Culture Shock: We Aren't In Kansas Anymore! Oh Wait, Yes We Are!

OH MY GOD WAIT! WE ARE IN KANSAS!

Wow. Writing this blog post is synonymous with redefining the definition of tired, but I will persevere. Please forgive my inarticulate-ness, but this post is more of a factual documentation than anything as my tank is on empty and I can’t muster anything but the facts implanted in my brain. This is my version of saying tonight I will spare you my endless narrative and cut straight to the point… I think.

So you could call this the "abridged" version

Hahaha!

(Don't judge me and my bridge jokes it is late at night.)

I don’t even know where to start. After my amazing host family drove the 9 hours to come pick me up, we drove on Denver/Kansas open empty flat roads for a few hours. I saw more 16 wheel trucks during that 4 ½ hour drive than I have in the entire rest of my life combined. The craziest part, there were 6 or 7 that had jack-knifed completely off the road!! If that had happened in Rhode Island or Vermont there would be a traffic jam backed up for miles. It was just normal here! I was like “OH MY GOD THAT TRUCK IS COMPLETELY NOT ON THE ROAD!!” Caitlyn was like, “Oh hey look another one…” Like it was no big deal.

Just another normal day in Kansas.

Quinter also has some of the best billboards I’ve ever seen. I will try to get better pictures and more variety.

They also have a scary restaurant chain called “Taco John’s.” I passed 6  on the way here.

'Nuf said

I felt very American. We ate lunch at two separate McDonalds restaurants for lunch, one for the food and then another one for smoothies. We also went grocery shopping at Wal-Mart where we bought meat and potatoes, and they very nicely bought me a ton of vegetarian stuff and a big jug of Rice Milk.

I paid super close attention to the TV they watched, (Elementary, Ellen, AFV, Castle, Hostages, 2 Broke Girls, The Mentalist, among others.) Since I want to work in TV and the middle of America really controls the ratings this is a rare opportunity to be areal live Nielsen box. This morning Collin was watching 60 minutes and last night we watched the Kansas news, and I learned people from Kansas are called “Kansas.” Today we watched Gilligan’s Island and black and white cowboys and Indians television show, with shootouts and a saloon and everything.

I met Collin, which was very exciting. He’s very real and very sweet. He has a girlfriend named Tamika and he bought her a present but he’s too nervous to give it to her and keeps making up excuses about why he hasn’t given it to her yet. He plans to give it to her tomorrow at the basketball game, but we’ll see.

He's Real :0

I have a room all to myself, which is really great, and it’s decorated with all sorts of antique dolls and pictures of baby Collin and Caitlyn. When it gets dark here it gets really dark. I plugged in my laptop and kept the screen on and facing me at full brightness all night. It was still pretty dark.

This is what Kansas dark looks like. Please note it is darker than Rhode Island dark. 

They have amazing pets. They have a kitty, named Pinky (I think.) and some other kitties. They have two small dogs Bella and Shadow. Bella is the sweetest thing ever, and Shadow, a Chihuahua, likes to sleep under blankets and drags himself around the carpeted floor with just his front legs. He likes to be rubbed on his belly and his tongue is very long and pink. He is happy go lucky and doesn’t bark ever, contrary to what I believed rat dogs to be like. He is not like a rat though, he is so cute I could die just thinking about it. 

Shadow

Bella

They also have horses. I haven't seen those yet. This morning Collin asked if I wanted to see the other dogs, I thought he meant some Yorkies or something similar to Bella and Shadow. I walk outside and out of a 6 foot chain link fence Collin releases two giant hunting dogs that jumped up on me and scared me half to death. My life flashed before my eyes. I felt like I had just jumped into shark infested waters covered in blood. I made up an excuse as quickly as possible to go back to barricade myself inside the house, however, it was an experience.

You can just make out the scary hunting dog. Blocking the only exit to freedom and safety.

This morning I woke up really gung-ho ready to go. It was still dark, but I didn’t care, unlike in Vermont where it still being dark every morning sets off a series of red flags that encourage me to drop out of high school and go back to sleep.

Kansas sunrise

I got dressed and ready to get on the bus to go to school. So Caitlyn was like, “Ok let’s go.” We walked into her driveway, and I watched in absolute shock as she got in the drivers seat of a car and motioned for me to get in it with her. I think in the back of my mind I knew already that Caitlyn could drive. But it hadn’t sunk in. Every ounce of paranoid Jewess in me was punching me in the stomach telling me this was a bad idea. But my rational brain reminded me that she knows how to drive and has probably been driving much longer than I have.  So Caitlyn drove me to school and did a fantastic job, I wasn’t even praying for my life on the way home. 

