Author: Rebecca Rose Thering

Resolutions Checkpoint 2018: March

Hello, friends! Time to look back and see what progress I made on my March focus items.

March Progress

Zero-Waste Lifestyle

(+) Read “Sustainability Made Simple: Small Changes for Big Impact” — Done! This was an excellent introduction to sustainability—very digestible and loaded with small changes you can make today. If anyone’s interested in learning about sustainability, I highly recommend starting with this book.
(+) Watch two more Climate Lab videos (#3 and #4). — I’ve been enjoying these videos and also recommend them!

Yoga/Pilates/Hamstring Stretching

As planned, I totally let this slide this month. I did start listening to a Forever Fused podcast during the month and now follow Forever Fused on Instagram. There Julie Wilkins often posts videos of different stretches she’s doing, which sparks me to try them too.

Art Journal Regularly

(+) Create a day-marker page for 20+ days of the month. — More than 20 pages! I even made one each day on hitch, both hitches. Still so fun!
(+) Read two more chapters of the art journaling PDF I have. — I hadn’t done this all month, then pulled up the e-book just now and finished reading the whole thing. I’m excited to play around with more materials when I’m back in Wisconsin.

Create One Bigger “Thing” Quarterly

(+) Write the PDF’s conclusion
(+) Write the PDF’s introduction

I’m so happy with the progress I made on my “mini” e-book this month! I went to the library often on off days and worked on it from the apartment too. All that’s left to do is come up with a title for this e-book and then make a cover page. That’s it! Everything else is written, edited, and formatted—91 pages. I’ll be sharing it here soon!

Bits and Pieces: Poetry

(+) Read a poem per day (track in bullet journal). — This was great!

April Focus

Since I’ll be in Wisconsin for the month of April, my priorities are going to mold to fit the environment. I’ll be able to use Wi-Fi every day for my Adapted Yoga videos, so daily yoga is #1. I might be building a deck in our backyard as well (we’ll see…), plus I have some personal projects I’ll be working on. And of course, I’ll try to see as many friends and family as I can throughout the month, too.

Zero-Waste Lifestyle

Read one sustainability book. (I put two sustainability books on hold at the local library. When I pick them up next week, I’ll choose which one to read for this list item.)
Watch two more Climate Lab videos (#5 and #6).

Yoga/Pilates/Hamstring Stretching

Yoga every day (from the 4th onward) and track in bullet journal.
One minute plank (x3: straight, left, right) each day. — My PT recommended I do this last June. I was good about it for July and August, until I moved to Arizona. I’d like to return some focus to my core this month.

Art Journal Regularly

Create a day-marker page for 20+ days of the month.

Create One Bigger “Thing” Quarterly

Publish IBS Story
Weekday 30-min. writing sessions for my next quarterly “thing”

Bits and Pieces

Finally, there are lots of other bits and pieces that will have my attention this month, so I wanted to list some here.

Weekly pushups. On my first hitch this month, a crew leader did 1,000 push-ups during the 8-days of hitch. Not having done push-ups in forever, I was curious if I could even do one, so I tried it one day. Four! On my second hitch this month I did push-ups every morning. First I’d do four real push-ups, then ten on my knees. One day I was able to do five real ones first. So this month I want to try out this beginner routine to see how high I can build it. Also, since I won’t be working as I usually do on hitch, I don’t want to lose the muscle I’ve gained in ACE.

Deck Swap. I signed up for the International Card Deck Swap last month, which I’m so excited for! This means I’ll have the month of April to decorate 54 playing cards and then mail them to the project organizer. Sometime this summer I’ll receive back a full deck of 52 handmade cards, each crafted by someone different.

Ukulele. I’ll be reunited with my ukulele when I get to Wisconsin, so I want to play often and learn as many songs as I can. I’m planning to take it with me to my summer/fall conservation gig in Colorado, so I’ll also be putting together a small booklet of songs/lyrics/chords so that I can play on-the-go.

