Excuses, excuses, excuses...

Today I was reminded of that Kenny Chestney song... "so damn easy to say that life's too hard..." as I was giving my students the final notes for their TOEFL test experience.

The board read "Handling stress during test" and it had 5 points which we found to be key in their success. As we're going along the points, which featured keeping things under perspective, facing your fears, being prepared, stop making excuses and visualization, I was telling them about the fact that excuses are a way of us trying to blame others for our faliures when the fact of the matter is that the only ones who hang ourselves in anything in life is us.

So when test comes, I said, stop making excuses for your own faliures. The lights aren't too bright, the sun ain't too hot and you know the language better than you expect yourself to know. One of my students then said, "but the AC is too hot!" It's not, I said, and that's an excuse. "but it is! we cannot concentrate with the heat and I need it to be cool..." It's an excuse. Not all classrooms have AC and the one we have here is keeping it very cool for the computers to work properly. He got all pissy and didn't even bother to pay attention the rest of the class...

And we're talking about people in unviersity level here, not five year olds...

It's easy to make excuses for our faliures. It's easy to say that it's too hard or that the AC is too low, or that the noise in the stadium is too loud and we cannot concentrate. It's easier to blame those factors rather than to look deep inside and see what we are doing wrong to sabotage ourselves.

So, quoting Mr Chestney... 

So damn easy to say that life's so hard... everybody's got their share of battle scars... as for me, I'd like to thank my lucky stars that I'm alive and well..

 PS. I would like to take this opportunity to give a very big HURRAY because Mexico defeated France 2-0 in the South Africa World Cup. Gooo Mexa team!!

Oh how the Writing has Fallen!

There is such a lack of interest in teachers TEACHING students how to WRITE... It shows... really, it does.
Today we had our second TOEFL writing class. My students were very excited because for the first time in over a month they had this sense of security that came from the idea that writing was the easiest task the TOEFL had to offer. Well, 10 minutes into the class, I could tell by the deer-in-headlight-look faces they were giving me that they had no clue whatsoever on what they had gotten themselves into.

FIRST TASK --- Topic Sentences.

They had to write a topic sentence about three general topics. (1) About their hometown. (2) About any place they would like to travel. (3) Anything they wanted.

We had already covered the part where it says that a topic sentence is the general idea of what your paragraph is going to be about. That it had to be clear and general, but not too general. I give them 10 minutes to finish the task. At the end of ten minutes, some had done the joyful sentence of:

"My city is big"

and, of course, who can deny those who...

"The city in Juarez is a city that is big, and pretty, and it has mountains, and rivers, and it rains a lot, and it has a lot of people.

After going around the tables with the "No", "Too general", "Too big," and "Are you kidding me? Seriously? Are you?!", I said, let's try again. This time, the topic was:

"A neighbor is someone who lives next door to you. What do you think are the qualities of a good neighbor?"

And this time, I said, you have ten minutes to do TWO topic sentences.

There was ye old classic:

"Neighbors are bad in my house"

and who can forget...

"I don't have neighbors, teacher."

And, of course, hats down to...

"My neibors taik drugs."

I look at them as they are looking back at me with almost-but-not-quite-tears of frustration running down their glossy, perky eyes. I reviewed the structure of the topic sentence once more. We did the exercise once more. I left them one more topic to see what they can come up with. Quite frankly, I'm expecting some sort of monster to come out of the page and bite me.


(sigh!)

Let's look at cute onigiri now, shall we?

Revise your petition, please.... GAWD!

So today, I get an angry call from the lady at Chihuahua -- the book lady. She states that we owe her about 8 000 pesos in books. We make counts... no, we don't. We owe her about 2 000. Check your stats, lady! We're paying on Friday -- but com' on! From 8 000 pesos to 2 000 pesos there are a lot of zeros in between!!

On Friday we have the annual Student Day celebration at the URN. Hamburgers in the morning, tacos at night. Good thing that this time they did not ask the English class to participate in the ye old pie-sell off...

That reminds me... I need to ask my father for sugar.

.... long story.

The squirrel has told me he got a 485 in his TOEFL exam. He insists that he passed. He has told me this piece of info about... 10 or 30 times now... and each time, he asks if he has passed.

Mr Squirrel:

It has come to my attention that you have presented the TOEFL paper-based test to obtain your Doctoral Degree in Communications and somehow you have achieved (if that is the correct term for someone who claims to be an expert in the language) to get 485 points.

I wouldn't be bragging this if I were you. 485? I mean, really, this score is not even good if you're in the BA. For a PhD, you should be getting 580 or more.

So please, stop asking me if you have passed. Next time you do this, I will bite your squirrel nose off and spit it out as I say "NO!"

Yours truly (and with love)
The Panda.

The First Day of... well, it's still too early.

It's still too early to tell... but it's Aunt Nina, so you never know what can happen around her.

Aunt Nina came from California and already she has made my bed and the couch her home. It's not that she's aunt Nina -- but the constant nagging is what makes her unique amongst the aunts. She has already met with Aunt Yolanda and Aunt Gaby and has already managed to annoy the heck out of both of them. According to my cousin Edgar, there will be a family reunion on Easter Sunday... is it? I can't remember if he said it was gonna be on Sunday or Good Friday. The thing is that we're gonna have the traditional Chairez Lent feast: PORK AND CARNE ASADA!!! SHEAH! -- I kid. It's gonna be capirotada, chiles rellenos (with tuna), lentejas, tortitas de camaron... and salad. Out of all these items, this panda will probably just dig into the salad because the bad thing about this whole ordeal (yes, there is such a thing as a bad thing in the Lent season) is that my mother was commissioned to do the capirotada and none of us has the courage/heart to tell her that her capirotada sucks.

School's doing okay. The big rustle was that the Academic coordinator FORGOT to place Miss Yesmin on the payroll. She just oops! forgot! And Miss Yesmin was in danger of not getting paid not only this last two weeks (we get paid every two weeks here), but also the two weeks of vacations we're gonna have in the morning! Unbelievable nerve of this woman! I know she's a little pregnant... but I swear, that baby must be sucking her brains out! Gladly, I could arrange it with the administrator her and Miss Yesmin will happily receive a check for her trouble.

Oh! And remember the CENEVAL deal? Well, since Mr Juarez (AKA the Squirrel) did not get up and move it move it, there was no promo for it (and the little promo that it was for it it was all screwed up with the 24 hour day and the costs of more than 2000 dollars) well, the courses will not take place. And it was a good idea. Now I am focusing my mantra energies of the FORCE on the conversational English. I have two groups now (one of them comes from the UACJ but I don't wanna tell the Squirrel of my boss 'till the deal is sealed -- they want to prepare for the TOEFL as they're about to finish their MA and do not know anything about this test) and I plan to make some extra dough out of them.

I am going to present next Saturday on my Leadership class! I am preparing the material! Yeeey! I wanna raise the bar so that my classmates know the kind of limits my imagination can go... and the level of nerdyness my brain has (is it "nerdiness" or "nerdyness"... is NERD-Y/I-NESS even a WORD??) So, I am very psyched about that. And on the communications class, I have to research a little bit on how mass media affects society. Hah! I am sure glad I listened to all those hours of talk radio now! Thank you!!!

I am sleepy yet happy...