first avenue, olympics, and the other twin

I needed this weekend. The last two days of Phantom Tollbooth were astonishingly difficult: trying to create a 45-minute play out of a long, wordy novel is nearly impossible, especially with a group of kids who are so invested in the story that the idea of skipping parts is just unacceptable. We ended up with so much great material that we had to cut two huge scenes on Friday, which, needless to say, was difficult for the kids, making it a really rough Friday for all of us in Tollbooth-land. The day persisted in making me miserable when, less than 200 feet away from my house, I hit too big of a bump on my bike and took all the air out of my back tire. 

Like I said, though, this weekend made it all better. My friend Ilana and I had tickets to see Dr. Dog at First Avenue & 7th Street Entry Friday night. We started the night out with chips and salsa and the Olympics opening ceremonies (if you missed them, don't bother looking for them - they were pretty awful) and then made our way to the Downtown area with plenty of time to spare before the opener, Field Report, took the stage. First Avenue is a really cool venue: it's massive, but somehow still manages to feel really intimate. The outside walls are covered with stars with the names of every artist who has ever performed there, from Booker T. & the MGs to Nirvana to Cypress Hill. The music nerd in me was freaking out about all the history - I was going to be standing in the same room as Paul Simon and Kurt Cobain did once upon a time! 

It almost goes without saying that Dr. Dog gave an incredible concert. I can't believe how privileged I was to have been able to see Beirut and Dr. Dog in the same week. (Somehow I forgot to blog about Beirut - I think it's because I'm still speechless from the beautiful concert they gave.) Because I lived on a little tiny island for most of my life, I didn't spend high school seeing concerts, so they're still really novel for me. I'm running out of words to describe these two concerts, so I'll give you a few photos to make up for it. 

Beirut

Beirut (We met the accordionist after the show!)

Dr. Dog

The combination of Phantom Tollbooth and the Dr. Dog concert was pretty exhausting, so my lazy Saturday morning at the Seward Cafe felt long overdue. After buckwheat pancakes, half a gluten free vanilla cupcake (I never would have guessed!) and a few cups of coffee, I found the energy to walk my bike over to The Hub Bike Coop. The fix for my flat took far less time and cost a lot less than I expected, and the coop was a really cool place. The plan was then to grab some takeout from the Afro Deli, a Somalian restaurant in the neighborhood, and then watch some Olympics. It was my first encounter with Somalian food, and I loved it! The Twin Cities have the largest population of Somali people in the United States (don't ask me why), so where better to try some kéké and sambusa? 

Vegetable sambusa, fried dumplings filled with lentils, cilantro, and onions; and kéké, doughy noodles and vegetables with cilantro and "Somali seasoning"

The rest of Saturday was spent lounging on the couch watching people exert far more energy in a matter of minutes than I had all day (all week, probably). Today started out similarly, but Ilana and I managed to get up off the couch and take a four mile bike ride into St. Paul. It was my first adventure into Minneapolis' smaller, more residential twin, and it proved to be a really lovely place to spend a Sunday. The bike ride across the Mississippi was beautiful, though once we hit St. Paul, the roads became far hillier (who knew the midwest had hills?). 

The view from the bridge to St. Paul

By the time we hit Izzy's Ice Cream, Ilana and I had without a doubt earned our ice cream. Izzy's is a really wonderful place that serves really inventive ice cream flavors, and with each scoop you buy, you get an izzy for free. What is an izzy? It's a mini scoop of a different flavor of ice cream (the size of a watermelon scoop) on top of your regular sized scoop. It's absolutely adorable. Because we just so happened to make it to St. Paul for Izzy's 12th birthday, we got a second izzy on top of our ice cream for free! I had a scoop of raspberry chocolate chip topped with an izzy of Norwegian chai and an izzy of Summit Oatmeal Stout. I thought it couldn't get any better, but then they gave us free t-shirts!

