The Diary Of John

Saturday, September 06, 2003

Death, childbirth and taxes... theres never any convenient time for any of them
- Margaret mitchell 1936

Okay my day is going really well at the moment.. although i have hardly any time to do anything thats not associated with the school lol. This morning my group and i decided to plan a small bbq at the school but it soon got out of hand lol. as soon as word got around we found that many students and teachers liked the idea of this so with my students in town to talk to the beginners groups we visited the classrooms and found that all groups wanted to take part. Nice isnt it? :-) So we have a couple of weeks in which my group will plan everything and then its all systems go and our little or now not so little bbq will take place. A BIG congratulations for my TT2 students who did this wonderful job for getting people interested :-) I think we are going to have alot of fun and on Monday i will talk with the director of the school about this party etc. Hmmm yeah i organised first and then left talking to the boss till later.. its a new approach to doing things you see lol.

Im trying at the moment to catch up on emails and also i have to email a couple of the students who are organising the list of things we need. Unfortunately the cell phone companies here in Brasil dont allow their phones to send text messages to other company phones unlike the british companies so i cant use text messages :-( They have some strange ideas here sometimes lol.. still i need a copy of the list so i can show it to the school to see if the bosses wanna help out a little although mainly the students will do 99% of everything. Funny though the students at the other school dont want to really take part in something like this.. but i am going to see if i can get the advanced groups maybe to do something, the movies or maybe visit a restaraunt just for a bit of fun. I know their is an english speaking one downtown so maybe i will give them a ring and see what they have to say :-) More on this later okay?

Let me see if there is some coffee in the kitchen lol

Yeah!!!!!!! we have some coffee lol. Great as i was in need of some lol. Oh i must remember to do some printouts. Let me find my floppy diskettes and just get the printer working lol ;-)

Okay all running. I need a few sheets printed out so that later on i can take them to the copy store to get a few copies for my groups. I have a few new grammar ones that i need to get done as i use them as extra material for the MEC students to stop the methodology from getting a little boring :-) I have a drawer full of photocopies now lol. I have to get one of those folders with seperations in it to store them all as they are getting everywhere now :-) But its nice just to do something a little different once in a while with them :-)

Tomorrow i have a bbq with one of the families of my students. It will be nice to get to meet a few people from their family as i didnt get to meet them last time around. Maybe ill get to ride on the horse again although i dont think that i looked much like John Wayne in the film True Grit lol. I like to go to these traditional parties as its nice to experience some of the things they do and i get to meet a few people and practice my portugues at the same time lol.

Hmm okay the printer isnt working properly so ill have to stop here so i can reboot the system. Tomorrow ill post about the bbq if it doesnt last all night long okay? lol

posted at 2:29 PM by john |

Friday, September 05, 2003

Chist this site had me in stitches of laughter

I was surfing and manage to stumble on a site called The Daily Bull and i thought you guys might wanna check it out lol. you can read on of their stories Here. Poor old Ricky Martin just cant get a break can he? lol. Anyway see what you think :-)

posted at 4:19 PM by john |

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have, the older she gets the more interested he is in her
- Agatha Christie

Ive just sat here at the school watching a remake of the japanese film 'Ringo' and its not too bad. Of course i saw the original which spoiled it a little as i had a good idea about what was going to happen in the americanized version lol. Was nice though as these students i dont meet as i am at the other school when they are having class here :-) They were GS2 but they could manage to communicate quite well with a bit helping of portugues from both them and me too lol. I will have to talk with them again about some conversation classes as they asked about them. I will need to create some new stuff as i have no beginner stuff prepped. Should be good for a laugh if nothing else right? lol

God i hate this bloody keyboard as the keys are so stiff that sometimes i have to practically thump the keys to make the letters appear on the screen ;-).. Time to invest in the schools computers with a couple of new keyboards i reckon..

