Labor of Love

 I knew I wanted to purchase a longboard for Jake's Christmas present, ever since he mentioned that it'd be nice to have one to get around campus. But I knew absolutely nothing about longboards and an Amazon search yielded so many options! All different woods, shapes, lengths... and then there was a whole new lingo to learn: the tail, wheels, trucks... It was overwhelming, but my only other option was too lame to pursue (Target giftcard, anyone?).

I was willing to invest in it, since I'd set a solid Christmas budget this year. So I called Jake's best friend Alex for some help and he sent me a ton of links and recommendations. At the top of his list was a blank board, "You could totally personalize it with wood-burning or paint if you wanted, which would be sick!" Sold!

The next hurdle though was what to paint? I had to think in terms of the right picture as well as feasibility. (Fun fact: I considered a similar endeavor for Mr. Jake back in 2008 or 2009 involving a dragon painting on the underside of a skateboard. But my ideas back then weren't fully developed and I wouldn't even know how to paint a legitimate dragon.) I thought and thought, what image sums up Jake's personality? Calvin and Hobbes!

Finding this picture on the internet solidified my decision:

It was so perfect! So I bought some brushes and acrylic paint at Michaels (my first time using this medium) and set to work. First I sketched out the drawing on newsprint in pencil and then sharpie.

Then I traced the back of the sharpie in pencil and transferred it to the board.

Then it was painting time! The sketching and transferring took me about an hour and a half and then I painted the board in three sessions, each an episode of Sherlock (mostly reruns). I wasn't really happy with the first layers of green because the medium was quite foreign to me and it wasn't turning out like my picture. So I didn't take a picture of it. But as I got into the second layer, it really started to take shape.

Once I added in a few more layers of color, it really started to shine! The black was truly the finishing touch on the piece and it made a HUGE difference!

I had my doubts in the beginning, but at the end of the day, I really couldn't have been happier with the outcome!

Merry Christmas Jake!

Good Chocolate (Christmas 2014)

Christmas should be like eating good chocolate. You savor it, letting it roll around in your mouth a little so you can taste each layer of flavor. You don't gobble it all in one bite! -Misha 

A little humorous, but so true, isn't it? Even with sleeping in as late as possible (9 a.m.), I still felt like the morning passed too quickly. "Can't we linger over breakfast a little and open stockings?" I asked, recalling fond memories of the four of us sitting around the table with the mandatory Christmas breakfast casserole (quiche maybe?) taking painfully long to get through the stockings and on to the true Christmas finale: the presents. This year, the tables were turned as I was the one my parents were waiting on, not the other way around.

Tea at hand and a half-eaten bagel, we began the unceremonious unwrapping of gifts. Cameron got some really exciting ones this year--including a fancy acoustic-electric ukulele (and many accessories), a Ghostbusters lego set, and a number of other interesting and eclectic gifts. I, for one, gave him a hand-made squid hat (post pending) which he was very impressed with. :D Over the years, I've noticed that the gifts tend to come in themes--one year might be clothing, or journals (several years of journals!), another year books. Cam's theme was definitely all about the ukulele. For me, I'm pleased to report that it was a year of French everything. Mom gave me my own copy of Julia Child's The Art of French Cooking and a macaroon baking set, while Bruce and Stacey gave me a beautiful Parisian journal with water color pictures scattered throughout. I also got several books which I am excited to read! Jake gave me my very own pair of Toms (which I would never buy for myself!) and an amazing atlas-printed cork board for my wall. I'll be hanging it up above my desk as soon as I can find an appropriate frame for it. And he was very surprised by the skateboard I got him. (Post pending on that as well.).

We passed the day relatively quietly as a small family plus 3 (Bruce, Stacey, and Jake), playing Mexican Train (and shouting "Doubles!") and eating excellent food. Before we knew it, it was already 10:30 p.m.! It was a good day, but I wish it had lingered with us a little while longer, like the taste of good chocolate.

 

The Stats on Misha's New TV Habits

Friday Stats:

episodes of Sherlock watched: 3 (season 1)
episodes of Lost watched: 5
episodes of Scorpion watched: 1
movies watched: 0
weeks of Christmas vacation: 3!
days until Christmas: 6
presents to buy: 0
presents to wrap: 4
learning: students love having a finished product to look at
highlights: 55ers/improv with the kids, last day of school, mentoring session, school Christmas pageant.
looking forward to: Caroling! Christmas!


Update:

Lately, I've been watching a lot of tv shows. I used to be such a snob about tv shows, thinking I was above them. But I've learned that one cool thing about tv shows--they can develop characters and storyline so much more deeply than say a movie, for instance, because tv shows are not confined to two hours to tell everything. This has its pros and cons, of course, but perhaps that's a blog post for another day. (Stay tuned for "Literary Lost: Misha's Analysis"!)

I'll confess that's all I had motivation to do in my free time the last few weeks with the school semester wrapping up (no pun intended) and making Christmas arrangements. Up until this point, I'd been looking forward to the end of the year in earnest. Yesterday the end seemed bittersweet, as I had no idea how much I loved my students in my heart. But today, I can breathe a sigh of relief--last day of work before vacation officially begins! Hoorah! The pieces are finally starting to fit into place and I feel like I am ready for Christmas, or at least mostly ready. From this point, I think I'll be watching a little less tv since I'll have more energy for baking cookies, singing carols, and all-around spreading the holiday cheer over the next six days.

