There are a couple of things that we need to settle before the pending move to IL. One of them will be to rent out our house before the move.
We do not plan to sell it yet because the real estate market is really sluggish in this area and the resell value of our house is horrible. We live not too far from a university, it’s not too difficult to rent out the house as the demands for rentals are reasonably good.
Did a search on the net and found some discount coupon codes for winter jackets and coats that I have thought of getting for the big boy as Valentine’s gift. But, he said he doesn’t need a winter jacket or coat, as he has a few of them already. Headache, headache, really don’t know what to get him.
Of course the big boy will always appreciate anything that provides entertainment, if i can’t think of anything else, will just buy him a DVD or I can always grab him a game or two with the Gamefly coupons. If you want, go over and see what other coupons you can get. They have a wide range of baby stuffs, women stuffs and lots of other things.
Before noon on Wed, I rushed out of the door and drove about 60 miles to the nearby town and didn’t reach home until 8.45 p.m that night. The trip was to conduct a demo of Spell to Write and Read for a few mummies.
It is a short trip and it shouldn’t be too tiring because it was an informal class. But I came home totally exhausted, went to bed right after taking a shower. It took me two days to recuperate from the tiredness! Five years ago, we drove up to Cameron Highland, Ipoh and Penang, it wasn’t even this tired. Age is really catching up with me. Driving and running around tired me out this days.
Though not a native speaker of English, I do speak and write English well enough for people not to have any problem understanding me in normal day to day conversations. However, I do speak with an accent typical of the people from my home country.
It can be quite nerve wrecking to speak publicly or to give a lecture to a group of native speakers. That’s why I am not looking forward to go back to teach in the university without first going through an accent reduction course to get rid of my accent. Are you in a similar predicament? You may want to check out the accent reduction course at ELT. It is designed to help non-native American English speakers tackle American English language skills and improve their American accent.
I know too well how critical the students can be of an instructor who have an accent. In the former university that I was teaching, we have instructors and professors from many different countries, thus many different types of accents. The students themselves are not native speakers, may speak with an accent and may not speak perfect English (in fact, many of them speak lousy English), but they always blame the accents of their instructors for their academic failures. I won’t want to be the scapegoat and lame excuse for their indiscipline and laziness.
I have been really terrible at keeping in touch with people that I used to know when I was living in VA. After few years of not contacting them at all, I finally picked up the phone and called this morning.
Managed to talk to J for a good 40 minutes. His wife H was not home, as usual busy volunteering at different places.:-)Would have to call back some time in future to talk to H and the little girl whom I was teaching Mandarin years ago. She is 9 years old, a big girl now! I really missed her.
Was quite a shock to learn that both of them have contracted Lyme disease in the past few years and were not in good health. Despite of that J is doing really well in his river conservation work.
I remembered J asked me whether there is a clean river in the town I live (not in the jungle or up the mountain) that you can swim and canoe. Shame to say, we have none. The Melaka City Council had spent a few millions to clean up the river, but it’s still as smelly and as dirty as ever, may be they should consult J or learn something from his education, conservation and restoration work.