The weekend is coming to a close with women's gymnastics and leftover Somali food. It's been the perfect balance of adventure and relaxation before another week of four- and five-year olds in the mornings and K-3 in the afternoons. If it's anything like last time, you may not be hearing from me much this week. 

behavior, diagnosis, and an arrest

The week with Phantom Tollbooth is officially halfway over, and I'm amazed how quickly it's gone by. We're creating our own script from the novel, not using the already existing stage adaptation, so we've been working incredibly hard to get this 200-something page book packed with wordplay and life lessons on its feet. It's exhausting, but the kids are working really hard, and all the interns in the room are taking on a lot of responsibility to make it happen.

Nancy, the teaching artist, is my favorite that I've worked with so far (we also worked together on The Lottery). She's so intuitive and really understands what the group needs in order to be productive. Because we have a huge group of kids (23!) and four interns in the room, she's been splitting the group up into smaller groups to stage individual scenes. I love how much she trusts the interns in the room, and I think working with her has really allowed me to grow not only as a teacher but as a director (who knew?!). It's been really rewarding to make choices about how to best tell the story with this specific group of kids, and more than any previous week, I think I'm connecting and communicating with them in a very exciting way. 

One of the girls in our group has a fairly severe form of Asperger's, a disorder on the autism spectrum. Although I know kids on the spectrum, I've only worked with one before, and his case was far more mild than this girl's - let's call her Megan. Megan really loves this story, and cares so much about telling it accurately and fully, which has been a little difficult, since we have to cut and adapt a lot of the story so it fits in our 45-minute sharing time. For the most part, though, she's been doing well, and her father has told us she's having a great time at camp. We ran into a few problems with her the first day, when she would wander away from her group to make faces at herself in the mirror. Though the other kids in the class have been great about including her, the other interns and I noticed a few snickers at her slightly odd behavior and weren't sure how to handle Megan's wandering or the kids' reactions. We brought it up with Debra at our morning meeting on Tuesday, and, as usual, Debra had really illuminating thoughts about Megan.

The second we mentioned that Megan was wandering away from her group, Debra asked us why we thought she was doing that. It's such an important question that often people (myself included) don't think to ask when there's a diagnosis handy. Megan doesn't wander away from her group because she's on the spectrum, she wanders away from her group because she's uncomfortable in groups. Reminding myself of that has made working with her so much easier, because instead of chalking her behavior up to Asperger's, I'm just observing. And it's true: not all kids with Asperger's wander away from groups, so Megan's behavior belongs entirely to her, and not to her diagnosis. As far as the other kids' reactions go, Debra wasn't concerned. She told us to be conscious of how Megan reacted to their behavior, but as long as it wasn't bothering her, talking to the kids and explaining that Megan acts the way she does because she has a disability would just alienate her even more from the group. They don't need to know that she has Asperger's, and really, neither did we. If nothing else, I think often diagnoses like Asperger's or even ADD make it easier to make excuses for behavior, rather than really observing and getting to know the kid for who they are, not for their diagnosis. 

On an entirely different note, I had a really fascinating experience yesterday when a few of the interns and I went out for dinner after work at a restaurant near CTC. As Nick Drake played in the background and I waited for my organic grilled three-cheese sandwich (I wasn't feeling too adventurous), we saw a man get arrested outside. The two policemen handcuffed him, patted him down, emptied his pockets, and then realized they forgot to remove his backpack. They held him still while they un-cuffed him, took his backpack off, and cuffed him again. After about ten minutes of searching through his belongings and walky-talky-ing, they released the man and left. 

I don't know why witnessing that affected me as much as it did, but the juxtaposition of Nick Drake and organic food with an arrest (okay, they let him go, but still) was really jarring. It's always amazing to me that I can be having a perfectly normal day while twenty feet away from me, some man is having what I can only assume is one of the worst days of his life. It's something I've always been aware of, but I've never seen it manifested so concretely right in front of my eyes. And what's more, that man and I will probably never speak, even though I witnessed a huge, emotional moment in his life. 

I think I'm going to dedicate my yoga practice to that man tonight. I hope his week gets better. 

extended child's pose

It's been a long week, to say the least. Working with the young kids has been so completely exhausting that I only made it to yoga once this week, and I clearly have been slacking off on blogging. I thought of my free time this week as one long extended child's pose (for those of you who aren't familiar with yoga, that's the restorative posture you're always invited to use during class when you need a break). Maybe I'm making excuses, but by the time I got home every night, my body was begging me for mac and cheese and episode after episode of How I Met Your Mother. And if yoga has taught me anything this summer, it's to listen to my body, so listen I did. I'm not ashamed to admit that I finished all of season one and the only thing I actually cooked all week was a quinoa salad to bring for lunch every day.

