The Long Road to the Year's End

       Merry Christmas and happy eating to everyone! As for me,I've already eaten my fill last night so today I'm just munching on what's left from last night's festivities.

     Unfortunately, I didn't stay up late last night waiting for the fireworks to announce that it was Christmas. This may be because I found last night's TV programs to be uninteresting which made me sleepier. But I do remember being awakened in the middle of the night by the commotion made by my neighbors and cousins. But instead of getting up to gaze at the fireworks outside, I just went back to sleep.

     Today, i suddenly realized that it was only a few days before the year came to an end. This year has definitely been a very memorable year to me. At the start of 2009, I was still a high school student who didn't have a clue as to what I wanted to do when I grew up. Now, as 2009 is about to end, I am already a college student struggling to prepare myself for a career. I've said farewell to old friends and said hello to new ones. So I guess I'm just excited as to what will happen in 2010.

      In fact, I have already made a list of things that i must not forget to do on 2010. It's sort of a list of my New Year's resolutions. The list is still small but I want to show all of you what I wrote:

      My New Year's Resolutions:

     1. Obviously, lose all wight gained during the holidays.

      2. Never forget the birthdays of friends and family.

     3. Try to have fun and relax this year.

     4. Ty to be friends with every person I meet.

     5. Never forget to keep my promises in this list.

     And so, I am still enjoying the last few days of this year that I have left before it ends. I am also looking forward to our high school alumni homecoming this December 28 so wish me luck! And once again, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you.

 

‘Tis the season to be jolly

     At what appears to be only a matter of days, Christmas is finally approaching. Unfortunately, I won’t be going anywhere which is just swell since I need all the time I can get to prepare for the upcoming preliminary examinations when I come back to school. So to Christmas vacation trips I say “bah-humbug”. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have any plans on spending the Christmas break.

      Aside from well…studying, I have planned to set aside time in order to do the following:

         1. Reading. I have already started reading the book, Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie. It’s sort of a biography about Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra, the last autocrats of Imperial Russia. As you can see, this book is just my cup of tea.

         I find the reason why the author wrote the book very touching and inspiring. After scanning the last parts of the book, I came to the part where the author talks about the suffering his son went through because of the disease hemophilia. Over time, he became so fascinated in discussions about hemophilia and he becomes more and more interested in the most famous hemophiliac of all – the last czarevitch Alexis. In his book, he wanted to show the effect the disease had on Alexis’ parents, Nicholas and Alexandra and how their behavior towards his failing health lead to enormous consequences to the world.

         But I’m still in the first chapters of the book so hopefully by Christmas, I shall have finished reading it.

         2.Watching TV. This Christmas break has given me the opportunity to watch the fifth season of one of my all-time favorite TV series, Supernatural. I’m so excited since in this season, Lucifer has been freed from hell so this should spice things up a bit. And the only way to know what will happen next is by watching so wish me luck!

         3. Eating. What’s Christmas like without eating to your heart’s content? I just have to stay from dairy products since they’re like laxatives to me. One false move and it could end up a disaster.

     But anyway, this break is just what I need for a little R & R. I expect to look rested when I come back to school. So I wish you all a Merry Christmas and see you next year…

Just getting the hang of it…

     It’s the fourth time I have blogged as of today so congratulations to me! Little by little I am beginning to learn how blogging works so hopefully by the end of the semester I will become familiar with the blogsite. Our blogging project has enabled me to immerse myself to the different activities that can be done in the internet.

     Well enough about that. During our meetings this week we began focusing on the paragraph composition especially the methods of paragraph development which reminds me that I am also thankful to our teacher for moving the deadline of our assignment on paragraph development. Thanks to the extended deadline, me and my partner were able to find and include more authentic samples to our assignment.

     Anyway, we only met once this week with our teacher which was on a Tuesday. During that day, our teacher divided us into groups of four and then she made us write a group composition as fast as we can. It was thrilling yet fun. The next activity we did was enumerating as many words as we can that contains a specific word.

     We did not meet with our teacher on Thursday because she was going to Marawi City that day but she left as an assignment before she left. We were asked to choose one type of method of paragraph development and then create a group composition that uses that method.
     Our English class this week was so fun and I hope it still is the coming days..

