It's hard to believe that it's Monday morning again already! As expected, the weekend went by very quickly. Thankfully, I got almost everything on my to-do list taken care of, despite being away from home for most of the weekend. I'm very glad that this week will be a little more normal.
The conference was pretty good--the theme was "Intercultural Competence." Not all of the presentations seemed to have direct application to my situation now, but most of them were at least interesting. One presenter talked about teaching using children's literature and provided a long list of activities to use when discussing literature. Those activities will certainly be helpful for my 101 class, since we spend about two weeks per unit reading and discussing texts from an anthology. I'm always looking for ways to keep those discussions interesting and productive. I will say that the most impressive part of the conference was the food--we had snacks and dinner on Friday, and breakfast, lunch, and snacks on Saturday. I'm quite sure the $20 I paid would not have even covered the cost of all that food! The other really good part about the conference was that a handful of 2nd year EL/L student were there, too (on Friday, at least). So it was a good opportunity for me and the other 1st years to get to know them a little better, and also discuss things about the program and the field in general. For example, I learned that it is expected for me to present at some kind of conference during my time here (which no one had yet mentioned). It also sounds like several people are planning to go to the TESOL conference in Denver this spring, which I had also been thinking about. Maybe we'll be able to arrange a carpool or something. I have to remember to think ahead about conferences and presenting and what I'll be doing after my master's, but it's hard to keep all that in mind when I've got a to-do list a mile long just for today!
Mark also played on Sunday with the SASO--this was the last part of his gig with that group. He got a ticket for me, so I was able to go. They played in a beautiful church in the far north part of town. It was a well-attended concert, and Mark did a great job with the difficult cymbal part on the last piece. In fact, he was pretty much the star of the show for that movement. It sounds like he'll probably also be hired to play with this group for their concert next month.
The only other thing I can think of to share is that it has finally started to feel like fall. Yesterday and today I needed a jacket in the morning. We were able to turn off the A/C and crack the windows at night, and Mark stayed cool enough. Today's high is only in the 70s. But, it's supposed to warm up again to the lower 90s by the end of the week. Honestly, I really like the weather, but Mark is eager for it to cool off and stay cool.
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