I'm not sure how to reflect on this past week. Nothing stayed consisted between the five days of camp, and it was agreed among almost all of the interns that this week was a weird one. One of my teaching artists was out for a day, so the interns had to lead the class with a different teaching artist there to make sure everything stayed on track. There were a number of times when I was asked to step out of the classroom to take care of unforeseen issues - a pale, shaky, nauseous camper curled up in the green room and two missing interns who needed to be replaced for the morning, to mention a few. Something about this week was just off, for various reasons, and I think it really contributed to my exhaustion.

Weirdness aside, I think I learned a lot this week. The four- and five-year-olds were surprisingly angelic (I talked to the teaching artist and she and I agreed that their good behavior had a lot to do with our tiny class size - only eight kids - and our two to three student-teacher ratio) and just an absolute delight to work with. We spent the week reading different countries' versions of fairytales and noticing the differences between them, and creating our own story that we transported and adapted to different countries. Of course, when we moved our story (which consisted of a flying trashcan that traveled around the town collecting garbage, assisted by a knight and his horse) to Peru, we didn't translate it into Spanish or set it in Machu Pichu. Instead, the kids decided that Peru was "backwards land," so here, the cats chased the dogs and the trashcan couldn't fly, she could only walk. And in China, we met lots of people who told lots of silly knock-knock jokes. Working with this age group took a lot of synthesizing of the kids' creative ideas, and a lot of simplifying slightly more complicated concepts. Our game of "Yes, Let's!" turned into "What do you see in your imagination?" I think my favorite moment all week was during this game, when one of our kids' imagination had us all act out being "snakes in Boston." It's amazing to be around these kids and witness what so many artists have to fight to find: completely uninhibited imagination. I don't know a single adult who, when asked what their imagination showed them, would immediately shout out, "snakes in Boston!" but I know hundreds who would kill for that level of impulsive creativity.

The K-3 camp presented much more of a struggle for me. Somehow, an afternoon with them felt longer than seven hours with 4th-6th graders. Though they were still remarkably creative and individually, really wonderful kids, the group of twenty that we worked with constantly fed off of one another's distracted energy, making it nearly impossible to keep the room in control for more than three minutes at a time. Even with five interns and a teaching artist in the room, we struggled to stay sane and to keep the kids sane, too. Their play eventually came together, and I was really proud of the sharing they had today, but the journey was rough. I think K-3 is not the right age group for me, but I'm happy I worked with them and really value a lot of the relationships I built with individual kids. 

That last paragraph feels like a cop-out. Like I said, I'm not sure how to reflect on my time this week, and K-3 is a huge part of that. I hope I get to spend more time in K-3 camps, even though I wasn't in love with this week's experience. I'm still trying to process this age group, and I think, if anything, more time is all that will make them make sense to me. 

Like I said, life outside of CTC has been far less exciting this week than usual. It's been a lot of hanging out at home and watching Netflix. But on Monday night (it feels so long ago, but I guess it really has been that long since I last blogged) I went to the "Fringe for All," an event hosted by the Minnesota Fringe Festival that featured three minutes each of thirty Fringe plays, twenty-eight of which were absolutely horrific. I'm not sure if I've mentioned yet that I'm volunteering at the Fringe this summer, but because I'm a volunteer, this ninety minute preview was free. And thank God it was, because I think I might have rioted if I had paid for it. The Minnesota Fringe chooses its shows by lottery, so even if you submit a terrible piece of theatre, you have as good a chance as anyone of getting produced. On one hand, I think it's great that there's an outlet here for anyone and everyone to express themselves through theatre, but on the other hand, I really struggle to find the value in producing really awful work. What, you might be wondering, could possibly be so awful? Try five  middle-aged men in tank tops dancing seductively on chairs to Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious." 

I'm not kidding.

