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Posts tagged "school"

I explained Archaeology to the tiny-Germans yesterday:

"You know, my house is really old, too! It's 20 years old."

"Wow! Well, the things I dig up are a lot older than that. Some of them are a thousand years old."

"How old?"

"A thousand years."

"How old?"

"A thousand."

"That's not a number!"


They're the best.


I finally brought my laptop to a repair shop to have its overheating problem fixed, so I'm not gonna be online much in the next few days. If you require the thrill of my conversation, you can always hit me up on Google Talk, which I've got on my phone: breakfastspoon@therandomplanet.com

I'm listening to the A History of the World in 100 Objects programme on iPlayer at the moment. It's pretty neat. Good old Olduvai Gorge, amirite? And it's available as a podcast, so you can alllll listen to it, even if you're not in the UK. :D

My parents' mac's screen has some weird contrast settings going on; it's making my eyes hurt.
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21. 1. 2010 10:13 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , | Comment

Not that popping hormones is my favourite concept ever now, or anything.

I had a lesson with the tiny Germans today. We made spiders! 8D


Mine had three eyes, but one fell off.


Tiny boy-German made a spider that was a cowboy first (it had a lasso), and then turned into a princess ('cause he made it a crown). Yeah, tiny boy-German is pretty awesome.


I got my test voucher for the JLPT yesterday! Much excitement. :3 I think I'll do one of my past papers tomorrow. Things I will also do tomorrow:

- Go to the post office
- Edit my personal statement
- Finish colouring robot commission
- Find a cobbler who will fix the zipper on my boots

Awesome!


I've read the first three chapters of Colony now.

A vague summary of stuff that's happened: Read More →
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11. 11. 2009 9:11 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , , | Comment

Fear my legitimacy.



Look guys, I got my staff badge at school today. \o/ Now I don't look like an impostor sitting in the staffroom being all... young. And stuff. The lesson today went pretty well, though no-one did their homework. -_- I've assigned them something they have to read out loud in front of the class next week in revenge.

Oh hey, it's November now, I guess I should start revising for the JLPT in earnest. get out those past papers I bought and stuff. I also haven't gotten any confirmation from SOAS at all that they got my application for the test, I think I'll call them about it tomorrow. It's still a month until the actual test, but I did send the application ages ago.

At the moment, I am constructing my Christmas list. I really want one of these flannel shirts. ♥ I want to buy a least half of everything Uniqlo sell. UniqLo? UniQlo? UNIQLO?


In other news, I've been watching a cool documentary, called Race and Intelligence: Science's Last Taboo. Rageh Omaar, who is a journalist, I think? Goes around investigating the evidence behind the claim that intelligence is linked to race, going over the flaws in IQ tests, whether race is even a valid biological/genetic factor (not really, big surprise), and so on. The conclusion (SPOILERS! You should go watch it yourself unless you're not in the UK and Channel 4 won't let you) is something pretty cool that I'd never heard about before - since I know little about IQ tests - which is that the IQ test measures a certain kind of conceptual thinking that has been developing as we've adapted to modernity. Someone in the 1900s, for example, would score pretty badly by our current standards*. So, taking that into account, obviously the average score from sub-Saharan Africa would be lower than that from the USA or... I think North East Asia was the term they used.

It was a pretty excellent documentary, which thoroughly confirmed me in all my previous conclusions and offered me even more evidence to back them up with, allowing me to be continue being a smug git until the end of time. (It was quite balanced and objective in tone, though, while still acknowledging how personal and loaded the issue was, which I liked.)

* Also, it is massively biased towards the educated middle class. The one he took asked what an imaginary number was. How is that intelligence as opposed to knowledge?
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2. 11. 2009 10:27 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , | Comment

Oh hai guys. I haven’t blogged in forever.

The exhibition was pretty cool! Many pretty things. I love Aztec Mexica writing so much. This was probably my favourite thing, but I can't find a proper picture of it online. I'm amused that the guy on the left is named "leg". Friday at 3pm was the wrong time to go, though; it was massively crowded. And people kept. Standing. Right in front of me. While I was reading something. щ(≖益≖щ) *murders*

I finished reading the Third God as well, and the ending was surprisingly good! (almost everyone I was really attached to survived! :O) In the last few chapters everything sort of comes together and you see the huge cycle of history that the characters only occupy a small, final part of, and it shifts the way in which you look at the story in a really interesting way and FFF I LOVE IT, OK. I can't really say more without spoiling, which I won't because I need you all to read it so I have someone to talk about it to. It's main selling point is the setting, I think, which I'll probably talk about more later. The author also has a huge amount of world building notes up on his website, which makes him my favourite.

I think I'll probably end up reading it all over again soon from this new perspective and to look for foreshadowing. :3

The book I'm reading now is one my mum brought me from Germany a little while ago; Die Praktikantin by Yannik Mahr. It's a sort of satire romance intrigue, I think, about a Journalist who gets put in charge of a small rural newspaper, not the big metropolitan one he had his eyes on, and hires a pretty intern, and then according to the blurb something mysterious happens, idk. It's really amusingly written, so far.