Days Like These: Flash Fiction and Improv

It was one of those rare "good days" at school today. Don't get me wrong, I love my students, but some days are definitely harder than others. Thankfully, today was not one of them!! It's the last week of school before Christmas break which means two things for me as a teacher:

1) Lots of big assignments due (meaning I can't assign homework)
2) Distracted kids thinking about Christmas

The temptation is to relax, have a party, and put on a movie for the kids. At least they'll sit quietly through 50 minutes of Elf, right? Wrong!! As anxious as I was for the semester to finally be over, I've been very reluctant to do a free-for-all just because it's the last week of school. I wanted to make the most of our short time together and do something fun and slightly educational (but mostly fun). Thus: 55ers and Improv Games.

In 8th grade writing, I showed the students how to write very brief pieces of fiction called 55ers in which a story is communicated in exactly 55 words (excluding the title). It is truly an art form and much more difficult than it sounds! But the students were up to the challenge. I plan to take the students' pieces and compile them into a booklet to give them on Thursday. Here's the one I wrote, inspired by this goofy picture:

A Tribute to ChildhoodRunning barefoot through the woods withBlackberry scratches and violet-dyed mouths.Buckets brimming with plump purple berries they are too delicious to resist.“Stop eating them all, or we won’t have enough for cobbler!” Mother warns. Those were the best days. Little did we know how quickly they were slipping through our tight-fisted, purple-stained fingers.

Even just rereading it makes me feel a little nostalgic! I was so proud of the 8th graders for jumping right in to the task! From what I've read so far, their stories are excellent!

In seventh grade, I taught the students the art of asking good open-ended questions using the 5Ws+H (who, what, when, where, why, and how). "These will be crucial to the game we're playing today." The game in question is an improv game called "Expert Interview" in which the audience is allowed to ask questions of the "expert." Meanwhile, I MC-ed the session to keep things from getting out of hand. Visiting our classroom today, we had a carniverous plant expert, a pirate linguist, a professional cat bather, an excuse maker, a dumpster diver, and two other experts one on interpreting apocalyptic weather patterns, the other on traditional Czechoslovakian Polka dance. As you can imagine, much hilarity and laughter ensued and all left the classroom with a smile on their face, including myself. 

Truly, it's days like these that make teaching one of the most creative, inventive and rewarding things I've ever done.

Published Article!

Check it out! Yours truly wrote an article for the CollegePlus blog!! ^-^ CP has been gracious enough to me to send a few writing projects my way over the course of my time with them and this is one of them! I am so grateful for all the writing practice! This one features 9 "bad" reasons for going to college and it was a fun one to write! I think the most challenging part though was balancing the cheerfulness of the CP brand with the sarcasm of the article's content. It went through several major revisions and finally, we are pleased with the balance.

Let it Snow!

This weekend, instead of planning my lessons like I should have been doing, I helped Mom make decorations for our caroling party on the 20th. We threaded cotton balls and pompoms on white thread and fishing line and hung from the ceiling to make "snow" in our living room! Eventually, we will hang up the strands in our church foyer, but in the meantime, this was our test run. It looks so magical!! I'm really starting to feel the Christmas spirit!!

Interacting with Iraqis

LtoR: Me, D, and L.

Strange smells wafted from the pot-luck buffet of hot plates arranged across the counter. Peppers and tomato sauce and sweet fruits and foreign combinations of seasonings. At the end of the line are the sweets. Some kind of nut--like a large almond coated in a sweet outer layer with little... bumps? horns? Beside the almonds is a bowl of small round balls. They crunch into a fine powder between my teeth like cocoa pebbles, but not as sweet and only the barest hint of chocolate. I load a few more dolmas on my plate and head for the living room.

Their language is melodic and beautiful and unlike anything I've ever heard. They correct me when I try to pronounce their names the right way. After four times or so, they say, "You can just call me Rana. It's easier that way." I feel bad that I cannot pronounce the hidden syllables or even remember the easier English-ified versions of their names by the end of the night. But there is only one of me, and so many more of them. "You'll get it with time." my mentor Sandi reassured me. Most of them have lived in America that they speak English well enough--especially the children in school--but they still turn to one another from time to time and speak in their own private tongue.

This semester, I've been branching way far out of my comfort zone in more ways than one! Sandi and her husband Tom invited me over to their house to meet their Muslim friends from Iraq. Not knowing what to expect, I went. And I went a second time, and a third time. Their group is called "People of Peace" (or POP) and they try to meet a couple times a month. They've been building bridges with these Iraqi refugees for over five years and the families are all very close.

Every time I hang out with them, it's different. At my first meeting, everyone recited poetry (some original some not) and even the children participated. The next meeting was held at a different location and a few others I hadn't met showed up. A girl named Nora (??) told me about a Chinese folk tale she was reading at school and we talked about peacemakers in the past. On the day after Thanksgiving, we held our own Thanksgiving to welcome a new Iraqi family to America. I tried my hardest to learn all seven of the children's names, but now I can only remember three! Maybe it'll stick the next time I see them. They don't speak as much English so one of our friends translated. We'll hear their story, bit by bit, just like the others before I came. But for now, I guess I'll have to learn some Arabic or just try to transcend the barrier with the language that everyone understands: a smile.