Proof

I had an excellent time at my first day of school. Driving up, it looked like the quinter-ssential (haha) public school, and the inside matched. There were rows of lockers in the hallways, Quinter Bulldogs posters everywhere, it was like a scene out of a movie. I stopped in the library with Caitlyn where I met Sandii and I chose my classes. I looked at the options and ended up choosing:

-US History 1^st period

-Spanish 1 2^nd period

-English 9 3^rd period

-Speech 4^th period

-Horticulture 5^th period

-Physical Science 6^th period

-Art 7^th period

-Vocal 8^th period

And SSR last (Sustained Silent Reading)

This is what I had to chose from

US History was very interesting. The teacher was in a fantastic green outfit, her name was Mrs. Getz. We filled out a sheet with the help of a textbook, very standard for most schools, but something I haven’t actually done since I began at Putney.  I actually learned some stuff about US History, so that was exciting. When I took a textbook off the shelf and began filling out the sheet the teacher looked genuinely confused. “Oh honey, you don’t have to do this!” She said. That caught me off guard. I know she meant this with the best of intentions but my first thought was, “I am not about to spend the next two weeks twiddling my thumbs and watching other people get to do stuff.” “Hey, I’m here 100% Ready for anything. Can I borrow a pencil?” Was my response to this. She was pleasantly surprised, which was good. I was worried at first that she would see it as a burden that she had an extra student with questions and things of that nature who wasn’t even getting graded or sticking around for more than a few weeks. Luckily this was not the case, all the teachers were content at the very least with my desire to participate actively with the in-class work.

English classroom with classic chairs attached to the desks.

Mrs. Getz had some questions written on the board and before class began I promptly Googled the answers to all of them (they were broad topics such as “What is Ptolemy best known for? Describe some key points about the age of Jefferson? Etc.)

I overheard two students discussing their summer jobs and how much money they could make. I was tuning in and out at first. At the start of class Mrs. Getz asked, “Has anyone seen Rick today? Doesn’t one of you usually drive in with him?” No one had seen Rick. Rick showed up about 15 minutes into class, and I didn’t pay attention to why he was late. He looked pretty out of it, and Mrs. Getz inquired, “You tired Rick?” “Yah I worked until pretty late.” They talked back and forth and I learned he works the graveyard shift at Pizza Hut. Throughout the day I discovered that about 75% of the kids I encountered today have jobs, Freshmen included. I don’t know if it’s because I go to a boarding school and everyone has work jobs, or if it’s because I’ve always been in private schools, or what, but this surprised me.

My next period was Spanish 1. The Spanish 1 teacher teaches two classes at once, one class happening at Quinter High school and another class happening at a school in Kansas about 25 miles away. She teaches these classes from the comfort of her home or at her third job, via Skype. I thought this was the coolest thing ever.

你好! Hello! Hola!

The class happens with two flat screen TV’s mounted on the walls, one for us to see the other class, and one for us to see the teacher. Fortunately for me, the teacher was actually present at Quinter live and in the flesh today, although that didn’t have much impact on the class. I don’t know if it’s because it’s their first day back from break or there were technical glitches or if she had a personal matter but literally nothing happened in that class at all. We spoke more Chinese during Spanish 1 than we did Spanish. The teacher was very friendly and the girls in the class (all Sophomores) had lots of questions for me, which I always love.

When it became evident we wouldn’t be speaking any Spanish I volunteered to start teaching some Chinese and although the teacher was hesitant she was outspoken by the class who all enthusiastically jumped on my offer. I taught them how to introduce themselves, and how to respond to the introduction. (Rebecca, Kristina, you better be reading my blog, and you better know what this Pinyin means.) I tried to get the characters into my computer to post with the Pinyin but failed, they just show up as little blank squares.

Q: Ni hao ma?

A: Wo hen hao xie xie, ne na?

Q: Hello, how are you?

A: I am very well thanks, and you?

To Cai who taught me that and so much more, don’t worry I’m studying the vocabulary! Starting tomorrow I have a specific time at school set aside for Chinese Units 1, 2, & 3, focusing only on the Chinese and nothing else. Since I can only learn so much Spanish in two weeks, and the class is so far ahead of me, I plan to switch out of Spanish 1 into either a math class or just in the library working on my Chinese.

