I love shoes.

I'm ready for summer and Christmas... the best times of the year.

The idiot professor is even more of an idiot. I'm so annoyed. I'm also annoyed with another class. But at least I like my linguistics class... kind of. I had to transcribe 8 minutes of conversation for the linguistics class. I think it will be the most enjoyable assignment of this semester.

I have some new shoes. I love shoes. When I get new shoes, I tend to just sit with them next to me and look at them. Ahh, shoes.

Verschult

Ok. I feel in a good ranting mood now.

The certain professor from the last post seemed nice enough to begin with. But then as the class progressed, the arrogance and idiocy was more and more evident. First, he changed the classroom location. Almost everyone in his class is in the class right before it, and now, everyone has to walk all the way across campus to satisfy his stupid whims. Also, we will have a quiz every week on the material that we were supposed to read for that week. This quiz will take place before the class discusses it. Many people were upset about this because they have difficulty fully understanding the readings before they are discussed. When confronted with this issue, he asked the seemingly rhetorical question of whether the quizzes are reliable and whether they are valid. My question is, is it valuable? Who cares if the quizzes test what they are supposed to test or if the results can be duplicated if it is not testing anything worth testing? The purpose of these quizzes is to make sure we read what we are supposed to read and nothing more. How is that at all valuable for graduate students or even college students in general? All it does is create extra stress for us. The Germans would call it verschult, which basically means treating adults in university classes as though they are in grade school... with more structure, more "baby-sitting", and less independence. Ridiculous. In high school, they always tell you that in college you will be responsible for yourself and that no instructor is going to be keeping tabs on you. I found in my undergrad that this was true to some extent but not as much as was suggested. Now as a grad student, I expected to see even more of this predicted freedom, but in fact, I am seeing even less.

I made falafel for lunch yesterday. It was actually pretty good.

There is indeed more to rant about, but as I'm slowly recovering from the reason for said rant, I will refrain.

It's a dark, wet, dreary day. The snow is melting. It's a balmy 43 degrees. I like winter, but last year's winter was extreme enough that I am glad to see signs of spring in January.

Speaking of January, my mom's birthday is in a few days.

I have no motivation to do my homework. It's not good.

No Such Thing

Woo bessy, it’s a snowin!

I had my first classes of the semester on Thursday. There was supposed to be a class on Wednesday, but the professor was in Baltimore for a linguistics conference. On Thursday, I had two of my three TESOL classes for the semester: Methods: Reading, Writing, and Grammar and Assessment. I’m expecting a blah semester. My other TESOL class is Materials: Reading, Writing, and Grammar. And my linguistics class is Discourse Analysis. I’m not looking forward to any of these classes. I have homework that I don’t want to do. One of the professors seems like an arrogant idiot. I won’t go into that right now because I don’t have enough energy to give the enthusiastic and thorough complaint that the likes of him deserves. The other professor I had last semester and I like. The last professor I haven’t met yet. Fun fun. Blah.

And it’s snowing. There was a ton of snow on Thursday, and now it’s snowing a lot again. I don’t mind.

I watched all of the special features on the sixth Harry Potter DVD today. I must say, they were all fairly entertaining. For some reason, I had a dream that I bought the Twilight DVD. Strange.

Yesterday, Nidhal and I got to have some very delicious and authentic Moroccan food. If I had to choose right now on the spot, I would say cinnamon and cilantro are what create the characteristic tastes of the Moroccan food.

I have approximately six favorite paintings, three of which contain trees (another has a different type of plant). Four have some water aspect. Two have people in them. Two contain animals. One is in black and white.

Soul Cake

Happy New Year!

The title is a song by Sting.

The vacation is basically over. I'm back in Ann Arbor... It was a good vacation, though. Christmas and New Year's were both nice. I got to see Ross, Ben, and Lyne while home. And I got the new Harry Potter movie.

Beki is in Idaho. Joslyn has been everywhere (Japan, Australia, Seattle) recently. Jake is in Spain. It makes me want to get out of here. So I decided to look for the cheapest way to get to Tunis, Tunisia. After all, it would be nice to finally meet Nidhal's parents in person. Per person, the trip was $1342 (not including food and activities) and it involved seven cities: Ann Arbor, Windsor, Toronto, Reykjavik, Paris, Rome, and Tunis. AND Nidhal has a friend in Paris, so this trip also includes about two weeks in Paris. Not bad, not bad. This price is $300 cheaper per person than flying to Tunis from the US (Chicago to Tunis with a layover in Paris). Now we just need to find some jobs so that we can pay for it.

I like watching movies, and while at home, I got to see six new movies. It sounds like nothing, but being able to rent a movie for $2.50 is amazing. Blockbuster is about $5.00 per movie for a week, but we usually do not need it for an entire week. One night would suffice. Anyway, we rented Public Enemies, Ingorious Basterds, The Proposal, My Sister's Keeper, and Angels and Demons. Also, Lyne loaned us Twilight.

To begin, My Sister's Keeper was awful. I had read the book, which was fairly good, so I expected the movie to also be fairly good. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The biggest issue for me was that the movie changed the ending, which was the most memorable point of the book. Also, they almost completely ignored the lawyer, an important and interesting character in the book. Without comparing the movie to the book, it was still bad. Nothing interesting happened, and it was basically just a story about a girl with cancer. There was no other aspect to it. Boring.

Angels and Demons, also based on a book, was much better. It has been a while since I read the book, but I was aware that some things were omitted in the movie. This time, however, the omissions did not disable the story. All in all, it was not a bad movie.

Public Enemies wasn't bad, but it also wasn't really my preferred type of movie. Not boring, but just so-so.

At the suggestion of Lyne, we rented The Proposal. For us, it was especially interesting because of the USCIS involvement (we also have had some experience with these people). It was funny and I definitely wouldn't mind seeing it again.

Inglorious Basterds was also good, but it had less to do with the "basterds" than I expected. It was almost two movies combined into one. The two movie plots only crossed at the very end, and even then, it wasn't significant. But I liked it.

Finally, we have Twilight. I didn't know what to expect with this movie. I had refused to rent it and I was only going to watch it if I could find it for free. Thanks to Lyne, I was able to see it. The story seems interesting. I was intrigued enough to want to know what happens next. (Sorry, Lyne. I looked up the plot to the next three books on the internet). I liked Carlisle. The story of the Cullens was intriguing, and I would have liked to learn more. I also liked the connection with the Native Americans and their legends. But I did not like Bella. Not at all. She was emotionless and annoying and weird. She could have been replaced by a rock and nothing more would be lacking. Also, some parts of the plot did not click. After Bella met Edward, it just flowed weirdly. In the end, the story was interesting, but I felt the movie was lacking.

I just ordered two of my seven books for this semester. $60 wasted. I already have one book from last semester, one book from the library, and one book bought ($54). So I guess there are just two more, but these, I'm sure, will be at least another $60. And we need to get Nidhal's books. I wish I would win the lottery.