Power Point Outage

Last night, I returned from a short weekend at Placencia. It had rained all of last week, and I needed to get out of PG for a little bit. The bus from Independence returned to PG at about 3:30. Elana had iguana and the best chicken I've ever tasted waiting for me, so I ate some. It took me a long time since there was so much food. I left her house at about 4:50 in order to go to the internet cafe and get some work done.

I was going to do a Power Point presentation on modern advertising today. I say modern, because the stuff in their (poorly edited) copyright 2005 textbook only had examples of text-only advertisements. Really? I think text-only ads comprise the barest, tiniest fraction of the amount of advertising teenagers view. How many text-only ads do you see in Seventeen? Online? Television? Hello?!

How can you expect today's kids to learn to think about modern advertising, which is heavily funded, heavily researched, and heavily persuasive, if you don't teach them using modern advertisements? How hard would it have been to obtain a real magazine ad or two for the textbook?

Anyway, the internet cafes were closed. That was the beginning of my problems. I walked way out to Christina Coc's in order to use her computer for my presentation. I wrote a wicked Power Point at Christina's place. I had Ralph Lauren perfume ads. I had examples of Photoshopped images from Redbook (before and after). I had Subaru. I had Blackberry. I was going to help these kids take them all down. Hoo-rah! I had already arranged for all the technology I was going to need. I asked Ms. Kile for permission to use her laptop for one 40 minute session. I asked the principal, Mr. Chan, if I could use his projector and screen. I asked the computer lab teacher if I could use his extra speakers. I borrowed Eddie's Flash drive so I could transfer everything to Ms. Kile's computer. I was ready to rock.

Unfortunately, it was very late by the time I left Christina's. Like 9:30. I only had to walk a little way, but I dreaded starting the walk. Punta Gorda's citizens are very friendly and safe; unfortunately, people from out of town have started to take advantage of that sense of security. They come in and do things like kidnap cab drivers. Add this to the fact that I was a female walking at night...well, you know.

The first car that I heard on the road thankfully went right by me without even slowing down. I was relieved. Then I heard another one - and he slowed down. Expletives sparked through my brain. I tried to walk away from the road, but it was extremely muddy due to the fact that it had been raining for a week. Yay!

"I don't need a ride," I said.
"Do you need a ride?" he said.
"No. I'm fine."
"You look scared."
That's because it's late at night and some strange guy is offering me a ride..."I'm fine."
"You sure?"
"Yeah, um, you can leave me alone now."
"Okay..."

Yeah, that's exactly what I said. He drove off. Maybe I was a little harsh. He probably meant well. But honestly, I have yet to see any non-tourist get offered a ride. I don't understand why people keep offering me rides. I'd have to be a flaming idiot. It's not like stories about kidnapped, murdered tourists aren't widely known. They are. If a person's well-meaning, why would they even ask? So that leads me to believe that the only people who ask are not well-meaning.

Okay, so there was that. Then Ms. Kile didn't show up today. At all. I ended up using the sterile textbook examples. Teaching fail.

Despite incidents like these, Belize and teaching are still a lot of fun. Sometimes I don't feel like getting up and going to TCC in the morning. But as soon as I get there, I settle in and start enjoying myself. I wonder how I'll feel about Ordean Middle School in Duluth?