I had fun socializing with everyone in class and telling them about Putney. Their jaws dropped when I told them how art is considered an academic course and when I talked about evening arts.

Interesting fact, no one here actually knew what a boarding school was. Finally someone just came out and said, “No one knows what you’re talking about. What’s a boarding school?” I actually even got a few people asking me if it meant Putney was a special needs school. So I’m spreading the word about what a boarding school is. I’ve met a few students who have been on network trips already including my host Caitlyn who went to the Philadelphia school. I met a girl who went to the Rochester school and someone else who went on a network trip but left before I could ask them where.

Lunch Room

Next came English 9, which Caitlyn was in with me. Immediately I was rushed by a group of Freshmen girls, which was refreshing having just come from a group of all Sophomores. They knew who I was already because Caitlyn had told them a network student was coming. When everyone in the hall asked me what class I had next I said “English 9, then speech.” I got the same response from everyone. “You have TWO HOURS with Tebo! You’re about to have like the best two hours ever.” I thought they were saying I had two hours with “T-Bone.” I thought some body builder tractor pulling steroid taking monster was about to come teach me English.

I was very relieved when I walked into the English classroom to find a skinny woman of average height with remarkable studded boots and a glorious tan. Lucky her, she just returned from Cancun. Ms. SueAnn Tebo is bursting with energy and excitement. She told me we were starting a unit on Romeo and Juliet that day, which was very exciting because I studied Romeo and Juliet last year for almost two months. We acted out the entire thing scene by scene as a class. You would think after writing an eight page paper on the book, acting out the entire thing, watching the movie, answering all the reading questions, having all those in class discussions, and memorizing and presenting a passage dressed in a old tyme red dress with a corset and a 2 foot tall white beehive wig, I would know the book backwards and forwards. This was not the case (*cough cough* thanks middle school.) Although the Romeo and Juliet unit is, to be entirely clear, the 2^nd most fun unit you will do in 8^th grade at Gordon directly behind the screenwriting unit.

Because we aren’t starting with just the book, we’re doing background research on the social class of the Renaissance, the costumes of the theater then, Shakespeare’s early life, Christopher Marlowe, and many other interesting and relevant topics. I was partnered with Taylor, a very friendly blonde girl with impressive eye makeup and a camo sweatshirt. We are researching the topics of Christopher Marlowe and the social class of the renaissance together and will present our findings to the class as a group. We were limited to resources from the Kansas State Library database, but luckily this wasn’t a problem as the Kansas State Library has Encyclopaedia Britannica, a resource that I didn’t have access to at school until I entered Putney and has been my go-to source ever since.

Everyone has camo

As I mentioned Taylor has a striking camo sweatshirt and glamorous eye makeup. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people wearing camo in one place, nor this many girls in eye makeup. At Putney since the majority of the student body lives together, we have nothing we can hide. Our friends know what we look like when we first wake up in the morning, they know what we look like when we’re up until 3:00 AM re-writing research papers, and they know what we look like when we’re decked to the 9’s for a college interview or the snowball dance. Also, considering our school day usually includes multiple encounters with paints, charcoals, pottery wheels, cows, horses, chickens, goats, alpacas and their excrement, dishes, food preparation, etc. Make-up just isn’t practical. Now that I am in a place where make-up is completely practical I am beginning to realize how commonplace it is in the country, and this incited a bit of culture shock for me.

Let’s move on to speech. I had Tebo once again. Speech had more kids in it than any of my other classes did. I am still not entirely clear on what it is, it goes by the name “Speech” and “Forensics” (not the finger print, blood stain, type forensics.) Essentially it appears to be a squad of students who compete statewide in a series of tournaments involving oration, monologues, duologues, and a variety of acting and presentation skills. It seems like an incredibly useful class, however, not only do I already have a pretty firm grasp of public speaking, but this is a squad that trains to compete in tournaments. The entire class today was an hour long impassioned speech about the importance of the tournaments, minimum amount of tournaments you have to participate in, tournament rules and regulations and scoring etc. Quinter has taken state champions more times than I can count on my right hand. I don’t want to stand in the way of their training time, as I am not competing in these tournaments. I will switch out either into a math class where I can work on Putney algebra or a language class where I can work on Chinese.