Five portraits. I want to finish at least five portraits this month for my 100 Portraits project. I only did two in March, and I should certainly have the time to crank out some more.

I feel like I consistently overestimate what I can do when spending several weeks at home, as the unplanned always arises—but most of this feels attainable at the moment. We’ll see how it goes!

As always, I’d love to hear from you! What went well for you in March? Where would you like your attention to be during April?

7 years past

Hitch #9: Texas (Laguna Atascosa)

I spent the month of February working on a private ranch in Raymondville, Texas. Here’s where it lies in comparison to Flagstaff, AZ. (Note: Route pictured is not the route we drove.)

We spent two days driving down, and then it was off to work!

The task was to plant 45,000 shrubs during the month, in order to create a more ocelot-friendly habitat. (An ocelot is pictured below, courtesy of Wikipedia.)

The Ranch

The Frank Yturria Ranch where we worked let U.S. Fish and Wildlife and a local nature conservancy do this project on their land. It felt kind of weird to be working on a conservation project there because the ranch is home to all sorts of exotic animals, for the purpose of hunting. The ranch charges a hefty fee for hunters to come hunt on the land.

So on the drive in each day (20 mph limit within the ranch), we’d see all sorts of wildlife. Deer, javelinas, turkeys, this strange deer/antelope from India, etc. One day we even saw zebras!

The Plants

Here’s what the plants looked like:

There were over 30 varieties of shrubs and they came in these crates of 49 plants.

And the crates were in these trailers of something like 80-90 crates. There were multiple trailers around the property.

Each day the most important number was how many crates we had planted. Our very first day we planted 19 crates, and later we’d get around 30/day, with a high of 52. (Our partner’s original goal for us was 66 crates/day!, which was simply not possible.) Later in the month they brought in a 12-person NCCC AmeriCorps group, and our last three days they also brought in a 6-person ACE crew from the Corpus Christi branch. On the days when all 28 of us were planting, we got 60-64 crates in a day.

The Planting

For a majority of our work days during the month, we used augers to make holes in the ground. Plants were supposed to be 7′ from each other, which later got changed to 6,’ so that’s how far apart augers made the holes.

Three or four people would auger side by side moving forwards in a straight line, from one end of the plot to the other.

The augers were followed by “tubers,” who would lay a tube next to each hole. (After each plant is planted, tubes are put around the plants to protect them during their first year in the ground.) We set the tubes out right away to make the holes visible and to make the planting go faster.

Finally, someone would walk along with a crate of plants and place a plant at each hole. Everyone else would begin planting at that end while the augers, tubers, and plant-passer-outer continued creating their rows across the plot.

Here’s what a hole would look like for the planters:

First you rip the plant wrapper at the top and fold it over a bit, so the wrapper doesn’t stick out. (It’s biodegradable so we buried the plants in the wrappers; they simply couldn’t stick out of the soil.) Then you put the plant in the hole and pack in dirt tightly around it, followed by sticking the tube in the ground around the plant. Sometimes we could push the tube stakes all the way down into the ground, but we often used a hammer and block to hammer them in. The stakes couldn’t be hit directly with a hammer, which is why we carried around wooden blocks.

When the augers (and distribution group) reached the far end, they would all get on their knees and begin planting and tubing, until we met with the other group in the middle. While I wasn’t using much upper body this whole month, my legs certainly got a workout from jumping up to my feet and back down to my knees over and over.

Odds and Ends

Another part of our work day was assembling the tubes that we put around the plants. Stakes had to be put through each tube, and then we’d stuff a bag with around 20 tubes to take out into the field. Often there were volunteers who worked on assembling tubes while we planted during the day, but any extra time after finishing our final row of the day was also spent assembling tubes.

