Moving on up!

It doesn't feel quite real to me yet, but Friday was the last day of classes. Since my department doesn't do final exams, that means I'm almost done with my work for the semester. I can't believe how quickly this spring has gone by; it's equally wild to me that we've now been in BG for almost two years. So far in our married life, we've moved to a new apartment every two years, and it turns out this year is no exception. Later this week, we'll be moving again, this time into a nice 3 bedroom in a quiet complex with great amenities. It's pretty exciting to think of living at the new place, but I'm a bit overwhelmed by all that needs to get done in the next week. Stay tuned for pics of the new place!

TESOL 2012

Well, it's been over a week now since TESOL, so I better post an update! Overall, I think the conference went really well. Our travel, though complex, went about as smoothly as it possibly could have, and it seemed like everyone in our group got along well. We're a very collegial bunch, but having 5 ladies in one room could have become tricky. Thankfully, there didn't seem to be any major issues.

The two presentations I was part of went pretty well, although the humongous crowd at one made me a bit flustered, so I don't think it was my best presentation ever. Still, we had a really good response from the people who attended. From what I heard, the other presentation that I wasn't in also went well. I was able to go to some really great sessions, and I came home with a a lot of things to think more about and follow up on. In particular, I'm reading up on work by Eli Hinkel, who was my favorite speaker from this year. I saw her twice, and not only was she talking about issues that were really relevant to my current teaching situation, but she was also hilarious--a totally unexpected perk.

Actually, the coolest part of this conference was the fact that I do have a specific teaching situation to apply what I've learned. The last two times I attended, even though I was teaching first-year comp at the time, I felt more like the conference was a chance to explore any and all areas of interest, which meant that I was attending sessions on all kinds of topics--immigration, adult ed, writing, etc. And I loved that, but it was really great this time to focus in on the kinds of sessions that were about issues I'm currently thinking about in my own teaching. As a result, there were many connections between the different sessions I went to, and I've been thinking a lot about how the things I learned (and the things I want to study further) can inform my teaching, especially as I'll be planning classes for the fall.

The other neat thing about this conference was having the chance to share it with so many colleagues--sometimes we went to the same sessions and discussed them; other times we went our separate ways and compared notes later. And besides interacting on that professional level, it was really fun to get to know them better personally. I also got to meet up with one friend from grad school--seeing her was really great, too.

So, I've got a few pictures to post, but I'm missing a big chunk of the trip because I had misplaced my camera (thought I lost it, but thankfully I didn't!). I might get some pics from a colleague to fill in the gaps, but for now, here are a few highlights that I did manage to capture on film (so to speak).

At the convention:

 Plenary from William Labov--a really famous sociolinguist.

These weird blue cutout people were out in one of the main hallways. We thought they were kind of lame, which is what I'm trying to express with my own weird face and body language. Turns out, they look cooler in the photo than in person.

Some of my colleagues and me outside the convention center.

Around Philly:

There's a walking tour of murals in the convention center area--we saw about 4 of them. This was one of my favorites.

A cool old church. There's another awesome mural right next door, but I didn't get any pics of that one.

That's the capitol building in the background.

 Another pretty church.

At a lovely park with the kids--a friend and I were kidsitting while mom and dad presented.

Food:

Our hotel had free breakfast, and some awesome freshly baked soft pretzels in the afternoons. So dinners were the main exciting meals.

Thai on our first night there. Our hotel was practically next door to both the convention center and China town.

The complimentary cheese and meat trays we received at the swanky "Parc" restaurant in the French Quarter after we waited two hours to be seated (when they had told us it would be 40 minutes).

 My entree--gnocchi with parsnip puree, mushrooms, and Brussels sprouts. Tasty and pricy.

Another nice group shot!

All in all, I think we had quite a good adventure! Now, it's back to the real world--only 3 weeks left of the semester. It'll be a race to the finish, as usual.

Heading to Philly!

