AND THE ANSWER IS ...

To walk a mile in my ESL students' moccasins (or Sketchers, or Manolo Blahniks), I decided I needed to experience their biggest bugbear - the ... (drumroll) TOEFL! >:-o

(Test of English as a Foreign Language) To get into most US universities, international students normally have to get a passing score on this test - the exact score depends on the quality of the university.

If you remember back to your ACTs or SATs or GREs, you probably recall a long, relentless paper test that drained every brain cell by the end. The TOEFL now has an online version, the iBT (internet-based TOEFL), which I was totally unfamiliar with since I haven't taught a TOEFL prep course since the late 1990s. So, to see what all the fuss was about (and round out my own resume for ESL jobs), I decided to actually go through it myself. (And, hopefully, come out without a humiliatingly low score as a native speaker!)

This Saturday, I sacrificially gave up many of my daylight hours to sit in front of a small screen with ill-fitting earphones on to fry my brain cells yet again - supposedly testing my own native language ability. Even for me, a native speaker who has taught English writing and reading and the tricks of test-taking, the reality proved taxing. In fact, in the "Speaking" section of the test, I frequently didn't finish answering the question before time was up, lowering my score, no doubt. It was hard both to look DOWN at my notes and UP at the same time to see how many seconds were left on the clock on the screen. (Never enough.) "And finally, I would agree with the speaker's opinion that ..." [TIME OVER] "But, but ... I'm not finished yet!" (The kid's got GREAT pronunciation but lousy planning!)

We should be getting our results in the mail in a few weeks. I choose to believe ASU would admit me!

LUCK OF THE DRAW

Well, after having the "schedule from hell" last term (August 25-October 17), including teaching a three-hour elective from 3-6 pm on FRIDAY, I have been treated mercifully this term. Friday (October 24), we finally received our new assignments through December break.

Instead of four courses to prepare for every week, I have only two: Reading/Writing and Listening/Speaking. (They like to bundle things in ESL institutes these days.) This is still a very full schedule - each course meets daily, so I have 10 separate classes to prepare for weekly, but at least it's only two groups of students to learn names for and my teaching is over by 1:15 pm at the latest. And one of the courses is exactly the same as I taught last term: Intermediate II Listening/Speaking. Same textbooks, same handouts (presumably).

This is to give me time to fill in all my required duties for my "Annual Lecturer Review" due by the end of December. We're not only teachers, we're brownies working on getting brownie points for various badges. So, for example, if I attend an AECP scheduled picnic or outing,I get a point. If I do a textbook or software review, I get a point, etc. This is in all of our "free time" outside of teaching our full load of classes. But at least I have more time now ... Good news.

SUNS UP



One of the perks of our ASU job is getting discounts and freebies. Recently, AECP teachers were offered free pre-season tickets to a couple of Phoenix Suns games. I signed up for the tickets last night against the Charlotte (NC) Bobcats.

Just to show you how out of the sports thing I really am (not that any of you are in any doubt!), I drove downtown to Chase Stadium for the 7:00 game and then wondered why the baseball stadium was all dark and there were no streams of people heading towards it! Then I noticed the D-Backs (Diamondbacks) signs everywhere, and it finally hit me: aha! The baseball stadium is for Phoenix's baseball team, the Diamondbacks. The Suns must be playing some other kind of sport. (Very smart, this Dr. Sundberg!)

Fortunately, the US Airways Center was on the other side of the parking structure. I just decided to follow the crowds, passing the Center's Bacardi Rum Bar, the Bud Light Paseo, the Casino Arizona Pavilion, a Starbucks and voila! There was the box office to the basketball stadium, where the basketball team was to be playing!

I've never attended a professional basketball game before, so I wasn't quite prepared for the A.D.D.-centered, entertainment-based spectacle that professional sports has become. (Don't remember Dodgers Stadium in LA having this commercialized and multisensory blitz.) Not only were there the usual corporate sponsor billboards all around the top, but there was a big-fat band of screen all around the stands on which - variously - ads, flaming sunspots, blinding flashes - were broadcast. Then, hovering far above the court like some wheel-within-a-wheel chariot, was the scoreboard - also with changing ads for Macdonalds, etc. Then during the breaks in playing (every two minutes, it seemed), came on-court commercial spots and spectacles, like the pizza give-away from Peter Piper Pizza.

The soundtrack was non-stop. Every 15 seconds, approximately, the thumping music and synthetic muzak cheer-leading beats changed to something equally LOUD and thumping. If I were an epileptic, I'd have been having fits! I don't remember college basketball games being this much of a sensory overload. In fact, I could barely recognize all the media blitz as a basketball game at all.

The Suns lineup was interesting: an aging Shaq (O'Neal), new afro-Brazilian star Leandro Barbosa, a newbie 6-foot-infinity Latino player named Robin Lopez with frizzy blond hair, and local celeb point-getter Amare Stoudemire, among other almost ant-like blips on the tiny court below. Balls were passed, baskets made somewhere down there in all the blitz.

The Suns beat the pants off the Bobcats 111-108 in double overtime. (I left before the end.) But this was just a pre-season game.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH

After hitting the ground running here in Tempe back on August 19, when I arrived from Oman, I have now completed two months and have finished one full term in the ESL program (the American English and Culture Program). They gave me the "schedule from hell", giving me little time to settle in back in the USA in between preparing and teaching all my courses. Tests have been given; grades are finally in, and this next week is the first breather I've gotten in two months!

Släktingar / SWEDISH RELATIVES

Some photos of this summer in southern Sweden with my grandmother's relatives (Carlson side of the family).



A bit of alcohol-induced levity during one of the incessant "kafé" times while visiting my grandmother Carlson's relatives this June. (I joked that in Skåne, they have five meals a day: breakfast, kafé, lunch, kafé, and dinner!) Lisbeth Serjun (right) said her mother Anna Andersson (left), Dad's cousin, normally a very proper Lutheran, enjoys an occasional kaféjök (coffee plus schnapps). I provided the excuse for a "cultural lesson".



Lisbeth and her cousin Berit Jönsson (left) in front of the parish church in Glimåkra, where my grandmother and her parents and siblings attended before she and Fränk boarded a ship for Amerika in 1908. All the Swedish family is buried in the kyrkogård, or churchyard, behind the church. Berit's mother was another daughter of Grandma's sister Alice Carlson. Anna Andersson was the other daughter.



Anna Anderson with her two granddaughters Frida (left) and Karen (right) the day we visited the former family farm, Gamlarp. The girls' mother, Inger Höglund, (taking the picture) is a published nursing/aged care specialist. The farm was inherited by Gullan Persson, the common-law daughter of Uncle Sven, last owner of the farm, and the household maid. (Long story. The Swedish Carlssons haven't much good to say about "that woman.")



Inger Höglund with Karen and Frida the day she drove us up to the Emigrants Museum in Växjö, next door in Småland. A special request of mine, given the purpose of my trip this past summer.

DENSITY



As one of the US's largest universities, Arizona State U. in Phoenix now tops 67,000 students (on four campuses), according to the school paper this week. I'm on the original campus in Tempe.

BANKING UPDATE

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, they say. So, today I opened up a new checking account with Chase Bank (part of JP Morgan Chase, who purchased WaMu assets when the government seized the failed bank last week). Of course, my act of submission was sweetened by a Chase newspaper coupon offering $100 to open a new checking account linked to direct deposit - something I'd been thinking about since I started work at ASU in August anyway. Eventually, all the marbles will roll down into one funnel - Chase: my WaMu checking account, my WaMu mortgage loan. So, since there is a Chase in my future, in any case, why not milk the system a bit!