Thursday, April 25, 2013

Small Stones

I've been sending my sister pages of one sentence thoughts of daily occurrences (hope you're saving those so I have reminders of stories).  To prevent more e-mails along the lines of  are you alive? You haven't posted anything/e-mailed me I figured that when I don't have a preplanned post, but have internet, I could share some of them.

I've participated in something called Small Stones before and liked the concept, and these fit the bill as well. Sorta. They're less haiku-ish.

  • Why do men feel it is okay to grab my wrist, and then laugh when I yell at them not to touch me? Ruins my mood for a whole night, even hot chocolate doesn't help.
  • Always happy when I connect my flashdrive to something I know has a virus and it comes away clean.
  • Meant to do so much today, but a good book got in the way.
  • I don't know what makes me feel better, working out or the shower afterwords.
  • Shoo fly, don't bother me. It's 6am and I'm sure my dresser is more interesting than me trying to sleep.
  • It's kinda silly, but imagining I'm in a work out video makes me work harder in TaeKwanDo.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Earth Day


Today is Earth Day. (Or it was when I wrote this/planned to publish it.)

Honestly, I can't remember much as to what I did for it when I was back in the States. (Except for maybe that Darth Vadar Dark Hour thing).  But I do know here thing are more the most part Earth friendly already.  Probably has something to do with Ethiopia being 85% agricultural and it has tons of mini wildlife parks.  (Like Dera, where I saw hyenas!)  Or maybe it has to do with the lack of modern conveniences. I remember a friend telling me at home that modern plumbing wastes so much water. Well, here I can take a spot bath with just 500ml.

Strangely proud of that, but not sure I should be.

I do know that Pintrest exploded with Earth Day school activities, but many weren't feasible here.  Still, I decided to do something with my English Writing Club.

On Thursday (when we meet) we made posters.  Each student picked an object in nature and wrote on the top of the poster 'Earth Day is for -----------' and then underneath did 1) an acrostic poem and 2) draw a picture of the item and filled it will facts.

Yesterday, I went around school putting them up.  Which was a bit harder than I excepted because I thought the outer walls of the classrooms were mud. I wanted to fill a single wall with the 20 some posters we made. Turns out too, that not all of the classrooms have mud dividing wall and it's pretty much impossible to force a staple into cement. At least the door frames are wooden. 

I ended up putting one in every 7th and 8th grade classroom, and a few extras in 6th grade ones and one by the student shai bet. Ahem, sorry, Amharic slips into everyday use. I mean tea house. Though it's really just a room. Could have just put all the posters in there, but the door was locked. :/



Saturday, April 6, 2013

ICWC stories


So, I lied, I do have an update. Sorta. My English club participated in the International Creative Writing Contest and I figured the National finalists (4 from Huruta) would be something you might get a kick out of reading. I'm messing around with the new Google Drive here, so I'm hoping you can see this. You can go here if the embedding doesn't work.

A-Z Challenge

Sorry if you guys expect updates this month, they'll be rare in coming because I'm focusing on the A-Z challenge at my writing blog, Fulfilling Dreams.  Lots of free stories if you're interested.