French Progress!

It occurred to me that those of you who have not heard my French (but have heard all about it on this blog) may be wondering: Gee, Misha says she is learning French, but I'm not so sure. Remember when she tried to learn Spanish with Rosetta stone? Sadly, such concerns are legitimate! (I barely made it 3 days with Rosetta Stone Spanish, for all my enthusiasm then.) But, here I have provided video proof to dispel any concerns about Misha's mythological French studies. I promise you, they are not myth.

It's been awhile since I mustered the bravery to talk with native French speakers on Skype, but today I had a wonderful conversation with my friend Clara! We talked about all sorts of things, but mostly we ended up giggling a lot as we tried to navigate the language barriers. My awful pronunciation was the running joke throughout the conversation, but she could understand most of what I said and I could understand most of what she said. If nothing else, I could understand enough words to get the gist of what she was saying. Her little brother came in and helped us out, much to Clara's dismay but I found him quite amusing and even the slightest bit helpful!

To be truthful, my French studies sloughed off last semester which is perhaps why I did not enjoy past conversations with native speakers. I never understood their French because it was too fast and when I asked them to repeat it, they spoke at the same speed! I have not necessarily learned more vocabulary since my last conversation, but since the new year, I have renewed my studies with vigor, this time focusing on the pronunciation. Although I was enthusiastic in the very beginning of my French study, I also picked up many bad habits with my pronunciation so I am trying to go back and correct that. I've been studying with Anki, a spaced-repetition system which is a glorified (and super fancy) flash card system on the computer. I love it! And with the few weeks I've been working on it and all the vocab I learned before, I can tell my comprehension and speaking has really improved! Yay!!

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!

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.

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!!

Horseback Riding and Tractor Driving

 As I mentioned in my first post, there are several horses on Grandma's farm (and one donkey):

Haha! That picture ^ makes me laugh! ...and we got to ride some of them! I'd ridden a pony before when I was nine years old, but that was also ten years ago. (Amazing how time flies, huh? I feel so old!)

 I remembered quite a bit from my first experience, mostly the brushing part before you buckle up the saddle, but the first time, Lisa used a lead rope for me. Unlike last time, this time I was maneuvering the horse myself!

More Exciting News

This morning's breakfast

Stats:

journal entries: 7/7
students: 13
movies watched: 4
hours spent in Starbucks: 5
lessons planned: 15%
feeling: excited and overwhelmed
reading: Radical by David Platt
learning: it's okay to not know what I'm doing
highlights: Jake is acting for Gaslight theater! Having old friends over for dinner, meeting my students!
goals for this week: 1) finish Radical by the first day of school 2) send out an overdue package 3) finish planning the first quarter

Weekly Update: 

Since I posted about meeting my students yesterday, there isn't much to report in the form of this weekly update. But we had the privilege of hosting dinner for a few friends visiting from Santa Rosa. There was a lot of catching up to do amidst much laughter, story-telling, and great food!

In other news this week, Jake has accepted a position with Gaslight theater as an understudy!! Gaslight is a long-running playhouse here in Tucson, known for their dinner-and-a-show style comedy theater. We went and saw one of their shows, "Ghost Blasters" on Tuesday. Everyone there is very talented and I am confident that Jake will make an excellent addition to their team! (and I'm only a little biased.) We are both very excited for this opportunity for him to continue acting.

Next week, I'll be doing a lot of lesson-planning and miscellaneous tasks in preparation for the first day of school on August 18th(!!!!) Stay tuned to find out how it goes!

Welcome to Farm-Life

Farm life isn't all that it's cracked up to be. In fact, farm-life is a lot of work! Maybe you knew this already; but we sure got a taste of it while we were there!

^ These guys...........

These little sheep look quite harmless, but in fact, they are are magicians! Every day, they move the fencing (that white netting in the background) to a different area so the sheep will graze it down. And they just keep moving it so the sheep graze down different areas of the property (and it gives time for all the grass to grow back). It's a pretty cool system, but you'll notice that the netting appears pretty flimsy! That's because it is and these seemingly ordinary sheep are escape artists! Somehow, I don't know how, they always managed to get out and then it would take six of us to wrangle them up--strategically walking around them to coral them back towards the temporary pen where someone was waiting to lock them up! It was quite comical to watch, even more so to be apart of. The rush! The adrenaline! The excitement!

