Story #18, That Is Another CPE Article.

Story #85 is the poem "A Ballet Dancer"

Put your pointe shoes on

And get to the barre,

It’s your stage for tonight,

You’re a soloist.

Keep your balance,

Assemblé, 

Attitude derrière,

Show bravura,

S'il te plaît

You’re not made of wood.

Half turn here,

Half turn there

Right leg extended in alongé

Left foot strong

With your foot en pointe --

Hard?

Demi-pointe it’s then.

Face your audience

Return to the first position

Grand plie,

Grand jete,

Pas de chat.

It’s your stage for tonight

You’re a soloist.

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Photo by Nihal Demirci Erenay on Unsplash

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Stories #30-38 are The X-Files Fanfiction stories.

They are taken down for now but you can still read them on AO3.

Read it on AO3

STORY 15 which is another CPE review "A Little Book of Hygge" by Meik Wiking

The prompt: A literary magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of non-fiction books. You decide to submit a review of a book that has influenced you greatly. Your review should briefly describe the book, explain what aspects of your life have changed after reading it, and assess the importance of non-fiction literature.

Imagine yourself waking up in the crisp blue morning, snuggled in a soft, warm blanket, still hazy and disoriented, but well-rested and content. Imagine yourself taking that feeling of coziness and comfort, bottle it up, and carry it with you throughout the day: no stress, no chagrin, just pure joy and happiness. 

“The little book of Hygge” by Mike Wikking is your guide to the Danish concept by the same name of life devoid of anxiety and tension. Step by step, from picking the right light for your bedroom to planning weekend dinners, you’ll learn to recreate an atmosphere of the place where you feel shielded from the outside world and can let your guard down. The principles of this 10-part manifesto, full of gorgeous photos and illustrations, can be applied in the familiar space of your house, in the office environment, while traveling or walking by anyone from executives and mere employees to homemakers and students.

To me, Hygge is the epitome of tranquility. Curled up on my couch, with the ripple pattern baby afghan I had knitted for my daughter, I read through the book in a couple of nights. Prompted by the Wikking’s work, I put on the rubber gloves to clean the apartment of junk piling in my bookcase, my wardrobe, my cupboards. Little magic rituals like cocoa by candlelight and a game of Monopoly with kids on a Saturday night naturally implemented themselves into my routine. Hygge was that magic ingredient in my recipe for a stress-free life.

Lost in a hectic race to achieve some bigger goals, people forget to appreciate little mundane pleasures, such as a smell of a fresh-baked cake, or a bedtime story to children. Meanwhile, what could be a more effortless way to be reminded of the value of life? It’s the very time to turn to books of facts. They might not provide a fantasy world to escape like fiction, but become our tools for a quick-time solution, an answer to a burning question, or just a piece of advice. Perhaps, next time you ponder what kind of read to indulge in, attempt reality over imagination.

Photo credit: @stellarose Unsplash

Story #57 "You gotta stay away from work to work better"

Said A. in our yesterday’s lesson when I asked her about Women's Day. Hell, yeah, I replied, would be nice but kind of hard to do your work not working it. We laughed it off and got back to our good old lexical items but the thought stuck. 

It played on the loop later as well, when I thought back to my last year's holiday. And two years back. And basically all the holidays of the last 10 years. The first thing I pack with me is my laptop. I take it out to the airport to check the student's homework. I take it out on the plane to outline a workshop. I take it out in a hotel to upload some extra materials for them and then write some more. 

The children run around asking for a cable car trip, or a dip in a swimming pool. The husband is pulling me under the blanket in his subtle attempt to make out with his seemingly relaxed pre-holiday wife. The dog we don’t have (thank god!) scratching the door desperately to remind us about its basic needs, would complete the picture perfectly. 

Yet, I have my laptop on my knees. The wheels are already set in motion while I’m getting ready for my lesson in the room I set up for my study in our two-bedroom suite. 

That begs the question - why the hell is it so hard not to work at all? And If I strip myself of any opportunities to be engaged in any work-related environment, can I break that vicious cycle? 

What’s your holiday like, guys? Is it a real work-free holiday or do you tend to squeeze in a few lessons/homework checks/course supervising/etc. in between a morning beach stroll and an evening family dinner?

Story #6, CPE Review “Paradise Lost” by John Milton

Prompt⤵️

A literary magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of classical books that seem to have been undeservedly forgotten. You decide to submit a review of a forgotten classic you liked. Your review should briefly describe the book, explain why it deserves to be remembered, and assess the importance of classical literature.

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"Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven." There's hardly a person who'd never heard these words from the monologue delivered by Satan in John Milton's work "Paradise Lost." In his quintessential poem, epic both in scale and ambition, Milton wrote in a state of total blindness, claiming to have divine inspirations that approached him nightly.

