Fighting the morning sleep
It's Wednesday. Two more days to go. Boy, the week sure goes by fast these days. There is really no time to do anything besides trying to keep my head above water!
Yesterday, during my math chapter presentation with my group, the fire alarm went off.. hmm.. that would have been fine and dandy if we didn't need to come back and continue the presentation! Turned out that there wasn't anything wrong.. who knows what happened. Anyways, at least it woke everyone up.
I have been reading a novel called Airborn this week.. wow, it's good! It's not an adult book for those of you who are wondering, but it's a book that adults can read :) It's about a boy who works on an air boat and follows an adventure with another girl (passenger) of finding these creatures her grandfather observed. During their quests, the ship gets taken over by pirates and they get ship wrecked on an island.. It's one of those books that you won't be able to put down!! It's won two prizes - the Michael L. Printx award for excellence in young adult literature and the governor general's literary award. Again, it's called AIRBORN and it's by Kenneth Oppel - read it!
Alright.. time to get moving.. I was almost late for class yesterday because of my mamoth speed.
Snow!?
This will be a short post since I have 10 minutes to spare before leaving the apartment this morning :)
My practicum went OK.. nothing overly spectacular but nothing bad. My mentor teacher is really nice and seems like a really interesting teacher.. I think I'll learn from him. Most importantly, he makes it comfortable to be around and I think he'll be supportive of anything I try which is the most encouraging thing. The students aren't that big!! Heheh.. I guess it must be because I've aged.. they are not that intimidating and when I look at them, I think they seem naive about the world around them even though some of them think they know a lot. Most of them seem to be pretty nice and some seem to be eager to get to know me :D Hopefully all will continue to go well as the weeks go on.
Snow is forecasted to fall tonight and tomorrow. Wow. I wonder if we'll get a huge snow storm early on this year and be one of those cities that gets covered in snow with school cancelled and we get to be on the news??! hehehe.. This reminds me, now that I'm back at school, I get to be like a student again, anxiously turning on the radio in the morning to see whether school has been cancelled or not.. ahh.. the good ol days of school cancellation - FOND MEMORIES!!!
Classes are getting to be increasingly more boring (for the most part). Lots of students are actually starting to skip classes even though we were told over and over again that attendance is compulsory (since we have so few hours of in class instruction). Ho hum.. if I had no math presentation this afternoon.......
I have recently been shopping around for a pair of shoes. My clogs are driving me nuts and I need a decent pair of shoes. Argh. Clothes are expensive! I'm also in the position where I need more dress clothes since I have to be dressing all "teacher-ish" ... but does JY have money to spend on clothes.. noooo!!!!! Boo!! Bah Humbug!
Anyways, I've written more than I thought I could write in 10 minutes - yay! It's time to go walk to the bus station (boo! I'm getting sick of walking there already!!).. have a nice and HEALTHY day!
The Week Has Come
I went to check out my school yesterday - so far, so good. It looks like a pretty clean and well maintained place - hey, there's not much you can observe on a Sunday afternoon - would YOU be at school on Sunday!? :P
Anyways, this week is pretty brutal. I'm not looking forward to not being able to sleep in at all.. I also made the smart decision of signing up for another workshop on Saturday so there goes my weekend :(
I was feeling mighty proud of myself (and also a bit confused) for not getting sick while people were coming down with the flu left and right. Alas.. I think I've started to fall prey to the lovely demon. My throat is scratchy and I'm feeling a bit under the weather. Hopefully some rest and good food will cure all for the rest of the week.
Ottawa is freaking cold!!!! The wind is just brutal. It's strong, snaps and bites at you. Ugh! It's not even winter yet! It's been pretty dreary for the last week or so .. it's been rainy, windy and cold. Just gloomy.. I think it's starting to get to me??
Not too much to report today.. sorry for the choppy writing.. feeling tired at the moment (though I had a two hour nap this afternoon). I'm sure I'll have more interesting things to report by the end of the week... ohh dear friends, please keep praying for me!!
Curious Chickadee Investigating the Food Situation
This birds are so friendly!
Beautiful Sky Eh?