On a lighter and more exciting note, my other relatively exciting non-CTC experience this week is summed up by the following photo of JJ's Coffee and Wine Bistro's cookies and cream ice cream cupcake - like ice cream cake but in cupcake form! I don't know why I've never encountered something like this before, but I have a feeling it's going to catch on in a huge way. My taste buds have never been happier.

This week has been a week of lists for me, so I feel it's only appropriate to end this blog with a (Minneapo)list of things I'm looking forward to:

• Fringe training (even though the theatre was awful, I'm excited to see what this festival is all about)
• Spending time at the lake 
• Seeing Beirut in concert tomorrow night!!!
• Pancakes at the Seward Cafe on Sunday morning (who's surprised?)
• Season two of How I Met Your Mother
• Spending next week with my favorite teaching artist (Nancy, from my first week in The Lottery)
• The Phantom Tollbooth!
• Actually making it to yoga next week

I hope you all have a great weekend! Again, I'll try my best to be better at blogging next week - hopefully the 4th-6th graders in my next camp, Phantom Tollbooth, will be less exhausting.

another long post about another incredible weekend

I'm always amazed at how much can happen in just a few days. Take that as a warning: you may want to get comfortable, because this is bound to be a long post.

The rest of Spooky Town was an adventure, to say the least. Somehow we managed to get everything done, but it wasn't easy. Our last two stories happened differently than the first one: the script for our second story was developed through improvisations and belonged completely to the group, and the third story was narrated by Laurie and pantomimed by the kids. Although developing a script was certainly ambitious (I think this camp would have benefitted from being two weeks long), I was really glad it was a part of the process. It gave the kids a real feeling of ownership over the process and allowed for a lot of silliness and fun in exploring an otherwise creepy story. 

I've mentioned a few times on this blog that I've been struggling with the idea of theatre training for young people, as opposed to the process-based creative drama I'm used to. I think Spooky Town did a good job of focusing on the process while still ending in a pretty fantastic performance. It's interesting being in a room with kids who have signed up for a theatre camp - there's very little hesitation to jump in and take risks, and it's possible to have an extremely high level of individual exposure almost immediately, because these kids are already excited about performing. I'm sure this also had a lot to do with the room's ethos, which was immediately set up as very supportive and welcoming. Though I'm by no means a total convert to theatre training over creative drama, I was excited to witness the two come together in the way they did this week, and it was fun to be able to just jump in, without having to build up to it.

Outside of the CTC basement, I've been having some incredible adventures. They started on Thursday, with a trip to French Meadow Bakery and Cafe, the country's first ever certified organic bakery. I had the Ahi tuna sandwich special with goat cheese and arugula. And yes, it was as incredible as it sounds. I also had the chance of picking at my friend's rosemary potato flatbread pizza, which didn't disappoint either. I followed that with the cappuccino torte, which was so beautiful and decadent I couldn't finish it all, and if you know me, you know that almost never happens with dessert. I wish I had thought to take pictures, but I was too excited about the food to remember. 

We then made our way over to the Guthrie for their production of The Sunshine Boys, the only hiccup in my otherwise perfect weekend. I've never been a Neil Simon fan, and this show did nothing to convert me. It was an incredibly high quality production of a horrible, dated script. I really struggle with the idea of producing theatre like this for the sake of pleasing subscribers, but of course, the house was packed on a Thursday night. It's worth noting, though, that almost no one in the audience was under fifty, and looking around before the show, I could count the number of non-white audience members on one hand. This script in particular was Neil Simon at his most offensive. I know a lot of it comes from the conventions of the 1970s, but the sexism and racism that pervaded nearly every minute of the play made me wonder why anyone would consider this play worth producing in 2012. 

Friday night, my friend Ilana and I made our way over to Mesa Pizza in Dinkytown, famous for their incredible macaroni and cheese pizza. I had tried the mac and cheese pizza a few weeks ago, so this time I decided to try their Avocado Delight pizza: black beans, avocados, tomatoes, and feta cheese. Again, a complete success, and this time I remembered to take a picture!