As we were trying to wrangle these sheep back into their pen, where it was safe and there was plenty of grass to eat and water to drink, I recalled a bit of Scripture (several bits, actually) in which Jesus compares us to sheep. And I wonder if maybe the people back then found it to be quite a humorous comparison! I certainly did! How many times have I blatantly run away from the one (my Lord Jesus) who had nothing but my best interests at heart? Too many, that's what. But watching these sheep, I couldn't help but laugh and thank God for being my Good Shepherd.

Cameron also got to help slop feed the pigs! (Grandma takes offense to the word slop, "We only feed out pigs high-quality food! Not slop!")

Needless to say, it is a bit more interesting to say "slop the pigs," at least in our opinion!

And Cameron also got to milk a goat!

And he liked it! <-- all.="" and="" as="" awesome="" but="" can="" did="" either="" fact="" former.="" get="" goat-milking="" goat="" he="" highlight="" hopefully="" i="" in="" is="" it="" lame.="" liked="" maybe="" me="" milking="" most="" much="" myself="" next="" not="" of="" opportunity="" or="" our="" p="" really="" same="" so="" super="" surprises="" take="" tell="" that="" the="" then="" this="" time="" trip="" unfortunately="" was="" whether="" will--="" you="">

4th of July

For the 4th of July, instead of celebrating in red, white, and blue, our yard was decorated in all colors of the rainbow in honor of Miss Jessica's 50th birthday!

Joyeux fête des pères!!

Dad chose a Mexican restaurant called Guadalajara for his fancy Father's Day dinner, where the mariachis are delicious and the food is harmonious! Or rather, the reverse. ;)

Seriously though, these mariachis were excellent musicians. 

I was a little starstruck by their patio-decor. All of it was pleasantly romantic and I found myself enchanted by such minute details as these laser-cut plastic flags, decorative tiles, and the curved edges of adobe walls. Mmm mmm. I love the aesthetic.

Aww!! Maman et Papa! So adorable! Happy Father's Day!

Baklava: Part 2 (Tasting)

After a long day of training for Royal Family Kids Camp (a 5 day camp for foster kids coming up in July!) we celebrated with an evening filled with smoked brisket, buttery chins, good fellowship, and of course, baklava. As a result of our different methods of cooking and combinations of ingredients, both dishes were truly unique to one another.

Cameron's entry was rich and dense and soaked in perhaps too much honey-syrup. His pan achieved a beautiful caramel brown color and a flaky crusty-ness.

Our dish was lighter with stronger cinnamon flavors, reminiscent of Mom's apple crisp. Unfortunately, it was a little more blonde compared to Cameron's due to less oven time and all that extra butter (2 sticks more, or double what the recipe called for) prevented some of that flakiness from forming.

The verdict? The dishes were too different to declare a winner and a very solid tie was agreed upon by all parties involved!!

Baking Baklava

Baklava.... It began while eating pizza at a restaurant that used to be My Big Fat Greek Restaurant. "We went there for my birthday once." I said, "And we got baklava!"

"I saw a recipe for Baklava!" Stacey said, "I've been meaning to try it!"

And Cameron piped up, "Alton Brown [his cooking idol] has a recipe for Baklava!"

Thus our competition was born: The Great Baklava-ke-off (pronounced bah-klah-vah-klauff, a mish mash of Baklava and Bake-off) in which two teams go head to head to see whose baklava recipe is better!!! 

Language Goals: Mini-Modules

I'll confess that after I finished writing my French love letters for Jake I slowed down a bit on the French practice. Okay, I slowed down a lot. All of a sudden I had no tangible goal to reach for. The letters gave me a reason to keep practicing and learning new words and sentence structures. But oncee that goal was accomplished, what was I supposed to do next?

I tried setting goals like, "have actual conversations with French people" or "watch/understand a movie in French sans English subtitles" but these seemed so distant from my current level. Then I read a few articles online and between this super cool article about realistic language goals and this article about language learning frustration I was able to refine some of my own goals for both the long-term and the short-term.