A tragic and powerful piece whose legacy didn’t endure as firmly as one of its remarkable quotes. Beautifully and somewhat encyclopaedically, Milton explores the ideas of salvation and redemption and tells a tale of a war that rages across Hell. Outlining the portions of the Bible, he puts the story of the Fall of Man in the center of his immense drama. A fallen angel, vain and full of pride, Satan is the projection of all too human temptations that compel readers subconsciously to sympathize with him.

“Paradise Lost" is a book of questions, daunting and intense, that deserves to be remembered. As you submerge deep into philosophical matters of the nature of a human being and its purpose on Earth, you are compelled to re-conceptualize entirely your ideas of Hell, Heaven, God, and Devil. What makes it even more valuable is a chance Milton hands over to readers to analyze the evolution of the English language through his poem's lines. "Paradise Lost" allegedly gave us more than five hundred English words, such as "satanic" or "terrific," and negative forms of already existing words like "irresponsible" or "unprincipled." It also provides us with a new angle to look at the overall poetic genre. The poem doesn't rhyme; instead, Milton uses blank-verse: ten-syllable metrical lines.

The book is a classic once it withstands the test of time. Classical literature encompasses different periods of history; therefore, it enhances our comprehension of human nature and sets the basis for broader vocabulary and a profound understanding of the language, its origins, and functions. Even though most classical characters we see in the canon books might not be applicable today, the message they carry is timeless, and their merits cannot be undermined.

Some more factual information behind the CPE fiction article "The local hero". You can find a full article here https://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/05/nyregion/girl-s-death-is-attributed-to-rabid-bat.html

Story #1 “A Local Hero”.

This one was originally written as a part of my CPE training. It’s based on a true story, and I do love the way it turned out; however, it’s fair for most of my pieces.

___

Daniel Watzlav never planned to be a hero. He didn’t expect his life to change overnight, taking twists and turns like in an action-packed movie. It was more of a downward spiral reversing steadily until the point of no return was reached. In the summer of 2000, he took his daughter Liz to explore the Kungur’s cave in the suburbs of his home city Perm. They spent a night at the campsite, a fire cracking at their feet and a canopy of stars above their heads.

Anything can change your life forever. It can be something big like falling in love. Or something so teeny-tiny that it doesn’t even leave a mark. Like a bite of a rabid bat. Upon returning home from their holiday in the embrace of nature, Liz started exhibiting symptoms of a virus-like infection. Doctors failed to identify the root cause of her condition until it was too late. The girl died of rabies. 

It might sound awfully cliché, but as a loving parent, her father wanted to commemorate his daughter’s memory. While Liz was undergoing treatment in a hospital, Daniil became a first-hand witness of the sorry state of affairs of medical facilities. Little patients were surrounded by nothing but faceless white walls and stiff plastic chairs for parents in hallways. Daniil poured all his grief and sorrow into the project of building a state-of-the-art children’s hospital where parents would be welcomed into the healing process, and children would have buoyant space to recover that felt like home. It took another two years for the Elizaveta Watzlav Children’s Hospital to open.

Daniil played a pioneering role in addressing the problem of restricting parents’ access to their children once they were admitted to the clinic. Not only did the Elizaveta hospital become a template for all the following world-class children’s medical facilities built, but it also set the health system on track towards designing special parents’ houses on the grounds of the existing hospitals not to separate the minors with their next of kin. So, is Daniil a hero? Indeed.  But then again, do you need to be a hero to help others with all your heart?  

Story #79 "Mapping My Childhood"

That was a creative writing exercise from my tutor, and it's a mix of fiction and real-life events.

There was a heavy wooden bookcase in the living room of our old two-bedroom, creaky dusty shelves storing all kinds of books - detective stories, thrillers, romances that would make the most jagged reader blush. I rummaged through it from top to bottom and stopped my gaze on “Hatter’s Castle” by Archibald Cronin, a hefty volume of blue color - the book my younger self, fascinated with British and American literature – devoured whole in one week. Took me another week to digest it, before embarking on Dreiser’s “American Tragedy”.  We’ll get back to that.

Kesha, our green and yellow budgie, was tweeting in his cage as I stood there hypnotizing the book, trying to decide if it was worth a read. As I made up my mind to give it a shot, I sauntered over to the kitchen to boil some water for tea. Benny, our beautiful white mongrel, looked at me with her wet brown eyes – always seemingly sad – and I paused by the door of the kitchen with my manuscript.

Later.

We could look through Hatter’s castle later. Tea could wait too. It was time to walk.

“Hey, let’s go out for a while.”

She didn’t hesitate and jumped on me, pawing my knees excitedly.  I crouched down to be level with her lovely fluffy face and pulled her increments closer. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head, I had already known it would be one of our last times together. As I had known that one sunny day in June, I would forget to pull down the bar of Kesha’s cage while filling his bowl with fresh food, and he would fly away.