Woho.. Birthday BBQ!! :D
Hiking in Gatineau Park
Feeling Beat
Man.. you'd think that after Thanksgiving weekend I would be refreshed and ready to get at school work again.. hmm.. you guessed it, I'm NOT!! :P
I went to school this morning feeling very drowsy and tired.. it might have been the turkey last night?? I don't know. This past weekend was pretty busy - went for a walk around the Green Belt (a rich old lady donated a piece of land to the city in her will stating that it was not to be touched for development but was to remain a natural area for wildlife) and had a fun time feeding chickadees (birds) and spotting some beavers (cool!). Following that, we had a BBQ which had been postponed from Friday night because of rain to celebrate two friends' birthdays. On Sunday, we went for another hike in Gatineau Park. It was a semi gloomy day but it was fun anyways. We had a late lunch/early dinner at a hong kong style restaurant at around 5:30pm (OH MY!!) ..heheh.. it was amusing because we all joked that it was too early for dinner and that we'd be hungry later and it ended up happening.. since everyone was already home by then and all too lazy to come out again, I think some people starved the night away.. hehehe!!
We had our Thanksgiving dinner Monday evening since we purchased the turkey on Sunday night (talk about procrastination).. it was a fairly simple dinner but it was all good.
Anyways, thats my weekend summary. Onto my complaints about school.. hehehe! I finally got my placement information today.. I'm going to be doing my internship/student teaching at a school called Fisher Park Public School for grades 7-8 (*gasp*) teaching Computer Science, History (*GASP*) and Geography (*gasp*) (suffocation is happening over here at the moment). I think my teacher mentor is a good teacher (I'm grasping as straws here but I saw his name down on various activities in their school newsletter so I'm assuming he's enthusiastic which leads me to believe he's good). I'm keeping my fingers crossed (and so should all of you!) that my experience will be a positive one and I won't come home sobbing and wailing about the students. Actually, pray for me people!
Besides practicum placement, I'm beginning to realize that I'm drowning in work. I've tons of projects due and the readings aren't letting up!! ARGgggggggghhhhhh.. I don't know where I'm going to find time to do all this stuff once student teaching begins.. I won't be able to rely on Thursdays & Fridays anymore *SOB*.
Another thing I want to complain about is that I don't get a March Break this year!!!!!!!! That means, I'll have no break from January - April!!! :O Hmm. I guess being a teacher means sacrifice so I'd better get used to this.
On a brighter note, I have booked my plane ticket home for Christmas and am now official broke (ok, maybe not so bright). I'll be flying back on the 18th of Dec and departing again on the 2nd of January (class starts up on the 3rd - ugh!) - this information is for any of you who care to know :P
OK, I have a textbook sitting under my arms as I type.. as my math prof is saying "it's not going to get transferred into your brain through osmosis, read it!!".
Just a person who wishes that she could sleep......
JY
Yummy... Vietnamese food!
Yes, Autumn has come!
Flowers for me? AWWW (YEAH, I WISH!!!)
October is here!?
Man.. fall is here! I know I say I hardly believe that time passes so fast all the time but I don't really feel like it's been THAT fast this time. I feel like I've been in Ottawa for quite a long time but in reality, it's only been about 2 months. The thing that I can't really believe is that practicum is sneaking up on us.. I'm sort of pretending that I'll get Thursdays and Fridays off every week until the end of the year (I wish!).
School is starting to get supremely busy with all our readings and projects. I feel like I'm drowning! It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have so much reading to get done each week.. ahhh..
This long weekend will probably be spent doing some work and taking it easy. I'm trying to get as much accomplished during the week as possible so that I can relax a bit over the weekend. Gotta keep in mind it's only 1 extra day off!
Nothing extraordinary has been going on lately.. just discovering some new places in Ottawa (slowly) and am still finding the city interesting and nice. Anyways, I'm going to keep this post short - better get back to work! I just thought I'd post something since it's been a while and I didn't want people to think I had disappeared! :)
BTW, Happy Birthday to all of my friends who have had/having birthdays in Sept and October (holy cow there are a lot of people!!): Simone, Clara, Cindy, Mon, Danny, Kwang, Kok Wai, Adeline, Julian, and Wei Ching!
