Almost Finished

Only a weekend left in Edmonton! Thankfully I have a road trip to some national park called Elk Island (to see Elk, Bison, etc.) and a free K-Os concert to keep me occupied. I am so looking forward to my week in Toronto, especially seeing Michelle, Aunt Carole & Bill, playing tourist with Louise and spending all day wandering the ROM and AGO. Oh, and just travelling is good enough for me... put me on a plane! As for the flu pandemic, it's not on my mind at the moment, and I don't think I'll be wearing a mask on the plane. I am glad that I thought to buy that Nectarine Mint antibacterial hand gel when I was last at Bath and Body Works, though!

Anyway, these last few weeks have been pretty intense school-wise, including preparing for my very first presentation at an academic conference (well, we were co-presenters). It was the Alberta TESL mini-conference and my pronunciation instructor spoke about how to teach pronunciation and then each of the students in my class spoke for 5-10 minutes about some successful tasks we used in out tutoring sessions this semester. I think we all did a great job, and I was thankful that, as Carole pointed out, we were forced to get over our fear of public speaking at as teenagers. I felt anticipation but no nerves, and I trusted my memorization to remember what I was supposed to say. Anyway, this is our pronunciation class after the presentation, and also my closest friends in the TESL program:
Dr. Tracey Derwing, Miao, Me, Sabine, Amy, Bonnie & Jun

The nice thing about all the hard work this semester is that it paid off! And, since I don't think anyone from the UofA reads this, I think this is a safe place for one sentence of bragging? I got an A+ in Teaching Pronunciation and in my Education Research class, and an A- in my Statistics class! I was relieved with the stats grade (I didn't understand 90% of what the professor said) and really proud of the research grade because it was such a difficult class. Of course, grades really don't matter that much, but at least I'm leaving the opportunity open if I want to go for a doctorate ten years down the road.

Anyway, this week has been one giant to-do list. I've crossed almost everything off, including handwashing all my winter sweaters, going for a physical at the student health centre (I just walked in: convenient and free) and figuring out the Canadian tax system. I'm celebrating my first free "nothing-that-I-should-be-doing" afternoon by watching Funny Face.
If you haven't seen Funny Face in a while, I highly recommend renting it and singing along: it's such a cheerful movie. I was also considering Roman Holiday, but that always makes me melancholy at the end.

Last random thing to report: the opera. This week I went to see La Traviata by the Edmonton Opera Company. I splurged a bit and sat in the very front row, centre, about six inches to the left of the conductors head. It was worth it! I felt like I was the only person in the audience, I could see every expression and the voices were so much more intense than they are from the speakers in the second balcony. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of the second balcony and obstructed view seats- I would never have been able to see all of the arts performances I've seen around the world if I had to pay full price! Next year they are putting on Rigoletto, Othello and the Pirates of Penzance, and I'll be back to the nosebleed section where starving students belong.

I was thinking I should put a clip of the opera on here, and this is one I stumbled upon. The song is an aria from La Traviata, but the Muppets make it more interesting!

Calgary Tower

Last set of overdue pictures from the weekend in Calgary. We had a gorgeous dinner in the revolving restaurant atop Calgary Tower. The longer days of spring meant that we arrived in sunlight at 8pm and watched it set before we left a few hours later.

The food was incredible too. When I saw that "Digby scallops" were on the menu, I had to order them. There was something very surreal about eating them in such glamorous surrounds compared to the "charm" of Digby, NS where they came from (that's where camp was last summer, and I have many fond memories of scallops by the Bay of Fundy). Yes, there are only three scallops on my plate... a reminder to eat slowly.
And crème brûlée for dessert! Obviously that's my friend Amy in the picture with me, she's one of the few students who started the program full-time in the fall with me.
The weekend passed quickly, but it was a great first introduction to Calgary.

More of Calgary

Here are the pictures of the hotel. It might not seem like something worthy of it's own blog post, but you have to remember that I often sleep in a bunk bed in a shared room at a dingy youth hostel. The only hostel in Calgary was $30 a bed, so I ended up convincing Amy that if we put that $60 towards a real hotel room, it would be worth it. The Fairmont Palliser downtown had an amazing deal, and the location was perfect (that's the hotel and the Calgary tower in the picture above).
The lobby had a great marble-and-warm-lighting kind of atmosphere.
And the room was "cozy" with all the nice toiletries and cushy bathrobes.
I also loved the pool! (though I didn't take this picture)

I really should be studying for finals, but it's more fun to put up pictures from my weekend trip to Calgary. Overall it was a nice weekend away with my friend Amy, and the highlights were the zoo, dinner at the revolving restaurant in the tower and staying at an elegant hotel downtown. Oh, and Denny's for breakfast, but that's just cause it brought back memories of childhood roadtrips in the States with my family!

