a month?!
Crap, can we pretend that it hasn't been a month and a day since I last logged on to live journal??? I didn't realize it was that bad!
So what are the most important things I have to mention within a limited timeframe...
Well, most of you are probably wondering how school is. It is awesome, I have never learned so much in such a short period of time. On the other hand, I've never been so busy. I wake up, go to class, go to work, come home, do my homework and reading, and go to sleep, and that's pretty much it every day. The last few weeks have flown by that way. I haven't played warcraft since last saturday (though I may today if I have time.)
Yes, I knew that the program would be intense... I knew that I would have a lot of work, and would be dedicating myself to this alone for a year. But I had no idea how it would feel to live, breathe, eat, hear and speak in this world. The ideas are like a drug, people care about what we learn in class, it's not boring because I love it, even at 8am. But i need to buy a louder alarm clock.
Secondly, as you just read, I have a job. I love that also. I'm tutoring in a program that serves the employees of Harvard (cafeteria-workers, cleaning people, maintenance - even the subcontracted ones). Many of them are immigrants, so I'm teaching them English. One of my students has been living in the country for 14 years, and he doesn't speak more than 30 minutes of English a day. I knew it was theoretically possible, but.... wow. The difficult thing is that at least two of my students don't have more than a third grade education. The pace is much slower than what I'm used to from my other students, and I have to build a basic framework - teach them the difference between nouns and verbs, for example, because they never got that in either language. But I love teaching people who want to learn what I can give them.
In other news... people here are generally very nice, but I always get this feeling that they're listening to you only on a superficial level, so they can respond to what you say. But I've found a couple of people that I seem to have connected with, so we'll see ^_^
That's it for now... I'll try to keep on top of the journaling, and subject you all to my moral and philosophical dilemmas (there's a new one every day :-D )
but now I gotta go to work, so chaitao for now!
~k
So what are the most important things I have to mention within a limited timeframe...
Well, most of you are probably wondering how school is. It is awesome, I have never learned so much in such a short period of time. On the other hand, I've never been so busy. I wake up, go to class, go to work, come home, do my homework and reading, and go to sleep, and that's pretty much it every day. The last few weeks have flown by that way. I haven't played warcraft since last saturday (though I may today if I have time.)
Yes, I knew that the program would be intense... I knew that I would have a lot of work, and would be dedicating myself to this alone for a year. But I had no idea how it would feel to live, breathe, eat, hear and speak in this world. The ideas are like a drug, people care about what we learn in class, it's not boring because I love it, even at 8am. But i need to buy a louder alarm clock.
Secondly, as you just read, I have a job. I love that also. I'm tutoring in a program that serves the employees of Harvard (cafeteria-workers, cleaning people, maintenance - even the subcontracted ones). Many of them are immigrants, so I'm teaching them English. One of my students has been living in the country for 14 years, and he doesn't speak more than 30 minutes of English a day. I knew it was theoretically possible, but.... wow. The difficult thing is that at least two of my students don't have more than a third grade education. The pace is much slower than what I'm used to from my other students, and I have to build a basic framework - teach them the difference between nouns and verbs, for example, because they never got that in either language. But I love teaching people who want to learn what I can give them.
In other news... people here are generally very nice, but I always get this feeling that they're listening to you only on a superficial level, so they can respond to what you say. But I've found a couple of people that I seem to have connected with, so we'll see ^_^
That's it for now... I'll try to keep on top of the journaling, and subject you all to my moral and philosophical dilemmas (there's a new one every day :-D )
but now I gotta go to work, so chaitao for now!
~k