well i'm sitting at the computer lab with nothing better to do until class starts at 4, so i might as well post... i apologize if i rant about the girl across from me who has been sniffling and sneezing CONSTANTLY without using a kleenex, or the girl behind me who has been holding a conversation with someone on the other side of the room, which stops only when she calls someone on her damn cell phone, or the conversation TWO ROWS away that i can still hear....
micki's birthday went fine on tuesday. i bought her the box set of the Anne of Green Gables books. So Helen, you're still set to buy her some vodka. we still haven't gone out for her birthday dinner. i think it's going to be lunch this coming saturday at pizzaria uno's downtown.
thursday dad took the day off and scheduled a repair dude from sears to come between 8 and noon to fix the dryer, and from 1 to 5 to fix the furnace. i got home at one and the dude for the dryer still had not come yet, and had not called saying he would be late. dad called sears to let them know that he purposefully scheduled them at different times because they had to work in the same 2' by 3' space. around 1:30 the furnace guy comes. he cleans it out, pokes around and leaves. after he leaves it stops working. then the dryer guy comes around 4:30, still hasn't figured out what a fucking phone looks like, and spends thirty seconds putting in a new igniter. after he leaves, the dryer guy comes back and puts in a new igniter there. ok. we now have two working items. thank you. you may have wasted 5 hours of my dad's time, but at least you fixed something.
observation went fine last week. i tallied and organized all of the permission slips, money, lunch choices, and parent chaperone numbers. (then i didn't observe yesterday and the CT mutilated my nicely organized list). my professor came to observe me, but all i really did was wander around during the III/IV class and help them translate words into German for their Timeline of the Berlin Wall posters. The posters came out pretty good. I'm impressed by their creativity. I liked the one group that put in random sections of exposed bricks. and the group of all guys whose timeline was nice, but very utilitarian with lousy handwriting and commented "man, we really could have used a girl in our group" *I* laughed.
i went to observe again Thursday and I was helping the students translate more words. One kid had a bunch of stick figures holding up signs that said "Freiheit!" and "Einheit!" (Freedom and Unity) and asked me for other similar words.
Me: "how about 'gleichheit' - it means equality
Student: "ooh, that's a good one"
Teacher: "what's a good one?"
Student: "gleichheit"
Teacher: "sameness? why would you use that?"
Student: (pointing at me) "he said it means equality"
Teacher: "no, it doesnt, it means 'sameness' "
now i know for a fact that gleichheit means equality thanks to Herr Murray's constant stream of "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Solidaritaet!" not to mention that i have never in my life heard of the word sameness (although i'm no english teacher). this was irritating.
i don't remember what i did this weekend. saturday rory and i went to see Hitman with the dude from Die Hard 4. it was alright. nothing exciting but it could have been a lot worse. i bought a student-teaching outfit. i clean up good.
sunday i went to try and retrieve some data from Jenny's dead computer. whenever her computer boots it says "Master File Table Corrupt" and will not load windows. so i start poking around. she has two hard drives, C and J. C is the main one, with windows loaded, and has her documents, J has her music. now jenny can re-rip most of her music but there's a hell of a lot, so J is her priority. I manage to get the computer working fine, but only if J is not plugged in. so we get the stuff from C, download it to a flash drive and put it on her new computer. nothing i do can salvage the J drive though. i try plugging it into her new computer. it is recognized in the hardware manager, but you can't see it in the hardware profile, or through windows explorer. i try and boot her old computer from a boot disk. i can get to the J drive in dos, but i can't see any files there. i tried making a boot disk from NTFS.com, but it didn't work and then i got tired of trying. so i was minimally successful. i might try again later. hmm... thoughs?
yesterday i dropped off some food and stuff at Gram and Gramps and then came to class. last day of GER 448! we still have stuff due, but no more lectures! after class we went over to Jak's Tap for some expensive burgers and mediocre fries. i had to miss karate to go, but i guess it was worth it. she talked about some of our different options for graduation with a degree in second language education which was cool. she mentioned caitlin's school in VT and some other places where the undergrads could go to get their masters degrees. she did suggest the MAT programs in language over a MEd program, while the two other MEd students and I looked at each other. she's also heavily research bent though, so it's cool. who knows, maybe a PhD IS a possibility? I'd definitely have to find myself a spot at a teaching-oriented school and not a research-oriented one though.
today i observed. i was somewhat vindicated about the teacher arguing with me over the translation of gleichheit when she started arguing with a students grandmother who is in town from Switzerland for the holidays about the translation of the word "checkers" (as in the game).
Teacher: "what do they call checkers in German?"
Gma: "we call it checkers
Teacher: "well I think they call it Damenspiel"
Gma: "no, we call it Checkers"
Teacher: "no, they call it Damenspiel, see it says so on my card"
I wanted to throw something.
another stupid thing...
so i got a call a few weeks ago from Mather High School saying that they were happy to have me for student teaching in the spring, they sent information to the CTE (UIC council on teacher education) and could I come in to meet my cooperating teacher? I call back and say sure, we set it up... Yesterday, German Sara says that I better go in to CTE to make sure that's ok because they can make my life hell if i piss them off. so today i go in there, the head lady (who makes Frau Engelmann look like an actual Engel) was not there, but the secretary says that yeah they have my information, it's all set but they aren't going to send out an acceptance letter to me until next week. she suggests that i email the head lady to run it by her. so i do that, and i get an email back saying that she "can't confirm placement" until the letter goes out, and that the letter will tell me what to do about contacting my school. uhhhh. so even though your secretary has confirmed the placement, even though i didn't contact them, they contacted me from my information which CTE gave them... i'm supposed to... what?
everyone is a fucking moron.
