illness, teaching, comics, japanese, writing

Well, I visited the doctor again today. The nurse who speaks English there is becoming very familar with me. He figured I might have a cold, or might have a virus (which I could have told him myself) but gave me another healthy supply of drugs for the cold (which actually work, yay) and antibiotics. I then headed home to drouse my way through the afternoon. Even ended up taking an unsucessful nap. I'll be going to sleep early this evening too since I nearly work a full time day tomorrow (seven hours of class). I've been invited to a party tomorrow night too, but I have no idea if I can keep going for that long. Stupid cold.

I'm not exactly sure why - maybe because my mind tends to wander from topic to topic and I know a lot of really random things - but I seem to discuss some of the strangest things in my classes compared to the other teachers. I wonder how my students know I can tell them the history of the Mormon's or obscure presidential facts that most Americans would be hard pressed to know? I'm going to teach my advanced class some Emily Dickinson poetry soon, and last night I ended up teaching my students classic quotes from The Little Prince. I also taught one of my classes some taijustu principles, and another class got my favourite Leonard Cohen poetry. I suppose my conversation students are assured a more unusual English education than most, eh?

I am both scared and amused by how much this comic is me;) (And this is the best review of Wheel of Time I've ever seen.)

I'm a bit frustrated with myself regarding writing atm. I have only a page more to write in Uric before I finish it, but I've been stalling myself with Star Wars fic and I'm not sure why. Once I'm finished with the next chapter of Uric, I can start working on my book again, and I suspect I'm avoiding it for some reason. Damn subconcious won't reveal any reason why though.

In the meantime, my obsession with learning Japanese continues to intensify the longer I live here. I learn sporatically, but I am learning and the kanji stuff is on my own. As it is, when I'm faced with conversations, I'm usually able to make myself understood but I seriously rely on the fact that you can drop almost everything from a Japanese sentence and still be understood providing your listener knows the context. (For instance, M. was over to use the internet and one of my neighbors stopped by to ask me to move her car from the wrong parking space (I told you they were scary about parking...) and I struggled to find a way to tell her that M. was just leaving and finally just said, "going" which would be highly inappropriate in English, but was perfectly understandable in Japanese.) Meanwhile, my listening comprehension is growing. The music lady for instance, drops into Japanese as soon as her lesson is over, and I was surprised to find that I knew she was telling me that next week, she couldn't come at our usual time and would instead try to reschedule the class for Saturday. I don't think I would have understood that a month ago. Just recently, I seem to be skipping the part of actually listening to what the person is saying though and jumping righ to the translation in my head. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

illness, teaching, comics, japanese, writing

Well, I visited the doctor again today. The nurse who speaks English there is becoming very familar with me. He figured I might have a cold, or might have a virus (which I could have told him myself) but gave me another healthy supply of drugs for the cold (which actually work, yay) and antibiotics. I then headed home to drouse my way through the afternoon. Even ended up taking an unsucessful nap. I'll be going to sleep early this evening too since I nearly work a full time day tomorrow (seven hours of class). I've been invited to a party tomorrow night too, but I have no idea if I can keep going for that long. Stupid cold.

I'm not exactly sure why - maybe because my mind tends to wander from topic to topic and I know a lot of really random things - but I seem to discuss some of the strangest things in my classes compared to the other teachers. I wonder how my students know I can tell them the history of the Mormon's or obscure presidential facts that most Americans would be hard pressed to know? I'm going to teach my advanced class some Emily Dickinson poetry soon, and last night I ended up teaching my students classic quotes from The Little Prince. I also taught one of my classes some taijustu principles, and another class got my favourite Leonard Cohen poetry. I suppose my conversation students are assured a more unusual English education than most, eh?

I am both scared and amused by how much this comic is me;) (And this is the best review of Wheel of Time I've ever seen.)

I'm a bit frustrated with myself regarding writing atm. I have only a page more to write in Uric before I finish it, but I've been stalling myself with Star Wars fic and I'm not sure why. Once I'm finished with the next chapter of Uric, I can start working on my book again, and I suspect I'm avoiding it for some reason. Damn subconcious won't reveal any reason why though.

In the meantime, my obsession with learning Japanese continues to intensify the longer I live here. I learn sporatically, but I am learning and the kanji stuff is on my own. As it is, when I'm faced with conversations, I'm usually able to make myself understood but I seriously rely on the fact that you can drop almost everything from a Japanese sentence and still be understood providing your listener knows the context. (For instance, M. was over to use the internet and one of my neighbors stopped by to ask me to move her car from the wrong parking space (I told you they were scary about parking...) and I struggled to find a way to tell her that M. was just leaving and finally just said, "going" which would be highly inappropriate in English, but was perfectly understandable in Japanese.) Meanwhile, my listening comprehension is growing. The music lady for instance, drops into Japanese as soon as her lesson is over, and I was surprised to find that I knew she was telling me that next week, she couldn't come at our usual time and would instead try to reschedule the class for Saturday. I don't think I would have understood that a month ago. Just recently, I seem to be skipping the part of actually listening to what the person is saying though and jumping righ to the translation in my head. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.