Las Vegas is amazingly dirty. Everything is oozing with that wonderful mixed fragrance of alcohol sweat, ashtrays, and pollution stench. I saw a pregnant woman at a slot machine. Everything has rhinestones on it. I'm currently enjoying a view of another dirty hotel and a parking lot through a window smudged and smeared with I-don't-know-what. It's both sick and strangely cool. Tomorrow, after the convention, I venture out off the strip to hunt for a good thrift shop.
I'm here for a national conference for teachers. So far several speakers have tried to motivate me to motivate my students by asking me to pretend I enjoy their presentation, that I am amazed and so jazzed by their smart solutions to minor classroom problems. So much so that I can't hold back an "Oh yeah!" I feel like the only sober audience member of an infomercial, looking around in amazement at everyone's burnt out reflexive over-enthusiasm.
Creepy.
One woman, both weak and energetic, made a sad sad argument about the connection/s between math and science: it consisted only of everyone putting on a latex glove before drawing perpendicular lines over a drawing of the human heart. That's all she had.
Depressing.
My hand smelled like latex all day... Every session I have to introduce myself to my 'neighbors,' say where I teach, and hear "Ohhh waaaaw. You're from Hawaaaiii! She's from Hawaaaiii!"
'Well. I'm not FROM there.' God.
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