The TESOL International Convention is this week, and I'll be there! I'll be presenting twice, once about a cool service learning video project, and once about teaching grammar and vocabulary with games. The second is a repeat (with some adaptations) of a presentation from OH TESOL back in November, the first is new. I'll be traveling and presenting with 5 colleagues from my program plus another woman who used to be the director of our program (she transitioned to a new job at another university just as I was starting at BGSU). The travel logistics have been a bit complicated, and there's a lot of prep involved (not just for the presentations, but in terms of figuring out how to keep my students busy while I'm gone). But, in the end, I think it'll be really great. It's actually kind of a cool milestone for me, because the last time I went to TESOL was two years ago, in Boston, and at that convention, I met three of the ladies I'm traveling with this year. They told me all about their program, and I was really hopeful to get a job there. Here I am two years later, not only working in the program, but collaborating with them on conference presentations! The last two years really have gone by quickly, and this moment of reflection has left me feeling very blessed. It'll be a crazy week, but perhaps I'll have some pictures to post at the end of it!

Spring Break!

I'm a bit surprised that it's been a month since my last post...that's a bit longer than I thought! I guess things have been really busy around here, and maybe there haven't been many exciting things going on. We're just plugging away through the semester. I guess one thing is that we're planning to move to a different apartment complex when our current lease is up this summer. The new place will be bigger, and the complex is completely smoke-free, with a quieter group of residents. They also have some nice amenities like pools (indoor and outdoor), a fitness room, and a meeting room. I really resisted the idea of moving at first, just because it's so much work, but I think once we're all settled in at the new place, we'll be really glad we did it.

This week is Spring Break, and to start things off, Mark and I decided to get out of town for a few days. We spent the weekend in Ann Arbor, MI, which is a nice college town about an hour from here (it's much bigger than BG). I forgot to take my camera, which was really disappointing, so I don't have any pictures to share. Our time there was pretty low-key, especially because the weather was much colder than we expected and there weren't any music/theater/arts performances going on the weekend we were there. (We picked our travel dates based on the best rate we could get at the hotel, so we later discovered it was a pretty quiet weekend as far as events go). We ended up exploring the town through a little "driving tour" courtesy of Mark's navigational skills with a city map. That allowed us to see it without having to stroll around in the cold/snowy weather. We also enjoyed eating out, shopping, and just taking it easy. I think for me, the most important thing was to take a step back from our hectic lives and spend some quality time together, which we certainly did.

Now that we're back in town, we're dealing with a long list of to-dos, which does include relaxing a bit more, but it seems that it will be a busy break for us. We did our taxes today and met with our insurance agent. We've also got some other things to do around the house, along the lines of spring cleaning. I've also got school work that needs to be done, but I haven't been ready to tackle that yet. In the end, these breaks always feel like they go by too fast. After break, though, we've only got 7 weeks left in the semester, and I know that time will fly by as well. Our summer plans are mostly up in the air still, but I hope they'll come together soon.

So, that's the scoop. I'll try to think of things to post a bit more regularly in the coming weeks! :-)

Four Weeks In

As usual, the semester is flying by--in fact, it's now one quarter over. The past few weeks have been filled with classes, grading, and other day-to-day stuff that's kept both of us busy (for Mark, it's been a lot of rehearsals). I'm finding it a challenge to adjust to my new schedule, which includes 10 hours a week working at our tutoring center (I'm filling in there for a colleague who is on leave this semester). That means I'm only teaching 3 classes instead of 4, which is certainly a fair exchange, but it's been an adjustment to have so much more of my time each day scheduled. For example, it's much trickier to find a time to meet with a colleague about a project we're working on for one of our classes because I have less flexibility in my schedule. But it's really a great opportunity for me to explore the teaching of writing in a totally different context: working with writers one-on-one. I'm also leading weekly training meetings for a small group of student tutors who want to learn more about working with ESOL writers, and I'm contributing small lessons/activities/tips in the weekly staff meetings for all the writing tutors. So I'm learning a lot, and I hope I'm making a meaningful addition to the other tutors' knowledge base. I've also been completely reworking the curriculum for the writing class I'm teaching, which is pretty exciting, but it also takes a lot of time. I feel like I'm just barely one step ahead of the students most of the time, which is not how I prefer to do things. So, there's a lot going on around here, but it's mostly good stuff.

