12-26-06 Rainy Day

It was rainy all day today, but warm. My car still won't start, so Mom and I had to walk everywhere.

12-25-06 Family for Christmas

This is the first Christmas in three years that I had family here! It was wonderful! After opening presents, we went for a walk through the neighborhood.

12-24-06 My car is broken, again

Tom and I went out for some last-minute Christmas shopping in Emeryville, but when we were leaving, I couldn't get my car to start. We ended up being stranded there for about 2 and a half hours before Julian and Mom were able to figure out how to get it started. Then I got it home and it died again. At least it was in my garage. Here are some pictures of these wrought-iron cut outs they have in the parking lot:

12-17-06 Walk around Lake Merritt with Mom

Today Mom and I practiced our night photo skillz around Lake Merritt. It was slow moving and we took a lot of photos, but it was fun and good practice. My favorite photo was of the pigeons, which is also on Mom's blog:



I also liked a couple of the landscape-y pictures:

12-16-06 Vodka Tasting

Today we went to Alameda and had manis and pedis, then on to Hangar One and St. George Distillery for vodka and whiskey tasting. The distillery is in an old airplane hangar the tasting room looks out into the hangar and the barrels and all the distilling equipment. The windows in the tasting room have a great view of the San Francisco Bay and the skyline. The vodka was great! I will definitely bring out of town visitors there again.

12-14-06 Holiday Lunch with Student Services

Lewis took the office out to lunch. We were seated in the wine cellar, which was kind of fun, but I think it was because we made the reservations really late and they didn't have anywhere else to put us.

12-12-06 Too Busy at Work

Things have been worse than hectic at work. Here is a picture of my desk:

12-11-06 Love the Bay Area

This house is near the school where my mentor teacher works:

Isn't that Kaiser Permanente?

Tom's Birthday and the Chivas' Victory

I have to do another multiple entry for the photo-a-day and I notice that I am missing one day. The first photo are some people from work. We had our annual holiday retreat, but not everyone got to go, which they really didn't miss much because it was boring and not worth the time. After the retreat, everyone met up for dinner at Chef's Wok. The food was not too good and they served shark's fin soup. I had no idea it was so environmentally wrong to hunt the sharks and that the whole shark-fin fishing process is so bad. None of us ate the soup.




I wanted to put a cute picture of Tom on my blog for December 9th's photo, but Tom said I couldn't. You will just have to imagine what he looks like holding his birthday presents.

Today, December 10th, was a big soccer tournament between the Americas (Mexico City) and the Chivas (Guadalajara). The Chivas won and all over Oakland the fans were going crazy. Lots of red and white jerseys, horn honking, and partying. I got this photo on Fruitvale Avenue when I went out for some tacos.

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Almost There...

Only six more days until the end of quarter and Mom will be here in one week! Not much to say, here are some photos of me and a friend, Serok, doing homework. Also, I was desperate for my photo of the day, so I took a picture of my computer screen at 5:30am when I was working on my homework.

Catch Up and Last Day of English 6508

Well, these last few days have been full of homework and avoiding homework. Yesterday, one of the latter category was the crab dinner that I made for dinner. It waa dee-lish and was accompanied by an aioli sauce made with chipotle pepper and cilantro. Here is a photo of one of the freshly cooked crabs:




Tonight was the last day of class for English 6508 (actually, we do have an optional class next Monday, but really, who is going to go to that?). We all are going crazy trying to finish everything by next Wednesday. Here is a photo of Clarissa expressing her frustration:



In other school related news, my mentor teacher let me lead a small group with one of the students who is struggling to keep up with class. It was great practice and made me feel like I am doing more in the class than just sitting there and observing.

Christine Visited!

Yesterday was normal at work, but then Christine came by to visit! Christine used to be a student at Argosy, then she started working there too. Recently she quit because she found a full time job that is in her profession (clinical psychology, she's a Doctor!) and close to her home. Yesterday she was teaching a class at Argosy, so I got to see her. Anyway, she is the one on the right and Amy Brom is the one on the left.




Also, Christmas decorations are being put up around the offce:

Hate Letters

Wednesday I had class and we received the grades on our midterms and I didn't do as well on it as I usually do. Part of the test was to create a visual project about adult learners in ESL. I did this:



It is supposed to show that as adults build their "web" of self esteem, their ability to learn language increases. Well, I only got 8/10 on this, which is fine, because it really does look like a three year created it. Oh well.

Then I got to work yesterday morning and I had a three page hate letter in my mailbox from a student. The student had had a hard time with our school and decided to take it out on me. It was addressed to the president of the school and cc'ed to half the campus. Of course I did not take it very well. However, after spending the whole day feeling sorry for myself, I now see that the student is just frustrated with the school and the only person she talked to the whole time she was there was me, so naturally when she needs someone to blame, I came to her mind. I will post the letter tomorrow so that interested people can read it.