pierogis, people watching, and pancakes

It's been awhile since I last posted. I won't make any excuses, but I will apologize in advance for the length of this post. I have a lot of ground to cover!

This past week I was in a 4th-6th grade camp called Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. We worked off a script based on the Judy Blume book by the same title. For those of you unfamiliar with the book, like I was before starting this camp, the story is about a fourth grader named Peter and his struggles with his three year old brother, Fudge. I think Fudge is a nickname, but I never managed to figure out what the kid's real name was. Fudge is, to put it lightly, a nightmare. He bangs incessantly on pots and pans, he eats Peter's pet turtle, he jumps off a jungle gym and knocks out his front teeth, and commits any number of other behavioral atrocities you could think of. 

I'm not sure if it was just the group of kids or if it was the influence of Fudge (all the kids thought he was hilarious and wanted to play him in every scene), but this was one of the most difficult groups I've worked with so far. It was nearly impossible to get them to stay focused, which generally doesn't bother me, but their unfocused energy wasn't creative so much as it was just distracted. There were a few moments when we were able to harness that energy and get the kids to put together something creative and, ultimately, really funny, but those moments were rare. Needless to say, it was a pretty tough week. 

The teaching artist for this camp, Matt, has only taught K-3 and preschool all summer, which is what he teaches during the school year. Seeing him adapt his teaching for a 4-6 camp was really fascinating. Matt has a great sense of humor and is a very gentle teacher, which helped me to keep a level head throughout the week. He is also the first teacher I've ever seen use storytelling so effectively as a classroom management technique. After lunch, when the kids were the most distracted, he had them sit down in a circle and vote whether they wanted to hear a myth, a legend, or a fairytale. He'd then explain what the genre they chose meant (for example, a legend contains elements of truth, so he'd ask the students to listen for parts of the story they thought were true) and then he'd start the story. He always told in a very quiet, gentle voice, so if they wanted to hear it, they needed to remain completely quiet and still. Matt is an incredible storyteller, and his sense of humor really comes through in his tellings, so after the first story, the kids demanded another story every day. After his tellings, we'd discuss the themes of the story and how they might connect to Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Once we had a really engaging discussion about gender after his telling of the Italian folktale "The Robber with a Witch's Head." He never underestimated their ability to discuss the themes of a story, which was refreshing, since I think Judy Blume's book does underestimate the comprehension ability of a fourth grader. I think it was refreshing for the kids to have to think and process, rather than just absorb the silliness of Fudge's antics.

As I've said before, I signed up to volunteer at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. The festival began last Thursday and ends today. I've finished my twelve volunteer shifts and have seen four shows (I may try to see another tonight, but we'll see). The festival's atmosphere is really exciting. Five of the venues are within a minute or two's walking distance of each other, so in the thirty minutes between shows, there are hundreds of people on the street outside each of the venues, all wearing their Fringe admission buttons and talking about theatre. Honestly, I haven't liked anything I've seen so far at the Fringe, and since the shows are selected by lottery, I sort of doubt I'd have really loved anything I didn't see. Some of the pieces seem like solid first drafts, but I wonder whether they'll be workshopped further - everyone seems really confident about their work as it stands. Despite the somewhat sub-par quality of theatre at the Fringe and the occasionally stressful volunteering environment, Fringe has been a pretty good experience. If nothing else, it's kept my weekends busy and allowed me to meet some interesting people. 

Amazingly, between my crazy week at CTC and volunteering at the Fringe, I've found some free time to have more exciting Minneapolis adventures. Last weekend, on her last day in town, Ilana and I made our way to the Seward Cafe for the customary weekend buckwheat pancakes, and then wandered over the the Northern Clay Center, a really beautiful ceramics and pottery gallery in Seward. I know next to nothing about ceramics or pottery, so I'll just leave you with a few photos of pieces I liked.

My friend Lizzy and I had planned on seeing Tallest Man on Earth at First Avenue last Monday, but when we tried to buy tickets, the show was sold out. Because my goal this summer was to live everything as fully as possible, we decided to take a chance and walked up and down the line to get into the venue, sketchily asking people if they had any extra tickets. And someone did! We managed to get in and see a really beautiful concert. I think Tallest Man on Earth is much more suited to an outdoor venue in the middle of the afternoon, but I'm so glad we went, and I haven't been able to stop listening to him since the concert.

Outside First Avenue, as we tried to score tickets, we met this homeless man, who asked us to sign his "birthday card." He was wearing a white jacket and a white hat, both of which were covered in people's signatures. I chose to sign the piece of cardboard he had propped up against his legs. I ran into him again today outside the Seward Cafe, and in addition to his signed jacket, hat, and piece of cardboard he had at First Avenue, he had a birthday bike for people to sign in metallic marker. I'm not sure if his birthday is actually coming up, but he's hands down the most interesting person I've met here. I wish I had had more of an opportunity to ask him about himself, but I'm content to leave it up to my imagination.

Happy birthday to this guy!

This weekend, I made my way over the Stone Arch Bridge to the Twin Cities Polish Festival on Main Street. If you know me, you know I'm really proud of my Polish heritage (it's not entirely because of the food, but that plays a huge part). The Polish Festival was a beautiful event, complete with vendors of  beautiful handmade Polish Christmas ornaments, Polish pottery, painted wooden eggs, and, of course, plenty of pierogi, potato pancakes, and kielbasa. I waited in line for twenty minutes to get pierogis at "U Babci" ("grandmother" in Polish), and they were worth every minute of the wait. I think they were the best pierogis I've ever had (not counting my family's recipe - nothing could beat that). There was a tent which housed a few different polka bands, my favorite of which, purely for their hilarious band name, was called Doctor Kielbasa. Seeing dozens of old Polish couples polkaing made me tear up a little, and I wish I had had the guts to ask one of them to teach me to polka. 

The Festival also includes a film festival at the St. Anthony Main Theatre, where I saw a really interesting film called "Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers," about an incredibly inspiring woman who smuggled thousands of children out of the Warsaw ghetto and saved their lives. The trailer for the film is below.

This morning was my last trip to the Seward Cafe. It's crazy to think that I only have a week left here. I won't reflect on the entire summer yet, but I can reflect on how important the Seward Cafe has been to my experience. It's been really comforting to have a place where people know me well enough to joke about making blackberry pancake scented perfume. The Seward Cafe may also be the best place in the world for people watching. Today, I saw a hipster in a sunflower t-shirt unknowingly sitting next to a napkin dispenser with a sunflower sticker on it advertising "Earth Day 25 - Let's Never Call it a Day." While I was appreciating the image of his shirt next to that napkin dispenser, he used the phrase "to witness the human spirit" casually in conversation. That's not something you'd witness anywhere but the Seward Cafe.

And, of course, my summer would not have been the same without those blackberry buckwheat pancakes. Because I've never posted a photo of them, here they are - my last two Seward Cafe pancakes.