I'm headed to NAPP, boys and girls
I have a difficult time remembering the acronym for an organization I joined a week or so ago. NAMM is always the first thing I think of for some reason, hence the title. NAPP stands for the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. According to the folks back home I even have a certificate suitable for framing with my membership number. (Perhaps I should pretend it is a diploma, hang it on my wall, and forget the remaining two years of school!) The main reason I thought I'd join this year is because they were offering a free instructional DVD with each new signup. Just my luck: all the DVDs are out of stock. However, I've been pleasantly surprised with the quality of how-tos online. Now I just need some photos to play with. If you have any problem files that you want Troy to try and improve with his new NAPPy skillz, send him an email.
Today I had another excursion with the school where I take Russian lessons. My comrades for the tour this time were a German lady and an American man. Destination: Baltisk. The city of Baltisk is a military city. Certain places there are off limits for people without special documents. Fortunately there were no passport problems for me or anybody else in the group. When we left the sun was shining and it was a rip-roarin' day. Along the way it started snowing pretty heavily, then the sun came out again, and then back and forth and so on all day. At the passport control place we picked up our tour guide. When the people at my school told me about the excursion they had mentioned a tour guide, but I thought it would be more like last time. Nope. This was a real guide that talked 90 kilometers a minute - "Look left, look right, look farther right. Oooh see that over there." She was really quite excellent. Surprisingly, I got most of what she was saying. Too bad the battery in my MP3 recorder died. Due to the nippy weather we didn't really spend too long looking at the different things she was showing us. I really wanted to take more pictures. After the guide left us I got a few cool rainbow shots of the ocean spray on the rocks.
En route back to Kaliningrad, we stopped by another beach. It is called Amber something, but I don't remember exactly. Anyhow I learned a little bit more history. According to the history books, Hitler's death camps closed shop in the spring of 1944. When the Third Reich realized that Russia was closing in on them they opted to dispose of their 'extra Jews' by sending them on death marches. In the middle of the winter, 13 degrees below (Celsius), somewhere between 1,200 and 4,000 scantily clad women marched to their death off this high embankment. Surmising at their fate, some of the prisoners ran into the frigid waters of the nearby sea undercover of night where they remained until after the procession had passed and/or the officers assumed them dead. Thanks to those who survived the boiling cold sea water, we know of this atrocity. About a month ago (on January 31) a monument was erected memorializing the last batch of frozen Holocaust victims to graduate from Hitler's school of perfection. Perhaps one of the reasons this is considered the last Holocaust act although a few months of the war remained is that bodies continued to wash ashore throughout the summer of 1945.
Wanting to make sure I understood correctly I did a bit of poking around the internet and turned up two decent sources of further information for those interested courtesy of The Moscow News and Guardian Unlimited.
Yesterday in free talk we finished up our month long study of Moses, the Hebrew nation, and their deliverance from Egypt. Excepting for the cement that held the stones together, the monument of remembrance near the beach could have been an altar similar to that erected by Moses and his cohorts ~3250 year ago. When I returned home I fired up my NAPP movies and watched them for a little while till I got tired. Saturday nights and me don't go too well together. Either I stay up too late, in which case I'm worthless on Sunday, or I go to bed too early, in which case I wake up in the middle of the night and stay up for awhile rendering myself equally as useless on Sunday. Last night I opted for the early approach. Sure enough, 1:30 rolled around and I was raring to go. So I called the folks only to find out that they were having a pow-wow to divvy up my belongings. Apparently a comment I made about having a headache got blown slightly out of proportion and they were arranging a transatlantic helicopter to come pick me up and take me back to the land of expensive medicine (woe is me, the uninsured). In that respect, my call was aptly timed - I think I saved everybody oodles of worry-time.
I must be getting old and crotchety - it seems that time is in fact speeding up. Already this semester is more than half way over but yet it certainly doesn't feel like it. My first semester seemed to take forever, but this one is practically finished and I find myself wondering where the time went. Last Tuesday evening I had an excellent teaching experience. Probably just coincidence, but a day or so before I had read an extremely thought-provoking three page essay by Carl Rogers. In it, Rogers sets forth his personal thoughts on teaching and learning and how they appear to be diametrically opposed to anything resembling education in existence. As I mentioned earlier, probably coincidental, but related nonetheless. Due to one of the other teachers needing to make up a class, I was asked to move into the small room. This was not a problem because I had only five students, but shrinking the classroom size threefold does tend to bring people closer together. Class began and I started through the material in the book. Some ideas were sparked and I fed the tangents a little bit until they began shooting off by themselves. It was quite entertaining to be an observer as the students talked about some big issues. This isn't the first time I've used the whole class time without hardly cracking the book, but I believe it is the first time that all the students were totally engaged. I know that I will remember that class period for quite some time and am sure the students will also. There is something quite electrifying when everybody in the room is plugged into the 'learning current' because they want to be. Looking a few years into the future I predict that it will be my success or lack thereof in fostering this type of contagious learning environment that will dictate how long I survive as a teacher.