I think it's safe to say that Saturday was my favorite Minneapolis day so far. My friend Lizzy, a fellow CTC intern, told me about a vintage store she heard about called Mighty Swell. It's only open every once in a while (I think one weekend a month but I'm not sure) and it's located in an obscure residential neighborhood in south Minneapolis - so obscure, in fact, that Ilana and I got lost on our way there and ended up taking a cab. We pushed through that little setback and I couldn't be happier that we did. The store is long and narrow, and lined with clothing racks packed with reasonably priced, beautiful vintage clothing. We spent an hour and a half just looking, and I walked out with two new belts, a couple new rompers, a shirt, a wrap skirt, and - my favorite purchase - a $3 apron from the 1950s. I figured with all the cooking I've been doing, I deserved it. The store also sold a literary magazine called C.L.A.P. (Creative Ladies are Powerful), and the gender studies major in me couldn't resist that title.

I once again was too excited to take pictures, so the credit for this one goes to Ilana.

Once we had been through everything at Mighty Swell a few times, we headed to Uptown for lunch at Ecopolitan, a vegan, gluten-free, raw food restaurant located in a holistic health center. It reminded me of a more polished version of the juice bar and restaurant where I worked in high school, and I was thrilled to be eating raw food, probably my favorite type of "cooking" (nothing actually gets cooked above 104°F). The menu looked so delicious I couldn't decide what to get, so luckily there was the option of a surprise entree - if you can't decide, the chef decides for you! I took a chance and ended up with an imitation tuna (made with walnuts) maki roll to accompany my "Greenway" smoothie: coconut water, banana, pear, spinach, blueberries, and vanilla. Lizzy tried the "rawvioli" and Ilana tried the mac and cheese (zucchini noodles and cashew cheese). I tried a bit of everything, and it was all so fresh tasting and delicious. We finished the meal with a berry ice cream (made with almond milk) parfait.

Lizzy had to go babysit, so Ilana and I made our way to the Lagoon movie theater to see Beasts of the Southern Wild. I can't possibly talk about this movie without doing it a huge injustice; I think it suffices to say that I have only had this visceral of a reaction to a piece of art twice before in my life (and never before to a movie). I openly wept all the way through the end of the credits, and I felt so weak that I could barely get up to leave the theatre. If you haven't seen it yet, go as soon as you possibly can.

The rest of the night consisted of dinner at the Bryant Lake Bowl, a bowling alley/theatre space/restaurant in Uptown. We thought about going bowling but decided against it, and instead I had a delicious flatbread pizza (made with manchego, my favorite cheese in the entire world!) while we decompressed after the movie.

I know I've said before that Uptown is overrated - when I called my mom yesterday while walking around, she was surprised to hear that I was enjoying myself there - but I think I need to retract that statement. Until this Saturday, I had never explored Lyndale, a street in Uptown packed with cool coffee shops and more places like Ecopolitan (French Meadows Cafe is also on Lyndale). Once you get away from the more commercial, yuppie Hennepin Avenue, Uptown is pretty great, though I still have a soft spot for Seward.

I made my usual weekend trip to the Seward Cafe this morning to keep pushing my way through William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, a beautiful piece of Beat literature that I've been meaning to read for years and have finally found the stamina for. His writing is haunting and often really hard to stomach, but it's so breathtaking that it's worth every minute. All that said, though, I still only managed to get through 35 pages in the two hours I spent there.

Yoga class today was another pleasant surprise. I had never taken class with this instructor before, and even though it was an intermediate class, it was really challenging. There's a fitness center above my yoga studio that's completely unaffiliated, and at the end of class today (just before we started to meditate) an aerobics class, complete with Lady Gaga, started right above our classroom. I was really amazed with how the instructor was able to keep us focused through that - he told us to notice the sounds around us, and then to turn our listening to the silence within ourselves. He spoke about a monk he recently heard speak who, beginning in March, is taking a five year vow of silence to communicate the idea that silence is one of the few things that every person has in common; it crosses language  and cultural barriers like nothing else can. I usually don't like when yoga instructors attempt to impart wisdom like this on the class because it often breaks my focus, but since class this afternoon I've been thinking a lot about the idea of listening to the silence within and finding peace that way. I think it'll come in handy next week, since I'm moving on to my first week with the little ones. 


