Yay.

This has just made my day!!!

Provided it means what I think it means ... you will see me jump for joy like you never have before!

(I've spent some time pondering on whether to send it to Luischen via email.
And I've just decided I will! ^^
So: sorry Luischen if you hate me for sending an email to you again, but I just have to on this occasion.)

I feel like ...

... the biggest

IDIOT ON THE PLANET

now.

There you go, life.

I felt like ...

... a bajillion friggin'

NINJAS

two and a half hours ago ...

... but forgot to post it here.
Bugger.

Other news.

• One of the "Something to mull over"-issues has been taken care of:

Breaking Dawn has officially been pre-ordered!!!

Of course, I'll add an update as to when I received it in the end.

• Painters are coming over in about 10 minutes to look at our house.

• Preparations for London have gone into the final round! (That is buying miniature shower gel and checking on the validity of my bank card.)
  

Countdown.

Remaining days until birthday: 7

Number of presents which are not money: 0

Amount of happiness created by this: *blowingraspberries*

Something to mull over.

Note to myself: if you put a remote control in between the pages of a loose leaf binder, the binder will not lie flat unless you remove the remote again. Hm ...

Here I am, wrecking my brain once again. Honestly, sometimes I wish I was stupid, so I could not think as much as I do.
What it is that gets me thinking? Well, essentially two things:

1. Do I want to get an iPod for my birthday (which, btw, is only 12 days away) or not? In fact, I do want one, but now I got a cheap mp3-player from my neighbour (which makes me lose my temper every two seconds, cos it doesn't work the way I want it to) and I still have my MiniDisc-player which I just love but it's got a crack in its casing and so maybe it's going to die very soon - these two make me feel bad about getting another technical device designed to play music.
2. Do I want to pre-order Breaking Dawn with amazon (they will ship it on August 4th, i.e. I'd have it August 5th or 6th) or do I want to try my luck at some bookseller's in Vienna? I have tried to get hold of a copy of Eclipse in Vienna two months ago (shortly before the release of the new edition) and after 3 hours of hopeless searching made my way home to order it online after all. Nevertheless, if they had it someplace - I would have it on the day of release and not one or two days later. However, if they don't have it, I would only be able to order it on the 4th and hence they'd ship it on the 5th and I would really have to wait until the 6th to finally hold it in my hands ... Is anyone still following???

Any suggestions?

Thoughts of a dying teacher.

Here are some thoughts I just included in my written task for one of my didactics classes at Uni. I don't know, but somehow those issues never leave me and I end up wrecking my head again and again about how to solve them or even what to think of them. Maybe someone would like to share their ideas on this one with me ^^ ...

We then came up with some activities which follow these rules of task-based design. I have tried some of these with my students and again, I found them successful with students of average or higher language levels. All of my slow-learning students, even those aged sixteen upwards, had a fairly difficult time coming up with ideas about the content of their writing even with those task-based instances of practice. I could not help but notice that some of these difficulties were due to the lack of practice the students experience in their school routine. To me, this is a big issue, as I can relate to the thoughts behind the teachers’ decision not to include extensive writing practice. In almost every case, working with lower-level students requires a great amount of patience as well as help and guidance. This guidance, however, is often needed at a level which cannot be provided in normal school teaching, as there the teacher does not have the chance to focus on each individual. Nevertheless, if the students do not receive the help they need, they are prone to be unsuccessful to a point that makes the practice irrelevant in itself and also in the long-run (as no mere further explanation could resolve their problems). Hence, it seems perfectly understandable to me that teachers in such schools omit the concept of essay writing from their teaching.

Personally, I am usually at a loss with those students for a very long time until - when I've almost given up - they start writing "like Gods" ^^ straight out of the blue.
Consequently, I haven't yet been able to identify any action or kind of support which aids their learning (maybe it is their own miraculous development that gets them started and none of my help at all - what the heck do I know?). Or is it the mere amount of practice?

P.S.: If you don't get the reference in the title, check here. (The video is kind of strange, but it's the best version of the song in album quality I could find.)