We tended to keep the balcony doors open in summer, but I still believed the chances he’d find his way out would be close to nil. Well, fucking stupid of me. But what would you expect from a fourteen-year-old – a clusterfuck of uncertainty and confusion? 

Fourth floor. Eighty-eight steps up and down. Every day for the past six years, and then the next ten. Inside it smelled like dump plaster and cigarette smoke. I used to know all my neighbors by name, the types of plants they had (they asked us to water them when on holiday), and the loudness of their spouses’ voices once a row was in full swing.

Every four weeks it was our turn to sweep the floors of the lobby and wash two flights of stairs. Twenty-two steps. Up and down. I wish we had a rug there, so I could sweep under it all the dirt and humiliation I felt every time I got spotted by a random passerby.

Checking the postbox was the thing I loved best. There were letters and postcards I could read. When I was in high school, newspapers joined them. Later, when I entered the college, catalogs and brochures were added to the pile of the mess our postbox had become.

“What you got there?” The boy from the top floor – the fifth – asked me as he stepped across the narrow two-by-two lobby to check the box of his own.

“Yves Rocher catalog,” I mumbled and he pivoted on his heels swiftly.

“What?”

“Yves Rocher catalog,” I repeated louder and then felt compelled to clarify. “You can buy a lipstick there or a mascara.”

The boy smirked and swept my body down with his eyes, grinning wickedly.

“You think it’ll help?”

At his words, my face started burning. I kept staring at him with eyes wide open, acutely aware that if I closed them for a second, the tears that had already filled the back of my throat would spill over my lashes. I swallowed a sob ready to escape any moment and brushed past the guy, bumping his shoulder painfully with my backpack.

“Fuck you.”

Story #65 is something to be said about bones.

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.”

Said Henry David Thoreau probably talking about finding your vocation and yada-yada-yada. Sitting in a wooden gazebo of my mother’s country house and looking at our twelve-year-old orange ball of a Pomeranian gnawing at a raw steak bone makes that quote a bit of a joke.

What does it take to know your own bone? How do you even know if that fucking thing is your true bone? Damn right. This is where you had to start, dear Mr. Thoreau.

I wanted to be a forensic pathologist. No, seriously. I thought I was going to cut skin and muscles and all. Literally. I would slice and dice and get to the very essence of a bone.

A human’s body is a temple, so often vandalized and violated by a few who believe they’re omnipotent - criminal offenders, abusers, perpetrators - doesn't really matter what you call them. By unraveling the mysteries of the body's destruction and gathering all the clues it left behind, I’d solve the puzzle and bring the body its dignity back. Restore it. Make it whole again. Make it more than just a set of bones.

I never became a queen of an autopsy bay. Somewhere along the way, I took another turn to explore my other obsessions. The writing was one of them, and this time it’s all down my bones.

The thing is, I didn’t recognize my bone when I first saw it. Sometimes it takes years to find it. It may take a few more to understand that it, indeed, is your true bone. However, one thing Mr. Thoreau was right about is, whatever your bone turns out to be, once you find it – gnaw at it. Gnaw at it with all your might. 

Story #41, CELTA weeks 2-3-4

Considering teacher’s practice still hasn't started, both these were relatively easy.

During the second week a student is supposed to cover 4 modules on the platform, each takes from 40 minutes to 2 hours.

✅ Dealing with language ✅ Classroom management ✅ Using the coursebook 1 ✅ Lesson planning 1

Week 3 modules: ✅ More about the learner ✅ Checking understanding ✅ Anticipating problems ✅ Coursebook

Week 4: ✅ Listening ✅ Lexis ✅ Practice activities ✅ Correction

There were also a few tasks to submit on discussion forums both individually and in small groups about the theoretical material.

Apart from that, there’s only live session a week (2-2,5 hrs):

📚”Classroom management, online vs offline lesson”. 📚 “Eliciting and concept checking questions.” 📚 “Lesson Planning”

At the end of the 4th week we also had to submit one of our written assignments.

📝 Assignment 3 is a reading lesson based on authentic materials, designed for a particular group of students. The list of possible articles to use, as well as the class profile are provided by Cambridge. No stages and procedures should be included, it’s a lesson in prose, where each activity should be described and the rationale stated (references and appendix with designed handouts included).

The revelation of the week: when it comes to lexis, CELTA promotes (however, not explicitly), the Lexical Approach and encourages students to study words in chunks and collocations, notice grammar patterns and check linking and connected speech features.

That’s it 👌 Off we go to week 5, where teaching practice starts.

This week I have on the plate:

✅the first lesson with a pre-intermediate group. ✅ assignment 2 ✅ two live sessions ✅ lesson plans ✅ sweat, tears and a lack of sleep.

But.. I will survive ❤️