Brown Elephant 2006

So tonight was our annual Brown Elephant party. For those of you that are new, in early December we have a Brown Elephant gift exchange.

My mama started this tradition one Christmas because we didn't have a lot of money for real presents, so mama went around the house wrapping what she could find; cans of tuna, panty, hospital bedpan. That's when we realized that the gifts themselves were irrelevant, the fun of Christmas is opening the packages.

Then one year, S imposed rules on our joke gifts, White Elephant rules, complete with numbers from a hat and swapping gifts and all that.

So the 2006 edition was excellent.

First, attendance: H and T, M, C and M, E and E, K and R. And me.

Next the food: Arrozcaldo, secret chicken wings, turkey/pork/beef/bacon meatloaf, cold noodles, cheese fondue (jack, cheddar, emmenthaler) with bread cubes, potatoes, and broccoli). Cheese plate, huge creamy cream puffs, spinach mushroom pastries, apple crisp.

To drink: Brown Elephant Punch (pomegranate cider with soda and rum on the rocks); frozen peach vodka, some kind of tequila in the cell phone flask.

The gifts: a tiny Christmas tree, incredible hulk fists, White Chicks DVD, Girls Gone Wild DVD, Brokeback Mountain DVD, Cowsins Gone Wild DVD (from K and R's wedding). A Japanese sake ceremony set in a box. A framed chart plotting the data of a couple's fertilization efforts. A cute teddy bear. I tried to trade for the cute teddy bear, but at the last second I was thwarted, and I ended up with Brokeback Mountain. Also, White Chicks managed to remain in my house after the party; I will keep them both.

We played Catchphrase. Overheard: fire crotch! Penis... Penal colony! Cows... The opposite of... If you get too drunk you ruin your... Wedding! The blank blank of the blankety blank!

H and T tried to rope me into watching Brokeback Mountain, but it didn't work. SNL was on, so I watched that. I'm thinking about buying another DVD player for upstairs. We'll see. They're so cheap now.

I have to go in to work tomorrow for Open House. That's when some sixth graders show up and ask what languages we offer, I tell them Spanish, French, Japanese, German. Then their parents butt in, asking if we teach Latin. I teach modern Latin, sweetheart, it's called Spanish and French.

It's either that, or they ask if we teach Chinese. Look, many students pass their language classes, many even get As. Far fewer, what, one in a thousand? go on and actually learn to speak, read, and write that language. The vast majority of these kids don't learn it because of their high school language class; they learn it because they go and spend time in the target language environment... they learn it in the wild.

And I'll guarantee you one thing; people who learn language are the students who WANT to learn it, NOT the ones who are taking it because it's useful or because they hear the buzz about all the economic benefit. People learn language because they enjoy it; their enjoyment activates their language learning instinct, and once your instinct kicks in, it's hard NOT to learn it.

Amerian second language classrooms do not exist to teach kids target language, anyway, so it doesn't matter if the target language is widely spoken or not. Second language study in America is geared towards grammatical concepts in the first language. They exclaim, "I learned more about English in Spanish class than I do in English class!" Congratulations, genius, that's why we do it. If we were serious about teaching them language, we wouldn't do it in a 5 hour a week classroom.

Shudder. Not looking forward to Open House.

Welcome to the Family, K!

I just got back from Cowsin R and K's wedding.

The Mass was fine, and the presder was Father MR, who has got to be everybody's favorite priest. He is gracious, well spoken, down-to-earth; just the best.

The reception? Fun! I think there was a concerted effort to have a classy, grown up reception with salmon and prime rib. Some of the stuff you might expect to see at a filipino wedding was not present; no veil and chord, no filipino food, no money dance.... and then there was the rumor that the Electric Slide was on the "do not play" list.

Ha ha, well, in an act of Non Violent Direct Action, the cousins started doing the Electric Slide to "Lady Marmelade," and they got the entire dance floor doing it. I have to tell you, my friends, that forbidden, defiant Electric Slide looked bu-BAD, y'all. There were hands in the air, there was booty shaking.

Later, when the bride wasn't looking, the DJ played the actual Electric Slide song. This time, it looked like the tired old line dance it always is. Funny!

They had fresh apples in the centerpieces; they were delicious, although it wasn't clear that people were supposed to eat them.

It was so good to see all those California cowsins!

And, speaking of California cowsins, Cousin F on the other side of my family just got engaged. Best wishes!

Lazy; might be a problem.

Yesterday: went to Auntie E Uncle T's place for a wedding party; the actual wedding was last month in the Bay Area. It was fun, we ate a lot, enjoyed the big house (star trek kitchen, deck to die for, tiki pool room). Played mahjong.

Here's some of the food: cheesey dip, artichoke dip, salmon dip, prawns and snowpeas in garlic sauce, strip steak, kalbi, lumpia shanghai, veggie pork lumpia, pansit canton, salad (in a stand alone salad bowl at the corner of the room) three whole rock fish.... leche flan with berries, ube cake, frozen mango slices layered with grahm crackers and marshmallow sauce.... A certain city council member was there; when my uncles make a show of giving their seats at the table to them, I got up as well to avoid him.

Uncle L and Auntie V were funny, reminiscing about Santo Tomas. Auntie V said, "When we were kids, we didn't have computer, we didn't have a videogame. We played Rubberband! We played Can!"

Can is played by throwing your tsinelas (flip flops) at a can; at some point, someone became "it" and got chased all over the place. "Rubberband" was some variation of marbles or petanque, only with rubber bands. The girls also had a hackey sack game. I told my sister that if she does ethnic or cultural studies, she could document these games for a paper. She was skeptical.

I got a drunk dial from Y, calling from a bar in Manhattan. He was disappointed by Montreal--too much English, but he was impressed by their clean chinatown. He's staying at M's in Manhattan, and encouraged me to go visit.

I feel lazy today. It might become a problem.