General Mayhem

Hola familiares!

I've had a fairly action packed week. I really should start taking pictures of all the generally rad stuff I do. I'll put that on my to-do list.

One of the first things I did this week was drop my Calculus class. I decided to get out while I still could when I failed my fourth consecutive quiz. I'm gonna spend the next couple of months brushing up on all the math that I was supposed to learn in high school but didn't, and I'll give Calc another shot in the spring. Oh well

On the bright side, though, dropping Calculus after the last date to add classes means that I only have 13 credit hours. In other words, I can barely call myself a full time college student anymore. I'll have tons of time for activities. My other classes are going pretty well, I have two midterms and a paper next week, but since Calculus is no longer taking up 6-12 hours of my week, I can do my other studying without many problems.

This weekend I got to see a really good hardcore punk show downtown. A couple New Orleans bands and a couple touring bands, in a bar just a few times the size of my room. Rage hard.

I just got back from teaching my ESL class by myself, and it went pretty well. All the students are adults so they were all nice and respectful, and I think I did a fairly good job, even though I accidentally finished 15 minutes early. I don't think I'm gonna become a teacher though.

In other news, I'm coming down with a cold, but it's not super bad, so nobody freak out. And I guess I'll have to learn how to be sick without Mom around to mother me sooner or later.

Anyways, y'all have a good week, and I'll try really hard to remember to take my camera out this week.

Peace.

P.S. Shout out to G&G for the awesome box they sent me, and Dad for the kickin' notebook.

Teachin' ESL

Here at Tulane a bunch of holier-than-thou students a few years before my time succeeded in making "service learning" a requirement for graduation. We have to complete 20 hours worth of "service" our first two years, and 40 the second two. I think the concept behind the whole program is pretty good, helping out the community and whatnot, but it's implemented in a way that really annoys me, mostly because it adds more classes I don't want to take but am required to (take).

So this semester I'm taking Latin American Studies, and the service learning part is working with an ESL program organized by the New Orleans Archdiocese, I think. I'm a T.A. in a level 2 English class, where the people speak more than basic survival English, but can't really have a conversation. In my class there are a dozen or so Hispanics, a few Brazilians, and a French speaker.

It's pretty enjoyable stuff, I mostly just wander around the room and explain things to the students, make copies, and do whatever else the teacher wants me to do. I actually have to teach the class by myself next Monday, because the teacher will be gone, so that should be interesting. It won't be too hard, because this level of ESL mostly involves a lot of smiling, big hand motions, miming, and enunciating the hell out of every word.

In other news, I've got two tests and a paper this week, so I gotta run. Take it easy, y'all.

Mah new room!

Greetings! Here I am, actually posting on a Monday. It's pretty crazy. I figured I'd post some pictures of my room, since only Mom and Dad have seen it so far. It's about twice as big and 4 times as nice as where I lived last year, so I'm pretty pumped about it. In the top picture you can see Xiao, my roommate, sleeping in his bed.

Last week was pretty eventful. On Thursday there was a torrential downpour where the streets flooded almost to knee level. It was pretty cool, I went to the park and played frisbee in the rain.

On Friday a bunch of us went downtown to check out the crushing NOLA metal band known as haarp. Unfortunately they were playing a 21+ bar, so we got kicked out after we saw a few songs from the opening band. We didn't really care and headed down Frenchmen street, where we saw a really good jam band and a 9 piece jazz band with a trumpet player who looked like Lil Wayne.

Saturday I somehow managed to not do a single productive thing. Funny how that works out.

Well that's all the news I can remember for right now, be on the lookout for another post in 7-15 days.