For one, I'll be starting the EFL course on Monday. The next four weeks are going to be spent trying to learn how to teach English. Eight hours a day of class every day, and then a couple hours of homework every night. Dude! Even in college, I wasn't in class 40 hours a week. So I'm pretty well freaked out. I just can't wrap my brain around the fact that I could really really be teaching abroad in a few months.... actually living in a country I've never even visited. In theory it's really exciting. I mean, every time I hear about someone else living abroad I think it sounds awesome. So why not me?? I guess I just need to take it one step at a time, and if I decide that I don't really want to go... then I don't have to. I know that should be obvious, but I do have to remind myself every once in a while that this class is just a bit of an experiment. We'll see how it goes.
Now, in other, less dramatic news... I've started cutting out the fabric for my Valerie Wells quilt. Due to a couple mis-cuts I just barely had enough of the polka dot fabric, and not quite enough of a couple of the fat quarters to make a center square and the outside strips. In any case, I've started auditioning blocks.
It'll take some time to figure out exactly which fabrics go best together. I may even decide to pick up another couple fabrics.... depends on how all these work out.
I don't know when I'll finish this one up. I don't expect to get much quilting done over the next month, and in fact I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing. So if it goes a bit quiet... don't worry.
Well worry about how I'm doing in class... but don't worry that I've fallen off the planet or anything. ;) Wish me luck!
7 comments:
Good luck with all that time in class! Just thing what you are working towards!! It'll get you through!
Best of luck. Looking forward to reading how it went.
Bueno suerte!!!
I like your latest quilt. I think this is why I would suck at quilting--I have a terrible sense of color.
I love Valorie Wells' stuff -- that will be such a fun quilt! Such fun blocks you've laid out.
Good luck with the EFL class! Does sound overwhelming, but it could be lots of fun. I've always wanted to do that. My daughter has a friend who taught English in Japan and loved it, but I imagine it could be challenging in many ways, too. There's also a quilt blogger who teaches English abroad, I think she's been to more than one country. Her blog is "lifesaquilt" on blogspot.
a) that polka dot fabric is the bomb dot com
b) full-time class won't be any worse than full-time joby-job. in fact it will probably be 200 times better because a) you'll be working towards a much desired goal and b) you'll actually be learning something.
OOh! I'm going to do a sort of similar pattern on a quilt for my daughter, There was a tip in my pattern that if you don't have a enough to do a larger square in the center of the block, you can build it out with strips of fabric. You would just put a border around it. Does that make sense?
You will know in your heart as you go through your EFL training whether this is the right thing for you to do. Being scared is part of the excitement!
**pangs of jealousy**
We'll see you on the flip side! If you do have any time to blog, I'd be interested in hearing a bit about the process of teaching English to speakers of a language the teacher herself does not speak. I have no clue. I envision a Tarzanish sort of exchange, or what happened on the Star Trek the Next Generation episode "Darmok" where Picard has to learn to speak to a species of people who speak only in metaphor.
You're going to have a real experience. It is scary, but so are a lot of really great things.
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