL Class

October 22, 2009 at 7:02 pm (Building a better world, China Chronicles, ESL Lead-Learner, Writing process)

Student with cell phones

Students use web access on cell phones to learn English

They did it today.  They took over.  My students, that is. 

I was happily minding my own business, teaching them the day’s lesson when suddenly they took over the learning.  It was down-right revolutionary.  And I couldn’t have been more ecstatic about it.

I’ve been dabbling in the realm of digital learning for an article I’m writing.  Today I thought I’d try an experiment.  What if I actually USE what I’m writing about in MY class?  I teach second year English majors at a local technical college.  The class is Conversational English.  I have the freedom to use whatever curriculum I choose.  So today it was a geography lesson:  The World is Flat.  My students had never heard of Thomas Friedman.  They had heard of Christopher Columbus, so when I wrote those words on the board they seemed a bit confused.  But in our last class we examined the English terms for concepts they are quite familiar with – “streaming audio/video,” “social networking,” “chatting,” and “online gaming”.  I also introduced ideas about expanding their learning beyond their classroom or text book.  But I could tell the lesson was barely brushing the surface of their sponge-like minds.  So today I blew their minds away.  I hope I did, anyway.

I introduced the concept of the flat world in much the way Friedman does in his introduction, in fact paraphrasing him.  We discussed ideas like “collaboration” and “out-sourcing”.  They know the ideas, just not the English terminology, and they only know it conceptually, not in practice.  China is a collective society, but it is woefully ignorant of the practice of collaboration. 

Near the end of the first half of class, when we were about to break, I asked the class who had Web access on their mobile phones.  95% of the class raised their hands.  I told them to use Google in English, and search for whatever they wanted.  Some needed help.  I guided – “What do you do in your spare time?”  Blank look. “What do you enjoy doing when you are not studying?”  A hesitant, “Watch movies,” uttered the shy student.  “Great!  What kind of movies?”  She nearly squeaked, “Funny movies.”  “Okay,” I said, “search for ‘comedy movies’.”

Others needed no help at all.  One searched for the history of basketball.  Another for the newly announced host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics.  Those who had no phone crouched close to their friends.  Groups of students whispered what  they found.  I approached two students who weren’t searching.  No phone.  I handed them mine, and walked away.  A few minutes later, I came back to see what they were looking for.  “Who is Thomas Friedman?” was in the search field.  “Yes!”  I shouted, surprising them.  “That’s it!”  I had written his name next to the title of the book.  They wanted to know who he was.  And without any prompting from me, they whipped the learning right out of my hands, and took over.   And they worked straight through their break time.

The timid girl who watched movies found a list of the 100 funniest movies of all time.  Now maybe she’ll watch them in English, and practice her listening comprehension and pronunciation.  Later, they had to come up with 5 examples of how the world is flat.  They had to create ideas.  And they did a fantastic job.  Creative thinking has not been a strong suit among these students, but they were suddenly coming up with examples of how the world is flat:

Changing our appearance…Girls in China want blue eyes, because of Western influence.  They can see how they will look online with blue eyes, just by uploading a picture.

Surgeries that were impossible in China before because of lack of expertise can be done using telemedicine. 

Automobiles are manufactured using parts created from every corner of the globe. 

In the introduction of the book, Friedman mentions Dalian.   It is the outsourcing center of China as Bangalore is for India.  He interviews the former mayor of Dalian, Xia Deren.  The mayor talks of China’s human resource capital – the largest number of university graduates in the world: 

“Though in general our English is not as competent as that of the Indian people, we have a bigger population, [so] we can pick out the most intelligent students who can speak the best English.”

These are my students, who are sitting in my class room, and taking over the world by taking over their own learning!  That’s the kind of coup I can support.

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The Ancient Struggle with Obedience

October 19, 2009 at 1:55 pm (Personal Development)
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Pillars of the Shrine of the BabI am in a battle with my soul.  It is private, as many of these lay-down, drag-out fights are.  It is a struggle with obedience.  I take some comfort in recognizing that the struggle has reached a higher plain than when last I fought the good fight, and lost big-time.