In my life outside of school, I've been cooking a lot, and trying some new recipes. Which reminds me, the new pizza dough I posted about last month is definitely a keeper. Specifically, doubling the recipe makes a perfect large pizza. I also found a tzatziki sauce that turned out pretty well, and I made some tasty broccoli soup using some ham bones I had in the freezer. Yum. Of course, I seem to have an unending list of recipes that I'd like to try, but sometimes it's hard to deviate from an old standard at the end of a long day.

I'm also reading the Harry Potter books, which Mark has wanted me to read for a while. I've just started the 5th one, which is where the story line gets a little "darker" than the previous books. I'm not expecting to become a die-hard fan of the series, but the books are interesting, and at least now I get all (or maybe most of?) the Harry Potter references people make.

So that's a bit about what's been going on here.

Breaking Pizza News!

I've been making homemade pizza for a while now, and I've posted quite a bit here about the technique I'd "perfected." But the other day, Mark mentioned that he's not crazy about the pizza crust I make when it's leftover. I think it's pretty good, but I've been wondering about trying another recipe for crust anyway. Well, the other day I was flipping through pictures on Gojee when I found a tasty looking recipe for herbed pizza crust, which was another blogger's modification of this recipe. I decided to go ahead and test out the original (I didn't know if Mark would care for the herbs), and it was awesome! The dough had a better texture: crispy on the outside (and along the whole bottom), soft on the inside. I doubled the recipe to make two small pizzas, but I think the crust was just a bit thin, so I might triple it next time, or just make one large with the double recipe. I didn't think to take pictures, but you can see how good it looks in the pictures with the recipe. I'll definitely be trying it out again soon (that is, assuming the leftovers reheat at least as well as the old recipe!).

In other news, the first week of school went pretty well, but I'm thankful for a long weekend to rest and work ahead! It's good to be back, though.

We also got our first major snow of the season this weekend, starting on Friday. There was a lot of wind, which was really nasty, but it is pretty to see everything covered in snow. The only thing that would make it better would be not having to go out in it. Unfortunately, that didn't work out this time. The roads weren't bad though, and it was probably less than 4 inches total, so still not too intense for this area. We'll see if the winter says mild or if we get really nasty weather in the next couple of months.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's been a while since I last posted, mostly because I was too busy when I was back in ABQ to find time to write any updates. Now I'm home in BG, unpacked, and ready to say a bit about our holiday visit. We were there for 2 weeks, which is the longest visit we've had at one time since we moved away from home. Since I hadn't made it back to ABQ since last Christmas, I was really looking forward to the time. Despite the length of our visit, I stayed pretty busy making sure I made the rounds to see as many people as I could, and getting in lots of quality time with family. I did lots of shopping, lots of eating, and lots of chatting. We also played some games, saw some movies, and got together with friends. I've found that I'm not very good at taking pictures to document this kind of trip, but I did snap a few at various points.

Here's the beautiful view of the Sandia Mountains from my Grandma's kitchen table:

The pretty dusting of snow we had during the first week of our stay (in my parents' backyard):

The table before our annual Mother-Daughter Tea, hosted by my mom:

Another shot of the beautiful, snow-covered mountains:

Dad looking at the Uganda scrapbook I made him for Christmas:

On the road with my parents in their recently purchased 1929 Ford Model A:

A chance encounter with a roadrunner, the NM state bird:

So, there's something to look at, but clearly not a representative view of our trip. Oh well. We really enjoyed being with all of our family and visiting our friends. We are truly blessed by the love, support, generosity, and hospitality of our loved ones. It was a lovely Christmas season, and now I'm starting to look forward to the new year and the new adventures it holds for us!