School and Stuff

School has been pretty stressful so far this semester. I'm taking two courses, Speech Science and Phonological Disorders. Those aren't too bad. But I've also started a clinical placement at the Wayne State Speech and Language Center where I see three clients twice a week. Prepping for therapy and writing up reports and evaluations is time-consuming. Plus there's anxiety that I don't know what I'm doing. But things have been going well so far. God has really been pulling me through. And my clients are great. One is an 8-year-old boy with a mild language disorder. I was giving him a standardized assessment and one of the test items required him to use a wh-question. The target response was "Where is my shoe?" This kid was trying so hard and he was being really polite and he kept saying "May you help me find my shoe?" instead of the target. It was adorable, but also bad because I had to score his response as incorrect. He did it for the next three test items as well.

The other thing that is causing anxiety and that is going to take up a lot of time is my research project. Although I'm not required to do a thesis, I do have to conduct some research. The exciting thing is that I'll be working with the department chair, Alex Johnson. He was the president of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association last year and working with him is a pretty big deal. I'll probably be doing something along the lines of phonological awareness as it relates to literacy. Phonological awareness is cool. How many sounds are in "cat"? Can you say "spider" without the "der"?

I went with Kelly to her hometown of Holland, Michigan this weekend. It's about 3 hours west of Detroit and right on Lake Michigan. It was nice. Very monocultural, though. Everyone's a Conservative and they're all white people of Dutch descent. Almost expected kids to follow me around and do kung-fu. Kelly's family is crazy and a lot of fun. Typical all-American family. Also went to Mars Hill, Rob Bell's church.

Anywho, I'm fighting to keep my eyes open and it's time to hit the books.

Life in the D - Part 2

Kelly and I went to the suburbs tonight to watch The Prestige at a discount movie theatre. The ghetto mall it was housed in was fairly easy to get to, just off 12 mile, but since the theatre wasn't visible from the outside we parked at a random entrance and went in. It turned out that the theatre was on the other end of the building, but No Biggie, we thought. Little did we know that half the mall gets blocked off after the stores close and that we wouldn't be able to walk back through the building to get to the car. So we walked on the outside. The parking lot was dark and deserted except for four or five African American teenagers. We were getting pretty scared at this point. Kelly had one hand on her pepper spray and the other on her cellphone and we just walked quickly and purposefully like we knew where we were going. We passed the group of teenagers and one of the boys called out "Hey ladies". For some reason I said Hi back and then he started saying some other stuff, but I didn't hear because I was just freaked out that we were in a dark, deserted and unfamiliar place and we weren't sure how far we were from the car. Then the girl in the group yelled at the boy: "She too ol' fo' you--She pro'lly a grown woman!" and that made us feel better.

Eventually we got back to the car, but it seemed to take forever. Everytime we rounded a corner we expected to see the car, but we had gone out the wrong doors and had to walk on the outside longer than necessary. We kept kicking ourselves: "We should've brought a guy", "Our moms are gonna kill us" (I had actually told my mom I was going to the movies, and she had warned me to be careful), "We should've paid those guys in the mall to walk us", etc. We also prayed: "God, please get us to the car safely". Well, He did, and we'll know to be more cautious in the future!

My pants are tight

When I went home for Thanksgiving, I got conflicting reports regarding my weight: some people were adamant that I had gained, others certain that I had lost. Well, over Christmas it became clear to me that it's the former. My dad mentioned that my face had filled out a little and he also kept drawing attention to the belly I've acquired, much to my chagrin.

I've always maintained a steady weight and have never had to pay much attention to it. Looking back over the past four months, however, I can see how this weight gain came about. 1) Compared to a house, apartment living requires a lot less travel between the kitchen, living room and bedroom. 2) I skipped at least half of my ballet classes. 3) I ate lots and lots of carbs.

I can't do much about 1), but this semester I'm going to kickboxing once (maybe twice!) a week with a couple of friends, and I'm adjusting the proportion of carbs I intake at each meal. Also, no more stuffing myself with a second helping rather than have leftovers! The one plus side of my weight gain is that I'm able to give blood, but hopefully within a few weeks buttoning my jeans won't be such a struggle anymore =D

i love morocco

well i'm back from spain/morocco/frankfurt, and just getting over jetlag. some of my favourite memories of morocco:

we stayed a night in the sahara again, but this time our tents were really out in the sand dunes, far away from the hotel and running water and bathrooms, i.e. we did our business out in the open and then kicked sand over whatever we had done. it was very liberating, to say the least.

we were in fes on our way to our hotel when we drove past a huge field full of people. we were curious so we parked and walked over, and it was essentially a sheep market. there were no other tourists there, so we really stood out, being asian and all. we could hear people all around us whispering excitedly "les chines, les chines!" (moroccans primarily speak arabic and french) and kids followed us around doing kung-fu moves.

while we were there, the people were getting ready to celebrate the muslim eid fesitval that commemorates abraham's willingness to sacrifice isaac. the festival involves eating lamb, so there were sheep for sale everywhere. sheep are some of the naughtiest creatures. either that or they're lazy, or both. these people purchased their sheep but had immense difficulty getting them home. the sheep just wouldn't budge. they'd stand there and refuse to move, even with a string around their necks like a leash, no amount of pushing and pulling would get these sheep to move. so people resorted to transporting them in carts or on donkeys, carrying them on their shoulders, or my personal favourite--holding their back legs and forcing them to do the wheelbarrow.