Color Vibe Tucson

After the Foam Glow 5K in Phoenix, I found out there was a Color 5K happening in Tucson less than two weeks later! I wasn't sure if I'd be up to running another 5K so soon afterward, but I decided to volunteer for it instead, so I could still partake in the fun! I was at the pink station so I got to throw fistfuls of hot pink powdered awesomeness on participants as they ran (or walked) past! (There is a picture of our team somewhere on the interwebs, but I can't find it.) We had some pop music blaring and the energy was Ramped Up. 

Afterward, there was a huge dance party with gigantic rainbow beach balls, clouds of colored powder, and of course some epic beats. For the time that I joined in, the DJ coordinated a Harlem Shake, crowd surfing, and several additional blasts of color!! It was soooo fun!! I loved every minute of it! And it's definitely on my list of things to do again.

See you next year, Color Vibe!!

Throwback Thursday

The other night my mom handed me one of those hefty kodak envelopes with a stack of pictures from my early soccer days (circa 2003)! This gem was one of the few close-up shots (all the rest were long shots of barely recognizable kids running up and down the field) and my favorite out of all of them!

Foam Glow 5K

I finished my first 5K this weekend!! It wasn't what I expected, but still an awesome experience!!

When we arrived, everyone was wearing all sorts of crazy clothes-- tutus and knee high socks and crazy glasses and glow sticks and faux hawk headbands... Pop music with too much bass and not enough treble blared through speakers as the crowd got pumped up for the race. Every ten minutes or so, they launched cannons of sudsy, shirt-staining neon foam on partipants.

For the "biggest black light event across the country" I kind of expected.... more black lights, or at least a lit course. As it was, with 8,000 people present, my dad described it as, "like running through Walmart on Black Friday...in the dark!" This part was a little unfortunate and Miss J was a little miffed.

More disappointing for me however was that even with our eight weeks of training I wasn't able to run the whole thing. This was probably due to a number of factors--feeling sick and still dealing with a nasty cough being the main one. I also have been chained to the house this whole last week so I couldn't run the last few days of our training. In addition, I think my initial pace was too ambitious, so I quickly got a side ache that forced me to walk.

All excuses aside, I ran as much as I could!! I finished the race and I was able to run for the last long stretch! I still cried, partly from disappointment and partly because my chest hurt so muh from trying to suppress my cough while running.

But the ice cream afterward was totally worth the effort. And now I have to sign up for another one so I can run the whole thing. Only this time, hopefully I won't be getting sick the week before!

Feeling So Blessed

Today, I think I received one of the most thoughtful gifts anyone has ever given me. (If not number one, it's definitely in the top ten!) A great big sketchbook arrived in the mail today from my friend Bethany, a long running friend of mine who used to live here before she moved away. I thought to myself, "Cool a new sketchbook!" with a twinge of guilt for all the other unused sketchbooks and notebooks I own. But when I opened it, I realized the sketchbook was already full! 

It was a "Life" book, brimming with miscellaneous fliers, to-do lists, scraps of poetry and sermon notes and class notes and chicken scratchings and letters and doodles and original Starbucks recipes.

 I was so blessed reading through it this morning! What a beautiful, transparent, funny, interesting snapshot of life! I was humbled, encouraged, cheered up, and inspired that this special notebook had been in the works for me for several months (Since September!). Bethany had told me about her project awhile back, but I never expected that I would be the recipient of such a gift!

For sure, the highlight of the week! And now I feel inspired to start my own "life" book to bestow upon another. Just don't mind me while I sit over here and sigh nostalgically all day, dreaming up thoughts and ideas and feeling oh so very blessed by the friends God has put in my life.

This Week in Photos

Not all of these photos are for the May Photo Challenge, partly because I got behind and partly because other things besides photo-challenges actually happen. Weird, right?

 Day 1: Chives

 Day 2: Sky, and little brother's first high school dance

 Dad took me out in the backyard for a lesson in night photography after our run. We don't have the right lens for it, but some of our pictures still turned out pretty good.

 Day 3: An Animal.
Believe it or not, there is a rabbit in this picture if you look at the center. It is running away from me. Almost all of my rabbit-hunting pictures look like this, some blurrier.

Day 4: Fruit. Blended in a cup after a Sunday morning run.

Day 5: Time. This is the whimsical clock that Grandma Ingrid gave us. It doesn't work anymore, but we've become quite fond of it.

 Day 7: Books


I missed day 6 (family) but as you can see, I have definitely been flexing my photography muscles and loving it every step of the way! More to come!