Mr. Churchwell in the greenhouse

Next I had horticulture with another teacher everyone respects and commends, Mr. Churchwell. He is the head of Quinter High School’s FFA chapter (it’s an agricultural thing.) He also teaches horticulture. In this class we went to the green house and watered the plants and looked at the aphids that had killed about but 4 of the 8 plants they had in the greenhouse. We then returned to the classroom and Googled ways to kill garden pests without chemicals on our phones and iPads. I actually learned if you want to get rid of pests you can:

-Plant garlic or spearmint around your infested plants as the spearmint and garlic plant repels aphids.

-Spray the leaves with mildly soapy water as the water is poisonous to the bugs.

-If it’s slugs and snails that are affecting your plants you can fill a shallow bowl, skillet, or “slug motel” with cheap beer or another fermented liquid. Slugs and snails are extremely attracted to fermented things. They crawl in to drink it, they drown, and they die. Or if it’s a slug motel, they crawl in and become trapped and you either release or let them sit until they die.

Then we had covered all the material so we played games on our phones until the bell.

By the way for the first time in my life I am at a school with an actual PA system and an actual bell. The bell rings ten minutes before the end of each class, the end of each class and at the start of each class. It blows my mind to be in a place with a real PA system.

After horticulture was lunch. If talking about killing bugs wasn’t already appetizing enough, they were serving corn dogs for lunch.

They have real lunch ladies with real hairnets :0

Until today I didn’t know what a corn dog was.

Evil 

I texted this question to my friend Phil and my mother, who I was updating constantly via group text all day. They said it was a hot dog covered in batter and deep-fried. “How bad could it be?” I thought. There was nothing that could have prepared me for the corn dog. Nothing. It was on a stick. It seemed normal. I took one bite… The grease seeped into my mouth drowning my taste buds, the hot dog was limp and flavorless and rubbery, and the batter was like crispy cardboard. It took all my willpower and strength to digest the one bite I so ignorantly allowed to enter my mouth (I wasn’t going to start off my first lunch by spitting out my food.) Everyone at the table was baffled I had never heard of a corn dog. (They call soda “pop” here by the way and I think that’s just hysterical.) A really nice girl who I’m pretty sure is named Bobbie asked if I wanted to sit with her (she is in my English 9.) I said yes, but by the time I had my food her side of the table was already filled up, so I sat with Caitlyn. Caitlyn may be the single nicest person on the planet, right on the same tier as Gen.

They have real trays

They even have little individual milk cartons!!

I ate a bite of a corndog and two pieces of canned peaches, 8 tater tots with some ketchup from a big jug, which were delicious, plus 6 baby tomatoes.  If they didn’t have a salad bar I think I would starve. I have the last lunch period of the day. When word spread around the table that I had never seen a corn dog and wasn’t enthralled with my first encounter, immediately a tall guy with sideburns appeared offering to eat my corn dog. Even if I still wanted it I would have given it to him because of how he came out of nowhere and how giant he was. However, I learned he is a gentle giant. He’s in my vocal class and is very friendly and likes corndogs.

The only thing standing between me and in-school starvation.

To avoid another corndog mishap, I will bring something from my vast vegetarian stash I acquired at Hudson News at the airport on my way here.

Even though my host family is super friendly and bought me all kind of awesome food, I still figured it was good to have a veggie Armageddon stash readily available. 

Vegetarian Armageddon Stash

Right foreground you will see my special raspberry Godiva bar I'm saving for a special Kansas occasion.

DON'T TOUCH IT. 

After lunch I had super fun physical science class, which is tied with art as my favorite class of the day. The teacher came into my horticulture class asking for salt water to grow sea monkeys  earlier and he was so tall I just automatically assumed he must be in charge. He is not the principal, however, he is a science teacher. He is very, very, very, very, very, very, tall. His class was great. Oh, and did I mention yet, he’s very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, tall.

Last semester they did physics, this semester they’re starting a unit on liquids, gases, and solids. I know a lot about those, we studied them in 8^th grade. I was so ready. I also learned new stuff too, like the definition of a pure substance, and that water is made up of two different elements, and that everything in the entire world is made up of the elements on the periodic tables. And that green fireworks have copper in them. It was my first experience with pencil and paper note taking since middle school, and I am just as bad at it now as I was then. I have never been more grateful that Putney allows you to choose between taking notes on your laptop or in a notebook.