Im waiting to hear about whether i am supposed to go to a pic-nic this weekend although i have also been asked by one of the students to attend their bbq and i think i will go as i turn down so many things that the students ask me to do. They must get tired of asking me to do things with them sometimes as i seem to say i cant quite a lot lol. This weekend though i think i will go with them as for two weeks i havent heard anything from anyone about this picnic. It'll be nice to meet some of the people, parents etc too as usually they dont attend the teachers day as their sons and daughters are all advanced or master and they know they would get called if their kids werent doing okay. These times i attend the parties and bbqs the students invite me to are the best places for me to get to meet all their families lol. Apparently they have killed a couple of cows for bbq, i wonder how many people are going to attend this thing? ;-)

**Song now playing - Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Venice Queen**

They gave me the book that my MEC2 students are going to use this semester so i will read it though and then work on the questions and answers for it. I have eight groups so you can imagine how many lit books and questions i will probably end up with right? :-) Good job ive read some of them already last semster aint it? :-) They got Les Miserables.. sounds thrilling. A couple of people told me that the story isnt too bad so ill try it out over the weekend when i have time and then rattle of the forty required questions and work on the composition answers that they also need me to run off for the school. I have Mde Bovary as well for my MEC3 students.. i have never heard of this one though.. the name sounds bloody boring lol I havent managed to get hold of a copy of this one yet but hopefully will next week and then we will see if its as bad as it definately sounds wont we? ;-)

Okay i'll end here so i can go and post on the other one and then maybe ill go and get something to eat at the bakery :-)

posted at 3:39 PM by john |

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Love ceases to be pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret

- Aphra Behn 1686

I had a few problems posting earlier on but as soon as i wrote to the help section it all started to work again lol. I cant find a way of cancelling my message to the help section either, im sure they wont mind though :-) The students had said that they couldnt read the sites earlier on too but i think this wasnt a blogger problem as i could get into blogger and make a message save temp but just not publish and both tripod sites wouldnt load. Still its all working now which is the important thing :-)

Ive got to give a couple of the students a hand to get their blogger setup so they can start to post at the sites. A couple of quick demos should be all they need though as once i have set theirs up for them all they will need to do will just be to login and use the blogger site. Unless they wish to Ftp stuf to the site as well but i'll sort that out later if they want to use it :-)

**got The Offspring on here.... Yeah!!!!!!**

I have a pile of stuff here to correct, ill have to spend an hour or so later at home getting them all cleared off as i dont want them piling up with having eight groups now lol. Nice though as the MEC groups correct some of theirs themeselves and i just have the writting parts to do and the others ill pull in before the end of tonite so i have a clear day tomorrow :-)

I dropped the adapter that is used to plug the stabilizer into the mains this afternoon at home so i had to run around to get another one. I hate going into stores where they tell me they cant understand what i say whn i speak portugues when i know they can, so one guy i showed him a pocket full of money and said well if you cant understand then i wont spend this here lol. His face dropped like a brick :-). I guess i wont go shopping at his store again but luckily enough i managed to get the thing i needed and they charged me just R$2 which was great :-) Without this little bit of plastic i cant use the computer at home so im glad i managed to get one this afternoon :-)

posted at 5:37 PM by john |

Brazilian women vainest in world

Just read this in Yahoo, apparently Women here are crazy about tryingt o look beautiful lol. To read the whole story just click HERE okay? :-)

posted at 10:50 AM by john |

Monday, September 01, 2003

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrement

- Florynce Kennedy 1973

At the moment i am just having something to eat here before my next class starts, wow ive been so busy here today with typing stuff up this morning and then classes to teach afternoon and evening too. Its a good way though to get some excercise i guess right? lol

I hope they have a good film on the tv later, i love watching a film when i get home from work just to relax.. even if i dont understand all of the words. I think this week i will start looking for a television for my house as its about ready for me to occupy, maybe a dvd player too. im not really sure yet though as i could also do with a computer as i wont really have access to one at home once i move places. hmmm i'll sort it out though within the next week or so. Really it will depend on how much time i have to use a dvd player, a tv yes will be important but a video i dont really think so as i never record programs now to watch later on lol. We will see right? ;-)

Anyway time to end here lol

posted at 6:01 PM by john |