tricia868

I've been teaching for almost a month now. I currently live in a small city in the coffee region of Colombia, working at a public technical college with free tuition. I'm scheduled to stay through June, but I'm leaning toward extending my stay for another 6 months.

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Back to the topic at hand...

My students are a very mixed group of skill/knowledge levels when it comes to English, because they're sorted by field of study rather than by English level. I teach at a beginner level and am incredibly grateful the more knowledgeable students have good attitudes and are willing to participate.

Every day at the end of class, my most advanced student asks me an interesting question. Today, he asked about gender and pronoun use. He'd heard that "they" is used as a gender neutral singular pronoun, and was curious as to whether that was accurate and why. "It," he thought, was already a gender neutral singular pronoun, and he wanted to know if it was rude to use that, since it made more sense to him than "they" did.

I explained that the reason using "it" (except in the rare case that someone actually identifies as that pronoun) can be offensive because the word is associated with objects, with things that are neither alive nor intelligent. "They" is less grammatically correct but more commonly accepted.

Every day, he surprises me. Every day, it's a pleasant surprise.

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Tomorrow I'm going to the national coffee park... which apparently has everything from a museum of coffee to shows to roller coasters and other rides. Then I'm spending the night at a finca, a coffee farm. I have a feeling avoiding caffeine will be harder than usual this weekend. How rude is it to go to all the coffee attractions and not DRINK any coffee?

I'm in Maryland for Thanksgiving, then I'm meeting my family in Long Island for the weekend. Going to see Harry Potter with our friends there, and in general hanging out with awesome people all week.

Latest entry in the bizarre injury chronicles:
Last night, I was sitting on one side of the sofa with my computer. I shifted to kneeling at the other end to go sit next to Rak or see something on his computer, I don't remember what exactly.

When I went to move back, SOMETHING (presumably a ligament) shifted in my right knee. I must have moved exactly wrong. I couldn't move my knee. I could neither bend it further nor straighten it. I started shaking uncontrollably, teeth chattering, heart racing, and was really freaked out that I couldn't straighten my leg. About ten minutes later, still shaking and making with the teeth that sounded like maracas, it occurred to me that laying on this side for an extended period of time wouldn't be conducive to keeping my hip tendons from joining in the pain chorus.

When I tried to move, it hurt to not have my leg supported. (That knee had been resting on a few folds of a blanket when it happened.) And so, I put my hand underneath my thigh to move it... and whatever was out of place shifted back! I could move again! My fingertip hit in exactly the right place to apply the pressure needed to fix things. I had been rubbing my knee trying to feel out the problem to no avail, but that particular spot on my thigh just fixed it. It's a little sore but 100% functional and with full range of motion. Yay!