November 25, 2012

I had a perfectly marvelous day as I got to stay home and take care of housekeeping stuff. The weather was sunny and I could see lots of children and teenagers frolicking in the snow as the weather warmed up a bit. By mid-day, I could keep the window open to bring some fresh air into the flat even though some people must have been burning leaves somewhere and the smell drifted in.

 I tackled the kitchen and only then remembered I had left the smoked fish we bought on the way back from Yssy-kul Lake in the plastic bag and, of course, they were rotten. I cooked the deep-orange hued pumpkin I had bought many days ago thinking of making a soup similar to the one I had had the day before, but mine turned out to be stringy and I didn’t have a colander or strainer to get rid of the rind and strings.

After a long bath, doing my hair and getting into my pajamas, I did another load of laundry. Tried to watch a bit of TV, but CNN was re-running the same program on the Irish IRA for the third time this week. Just sickening.

One of the teachers at the Forum session last Saturday had asked for recommendations on songs that teenagers here might be interested in listening to in her class. I looked up who was “hot” in the charts these days and came up with Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Justin Bieber, Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus and the like. I didn’t recognize a single one of the songs being quoted, a clear sign of the generation gap.

Doing yet more researched, I finally found the perfect article for me to start the foundation work on a presentation on using film in the classroom to increase fluency for intermediate and advanced learners. The cherry on top? The article contained a detailed list of movies with a brief summary that I can use to  guide my selection of clips for the presentation.

I managed to open a Gmail account for our book club and drafted the memo that would be sent to all prospective attendees. I sent it to Rebecca for her approval and she made some changes to it. All we need to do now is put together a mailing list this week and send it out.

I watched Ben Affleck’s film, “The Town”, averting my eyes every time the mayhem started, and found it too violent for my taste. The best part of the movie concerns the romance between the female protagonist and Affleck, but the movie devotes too much time to incongruous scenes, especially the last robbery.

All in all, I was very pleased with the way my day went. I felt rested, happy with the work I had done and ready to face another day.