Blind obedience is no longer required of humanity.  We now have a responsibility to question, to investigate the truth for ourselves, and choose the System of Laws by which we will whole-heartedly abide.  And even as we abide, we must continue to question, to learn, to understand more deeply.

For example, we accept Physical Laws.  If we were to fight the Law of Gravity, we would end up bruised and battered in our attempts to free ourselves from its obligation.  However, if we accept it, abide by it, study it, learn from it, we can use it to propel ourselves into the heavens and beyond. 

As a youth, I struggled with Spiritual Laws.  Why should I obey?  No one else does!  I don’t know how!  But I did out of a naive sense of duty and an academic understanding of the social ills of promiscuity and alcoholism.  Later, when my sense of identity had been worn down to a nub in a bad marriage, that naivety and intellectual understanding were no match for the ravages of the storms that life can throw.  Bruised and battered, I climbed out of the battle-pit and decided to investigate the nature of these Laws. 

Chastity suddenly loomed before me as a pillar of light holding the heavens high, keeping them from crushing me.  If I abide by, abide in, this law than I will come to understand it.   Through obedience, I learned that chastity is the price of a human soul.  How much do I value the human soul?  If it is cheap or worthless to me, than I can treat the method by which it comes into being (i.e. sex) with the same value.  If I recognize its true value, than I am willing to pay the price (sex only within marriage).  

Sobriety was not an issue for me in my youth.  The destructive behavior of those who chose alcohol as a route to entertainment baffled me.  I did not understand until later its seductive numbing powers.  Shattered hearts long for relief, however short lived it may be.  In my search for relief, some great beneficent Force showed me the power of connecting with my Creator.  And in learning to obey that spiritual longing for connection, I learned that alcohol, even a small amount, interferes like irritating static on a bad cell-phone connection.  Drunkenness is bliss.  But I am cut off and then have to deal with the consequences of going against the inherent nobility of the human soul. Through this genuine, deep obedience I have learned the bliss of compassion and true surrender.

Does this mean that I no longer have cravings?  My genetic predisposition to alcoholism is not just an interesting biological quirk.  It is a deep thirst that rears its head when I ache to cut out the pain.  My passionate nature longs to express its love in all forms – words, images, music, touch.  Now I am on a higher plane of obedience.  I obey from a deep appreciation for the dynamics of the laws.  They are the fortress for my well-being. 

But now I struggle in the realms of thought and feeling.  I have learned the catastrophic consequences of suppression of  thought and feeling. Restrained for too long, they burst the cage asunder and wreak havoc on the psyche.  That is not the right path.  Is it better to simply acknowledge the thoughts and feelings, and move on?  To not dwell, that is, on those thoughts that can lead to disobedience?  Or do I dwell long enough to reach some kind of understanding, then allow the thoughts/feelings to fade naturally over time?  I have no answers, and this is the battle.   

I am reminded of my friend Dave’s blog post on the inner battle – Two Wolves.  Which one will win?  The one I feed.

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Visiting my heart

October 15, 2009 at 12:28 am (Building a better world, Momma Bird, Writing process)
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Bahji, Israel - resting place of Baha'u'llah, Founder of the Baha'i Faith

Bahji, Israel - resting place of Baha'u'llah, Founder of the Baha'i Faith

My parents are in Haifa, Israel now.  They are on a pilgrimage to holy sites of the Baha’i Faith, on Mount Carmel and in Acre, across the bay.

I can smell the jasmine floating on the gentle breeze now.  It fills me with sweet sacred longing.  I left my heart there in Bahji, on the threshold of the Shrine of Baha’u'llah, years ago.  After 40 years of imprisonment and exile, the Founder of my Faith died still a Prisoner because He taught that, “the earth is one country and mankind its citizens.”  This was not a popular sentiment among the religious and secular authorities of the Ottoman and Persian regimes, and His tremendous influence on the hearts and minds of all with whom He came into contact did not serve their personal interests.

