Me??? Not Me!!!!!!!!!

Remember my previous post where I requested prayer for little Stellan??? Well, the surgical procedure on his little heart was a miraculous success and he is SVT free for the rest of his life!!!!! What an awesome God we have!!!!!!!

So, now that all's well with the Mck Family, and now that our prayers worldwide have been answered, its time once again for some therapy, and here it comes! Feel free to join in the fun. Just head over to Mck Mama's blog and sign yourself up for some 'Not Me' fun!

I am not a lazy girl who hasn't blogged in ages!! No! I do not keep the few faithful readers I have waiting for a blog post.

Don't you know? There are a lot of things a girl like me wouldn't be caught dead doing. Like these for instance:

• Wear denim capris to work without shaving my legs, and have a student tell me "Ms! My father have same legs like you!"...............YIKES!!
• Pretend that my baby is having a hard time falling asleep just so I can watch her sleep peacefully AND miss family prayer!!!
• Wade through murky, smelly, calf deep water (which necessitated wearing capris to work) to get to the car, to get to the van to get to work! hmmpf! I live in a mansion on a mountain and have palanquin bearers to carry me over even the smallest puddle!!!!
• Borrow something from a colleague and forget to return it even though its been in my bag everyday..... for 2 weeks!!!!

hmm.... there are a LOT of things I would do, but these I certainly wouldn't!!!

pray pray pray

I have friends who believe in the power of prayer and those who dont. But since I do, with all my heart, I am requesting prayer for a little one year old boy who'se life ai've followed from even before he was born..... Ive never met him nor his parents. Yet, his mother's blog has made me feel like he were my own nephew.

And he's sick....really sick and in need of a major surgery happening today. So please please.... pray for STELLAN. You can go over to his mother's blog to read more on him. She's the woman behind my Not Me Monday posts.

The 3 R's

I believe, like the Bruderhof community does, that the 3 R's of education are not the traditional

Reading
wRiting
&
aRithmetic


but,

RESPECT

RESPONSIBILITY

and

RESOURCEFULNESS.

Not Me Tuesday

Not Me Monday is a blog carnival hosted by Mck Mamma a wonder woman who's blog I have been following for the past 2 years. It's a fun form of therapy. Read on...

Over the past week, I did not write a post about all the bad stuff that happened to me the previous week, with the main intention of garnering some sympathy. I would never do something as low as that. And even if I did, why would I admit it here??

I did not lose my cool with my 7 month old daughter and yell at her for repeatedly trying to roll over and bite her new diaper when I was diaper changing. I am a very calm and composed woman who believes in quietly but firm discipline.

While out at Sparkys for dinner, I did not try to feed my lil chakakuru mashed potato laden with bad bad butter just to shut her up! And when she refused to eat it, I did not wonder if she were really mine and Paunch's child. And when I saw her make her "pooping face" I did not pull at her diaper right there at our table, in front of our friends, peer in and sniff and gag at the horrendous stench she had generated. I am not that uncouth and my Daughter's poop usually smells of apples, cherries and watermelons!

Hah!! What do you think of me?? I, Scatterbrain am such a classy woman that I could never even think of writing such disgusting things on my blog. It's all my crazy alter-ego's work.

A lesson from my teacher and a lessons from my students

I had the previlage of doing two courses for my masters, under the former Vice-Chancellor of my university- Dr.V.Ganeshan. I was known for bunking classes in college, but his was one of the few I hardly missed. If I remember correctly, I did a paper on teaching public speaking skills and another basic one on Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. What I loved most about his lectures, were that they weren't lectures but more like anecdotes from his experiences as an educator. I value the lessons learnt here far higher than those from my "Theories of Language Acquisition" or "Promoting Learner Autonomy in the Classroom" classes, because his lessons were life lessons. Today, I received an email from him, where he signed off with this.

As a teacher, I do believe in these words of Forest Witcraft (slightly modified by me!):

"Twenty years from now It won't matter

What kind of car I drove

What kind of house I lived in

How much money I had in the bank

Nor what my cloths looked like

BUT

The world may be a little better

Because, I was important

In the life of a student

Who was willing to learn from me

and

Whom I had the privilege to teach."

Dr.Ganeshan, you have played an important part in my life and I hope I can pass on the good deed to my students!

While on the topic of learning and teaching, here are two lessons I learnt today.