This Week’s Scoop: November 29 – December 5, 2009

     On our first meeting this week, our teacher returned to us the outline we passed last week. She then began discussing how to properly write a sentence outline. She first discussed the correct format and parts of an outline. Once again, I took the liberty of copying what she wrote.

     Then she illustrated the way the main topic, subtopic and subsubtopics are stated by revising one of the outlines a classmate of ours made. The outline was all about the advantages of the internet to its users.

     Then we corrected the assignment we were tasked to do which was all about identifying the topic sentence and its position in a paragraph and identifying the main topic and controlling idea of a topic sentence. I learned a lot from checking the assignment which I hope will be useful someday.

     Unfortunately, our teacher was going to leave for Manila tomorrow so she wouldn’t be able to meet us on Thursday. So she just left us an assignment aside from the usual blogging assignment. The assignment was that me and my partner should cut out paragraphs from different texts to familiarize ourselves with the methods of paragraph development. Thank God I didn’t throw away all those old magazines. It seems they still have some usefulness…

     This week also I have just finished reading the book entitled The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Reading the book suddenly awakened the bookworm in me. And the book contains lots of historical facts and trivia which is just what I need to feed my appetite. As you all know, I am a fan when it comes to books with historical connections. And so I hope I can balance my time studying, eating, sleeping and reading.

     Many people think reading historical novels is boring because they think past is already past so why bother writing about it.

     Well, my reply is an old French saying: “Il n’est jamais trop tard du changer l’histoire!” (It’s never too late to change history!)

And so here ends this week’s scoop. Gotta go…catch you guys later!

Specific Topic: Psychological Stages Undergone by a Dying Person

Thesis Statement: A dying person undergoes the psychological stages of anger, denial, bragaining, depression and acceptance.

This Week’s Scoop: November 22-28, 2009

     Last Tuesday, a woman suddenly entered our room in English 2. I didn’t have the slightest clue that she was our teacher. I was surprised that she was because she looked taller in the picture in her blog.

     Well anyway, it doesn’t matter because I didn’t really get a good look at her picture so why am I complaining? Our teacher, Prof. Lynnie Deocampo was one of the most unusual and fantastic teachers I have ever been under. For one thing, she spoke in English with such fluency like she grew up in the States or something. I have a feeling this is going to be a class I won’t soon forget.

     She then required us all to speak in English in our class even to our classmates. If we were caught speaking in the vernacular we would have to sing a song in front of the whole class (tricky…very tricky). But at least I was thankful she finally came so that we could finally start classes and have a proper discussion.

     During that meeting, we began talking about concept mapping in order to ease the burden of trying to come up with a good topic to write about. She said that concept mapping is useful in deciding what topic to write about in our term paper and I agree. She also taught us how to state our specific topic. I took the liberty of copying the concept map she used as an example which was about education.

     During our next meeting which was on a Thursday, we discussed about the concept maps we made last Tuesday. The teacher gave us some helpful tips when choosing a specific topic and when writing our thesis statement like not choosing a topic that even laymen know about, making sure that the thesis statement must be connected to our specific topic, using parallelism and etc.

     And so here ends this week’s scoop. Until next time…

How I Think and Feel Towards Writing in English

     As for me, I have mixed feelings whenever I write in English. But if I have to describe these feelings in a single word, I would use the word pleasurable. i admit that I feel more comfortable writing in English than in my native languanges. It sounds hypocritical but life is complicated. Just because I prefer another language than my own doesn't mean I no longer love my country, right?

     Well anyway, the reason why I decribed writing in English as pleasurable is because it gives me the some advantages that could prove useful in the near future.

     First, it offers me the chance to express myself through writing my thoughts, emotions and experiences. Writing opens up to a world where there are numerous possibilities and where anything is possible. It is an enjoyable and stress-relieving exercise.

     Secondly, it lets me practice my writing skills. I confess that I am not a very good writer. If I had a peso every time I attempted to write something that ended in failure and disappointment, I'd probably be able to own my own house right now. Okay, that was a little bit an exaggeration but you get the picture.

     Finally, it would give me a chance to brush up on my English and to include some novel words I learned through the years and other words which I thought I would never be able to use in my entire life.

     And so I hope I can do all those things I just said and live up to the expectations of my teacher and others concerned. I also hope to learn new thigs as I continue travelling into the vast and unknown future.