More than a hundred years after His death, I brought my heart, used and broken, to His doorstep and laid it there.  Who better to care for it than One who taught us that our hearts are His home, and that our very existence is due to His love for us?

So my parents have visited, and will again visit tomorrow, this spot.  I asked them to say a prayer for me, but as my heart is already there, it is already uttering a prayer. 

My prayer is that I can write pieces that educate, inspire and move.  It is a prayer of gratitude for every joy and anguish that my children give me, for through them I learn what it is to be whole and growing.  It is a prayer that sustains me when the black sea of grief threatens to engulf me, and when passions threaten to blow me off my course. 

The article I am researching involves the disconnect between parents and children, and even teachers and their students, about the vast amounts of learning occurring (or not) on the internet.  My children  steep in a digital brew, and have been since their babyhood.  I didn’t start using a computer until I was a senior in high school, well beyond my formative years.  Though I have become fairly computer literate as the online editor for a regional magazine, I am awed and even daunted by the array of possibilities for digital learning.   My son is excited and engaged when he’s learning online, and he’s not when he’s at school.   What can I do to help him?  What can his teachers do?

I want to do this piece justice because it might help other parents, and even some teachers, understand how we can connect and share learning with glorious, dazzling efficiency, speed and authenticity.  If I can do that then I have been on purpose.  And that is my constant prayer.

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Seeking clarity

October 11, 2009 at 11:39 pm (China Chronicles, Personal Development, Writing process)

The view of Kaifaqu from the Bell

The view of Kaifaqu from the Bell

We start by jumping over a wall.  On the other side is a path worn into the grass that the wall was intended to protect.  I am excited because I haven’t been on this path before, and I am expecting something more wild than the cultivated, paved hike I know so well that leads up the side of Tong Niu Lin hill to the UFO.  Initially, I feel a bit let down.  The trees are straight and tall and thin and planted closely together by human hands.  Stalky “underbrush” echoes the trees.  It feels somewhat surreal and foreign.  We pass the park’s nursery with hundred of pots of flowers waiting to be planted below.  In the distance, the spherical bird sanctuary nestles into the side of the hill like an enormous pearl. 

Eventually, we come to a divide in the road.  To the left is a rough concrete path that leads to the park. To the right is a narrow path worn down by not many human feet.  We take the road less travelled. 

 The underbrush is tangled and green, and catches my ankels.  My first battle wound, I think proudly to myself. Soon we are engulfed by oaks and pines.

“Oaks!” I say to my husband, who leads me on this trek.  I didn’t know there were oaks here.  I often feel my grandfather’s presence in oak.  He loved to work the stuff, built me a table of it before he died.

I am suddenly overcome with the sense that I am not in China anymore.  I am in the wilderness.  In spite of the sounds of traffic below, I am enraptured and wrapped in the sense that this place, any place, can be taken over by Management.  Trees rule!  Grass rocks!   We are suddenly climbing and I have to trust that the stones will not shift beneath my feet, that the earth will hold me. 

When we reach the peak of this small hill behind our house, we clammer on to the outcropping that overlooks the city.  The park below looks like a model train scene with hedges, tiny trees planted in rows, miniature bushes, cars and people.  Even the flock of birds that circle the park seem unreal somehow, like an animation in a movie. 

We sit for a long time on the rock watching the scene below, breathing in the wind, enjoying each other.  It is still and peaceful.  It allows for quiet things to rise to the surface, things unsaid for too long. 

Days later, I realize that more has risen to the surface than I realized.  Anger appears, then cracks and flakes away like a shell covering too much tenderness.  Below it is the heart of the matter, and I have no words for it. 

This hill behind my home has wilderness and sanctuary.  I can climb to that spot now, both with my feet and here, on this page.  The climb takes me higher, so I can see more clearly the scenes below.