Because of all the wildlife, we would find bones all over the fields while we planted. Here’s a deer skeleton spotted one day:

This was a strange hitch for me because our project partners put us up in a motel, so we weren’t in tents all month. It was weird to fill up a motel room with all of our food bins and coolers, and do the cooking in there with a tiny sink.

We also had to drive 90 minutes to different housing for our off days, which meant lots of packing/unpacking the trailer, coolers, etc. all month every three or four days—all done on our “off” time, of course.

Luckily we had a stellar crew, so we had lots of fun together despite some less-ideal work conditions on this hitch.

And that was my first (and only) monthlong while in ACE! Have any questions?

7 years past

Resolutions Checkpoint 2018: February

Some people avoid the word “resolutions,” but I continue to make them each year because of these lovely monthly check-ins. This simple monthly post turns my attention back towards new directions and provides the space for me to briefly reflect. That said, I’m diving right in!

February Progress

Here’s the progress I made on the focus items I gave myself at the start of February.

Zero-Waste Lifestyle

(+) Write and publish a blog post showing my starting point of this journey. — Done!
(+) Watch two Climate Lab videos (#1 and #2). — Watched them on the 16th and 17th.

Here’s some additional progress I made in this category over the month:

Read four blog posts on the Be Zero blog.
Emailed my place of work with ways we can reduce waste as an organization.
Used my tupperware/hitch dishes for breakfast at all of our motel/hotel stays (which only offered single-use utensils/dishes) and encouraged crew members to do the same.

Yoga/Pilates/Hamstring Stretching

( ) Track in bullet journal. (And bring bullet journal on hitch if I’m front country.) — I stopped using my monthly tracker after the 18th, and only had three yoga checks in that period.
(-) Do yoga at home at least four of my six off-days. — Being put on a monthlong, I wasn’t on an 8/6 work schedule after all. Due to our location on off days (bunkhouse without Wi-Fi) and the logistics surrounding all of that, I didn’t do any yoga on my off days this month.
(-) On hitch, do just 5 minutes of stretching after the work day. Do it from inside my tent if it’s cold. — Again, the schedule/logistics, our locations (i.e. grimy motel), and my various health ailments all led to this endeavor being completely dropped from my awareness. I did some stretching one work night from our motel bed, but that’s it while on hitch.

Art Journal Regularly

(+) Track in bullet journal. — I tracked it in my bullet journal through the 18th, where everything left off, but kept on making pages nearly every day.
(+) I’ll aim for creating a day-marker page 20/30 days this month. — I’ll have to count pages for an exact number once I’m back home (currently I’m at the library), but I know I have more than 20 pages for February.
(-) Read two more chapters of the art journaling PDF I bought last month. — Never did this.

Art journaling in my day-markers notebook has been so fun. Making my daily page is something I continuously look forward to; there’s still no resistance. So I’m going to ride the wave and keep on enjoying that part of my day.

Create One Bigger “Thing” Quarterly

( ) Go to the library at least twice per set of off-days. — While on my monthlong, I worked on this quarterly creation three times. One was a longer formatting session, so I’m surprisingly close to have the bulk of it written. (I’m at 80+ pages at the moment!)
(+) Write for at least 30 minutes each session. — Not all of these were writing sessions, as I jumped ahead and started to format the document, but each work session was 30 minutes or more.

Bits and Pieces: Poetry

(+) Carry poetry notebook and pen with me.
(-) Do at least two exercises per week. — I did one exercise in the van on our drive to Texas, and then nothing for the rest of the month.
(+) Track in bullet journal. — I do have a checkmark for that single day!

March Focus

I can tell you right now, the biggest adjustment I’ll be making for March is to remove my focus from yoga/stretching in order to swing the pendulum towards daily poetry reading instead. You can’t do everything all the time, and often focusing on one element for a prolonged period of time is when you’ll get the most growth. (That’s how I learned French back in 2015, for example.)

This is my final month on the conservation corps in Arizona, and I kept that in mind while making this tweak. April is wide open, and likely I’ll return to my parents’ home in Wisconsin which means ample space and time for yoga and stretching.

