Ode to the Porcelain Gods and other such oddities

Do I have to explain? No, but I probably should. From 7 pm to 7 am, September 29th and 30th, I roamed the streets of downtown Toronto searching for meaning in my life through art. The city was alive with Nuit Blanche, a self-proclaimed "all night contemporary art thing", and it was spectacular. The above pictures should give you just a sweet, addictive taste of my exploits that night. I was among friends all evening, and it was memorable.
On a less cheerful note, on Wednesday my grandmother, Amy, took a fall outside her home in Edmonton and destroyed her elbow joint. She's been in the hospital ever since and yesterday they surgically reconstructed it. Gramma is 83 years old, which I'm sure she wouldn't appreciate me divulging, but she's a real spitfire and I know she'll make it through this. I just hope she's able to come to terms with her own weaknesses in this situation and allow the people in her life to help her in every way they can.
Mom and I can't go out there; we can't afford it, financially and time-wise alike, so we have to depend on the kindness of people living 3000 kilometres away from us to get Gramma through this ordeal. I'm not a spiritual person, but I'm pretty thankful she wasn't hurt any worse than she was.
Right now I'm more exhausted than I've ever been in my life, and it's a pretty weird feeling. I need to clean out my backpack of any survival items that remain after last night, and then I can go to bed.
Tomorrow is October, by the way. Tempus fugit.

-Laur

Perfection, plain and simple. She is a huntress, dark and deadly, scanning her domain with the heady power of a queen. Queen of my backyard, queen of my bedroom, and queen of my heart.
There is nothing quite like a cat on a windowsill on a sunny afternoon.

-Laur

Family...who says you can't dump them?

So my sister is an unadulterated megabitch. She actually goes out of her way to annoy my mother and I into not even remotely liking her as a human being.
My mom got home from night school 10 minutes ago and I had some homemade chicken soup heating for her on the stove. What does Sarah do? She starts in on my mother about eating stuff with no nutritional value, how she should be eating good things for dinner. Maybe my mom, who has chronic IBS, doesn't want food with substance for dinner. Maybe her stomach can't take it after a long and stressful day working with ungrateful children. But no, Sarah has to sit on her high horse insulting other people's eating habits when she can binge eat an entire tub of Rolo Extreme ice cream in 10 minutes and then put the empty container back in the freezer.
She continues to grow more and more bitchy and hypocritical each day she lives with us, and I'm hoping soon we can drive her away so she goes and rains her misery on someone else's head.
What a megabitch.

-Laur

8:30 am :(

Here I am in my ISIP practicum class (of course, I'm not wearing the purple wig. That's from when I was working at camp, but that's a whole different nightmare.) We meet once a month at 8:30 in the morning, McLaughlin College 050C. Godawful hour, really, and the traffic is horrible.

This year my practicum course is very different. It is much more serious than my CMYR course was. Lots of lecturing and professional development aspects, employment portfolios and the like. Craziness.

Today after this class I have an hour break, and then I start 6 straight hours of class. 2 hours of English lecture, 3 hours of Teaching English, and 1 hour of English tutorial. Yay!

This is going to be an interesting year.

-Laur

Awesome day

Today I had my first placement day at Thornlea Secondary School and it was a SMASHING SUCCESS! This semester is going to be full of surprises because not only am I teaching English, but Geography and Civics too! I'll be prepared for anything they throw in front of me by the time this year is over.
The day started out with a short staff meeting after I followed my tiny, crazy host teacher around the main floor of the school photocopying, filling a kettle with water, and generally chatting. There was food at the staff meeting (YAY!) and a few speeches, plus I was formally introduced to the rest of the staff, which was really cool.
First period was Ms. Mirrlees' FYNE class, which basically means 12 grade 9 students who are taking English and Geography full year. Their elementary school teachers thought they would benefit from a slower transition into a semestered program, so I teach these kids all year. It makes for a stronger bond and a more accurate reading of skill improvement, so I'm not complaining.
Second and fifth period were both grade 10 Civics classes, which are definitely NOT English oriented. Those should be very interesting to teach. Both classes have some interesting kids in them, though, so hopefully I'll have a good time.
Anyway, even though I was only observing today I felt like I could get up and teach a class if so needed, which is a good start indeed. And the staff at Thornlea are first rate, which I'm really going to enjoy.
That's all until Thursday when I do my second day. Tomorrow I'm on campus all day buying used textbooks, going to a one-hour lecture, and chilling with friends.

-Laur

September

Today is the first day of September. What a relief.
After a summer that was in most senses of the word a bust, I'm really looking forward to the coming year. I know that my experience working at summer school is going to help me in the classroom when I start at Thornlea on Tuesday (that's where my placement is, at Thornlea Secondary School), but for now I just really want to get back in the halls of academia and exercise my brain a little bit.
I have some funny pictures to post. I'll do that soon.

-Laur