So I’ve finally gotten around to updating the page. Well, adding a post, at any rate. The page itself probably won’t get updated for a while though I’ve got a new layout and design already floating around my brain. But I digress, as usual. The point of this post is to catch up on the past month or so through random bits of whatever I remember at the moment. So here it goes:

Finals went well back in December and I was happy to have the time off work. I love teaching, mind you, but by the end of the semester I’ve generally just had it, especially since the students are all tired and worn out which makes me ten times more fatigued than before. So finals were over and I spent the next several weeks wrapping presents and crocheting…LOTS of crocheting. I made a total of four scarves and five pillows, all of which went over well with the recipients. I got a lot of neat stuff for Christmas including some awesome crocheting books and a ton of new cute ornaments for our new tree. It was awesome seeing all of the family again, and it was fun having the Flecks up even though I was pretty exhausted for most of the time they were up. Then we had Simon at our place for about a week so he could unwind with some video games and random movies. I think he probably ate chicken fingers and pizza the entire time he was up. That and lots of soda. Simon, you’ll stunt your growth! Hehe.

So New Year’s came and went and I watched the countdown on my Animal Crossing game, which had a cute fireworks display and party poppers for the event. The rest of that week was spent getting my shit together for classes since they started up this past Monday. I had lesson plans and syllabi to write as well as random stuff to gather up and organize before the new semester. I’m teaching four classes again: two sections of 102 (second semester of the first year), one section of 201 (first semester of the second year) and one section of 202 (second semester of the second year). All in all, I have about thirty-five to forty students. I am going to be teaching two of the 202 students in my office one day a week because they’re both on the tennis team and can’t make it to the 2 o’clock class. Teaching those two girls will be interesting because French is their native language and this class is just a basic grammar course! I guess we’ll stick to culture and history.

This week has been going well so far. Now that I have a semester of French teaching under my belt (if I wore one), I feel more confident in teaching these next four classes. It helps that I taught two of them before and that the classes are all pretty small. I prefer small groups to large groups. It’s that agoraphobia kicking in, I guess. At any rate, I’m doing a better job speaking predominantly in French, and the classes seem to have many eager learners. I just finished cleaning my desk off this week as well, so I’m feeling organized and ready. This won’t last, but I’m riding high on the feeling while I’ve got it.

So my next projects are to finish the mini afghan I’ve started (I’m thinking about making one for my cousin’s wedding this summer but not a mini one, a full-sized one), keep up on lesson plans and grading, sorting out all my e-mails in my five e-mail accounts which I’ve sort of stopped checking for the past month, rework WiG’s design, and maybe get around to working up part of my thesis as submission material to various linguistic journals. I like to keep busy. 🙂 At the moment, however, I’m just going to finish my cuppa and go over the lesson plans for tomorrow’s classes. Tonight’s laundry and Animal Crossing, so it’s looking like a decent day in all. I’ll try to post more often, but we’ll see!