Zero-Waste Lifestyle

Read “Sustainability Made Simple: Small Changes for Big Impact,” which I got from the library yesterday.
Watch two more Climate Lab videos (#3 and #4).

Yoga/Pilates/Hamstring Stretching

I did set up a column for this on my March calendar page, but like I explained above, I’m letting this drift from my attention this month.

Art Journal Regularly

Create a day-marker page for 20+ days of the month.
Read two more chapters of the art journaling PDF I have.

Create One Bigger “Thing” Quarterly

Write the PDF’s conclusion
Write the PDF’s introduction

Bits and Pieces: Poetry

Read a poem per day (track in bullet journal).

I realized after January that I needed to change my target from publishing a poetry collection this year (lofty goal; feels unapproachable) to simply filling x notebooks with poetry exercises/wordplay. Despite this change, there was still enough resistance last month to the exercises that I want to scale it back and simply be reading poetry every day in March.

I bought the poetry books “salt.” and “the sun and her flowers” as a gift to myself a few days ago, plus I checked out several books of poetry from the library. This is something I’ll easily be able to do even while on hitch, which makes it reachable.

My hope is that by turning my attention towards poetry at least once a day, my subconscious may start to think in poetry without so much force. To my delight, on my walk to the library today I pondered a topic and then my mind automatically worded it into a brief, two-line poem—in the style of many of Nayyirah Waheed’s poems. So I jotted it down in my poetry notebook upon arriving at the library. Hooray for small successes!

So that’s where my attention will be this month. What about you? What’s one small thing from February that you’re proud of? Where would you like your attention to be during March?

7 years past

Interview: Teaching Abroad in Spain + South Korea

Last month I was contacted by Megan Haskin of Korbay Delay to be interviewed for her Teachers Abroad series. Currently teaching in Vietnam, Megan has also lived/taught in Bhutan and Costa Rica.

It was interesting to reflect on these life experiences which happened between seven and four years ago (teaching in Madrid and teaching in South Korea, respectively). While looking back, I found myself staring at a canyon-wide gap of distance between the 22-year-old me in Madrid, the 24-year-old me in South Korea, and the current almost-29-year-old me writing today from Texas where I’m on hitch with ACE’s conservation corps.

This distance is more than the years, more than the miles.

I’ve shed and grown several layers since my days teaching abroad; I’ve turned the page not just to a new chapter, but to a new book. Might I teach English abroad again in the future? It’s an option. But that would be with my new identity, which is based strongly on living my values in everyday moments as a human being. The creation of this very site last fall has played a much larger part in adopting this new identity than I realized at the time.

Every day we change, though often it’ll be years before we look back and find ourselves staring at a stranger with our eyes, but whose mind we can no longer enter.

Update 2019: The interview is no longer live, so I’m going to post Megan’s questions and my answers here, below.

Teaching Abroad Interview

1. Tell us a bit about yourself – who you are, where you’re from, your teaching experience and where you previously taught.
I grew up in Wisconsin and have lived in a variety of places since college, my most recent home base being Flagstaff, Arizona, where I’m serving on ACE’s conservation corps via AmeriCorps. I’m currently in the fifth month of my six-month term and don’t yet know where I’ll live/work next, but I’m continually guided by my values (growth mindset, kindness, creativity, mindfulness, gratitude) and my personal compass.

It’s been about a year and a half since I first got into watercolors and travel sketching, which I do alongside hobbies of art journaling, blogging, reading, snail mailing, solo slow traveling, and wander walking. I first taught English abroad in Spain (2011-12) and then again in South Korea (2013-14). I’ve lived in France as well (2015-16) and have taught English to adults in my hometown as a volunteer at a local non-profit.

2. How is it that you ended up teaching in these countries?
I studied abroad in Madrid my junior year of college and loved it. I actually chose the year-long program in Madrid for financial reasons, as tuition was about the same as a year in Madison, but luckily during the year Madrid grew to feel like a second home.