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A Vision Reborn

October 6, 2009 at 9:31 pm (Building a better world, Momma Bird)

My son explores air currents at Explora Science Center and Children's Museum of Albuquerque, NM

My son explores air currents at Explora Science Center and Children's Museum of Albuquerque, NM

These are exciting times at my house. Today as we were walking home from the hardware store, my husband and I stumbled into a conversation that lead us back to a dream that started before we were married. It was a vision of a learning center, an environment that fosters our inherent desire to learn, one that nurtures learners at all age levels. In the vision, learners and facilitators are collaborators who support one another in their educational journey. Subjects are integrated, covering all areas of development, including material (the development and support of healthy daily living), human (human progress and civilization, such as arts, sciences, trade, government, invention and discovery), and spiritual (the development of the higher nature, or virtues such as truthfulness, compassion, courage and tolerance). Students, their peers and instructors assess learning to identify strengths and opportunities for further study.

What is most exciting now, though, is that, because of recent conversations and my re-introduction to the digital world, the vision has become more concrete. It includes a picture of students learning in discussion circles, both locally and at a distance through blogs and personal learning networks. And because of our family’s needs, my vision is a dual language environment, so that learners can become fluent in both English and Chinese.

Maybe we’ll only start by designing such an environment for our family. Maybe it will extend to a few others who would like to supplement their children’s education as well. But maybe a vision has been re-awakened that will grow into a dynamic, flourishing enterprise that is self-sustaining and contributes to the greater community, locally, nationally, globally.

For the time being, I am going to write…about this, about other things. It is a vision that deserves time and lots of dialog. But I’m interested in what others think about this vision.

 

References to three types of education, “material”, “human” and “spiritual” come from the writings of the Baha’i Faith.

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Dipping toes in the blogosphere

October 1, 2009 at 7:36 am (Writing process)

Toe dipping...

Toe dipping...

A friend of mine, David Truss,  recently showed me how blogging has become his personal learning space.  I have been resisting entering the blogosphere.  As a writer, I had not yet graduated to the understanding that one does not give up the importance of print by recognizing the importance of hypertext.  I was a print snob. 

I feel now that I am standing on the shore of a limitless ocean and my toes are being tickled by the surf.  

When I was very young and very small, I slipped off an inner-tube into a swimming pool and began to sink to the bottom.  My father pulled me to the surface moments later, but the experience gave me a healthy respect for water.  Later that same year, we took a packed and rickety motor boat across from Livingston, Belize to the Guatemalan coast in the middle of the night.  A storm kicked up shortly after we embarked, and both my brother and I had to be gripped tightly to keep us from going overboard as the waves tossed the boat around.  Healthy respect turned into a deep fear of deep water.

This fear, however, was not compatible with my nature.  I am a New Mexican girl.  We are desert-dwellers in love with water.  At the first sight of a thunder-head, I would rush around to find my rain gear.  If I was lucky the shower would last long enough for me to don the rain coat and boots and splash around.  The shower would be down to a “six-inch” rain by the time I got outside, six inches, that is, between drops.   I loved the water with a passion, and would spend every moment of the next half-hour splashing in the puddles left behind, and would curse the sand for sucking up the water so quickly.

By the time I was seven, I couldn’t stand NOT getting in the water because of this stupid fear any more.  My aunt would take me to the swimming pool, and I would stay in the kiddie end, in two feet of water, surrounded by pre-schoolers.  It was time to take the plunge.  Little by little, I forced myself to get wet – first my legs, then my belly, then the big hurdle – my face.  I learned to hold my breath.  I learned to drag myself around like an alligator.    Soon, I was pulling myself through the water with armfuls of water, SWIMMING!  I was a fish!  And I have been ever since.

I am standing on the edge of this internet ocean now, the blogosphere, and thinking to myself I just have to get a little wet.  I know this fear.  It catches in my throat like the excitement of a new love.  It bubbles in my belly like the nerves before a stage entrance.  And I am taking the plunge!

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