A week ago I attended a guitar concert. The hall was sold out so my free ticket didn't include a chair. Or so the door person thought. I high tailed it up into the balcony where the orchestra was and commandeered a chair from a friendly violin case. Quite by accident (yeah right), the chair was maybe three meters from the trumpet player. It felt nice to be in the thick of an orchestra again. Even if the violins couldn't play a scale in tune if their lives depended on it. The guitarist guy was from Moscow and played excellently. I really felt sorry for him in some places because of the orchestra. They're not bad, they're just not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think professional orchestra. One movement was supposed to finish with the strings playing whisper quiet. Instead of being so whisper it sounded like somebody had their hands clasped securely around a duck's neck squeezing out the last ounces of life. Too bad because the movement was really amazing. Then the conductor choose that movement for the encore. What could be better than exiting the hall with a chortling dead duck quacking repeatedly in your head? I'm pleased to say that if this trumpet player is representative of my brethren in the Motherland, the stereotypical trumpeter ego is thriving just as well as in the US. The second he finished playing in the last piece his horn was in the bag and he was wildly gesticulating to his unfortunate comrades in the horn section who still had to play. Then a minute later when the man in charge of turning the stage lights on/off pushed a violin case out of the way to sit down during the encore he gave him a look to kill. "Let me make lots of noise during the quiet solo guitar passage, but you're not allowed to. Who do you think you are, somebody who works here?" An evening well spent.
Earlier that day I had visited the barber for the first time in two and a half months. One day the week before I walked in from teaching and looked in the mirror. A congenial, yet wild, man gazed intently back in my direction. My beard was truly amazing (pix link soon), garnering questions of when my expedition was leaving at church. But I think the clinching reason for me to lose the latest facial hair incarnation was Saturday night I was invited to dinner at the home of one of my students. He has a six year old daughter and she was running around pell-mell. I stepped in her way to playfully block her, but apparently my grizzled features were too much and she started to cry. Later that evening she did give me a large complement though. She was the first person to take a bite of the cake I had cooked. And she proclaimed it tasty. That is always a nice relief to hear. I can survive on food not fit for beast let alone man, but when other people's lives are at stake, I prefer that things turn out better than not. My visit with the young couple, their daughter, and the wife's parents went extremely well. I could understand enough of what they were saying and I really only stuck my foot in my mouth once. There was a large picture of a man sitting on the kitchen counter and I asked where he lived only to find out it was the son of the Grandma and Grandpa, deceased. In spite of this blunder they still invited me back later when the garden and apple trees would be in bloom.
I'll close with this lovely thought. During the first three months I resided in my swank flat I think my bed went unmade all of one time. In comparison with the past month in which it has been made three times, maybe, it is clear that I have grown into my role as a bachelor. The pile of dishes in the sink grows until the water will not turn on. You can hardly see the linoleum at my entrance for all the dirt. Ah, home sweet home - dust bunnies and all.
Today I had another excursion with the school where I take Russian lessons. My comrades for the tour this time were a German lady and an American man. Destination: Baltisk. The city of Baltisk is a military city. Certain places there are off limits for people without special documents. Fortunately there were no passport problems for me or anybody else in the group. When we left the sun was shining and it was a rip-roarin' day. Along the way it started snowing pretty heavily, then the sun came out again, and then back and forth and so on all day. At the passport control place we picked up our tour guide. When the people at my school told me about the excursion they had mentioned a tour guide, but I thought it would be more like last time. Nope. This was a real guide that talked 90 kilometers a minute - "Look left, look right, look farther right. Oooh see that over there." She was really quite excellent. Surprisingly, I got most of what she was saying. Too bad the battery in my MP3 recorder died. Due to the nippy weather we didn't really spend too long looking at the different things she was showing us. I really wanted to take more pictures. After the guide left us I got a few cool rainbow shots of the ocean spray on the rocks.
En route back to Kaliningrad, we stopped by another beach. It is called Amber something, but I don't remember exactly. Anyhow I learned a little bit more history. According to the history books, Hitler's death camps closed shop in the spring of 1944. When the Third Reich realized that Russia was closing in on them they opted to dispose of their 'extra Jews' by sending them on death marches. In the middle of the winter, 13 degrees below (Celsius), somewhere between 1,200 and 4,000 scantily clad women marched to their death off this high embankment. Surmising at their fate, some of the prisoners ran into the frigid waters of the nearby sea undercover of night where they remained until after the procession had passed and/or the officers assumed them dead. Thanks to those who survived the boiling cold sea water, we know of this atrocity. About a month ago (on January 31) a monument was erected memorializing the last batch of frozen Holocaust victims to graduate from Hitler's school of perfection. Perhaps one of the reasons this is considered the last Holocaust act although a few months of the war remained is that bodies continued to wash ashore throughout the summer of 1945.
Wanting to make sure I understood correctly I did a bit of poking around the internet and turned up two decent sources of further information for those interested courtesy of The Moscow News and Guardian Unlimited.