I'll be with four- and five-year-olds in the mornings and with K-3rd grade in the afternoons. My morning camp is called Around the World in Fairytales and my afternoon camp is School for Sorcerers. If I'm being completely honest, I'm terrified for these camps - I've probably said this before, but I've never worked with kids this young. I'm much more comfortable with older kids; even 4th-6th grade was a stretch for me. I'm excited to try it out, but it's going to be a challenging week. Being able to recognize the chaos around me without letting it affect my inner silence is going to be tough, but I think it's doable.


Here's to yet another Monday! Thanks for bearing with me through this long post - I'll try to keep next week's posts shorter.

the museum and muffins

Until yesterday, I had never been to the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I have absolutely no excuse, since it's free, open six days a week, and is in the same building as the CTC. But yesterday I found myself with an hour to kill between camp and a Tao smoothie date with a fellow intern (in case you're wondering, this time I got the Minty Green Tea smoothie: banana, mint green tea, mint leaves, syrup, vanilla, and almond milk) and to escape from the heat, I wandered into the MIA. 

The museum feels more like a history or anthropology museum than an art museum (though I guess if I had paid to see the Rembrandt exhibit I might have thought differently). Each room houses art from a different part of the world, from African tribal masks to a Tantric Buddhist mandala to classic Greek sculptures. It's a fascinating place, and the hour I spent there before it closed went much too quickly.

That's why I was glad when Laurie and Marya surprised the kids with a trip to the MIA this afternoon, to visit the Chinese sarcophagus and Egyptian coffins (though there's much more to see, we had to keep it short, so we stuck with our Spooky Town theme). To keep them quiet and focused during rehearsal, we sort of bribed them with this surprise, and of course when we revealed that the surprise they had behaved so well for was a trip to the art museum, there were cries of "the art museum?!" and "that's not fair!" A few of the kids were excited, but the boys mostly felt they had been tricked. Once we made our way into the museum, though, they dropped their "too cool" act became really animated, especially when I took a group of them  to see the Samurai armor and weapons I thought were so fascinating on my trip yesterday. 

It was fun to explore the museum through their eyes; to them, the pieces weren't sacred objects from hundreds of years ago, they were awesome new things to look at and explore. The looks on people's faces when the kids got a little too close to the sarcophagus were hilarious. How did we all get to the point where we feel the need to stand an arm's length away from things that were created to be appreciated? I loved being at the museum with people on whom the pretension and stuffiness of the place was lost, and I think they did too. 

After the museum and a quick reflection, camp ended and I biked over to the Seward Coop to pick up some ingredients for these healthy blueberry nectarine muffins I've been dying to make. It was all I could do not to just eat the fruit after I cut it up, but wow am I glad I didn't. These are hands down the best muffins I've ever made. I'm amazed at how light they are despite the amount of wheat flour and wheat germ. I couldn't possibly be more excited for breakfast tomorrow!

It was tough to get myself to yoga tonight, but I promised myself I would go, since I have tickets to see The Sunshine Boys at the Guthrie tomorrow night. I had never taken class with this particular teacher, and she taught a very different flow than usual. I found myself having to think a lot more, which I'm not sure whether I liked. On one hand, it kept me more alert and aware of what my body was doing, but on the other hand, I feel like yoga loses something when it's too heady. It was still good to be there, though, and my balances are getting much easier. 

It's way past my bedtime, and we've got lots of work to do in Spooky Town tomorrow, so that's all for now. I'm making lots of observations that will make their way into a post at the end of the week. We're officially over the hump! 

back in minneapolis, and it's looking good

I couldn't have possibly had a better welcome back to Minneapolis than today. 

Spooky Town is exactly what I needed after two intense weeks of Junie B. Jones. Laurie and Marya, the teaching artists, have pieced together three ghost stories and written a few really, well, spooky songs to string the stories together. It's by no means a masterpiece, but it's fun and leaves lots of room for the kids to improvise and make fun character choices. 