1. Apart from teaching English Language, I also do "content support" where I sometimes 'pre-teach' science/math/S.studies vocabulary to my ESL students. Today, my 4th grade intermediate ESL students were asked to write down some facts they know about electricity - their next science unit.

Here's what one boy wrote :- Elektreecity is a sorce (source)of energe (energy) and it sticks to matle (metal) and water. So, becos a purson will be 70%water and the rest off the body are flash(flesh), mussal (muscle), blood and knowledge, pursons can get shoked (shocked= electrocuted) and be died if elektreecity sticks to them.

Think about it... can you actually separate what you know - your knowledge - from the rest of your body??

2. My kids are just back to school after their Fall break. (yeah... Fall break here in India!!!) Most of them went out of the country for the week. So this morning,during circle time, we were sharing our holiday stories. It was cute lil JH's turn (I know, I shouldn't have favourites, but he's such a cutie!) and this is what he said :-

" First my Mommy said we'll go to Japan for the holiday. But we got late and in Airport we got late again for writing name on some papers so the airplane went off to Japan and didn't take us. But thats ok, because we went to a place that's so much...much much...hundred times better than Japan. We went to Fisherman's Cove for 1 day (a beach resort here)and I saw a shouting star. (shooting star) - a double shouting star and ships in the sea in the night."

Seriously?? A one day trip to the beach is a hundred times better than a trip to Japan?? Aaah! If only I could make such tasty lemonade like that when life throws me lemons!!

Appa and Aana

Now that I am at my parents home, the evenings see us all on my parents bed, sharing "remember when" stories. Today, my parents reminded me of this embarrassing incident from my childhood.

My Apppa (Dad) is balding. He has always been....ever since I can remember. So one day, when I was about 4 years old, we were travelling by bus somewhere. The bus had stopped at a bus stop and there was a temple elephant that came by seeking alms. This is a fairly common sight in India. The elephant came to each window of the bus, stretched out his trunk to recieve the coins offered and after giving it to the mahout, "blessed" the giver with his trunk.

Now I had seen many elephants earlier. Like I said before, elephants are a pretty common sight in India. but I had never seen the top of an elephant before and I couldn't help but exclaim loudly for everyone on the bus to hear...."Oh look!!! The elephant's head is just like Appa's"

So here's what happened....

OK... I missed the 'Not me Monday' this week... And I'm terrible....I know. Don't remind me...

Anyway, here's a recap of my disastrous last week.

It all started on Monday morning....I woke up, hating the fact that the weekend was over, showered, dressed, kissed Paunch and baby goodbye and set of on my trusty scooter (motorcycle) to catch the van I ride to work. I left home at 6:30 and at 6:35 I met with an accident. I crashed my scooter straight into a parked tempo truck and ran over a man's foot in the process. No injuries to me... just bruises... my arms and legs have blue and purple patches!!! The cops came. They were decent (probably because I was crying by then). An FIR was filed. My bike and license were confiscated. (both were returned to me later) I am now a criminal!!
Monday night: I am still recovering from the accident. My body aches in places I never knew I had muscles....like behind me ear for instance!!! I always thought it was just skin and cartilage!!! Then at around 10pm, my chakakuru begins vomiting. She vomits through the night and Paunch and I haven't slept a wink and we're scared. I call my mom several times in between.... finally at 4am we go to the pediatric hospital. She is given painful intravenous shots. I am not allowed inside. I can hear her scream.... I am sobbing into Paunch's shoulders....I cannot carry my sick baby because my arms hurt too much from the accident. finally at 8am, we get back home.

Wednesday: I can walk. Baby is much better so I go to work. Back at home, FIL has an eye surgery. I miss my baby like mad. I cant wait to get home....

Wednesday Night: Paunch's brother comes back home from work vomiting.... then Paunch starts vomiting... then his grandmother.... then his mom(my MIL).... the whole family is down with a nasty food poisoning....the only ones spared are me (god's grace) and my FIL who's recovering from eye surgery!!!

Thursday: One more day's leave from work....I am tending to all the sick people, and I'm sick of it. I'm almost on the verge of breaking down and asking my parents to come and get me!!!!

Friday: I wake up in the morning, dreading another calamity.But there's none. Paunch and his brother are feeling better.... better enough that they travel to Goa for their "boys only" trip along with Mac and a few others.

Saturday: Aah.... finally the weekend is here.... and whats more, I'm going to my parents place with the lil one.... life is only going to get better after this!!!