Today

Today was good because:

LivingSocial hired me to write for Escapes (YESSS. I CAN WORK IN PAJAMAS FROM HOME UNTIL I DEPART FOR WHEREVER).

I sold several pieces of furniture.

I got to see Emily! Yay.

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I had a couple of pre-interview interviews this week for two schools in Shanghai. Both went well.

I got two more interviews confirmed for the fair: Prishtina, Kosova and Guayama, Puerto Rico. Beginning to think I overbooked myself. We'll see.

I'm starting to get sad about leaving Austin.

This song is currently cheering me up:



Ai se eu te pego!

More Fair

Yesss my fair binder is done. I organized all the school fact sheets and sticky noted with different colors so I remember which ones have invited me to interview and which other ones I want to talk to. I also have a sticky note color for "last resorts," but shh don't tell anyone.

I usually suck at organizing things, but this was pretty essential to do unless I wanted to lose my mind trying to keep all of them straight.

Days until UNI Fair: 10

Adventures in the Kitchen: Raspberry Poppy Seed Dressing

I made this for a strawberry and spinach salad on New Year's Eve, and ooh it was good.

Raspberry Poppy Seed Dressing

Ingredients:

1/4 cup grated/minced onion (half of a small onion)
1/2 cup raspberry vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup canola oil
1-1/2 teaspoons poppy seeds

Directions:

Add minced onion, vinegar, sugar, mustard, and salt to a blender or food processor and mix until combined. With the blender/food processor running, add the oils in a thin stream through the hole in the top. Blend until well mixed. Add poppy seeds and pulse just until mixed.

SALAD TIME!

Grammar Lessons from the Future English Teacher: Installment 4

Today's lesson will be a quick one: direct address. If you are directly addressing someone/something, this means that you are talking to him/her/them/it. If you are writing or typing your direct address, you need to use at least one comma.

Example:

Did you hear me, Watson?

Easy. Now, if your address is in the middle of a sentence, there needs to be a comma before AND after the name.

Example:

What I said, Watson, was to stop eating all of my cheese.

Also easy. If your address is at the beginning of the sentence, the comma goes after.

Example:

Watson, please buy me some more cheese.

EASY. Please use commas.

UNI Fair Update

Finished my credential file for the UNI Overseas Job Fair and sent my resume and cover letters to 33 schools in total, all around the world. An additional five schools contacted me separately (only one of which I turned down), so I've got some interview invitations set up already:

Barranquilla, Colombia
Manizales, Colombia
Shanghai, China
Jakarta, Indonesia
Taichung, Taiwan
Hawalli, Kuwait

I just finished sending out letters today, so I'll hopefully get a few more responses before the fair and some other interviews scheduled once I get there.

On an information type note, I've had a couple schools turn me down because of my lack of full-time experience (a lot of schools want candidates to have at least 2 years), but there are definitely options for new teachers like me.

I'm really excited about all of these prospects! I might be going to the Middle East, but I'm definitely going somewhere.

Whelp...

...just booked my flight to lovely Iowa in February. No going back now. Hope I don't get caught in a blizzard. I'm going to try to think of it as a vacay, though I don't know who would go on vacation to Iowa in the middle of winter.

I really just like to be in airports. I think if I could periodically just go sit in an airport and imagine that I'm about to go somewhere, I would be infinitely happier.

Left to do for UNI fair:

Personal Statement
Get 3 (?!) letters of recommendation
Fancy up my portfolio


TRAVELS! HERE THEY COME!

Texas Teaching Certification

Just got my official State of Texas bilingual teaching certificate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BAM.

BACK ON TRACK

OOH look I've gutted my blog. Relevant posts/things I like remain.

In my (way too long) absence from the blog-o-sphere, I have successfully obtained my Texas Bilingual Generalist EC-6 and ESL teaching certificate to add to my Oxford Seminars one. This qualifies me to go to things like this:

YAHOO

Which I will be doing. In February.

No attending schools from Buenos Aires, but I'm pretty open to South America in general. LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Banana Time

2010 wrap-up coming soon. For now, you're welcome:

Berlitz Day 4

UGH POLITICS UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH UGH TAXES BARF UGH ECONOMY UGHHHHHHHHH.

New Etsy items! Check 'em out! -->

Today was a long day, but it was pretty good. I went to tutor Ronald, and for some reason my laptop wouldn't get on the internet at the office, so I just asked him opinion questions out of the TOEFL book and let him talk. He did really really well and didn't make very many grammar mistakes! Most of his errors now are with word order, which is so so so so so sososooooo awesome, and I feel great about how he's progressing despite his limited vocabulary.

He asked me some questions about specific stuff that was confusing him, and we had a good talk about a few points of English like when to use "that" vs. "it." Then I asked some questions about a few things in Spanish that were giving me issues, and we had a nice knowledge-exchange. Hooray!

Thennn I got to go to Berlitz and observe the 2nd half of an upper-level English class. Today they were working on how to write business emails. It was very interesting, and I thought the instructor was great.

I took a break in the cafeteria (which has any kind of coffee or tea you can imagine from this amazing machine!) to do my module and prepare my 10-minute demo lesson on present perfect, then headed to training.

We did our demos and had one-on-one feedback with the instructor, and I feel like I did pretty well. She hinted that they need someone to do a total immersion class (4-8 hours a day!) in 2 weeks, and I might be considered for that. HOORAY.

During the rest of the training, we got into some of the more intricate workings of English and how hard they are to teach. I loved it because I love grammar and learning about how to explain it. Tomorrow we have a 30-minute demo to do! I'm nervous!

In other news, Emily AND my sister will be in Austin this weekend. I'm excited! I haven't seen seester since August I don't think.

YAYYYYYYYY