I had my second German lesson last Monday, and it went really well. :D I ran out of time before I ran out of things to do, and everything. Spent the first half an hour or so talking about the Middle Ages, because the kids didn't know anything. They hadn't even heard of the reformation, apparently. I'm probably going to give them a short history lecture every week, starting with the Völkerwanderung next Monday, since it's relevant to the Nibelungen. I'm making a ~powepoint presentation~. 8D

I also have about two thirds of a blog post written about Nick Griffins hilarious "indigenous British who've been living here for 17000 years!" comment on BBC Question Time, which was about a million years ago in internet time but who needs temporal relevance amirite? I might finish it tomorrow, I've been wandering around London a lot today shopping with Tim and I'm not in the mood to concentrate on properly structured writing. God, I missed writing properly structured things about archaeology/history, though. So much.

Oh yeah, I also started filling out my MA application! My personal statement is another thing I will probably write tomorrow.

PS: I say I was shopping with Tim, it was mostly Tim shopping, really. I only bought one thing. A pretty cool thing:




BFFs!

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30. 10. 2009 10:35 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comment

Looks like I’m a teacher now.

I went to the European Bookshop yesterday, with my mum and a colleague of hers from school who were textbook shopping, and I got some books to read with my German class. :D

I can't decide which to do (or which to do first, since they're pretty short), though. One is Level 4: Stadt der Kinder, which I read when I was little and is about a bunch of kids mysteriously becoming characters in a videogame. The other one is the Nibelungen written in easy words, which is also awesome because a) mythology is always awesome, and b) the book comes with little info sections about medieval history, and quizzes about the content, and all sort of other stuff that makes my life easier. So maybe I'll do that one first.

I am still a little terrified by this surprise teaching gig. XD I'm glad it's half term next week so I have time to figure out what's going on. Also I'm getting another group of really tiny 1st grade German children, who I get to teach how to read and write and stuff like that. :O HOW AWESOME IS THAT GOING TO BE? I've always sort of wanted to teach someone to read and write.



Also, the European Bookshop is the best thing in the world. I want to go back there when I have money and buy everything.


PS: Probably going to the London Expo next weekend. :D I'm trying to find something useful like a schedule of events on their website, but no luck so far. >_>
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17. 10. 2009 12:59 am | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , | Comment

Hnnnnnnnrgh

A little while ago, I made a resolution, to be more confident, to not put myself down by assuming I couldn't do things, and to throw myself in at the deep end more.

Granted, I made this resolution in the context of deciding on what difficulty level I should play BioShock on (which ended up being academic, since my computer overheats and freezes as soon as I get out of the elevator capsule thing and start enjoying the creepy atmosphere), but I think I can transfer it to teaching German classes to a handful of 13-year-old native speakers after school with absolutely no previous experience at all.

And next week, I'll have more than half a day's warning, so I'll have more of an idea what the fuck to do.



In other news, I've finally thought of something fun to do with tumblr. I often take pictures on my phone and then don't really have any idea of what to do with them. I cold spam twitter with them, but I'm not convinced pictures and twitter work that well together. I keep meaning to do an LJ picspam post with all of them, but I've not gotten around to it. So I had the idea yesterday that I could email them to tumblr straight from my phone whenever I take one. (Unless I find another/better site for mobile photo blogging.)

All that I have to do now is figure out a title.
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12. 10. 2009 6:24 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , | Comment

Oh, you mean THOSE pineapples? 2009-10-12 13:41:55

I drew a diary-type comic that was going to basically be half of this entry yesterday, but I just noticed my new drawing pad is bigger than my scanner, so that's not going to happen right now. It's ok, it wasn't that well-drawn anyway.

I went to London with Tim on Friday, mainly to get some revision material for the JLPT, since the revision course I'd signed up for was cancelled due to lack of interest. >_<



Read Real Japanese is a little bit above my level still, actually - lots of grammatical structures I've not come across before - but in a few months I can probably handle it.


I also watched a ridiculous documentary about Easter Island this weekend, with a full complement of stupid, notably: "'primitive' cultures are too dumb to invent stuff themselves", "aliens did it", and "Egypt is the source of all monumental architecture".

Before they mentioned aliens and I stopped paying as much serious attention, I got really irritated with some archaeologist they interviewed who was talking as if it's really weird and unusual and probably ~*mysterious*~ that people would want to build these huge apparently useless statues*. I know it was a documentary and they were trying to make it interesting, but that sort of attitude irritates me for so many reasons. Trying to smother genuinely interesting and intriguing things in pointless obfuscating mysticism, for one thing, and the suggestion that only "sophisticated" cultures are good enough to build monuments. And on a more basic level: Come on. Have you not ever looked around? Building big awesome impressive things is pretty much what we, humans, do here! I mean, by all means, be impressed that we manage it, I am constantly impressed and amazed by the crazy stuff we manage to do, but being surprised by the simple fact that we try is practically insulting.

... I may care too much about this sort of thing.



OH HEY, AND NOW I MUST BE OFF TO TEACH A SURPRISE GERMAN CLASS. Be back to explain later, if the 13-year olds don't eat me. O_O
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12. 10. 2009 1:41 pm | Personal, Syndicated | Tags: , , , , , , | Comment