While staying at a hostel in Valencia one weekend, I met some people who had studied abroad in my same program just a few years earlier, and who were at that time teaching English through Spain’s auxiliaries program (North American Language and Culture Assistants). I tucked that nugget of information away and applied on a whim the following year, two months before graduating from UW-Madison. I was moving forward with a Peace Corps nomination when I received an email that summer saying I’d been accepted to teach in Spain. I had three days to accept or deny the offer, and ultimately I chose to go back to Spain.

While there, I discovered a few blogs of people from my university who were teaching English in Korea and read them regularly. That possibility entered my radar, but far away at the periphery. After that second year in Spain I returned to Wisconsin and worked for a year to pay back my student loans at a faster pace. That spring I applied to teach English in South Korea through GEPIK, and I moved there in the fall of 2013 to teach at an elementary school.

3. What do you love most about teaching and living there?
In Spain I love the sun, vibrant culture, friendly people, beautiful language, relaxed lifestyle, affordable wine, and rich history. As an atheist who had to hide my lack of belief for much of middle and high school, I like that Spanish people are more open about certain topics, religion being one of them. I like the proximity to Western Europe and the idea of working to live—rather than living to work. In 2014 I walked the Camino de Santiago across Spain, and every subsequent visit to Madrid feels like a homecoming. I also like that there are such distinct areas in the country—so much so that after two years living in Madrid and traveling around the country, I still have places I’ve yet to visit.

In South Korea I most loved the delicious food, my adorable students, and the fantastic mountain views in all directions. Although it was a very challenging year for me, I enjoyed learning about a culture I’d been completely unfamiliar with before arriving. I also got to experience learning to read at age 24 when I learned to read Hangul, which was quite humbling.

4. What is the most challenging aspect of teaching in this part of the world?
In the program I taught through in Spain, it was challenging because I felt underused and powerless to change the outdated teaching methods at my particular schools. I taught at two vocational colleges where my upper-teen/adult students were required to take one or two years of English, but weren’t necessarily personally motivated. One of my co-teachers couldn’t hold a conversation in English and would give out irrelevant, boring translation exercises as classwork and homework. To keep myself sane, however, I taught several private lessons in the evenings and they were fulfilling for me. I could see my students’ progress and had total control over designing and teaching each lesson. I also played on Madrid’s ultimate frisbee team Quijotes+Dulcineas during the year, which gifted me with friends, travel, and fun.

In South Korea the most challenging aspects for me were the language barrier (and subsequent isolation) and cultural beliefs that differed from my own (i.e. collectivism, the social hierarchy, family pressures, demanding schooling, high presence of plastic surgery). I’ve written in more detail about what I will and won’t miss from South Korea in this post.

5. What advice would you give to someone wanting to teach in these places?
If you want to teach in Spain, keep a hefty dose of patience in your front pocket at all times. Patience will be required for any bureaucratic business, but living in Spain is so worth those hassles. I have a collection of practical resources and how-to posts about teaching/living in Spain here.

If you want to teach in South Korea, I would check out the EPIK and GEPIK programs, though teaching in a private Hogwan is definitely an option as well. Here is where I have a huge batch of information about teaching English in South Korea.

6. What would you tell someone who is considering teaching and living abroad?
Go for it! Even in my most challenging year abroad, I learned and grew so much—I wouldn’t trade it for anything. My years teaching and living abroad have had such a profound impact on who I am today, and they continue to shape my life.

If you have any questions or need some encouragement, email me! I love encouraging others and providing information that makes living abroad more accessible.

And here’s where you can read more:

Spain blog: Oh No She Madridn’t
Korea blog: Rebe With a Clause (This blog spans ages 23-28—including a year in France—so it’s not a “Korea blog,” but that’s where you can read extensively about my year there.)