Lazy lady

I've been one lazy lady lately. I haven't updated in about a week--sorry! I guess just not much has been going on. We put up our Christmas tree the other night and decorated it. I attempted to make sugar cookies and guess how well that turned out? I even made them from "real" ingredients the way Kyle wanted them but they ended up SO crumbly and too easily breakable. They still tasted good though. They were RICH! HOOO---WEEEE! You had to drink either milk or water to cut the richness. Oh well. Then we had hot chocolate. So, it was a special, fun night. :)


Didn't have a sub job for today. I still have a c0uple of assignments to do for my last class meeting this weekend. The long break that we had right before Thanksgiving until now totally made me switch into vacation mood so I'm certainly not excited to do these assignments. I did write one of them this afternoon though so I'm half-way done. Just gotta type it up and put some sort of creative, artistic flare to it because it's about fall leaves. You ask, what do fall leaves have to do with ESL? Well, here you go--I'll tell you what one of the professors wanted...The concept is called Nepantla or Nepantlando. This word is from the Aztec language, Nahuatl. It basically means "being lost or losing identity" or something along the lines of that. I can better explain it by my personal experience of moving across the country--when we first moved here and got settled (or somewhat settled, anyway) our first visit back to GA was weird. We had lived there our entire lives and it was so familiar then but when we went back to GA after having been in a different state for a few months, our homes were familiar yet not. When we came back to Idaho, it was the same way except more unfamiliar than familiar because we don't have any family ties here so we have to develop our own identities here in Idaho and start from scratch. I hope this makes sense. It's kind of an abstract concept. Anyway, I have to describe this nepantlando concept in terms of a leaf. Basically, I'm saying that there's this little leaf who grows up in the Spring and Summer and is proud of who he is and how uniquely colored he is but then the first Fall comes and he notices his friends are changing and no longer have their unique coloring. They soon fall from the mother tree and become mixed up in the oblivion of Fall leaves. This little leaf determines to not lose his unique coloring and he remains holding onto his mother tree. Finally the force of the wind is too strong and the cold is too bitter, he loses his pretty coloring and drops from his mother tree to the crowd of already-fallen leaves in order to be swallowed up into non-identity. They just lie there on the ground waiting for the big rake to come group them into one big bag to be thrown out and to never be seen again or be identified with this one particular, unique tree species because according to the humans, they're all just leaves---nothing special. Now, this assignment was supposed to be written in another language. Well, I haven't written stories in German in over a year or so! I feel like I can't express myself as clearly with that language anymore. Plus, I'm thinking, what are they gonna do if I don't write in another language? What are the people in my class that don't speak another language gonna do? They can't just pull a language out of their rears and write in it! Those translator websites aren't that good anyway because they sometimes don't give you the correct word or usage that you want. Anyway, I think I'll just leave it the way it is....in English. I feel more comfortable doing that. I don't want to slaughter the German grammar and structures. :) I could just try to write it in German but if it doesn't work out, then I'll just leave it as is.

The other assignment is just a reflection paper but we don't know how long it's supposed to be because nobody in that whole, dang department can't speak clearly for some reason or tell us what they really want. They have this hangup about telling us what to do...well, newsflash! Ya'll are a bunch of PROFESSORS WITH DOCTORATES!!!! Please tell us what you want!!!!