Anyway, for today, some pictures from the zoo. I really enjoy zoos, and Calgary's was small enough to walk around in a couple of hours with a pretty good range of animals. If you've ever been to the zoo with me, you know I've developed a bit of a fixation with monkey exhibits in my adult life. Picture from Ebay where an unloved Gundy is selling for $115 USD!

Who knows why- Mom thought maybe it was because Carole and I had much loved identical stuffed monkeys named Gundy and Mindy (yes, Gundy comes from the brand name Gund, and Mindy rhymes with it). My orange Wrinkles slippers were named "pumpkin" and "pie", and due to an inability to reach a compromise, both Carole and I named our polar bears "Pola." Good thing we developed some creativity later in life!

Anyway, as for the real monkeys, four of the species had adorable babies born within the last three months. And, of course, I took pictures.
The one above is my favourite. A bit alien-looking but so cute when she ran around.
The spider monkey is above, and the one below was so tiny, the babies head seemed about the size of a quarter.
Of course, there were other animals too.



More to come tomorrow (that is, if I survive the statistics exam...)

Still here

I'm still alive and in Edmonton. All I can think about is my schoolwork that has to be finished over the next few weeks and my trips to Toronto and Halifax for the summer. Especially now that spring has come to Alberta, it just makes me want to jump on a plane. But first I have to finish this beast of a research report. It was quite discouraging Wednesday when I realized I had written 20 pages and had only done the appendixes, references list and title page. If you're wondering why I start with the stuff people usually do last, it's because I like to get the "easy" stuff out of the way and have the satisfaction of crossing four things off my to-write list. For example, writing the "meat" today took the whole day for six pages. Yikes- it feels like wading through mud. I'm hoping that if I work non-stop tomorrow I can finish most of it so I can relax a bit on Easter Sunday. And then I have Monday for final proof-reading. I'm learning a lot- did I mention that? It's slow going because it actually requires thought (instead of just typing whatever comes into my head and relying on my writing ability to make it sound intelligent even if it isn't). I don't know if anyone would be interested, but here are the research hypotheses (which condensed, means I'm looking at ways that teaching and classroom management affect classes like Carole's where all the kids just talk in Turkish instead of listening or participating in English :)
Among Turkish Preparatory Year students in English language classes, the higher the quality of teaching that the teacher provides and the more collaborative the teacher’s approach to classroom management, the less the unsolicited use of the first language in the classroom. This effect will occur because the higher the quality of teaching the teacher provides and the more collaborative the teacher’s approach to classroom management, the greater the students’ perception of class robustness will be, and the greater the perception of robustness, the less the unsolicited use of the first language in the classroom. However this relationship between perception of class robustness and unsolicited use of the first language will be larger for students with high self-efficacy in the class than for students with low self-efficacy.

Last Week of Classes

The semester is screeching to a close, and I am coming to terms with all of the work that I need to finish. I have all of April; one huge research report, three exams (one for pronunciation, easy as pie and two really difficult ones, statistics and research methods). Oh and a statistics problem set that I'm trudging through at the moment. I find the professors notes completely confusing, and it probably doesn't help that I have Shakespeare's As You Like It on DVD in the background.

I re-discovered the wonders of the public library last weekend. I had been just getting books from the university library, they had everything I needed for school, plus I could find the literary classics, slightly dated travel guides and even 1980's knitting pattern books. But when I went to the main branch of Edmonton public libraries downtown, I just wandered around drooling. There were so many books, magazines, audio books, CDs, DVDs that I would love to look at! How to choose between fiction, travel, crafts. I got too overwhelmed and put most of it off for another day. They also had an annual booksale in a basement parking lot. Library booksales are increidble, and you would not believe the number of tables (or the number of people!) Thankfully, I made a logical decision to limit myself, which also allowed me to finish looking in under two hours. After all, I have a very small bedroom, and no bookshelves.

This may sound weird, but my other big excitement last weekend was doing my Canadian tax return! This is the first year I've done my own Canadian tax return (I figure Dad's accountant needs a break), but it's not intimidating after having figured out tax returns in four other countries (one in Chinese). Plus, I found that one of the programs, ufile, is free for students, and it was a breeze! Amazing. Even if I had to pay, it would be well worth it. No extra forms to fill out about student credits or income from two provinces, it's all taken care of.

And my last bit of news, which may make some readers jealous (and hungry) is that I went to Red Lobster this week! I hadn't been since I lived in Ontario, and apparently they don't have them in the Maritimes (strange?) But it only took two bus rides and a short walk to find one in Edmonton! The salad tasted the same, the biscuits were divine, and the whole resturant had the same feel as the one we used to go to in Thornhill. I was really wanting to get scallops, but I eventually thought they might not be as good in land-locked Alberta in winter as they are fresh from the sea in Digby! I went for crab linguine instead. Here's a picture I found online to remind you...