Some thoughts

My only class today was cancelled because of the inauguration, so I decided to stay home today, work from here, and watch it. I don't know if I've really seen any other inaugurations, but it was pretty interesting to listen to Obama's speech and all the stuff before and after it. I think the news people were pretty excited and the crowd there certainly was. I don't really feel like writing a big post on politics, but I think my professor was right to say he cancelled class because what happened in our country today was certainly more significant than reviewing phonetics in class. I also decided to make the inauguration speech the subject of my 102 class tomorrow--I'll be introducing Aristotelian analysis, and analyzing a political speech is a great way to have my students practice the skills. Plus, I do think today was important for our country and it can't hurt to have my students interested in discussing it. (with this type of analysis the focus is on the speaker's effectiveness in achieving his purpose, so we'll focus on what his purpose was and how he achieved it--hopefully not get bogged down in political discussions.)

Some other things I haven't mentioned on the blog yet: on Friday afternoon I went to a panel organized by the EL/L Student Association (ELLSA) on professionalism in ESL. Dr. Panferov (my former instructor and the director of CESL), Dr. Dallas (my current Contrastive Rhetoric instructor) and Dr. Reinheart (another EL/L faculty member) presented some information and answered questions about things like attending/presenting at conferences, getting published, preparing a CV, and finding jobs. It was really good information, including lists of websites to look for work and a copy of Dr. Reinheart's CV from when he had just completed his master's. This is the only thing ELLSA has done since I've been here, but it was certainly worth attending. I think I might try to become an officer next year...

Mark and I also went to the young couples class at EBC on Sunday. It was a nice group of people, although I think we were the only people in the class who don't have kids. They were very friendly, though, and the teacher of the class was really interested in talking to Mark about percussion (he has a high school aged son in the pit). I told Mark he ought to bring his business cards next week! I think we'll keep attending this church. We seem to like the people we've met so far, and there are some couples are age in the young professionals group. (The only problem with that is we won't be able to go every week because Mark has SASO rehearsals some Tuesday nights). But, people there are starting to recognize us, and that's nice.

I can't really think of anything else interesting going on. We're both still trying to get used to our school schedules again, but another week or so and it'll all feel normal.