There was a giant flat screen TV in the science classroom that told us what music was playing. Another thing about Quinter is in just about every academic class I attended the radio was on.  I loved it. It was always country accept in physical science it was classic rock. I knew all the songs in the physical science class. Mr. Nicholson, I officially approve of your taste in music. It still shocks me how commonplace country music is here. I wasn’t sure whether or not that would be the case because it’s the middle of America so I figured it was a 50/50 shot. Country is so popular here that someone on the speech team wrote an entire speech about how Taylor Swift has been more successful than Miley Cyrus because Taylor Swift hasn’t dressed like a slut for the cameras. I don’t actually know anyone in Vermont or Rhode Island who listen to Miley Cyrus anymore, accept Ha likes the song Wrecking Ball. Which I did not even know was by Miley Cyrus until I got here. I just remember Miley Cyrus putting out that song “Party In The USA” that was so bad it was good. That was in 5^th grade. We listened to it at the dance and at parties and in class and then the song’s popularity faded and I assumed Miley Cyrus faded with it. I was wrong. Country is alive and well here on the radio, and in the Quinter classrooms.

Next I had art with a teacher named Ms. Music, which was very ironic. She was very no-nonsense. The student art at Quinter is unbelievable, it’s so great. In the art room there is art everywhere, including on the ceiling.

Ms. Music said basically the only requirement for art class is that you’re working the entire time. The atmosphere was focused, but relaxed. She said I could bring my knitting in if I wanted to work on that, but I opted into learning the foundations of acrylic painting. I am painting a blood orange. It was in art class that it was called to my attention no one knew what I was talking about when I said Putney is a boarding school. They offer everything from pottery wheel, to basic drawing and painting, to sculpture, collage, jewelry making, and everything in between.

The Vocal Class

After art I had vocal, which is basically a chorus. They were discussing their upcoming competition. There are more competitive things going on at Quinter than I’ve had going on in the past three school years. It’s really interesting to see. Most of vocal was spent discussing the competition and choosing songs and groups and soloists for it. Speaking of competition, I will attend my first Quinter b-ball game tomorrow, it’s a home game, I’m friends with a couple of the cheerleaders and definitely some of the players (if it’s a girls game.) I am very excited.

But I digress… While some kids sifted through sheet music I hung out with some friendly kids who wanted to touch my “death ring.” I was sad I didn’t get to sing anything, but there’s always tomorrow.

The people I sat with at vocal

My "Death Ring"

It was during vocal that it came to my attention that, yes, I was hearing correctly, a lot of the Quinter kids (there is not a single person of color at Quinter High School) call each other “niggers.” (i.e. “What’s up my nigger?!”)This blew my mind. I expected they’re to be some homophobic slurs or “that’s so gay” thrown around, but it never occurred to me in a million years this would be the case. I thought earlier in the day that I was hearing them wrong. But I felt comfortable enough with the group at vocal to ask if that’s what they were saying. My mind is still completely blown away. If there is anything that gave me culture shock this is it—or at least this comes in a close second to the corn dog.

After vocal I went to SSR (Sustained Silent Reading) Gordon kids who may be reading this, it’s 5^th grade excel. That’s what it is. SSR is every other day, and the days in between is 8^th grade excel (Putney kids, every other day is basically conference block.) The conference block/8^th grade excel is called Seminar. You work on your homework, as far as I know. I am in Ms. Polifka’s SSR. I know I’m not spelling her name right, but I’m trying. She is very fun. She was very friendly, asked me a lot of questions, which we all know is my favorite thing, and she brought us M&Ms. Karma and Katie were in my SSR, and they showed me their “creepy dance” they were working on for the snowball dance at 

Quinter.

Lovely Katie/Karma dancing :D

The M&M's were Christmas Colors :)

Then the day was over, just like that, and we headed home. I was so tired that I just nodded. My friend Gen, who of course is too nice to take compliments and in response to my post had only this to say “You were overly kind to me.” Missed her flight back to Putney. So I stayed awake long enough to talk to her, and then she went to sleep as her flight is leaving at 3:00AM, and I conked out on the couch.

Then I woke up and ate some delicious fish, and then I said goodnight and came to my room to write a quick blog post. I began writing this post a out two hours ago. I planned on it taking 20 minutes, but what can I say, I like to be thorough.

Here are some miscellaneous pictures.

Super delicious home-made chocolate Kansas peanut clusters

The Kansas license plate 

A caribou Collin shot and had stuffed

The computers are the kind with giant backs. 

Their business is at their house so they have this sign, I think it's really cool :)

Jello Cups are a real thing, I didn't know that until I went to the Colby, Kansas Walmart

My nail stickers are epic

Real life flatness in the flesh

Thanks for reading! Three hours of writing later and I'm going to go to sleep :P 

Good night!!!!!!