In the real world, Laurie and Marya are a musical theatre writing team, so they work together all the time. It's incredible how seamlessly they transition the room's leadership back and forth between each other. There wasn't a single moment when one stepped on the other's toes, yet they often jumped in without hesitation when the other was teaching a song or staging a scene or leading a game.

Because Junie B. Jones was a big show to put up in two weeks, we weren't able to spend a lot of time reflecting or even really exploring the kids' creative potential. Spooky Town, on the other hand, is a much less ambitious project, so I feel like I'm getting to know this age group (4th-6th grade) in a whole new way. We spent thirty minutes today allowing the kids to cross the room one by one, using their bodies and faces to express the "spookiness" of the town, and reflected on what was successful about each person's choices. It's funny to hear this group reflect, since I don't think they're used to reading into their observations. They're very good at noticing things like "so-and-so's foot moved a few seconds before so-and-so" but their instinct is never to discuss what about that particular observation was noteworthy. It's something I never had the opportunity to observe during Junie, and I find it fascinating. They're even good at coming up with similes - passing energy around the circle was like popping popcorn or the way brain cells communicate with the rest of our body - but unless prompted, didn't offer any thoughts as to how that exercise could be useful to them in performance.

It's a much smaller group of kids (we only have 11) and they're all really wonderful and unique. I'm looking forward to getting to know them and seeing them work this week.

Dinner tonight was inspired by a beautiful bunch of dino kale I bought at the Seward Coop yesterday. My mom has always been an advocate of veggie-laden pasta sauces, and I'm trying to do more with kale than making kale chips (though I made those tonight as well), so I sauteed it and put it in marinara sauce along with some mushrooms, half an onion, and a couple cloves of garlic. It was really delicious over whole wheat pasta. 

To quote my friend Paige, "I just don't understand why anyone ever eats anything but whole grains and vegetables." With a dinner like tonight's, I can't see why you'd ever need to. 

I took my first yoga class after being gone for a week and was surprised how much I retained in some ways and, conversely, how much more difficult certain poses were. My strength and balance weren't too far from where they were a week ago, but my flexibility all but disappeared. Hopefully tonight's stretching loosened things up and I'll be back to normal in a couple of days. 

I'm three minutes away from my self-imposed bedtime, so I'll bring this post to a close. It's good to be back! 

another megabus post

I said a bittersweet goodbye to Evanston early this morning and now find myself sandwiched between cornfields, just a few more hours from Minneapolis. Tomorrow I'm back at CTC with a new group of 4th-6th graders in a week-long camp called "Spooky Town." I don't know any more than that, but I'm excited to jump into this one with no expectations and see where I end up.


I still can't offer an education post, since I've been away from CTC for a week, but I can give you the cupcakes I promised. After a delicious (though admittedly not photo-worthy - we'll just pretend ours looked like this photo of Ming's cupcake 19) adventure with blueberry cupcakes with maple brown butter frosting, we decided to get some more berries and try these red, white, and blueberry cupcakes in honor of Independence Day. The recipe is pretty poorly written (the ingredients list sometimes calls for different ingredients than the instructions do - go with baking powder and not baking soda!), but the results were incredible. If you like cupcakes as much as we do, I'd recommend making a double batch, because these went fast!

Red (velvet) and white (pepperment) cakes...

...and the blue frosting!

three grilled cheeses (grilled threese?)

Yes, this post is about exactly what the title says it's about. Being back in Evanston when classes aren't in session is a beautiful thing, since there's time to do absurd things with friends that we'd never have time to do otherwise. Need an example? Yesterday, a friend and I spent the day together and had three different kinds of grilled cheese sandwiches from the Food Network's 50 Grilled Cheeses, one each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Because with the Fourth of July coming up, what could be more American than a grilled cheese day?

We started with #48, Brie and Marmalade, which we dubbed "Briekfast." Instead of regular orange marmalade, we used ginger orange marmalade, which we decided was definitely an improvement. This one we ate sitting in my courtyard, early enough in the morning that it wasn't yet scorching hot. 

After an quick trip into Chicago to run some errands, we came back to Evanston to try #35, Pear-Camembert (we called it "Camempear"). I think in the future, I'd decrease the cheese to pear ratio on this sandwich, since we had some serious dripping issues, but it was still delicious, and it made the perfect lunchtime grilled cheese. We took this one to a park near the lake, and shared some of our bread crusts with a family of ducks.

