Alfredo told me a Mozambican joke today.
A man loses his wallet with 5,000 escudos (old Portuguese currency). He looks everywhere for it, to no avail. In the paper, he puts in an ad to offer a reward of 2,000 escudos for whomever returns the wallet.
A couple days later, another man shows up at his house with a wallet. The first man looks inside and sees that there's only 3,000 escudos inside. Clearly, he thinks, this other man must have taken his reward first.
So the first man says that the visitor must have already taken his reward and thanks him for returning the wallet. The visitor asks him how much money should have been in the wallet. When the owner of the wallet says "5,000 escudos", the visitor takes the wallet and says, "Well, there's only 3,000 in here so it must not be your wallet", and he leaves.
In my last half of 5 very tiring classes today, 10 minutes from the end of class, I was discussing why women's periods sometimes synchronize after living with each other for a while, and it seemed that everyone was understanding, if not very interested. Then, one student stood up and asked, "What is a hormone?" I looked at him with a blank stare for a few seconds, trying to ponder how frighteningly simple and yet complicated this question is and how much it spoke about the understanding of our current discussion. I breathed a deep sigh, looking up at the ceiling and pondering how I could explain it.
The students started to be noisy, wondering if I could answer the question. I told them the truth - I can answer it in English, but I didn't know how to explain it in Portuguese. To my utter and complete surprise (and delight) they begged me to explain in English - and after noting that they would not understand - begged me to explain or at least to try.
In that moment, I could see 40-some eager faces putting behind years of disappointment from other teachers who couldn't or wouldn't answer their simplest of questions. All of a sudden, I was not frustrated with the system, and was appreciative of the opportunity. I took a half-minute and hemmed and hawed while I worked out a good explanation. I essentially said that a hormone is a molecule (or chemical) produced by an organ that enters the blood and acts on another part of the body. I illustrated it with an example of an adolescent boy whose testicles start to produce testosterone (though I don't think they are produced there, rather in the brain - anyway, it's the concept that matters), causing the boy to start to notice girls. I played the adolescent boy. When I brought it back to the definition of a hormone (or as best I remember it), they had a pleasant look on their faces that confirmed that they understood. That was a neat moment.
Peace
John
