Motivation

Have you ever needed to do something, but can’t make yourself get around to doing it?

Probably not, right?

Well I am only 7 months removed from college, but I am finding it nearly impossible to make myself do my homework. Why do I have homework, you ask? Well, this semester us teachers have been reading (or not reading) books about teaching. As we all know, the only books I have been reading this semester start with an ‘H’ and end with an ‘arry Potter’.

Now that we will be presenting our book reports next week, I really need to start reading the book, which is titled something like “Motivational Strategies for the Language Learning Classroom.” I know what your thinking, with a title like that, who wouldn’t want to read it?! But I just can’t make myself do it! I am finding all sorts of things to distract me from reading the book, like:

• Watching music videos that I don’t care about
• Patiently waiting for E! News to finally tell me what happened during Florence + The Machine’s live performance on SNL (her earpiece that lets her hear her voice didn’t turn on for 20 seconds after the performance started!)
• Stalking people on Facebook that I went to high school with but have never talked to

And now, since I have taken so long to write this blog post about what I should be doing but am not doing, I have run out of time tonight to read my book. Before I can go to bed in an hour, I still have to wash 5 dishes, lock my door, brush my teeth, wash my face, wash my feet, and walk to my bed, which is definitely going to take up all of that hour.

So, my friends, it seems that Sir Tyler has a problem on his hands. Stay tuned to see what happens next.

Baby it’s [warm] outside.

Today in the States it’s Thanksgiving.

Although I have just missed out on my family’s Thanksgiving feast (I saw the leftovers via skype), and didn’t get a day off from work, I am still thankful for many things at this moment. Here are a few of them:

1. I can now openly listen to Christmas music (I have been listening to Christmas music for a week now, but have kept it under wraps out of fear of angry backlash for breaking the wait-for-the-day-after-Thanksgiving-rule.)
2. I can now daydream about the Christmas season.
3. I can stop to look at the Christmas exhibits outside of Ace Hardware.
4. This is my last day of teaching students for a month. Hello no lesson planning.
5. I leave for home in 2 weeks (this gives way to countless other things for me to look forward to).
6. My mind can wander to past holiday experiences, which briefly allows me to escape any sweaty, smelly, stressful, and/or restless situations I may be experiencing.
7. I have a job.
8. I have a family at home who is excited for me to come home.
9. I have been blessed with being able to explore different parts of the world and grow and develop in my relationship with Jesus. This probably overshadows numbers 1-8.

I’m sure there are some more items I need to include on that list, but I am currently being distracted by how much I love Christmas music. Right now I am listening to Taylor Swift’s “Christmas Must Be Something More”. We all know how I feel about her, but imagine how much more I love her right now that she is singing Christmas music into my ears.

Technically my Thanksgiving Day has already come and gone. But tomorrow, thanks to some kind teachers at my school, I will be celebrating Thanksgiving–complete with turkey!

Can I get a what-what?

Gavin lived a great life and was enjoyed by a kind family who ate him today.

Writing review

In addition to reviewing grammar this week, we are reviewing the 6 traits of writing, which if you didn’t know, are ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency, conventions, and word choice. 

As we went over the trait of organization, the students had to find a newspaper article with good organization, and then rewrite the information with poor organization. The goal of this exercise is that by intentionally creating a piece with poor organization, they would have to be familiar with what good organization is. I’m hoping they got it.

One of the groups took it a little further, and altered sentence structures as well. Before I share their final product, I should give you the background of the article. It was an article written about the negative side affects of playing video games too often. It stated that it can be bad for your health, and cited a case from England about a student who had a pulmonary embolism that was in part because of all his video game playing.

Here is the students’ revision:

“Video Games Kill, Dangerous

Video games very good very fun. Do you play it long? Someone got killeds someone died because of blood-clot problems. Addicted. Very addictive. Once play, no stop. It’s not your fault, it’s your brain’s. Brain fools you. You let your hobbies turns into needs.”

I have never been so proud of such bad grammar.

Grammar review

This week is review week for our students. Yesterday was grammar review for year 9. These were my two favorite slides from the powerpoint:

Do you know the answer?

Ending on a good note.

Winning the battles

In honor of one of the battles I just read about, I have decided to break this blog up into battles I have been involved in.

The weight battle: Status–victory

In a previous post, I talked about how my body is shrinking and my clothes are stretching. Well I am proud to say that has changed.

Despite the fact that my clothes are either still stretching or have reached the point of maximum stretch, my body is no longer shrinking. In fact, I have gained back 4 of the pounds I have lost since being here. That means that I am one pound away from once again being the heaviest I have ever been.

This calls for celebration!

The battle against Voldemort: Status–victory

I finished the last Harry Potter book tonight, and I am beside myself with how amazing it was. I was super cool and had the movie soundtrack playing while I read it. Towards the end, it got so intense that I was reading the pages faster than I have ever read before. The fighting scenes were superb. I felt like I was one of the Hogwarts students. And then it ended. And I just sat there, not knowing what to do. I have been reading these books for the last year, and now I’m done. A bittersweet ending indeed.

The Bread Battle: Status–victory

The banana bread I baked yesterday didn’t overcook like the zucchini bread I baked last week.

The Global Graduation Battle [this isn’t really a battle]: Status–victory

I am participating in the graduation ceremony on Friday, which means I will have been to graduation ceremonies on 3 different continents. So yeah, that’s pretty cool.

But alas, today is about to expire, and I must go to bed. May you enjoy these mannequins I saw at a mall this weekend. You can’t tell from the picture, but this mall is extremely high class and expensive.

The Mannequin Battle: Status–ongoing

What's your caption?

My next job

Today I realized what my next job is going to be. After I’m done teaching (and before I work at Nike, host SNL, and compete on So You Think You Can Dance), I am going to join a K-pop band. What is K-pop you ask? Well according to Wikipedia, it is:

K-Pop (an abbreviation of Korean pop or Korean popular music) is a musical genre consisting of electropop, hip hop, pop, rock, and R&B music originating in South Korea. In addition to music, K-pop has grown into a popular subculture among teenagers and young adults around the world, resulting in widespread interest in the fashion and style of Korean idol groups and singers.

On the music video channel over here, most of the videos are either American or British, or K-pop. There may be some J-pop mixed in (Japanese pop). At first I thought the videos were strange and sometimes ridiculous, but the more I see them, the more I like them. This video in particular:

After watching this video, you can see that I meet all the requirements. I can dance, I can kind of sing, I have the ability to wear weird clothes, and I have hair that can be dyed. Oh what, I’m not Korean? Well I will just have to address that problem when the time comes.

Until that time, I will start sending audition videos to Super Junior.

Korean 'tude.

Tis it the season yet?

It seems the closer we get to the holiday season, the longer I have to wait. Ever since Justin Bieber released his Christmas album last week, I’ve been getting antsy. I decided I can’t wait until Thanksgiving to play Christmas music. I made a deal with myself that I have to wait for 8 more days until I break it out.

As I think about heading home for the holidays, there are a few things I am especially excited about:

• Fresh air
• Christmas trees
• Good coffee
• Being able to wear long pants and jackets
• Chipotle, Taco Bell, and Subway
• Cottage cheese
• Downtown Portland
• Meeting my puppy

There are probably more things that I am looking forward to, so I will come back to this list and amend it when I remember the other things.

Oh yeah, here’s another thing: people. I am so excited to see all of my family and friends. It will be at least twice as good as having interrupted, pixely conversations on Skype.

Well I gotta run now, smells like my zucchini bread is about done.