Adding some more flavor

While stumbling around the internet from a wonderfully amusing site called People of Walmart, I came across a network of people who are in love with blogging. I also came across this great photo of a giant shopping cart. Whomever built this was crazy, but I love it and if I had been there, I definitely would have asked for a ride in it.

 


Anyways, the website that I found is called 20something bloggers, and its basically a community of people from around the world who all have their own blogs about different aspects of life. Perfect, this is just what I've been looking for. I feel like not many of my friends from Tech have blogs, or if they do, they don't publicize it enough for me to know about. Since I ambitiously expected that a lot of different people would read my blog, ranging from former teachers and professors to friends and family, I've kept it pretty basic and toned it down in case any potential employers use it to scope me out. But browsing through a few of the featured blogs on 20SB inspired me to add a little more flavor to my blog, so from now on I will try to write a little more in my voice from the top of my head instead of just photoblogging from my travels. Don't worry, I'll still post pictures.

I've also updated my blog's location on Peace Corps Journals. I originally submitted my blog under the applicant category, but changed it to Ukraine since I'm leaving in about 3 weeks!

Preparations for beginning my new job as an English teacher have been... interesting. I've always been a very math and science oriented person, but I did take both AP English classes in high school and scored a 4 and 5 on them (though now my creative writing skills have plummeted since pursuing an engineering degree in college).

The Peace Corps requires all TEFL (teaching English as a foreign language) volunteers to read their 60-page Word doc manual and then take a 50 question multiple choice test. And then we have to submit the results of our test scores to our appropriate country coordinators, so they can kind of assess what they still need to teach us when we get to Ukraine. I took this test at least 5 times before I scored 90% on it, which I deemed to be satisfactory enough to submit since I was getting fed up with it.

Here are some fun sample questions that I missed the first few times around (the test is randomized, so not all questions are the same)... these are things that I would say that I need to review, except I don't remember learning about them.

19.  How should the teacher get the meaning of the word 'average' across?
     a)  By using a dictionary
WRONG

20.  When the teacher presents the form of a new word, what should he/she do first?
     a)  Write a new word clearly on the blackboard
WRONG

32.  Modal auxiliary verbs can be used with perfect infinitives to talk about ______________.
     c)  things which are definitely happening now
WRONG

46.  'If we left now, we would catch the train.' Which Conditional is it?
     c)  Conditional 3
WRONG

Yuck... I definitely need to read the manual again, even though I already submitted my test results. Teaching English is going to be way more challenging than I originally thought when I accepted the nomination. Anyways, I came across a great teaching aid yesterday online, its a comic book style poster on How to Use a Semicolon and they also make posters for assorted other aspects of English grammar. Its a little out of my budget for teaching supplies though, so I'll add it to my wishlist for Christmas and maybe someone will be kind enough to send it to me in Ukraine.