After a nap (the heat and all that cheese got to us), we moved on to our dinner sandwich, #14, Avocado.  The lime juice in this one really balanced the harsh taste of the pepper jack, and it was the only sandwich we finished and immediately wanted more (we each ate two of these). It was much closer to a classic grilled cheese, and coupled with Harold and Maude, it made the perfect ending to a pretty perfect day. 

Needless to say, it's been a great trip in Evanston, and it's not over yet. There may be more food pictures to come, but in the meantime, happy Fourth! And happy birthday to the greatest dad around, whose birthday is today! 

a couple sharings and a half-birthday

(I had some internet trouble, so this post is a day late!)


Hello from the Megabus, somewhere in the middle of a whole lot of cornfields! I'm officially done with my third week at CTC and headed back to Chicago for a much needed week off with friends my own age.

Yesterday was Junie B. Jones' sharing day and final day of camp. It feels strange to be done with this camp and this group of kids. The other interns and I were surprised to discover how upset we were that it was over - it's been a difficult process for a number of reasons, but the kids were rarely one of them. In fact, I think our awareness of the difficulties made us hyper-aware of their needs, and brought us all closer together. It's amazing how much trust can develop in just two weeks, but I came out of this process feeling incredibly protective of and grateful for this group who, for the most part, gave this show their all every day, and took it upon themselves to build an ensemble. Though I occasionally worried that the rehearsal schedule and intensity was too much for this age group, these two weeks have just served as another reminder of how much young people can actually handle. 

Every week when there's a sharing, Debra reminds us to observe the kids and look for any changes in their behavior. I didn't notice much with The Lottery, I think in part because they were older and, as far as I could tell, everyone in the cast had at least one parent show up. But it was interesting to see how many of the Junie B. kids behaved differently when parents started to trickle into the TAT basement. One of my girls, who every other day was the image of a confident (even cocky) young woman, opened up to me for the first time five minutes before the second performance, when she realized her mother wasn't there yet. She started the conversation off by telling me that two of her friends came to surprise her, and when I invested in the first part of the conversation, she immediately turned to the subject of her mom. She was almost in tears asking me whether her mom would be able to get in the doors once they started the play (I assured her she would be). No amount of negativity in the rehearsal room these past two weeks ever made her visibly upset, but the second she realized her mom might not make it to her performance (even though she had already seen the first sharing), she completely lost her cool. Luckily her mom made it a few minutes into the opening number, and she gave a really focused, energetic performance. 

One of the other interns said something really beautiful to me the other day, that came to mind as we said goodbye to the kids. We were talking about the youngest age group (K-3rd grade), since she had worked with them her first week at camp. I asked her how she liked working with them, and she said they were her favorite, because (I'm paraphrasing) they taught her to be more accepting of adults that she met. They make so many mistakes every day, and when you're working with them, you just have to be willing to move past them and celebrate their successes. I think that's true of any age, and it's something that this group definitely reinforced for me. I can't pretend there weren't times when they almost drove me completely insane, but the golden moments made it worth the difficulty.

I was reminded by one of the Junie kids that, if my birthday was December 30, as they learned yesterday, today is my half-birthday! I like half-birthdays a lot (even though I almost always forget about mine) because to me, they're a day for celebrating yourself. Usually, no one else recognizes your half-birthday, but it's a significant enough milestone that it makes a great excuse for a morning yoga class and treating yourself to French toast and coffee at the Seward Cafe.

This was my second class in a row with the same teacher, and she's quickly becoming my favorite at this studio. Last class, there were only two students in the room, so she focused a lot on adjustments and helping us make the most out of each posture. Now she knows me and knows my habits, so in today's class of about twenty, she made sure to look out for my tendency to drop my head in low plank, etc. I feel like I'm really making progress on a lot of the more complicated poses, and I can definitely feel myself getting a lot stronger. We'll see what a week without yoga classes will do, though.

I probably won't post much, if at all, this week, but keep an eye out for pictures of cupcakes, because those are happening while I'm here.