Skip to main content

Last day of spring break


one really nice thing about being affiliated with the public school system is all the days off. today is the last of my little days off, and i have thoroughly enjoyed myself.

i went to a little lake and walked around it with my dad. We were viewing a house he wants to buy at Lake Braddock after a decade of renting his current place. There were many birds and turtles. it was strange walking around in someone else's house, inspecting the ceilings for water spots, walking into closets to check out the size, sniffing the air for dampness.

i went to DC to pick up an anthology for a writing workshop i was a part of last year. it's called Writers on the Green Line Vol 1 and i am on page 20.

my dad and i had coffee and green tea bing soo at our local korean parisian-style cafe. see above.

i then deposited my tax returns.

at home, i helped do a spanish translation for NMASS.

then i made anchovy pasta which i destroyed with too much salt.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t...

Secret Message Writing Exercise (Epistolary Poem)

This is a great writing activity that I learned from DW, but I’ve modified it a little bit so that it will be easier to use with my poetry students. (D, please feel free to post your own version or other versions you have heard of.) materials: lined paper tracing paper instructions: at the top of the sheet of lined paper, write Dear ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever. this will be your reader, your audience, and you will write a letter as if to _______________.) write a secret message to someone that you’ve been meaning to tell but never had the guts to do it. (1 – 2 sentences, but they don’t have to be full sentences). write it on the lined paper so that the message is scattered on the page but so that you can still read it top to bottom and left to right. now forget your secret message when the moderator begins to keep time, start writing and don’t stop. write anything you want but don’t stop, even if you get stuck. if you can’t think of anything, just write nonsense until ...

MangaNEXT Convention, Day 1

I have been facilitating an after-school Anime Club at two high schools next to Ground Zero, alongside teaching Japanese after school (there is a lot of overlap in the student participants). As I do more and more research on Anime and Manga availability in the U.S., I meet increasing numbers of young people of color from all kinds of backgrounds who are consuming and producing their own anime-related work. Yet the culture of Anime and Manga consumption/production in the U.S. is still dominated by white (and Asian) males, although there seems to be an increasing number of women being recognized on an institutional level. As an artist and teacher who was raised on anime/manga (I learned Japanese by reading and watching) I'm pretty interested in the changing social impact of Japanese/US manga and anime culture. So I decided to hop on NJ Transit bus #129 after work today and attend the 2nd annual MangaNEXT convention (only the second convention devoted exclusively to manga ever held in...