Yesterday in free talk we finished up our month long study of Moses, the Hebrew nation, and their deliverance from Egypt. Excepting for the cement that held the stones together, the monument of remembrance near the beach could have been an altar similar to that erected by Moses and his cohorts ~3250 year ago. When I returned home I fired up my NAPP movies and watched them for a little while till I got tired. Saturday nights and me don't go too well together. Either I stay up too late, in which case I'm worthless on Sunday, or I go to bed too early, in which case I wake up in the middle of the night and stay up for awhile rendering myself equally as useless on Sunday. Last night I opted for the early approach. Sure enough, 1:30 rolled around and I was raring to go. So I called the folks only to find out that they were having a pow-wow to divvy up my belongings. Apparently a comment I made about having a headache got blown slightly out of proportion and they were arranging a transatlantic helicopter to come pick me up and take me back to the land of expensive medicine (woe is me, the uninsured). In that respect, my call was aptly timed - I think I saved everybody oodles of worry-time.
I must be getting old and crotchety - it seems that time is in fact speeding up. Already this semester is more than half way over but yet it certainly doesn't feel like it. My first semester seemed to take forever, but this one is practically finished and I find myself wondering where the time went. Last Tuesday evening I had an excellent teaching experience. Probably just coincidence, but a day or so before I had read an extremely thought-provoking three page essay by Carl Rogers. In it, Rogers sets forth his personal thoughts on teaching and learning and how they appear to be diametrically opposed to anything resembling education in existence. As I mentioned earlier, probably coincidental, but related nonetheless. Due to one of the other teachers needing to make up a class, I was asked to move into the small room. This was not a problem because I had only five students, but shrinking the classroom size threefold does tend to bring people closer together. Class began and I started through the material in the book. Some ideas were sparked and I fed the tangents a little bit until they began shooting off by themselves. It was quite entertaining to be an observer as the students talked about some big issues. This isn't the first time I've used the whole class time without hardly cracking the book, but I believe it is the first time that all the students were totally engaged. I know that I will remember that class period for quite some time and am sure the students will also. There is something quite electrifying when everybody in the room is plugged into the 'learning current' because they want to be. Looking a few years into the future I predict that it will be my success or lack thereof in fostering this type of contagious learning environment that will dictate how long I survive as a teacher.
A week ago I attended a guitar concert. The hall was sold out so my free ticket didn't include a chair. Or so the door person thought. I high tailed it up into the balcony where the orchestra was and commandeered a chair from a friendly violin case. Quite by accident (yeah right), the chair was maybe three meters from the trumpet player. It felt nice to be in the thick of an orchestra again. Even if the violins couldn't play a scale in tune if their lives depended on it. The guitarist guy was from Moscow and played excellently. I really felt sorry for him in some places because of the orchestra. They're not bad, they're just not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when I think professional orchestra. One movement was supposed to finish with the strings playing whisper quiet. Instead of being so whisper it sounded like somebody had their hands clasped securely around a duck's neck squeezing out the last ounces of life. Too bad because the movement was really amazing. Then the conductor choose that movement for the encore. What could be better than exiting the hall with a chortling dead duck quacking repeatedly in your head? I'm pleased to say that if this trumpet player is representative of my brethren in the Motherland, the stereotypical trumpeter ego is thriving just as well as in the US. The second he finished playing in the last piece his horn was in the bag and he was wildly gesticulating to his unfortunate comrades in the horn section who still had to play. Then a minute later when the man in charge of turning the stage lights on/off pushed a violin case out of the way to sit down during the encore he gave him a look to kill. "Let me make lots of noise during the quiet solo guitar passage, but you're not allowed to. Who do you think you are, somebody who works here?" An evening well spent.
Earlier that day I had visited the barber for the first time in two and a half months. One day the week before I walked in from teaching and looked in the mirror. A congenial, yet wild, man gazed intently back in my direction. My beard was truly amazing (pix link soon), garnering questions of when my expedition was leaving at church. But I think the clinching reason for me to lose the latest facial hair incarnation was Saturday night I was invited to dinner at the home of one of my students. He has a six year old daughter and she was running around pell-mell. I stepped in her way to playfully block her, but apparently my grizzled features were too much and she started to cry. Later that evening she did give me a large complement though. She was the first person to take a bite of the cake I had cooked. And she proclaimed it tasty. That is always a nice relief to hear. I can survive on food not fit for beast let alone man, but when other people's lives are at stake, I prefer that things turn out better than not. My visit with the young couple, their daughter, and the wife's parents went extremely well. I could understand enough of what they were saying and I really only stuck my foot in my mouth once. There was a large picture of a man sitting on the kitchen counter and I asked where he lived only to find out it was the son of the Grandma and Grandpa, deceased. In spite of this blunder they still invited me back later when the garden and apple trees would be in bloom.
I'll close with this lovely thought. During the first three months I resided in my swank flat I think my bed went unmade all of one time. In comparison with the past month in which it has been made three times, maybe, it is clear that I have grown into my role as a bachelor. The pile of dishes in the sink grows until the water will not turn on. You can hardly see the linoleum at my entrance for all the dirt. Ah, home sweet home - dust bunnies and all.
posted by Troy on 21:00
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