#thought about it today at my german lesson - it was more important that actually listening what's going on

[nightydraws]

Headconing most tpom characters as a variety of nationalities is fun, but also... penguins switching between English and their national languages or those that they learned over time

Like Kowalski switching between Polish and English from time to time just because he forgot a word in one of them.

And Private knowing basic Polish just because how many polish people emigrated to England.

Or Rico speaking to Skipper mostly in Spanish (I hc Rico as Mexican or smth and Skipper was hiding there for 8 years... so he must know spanish) because it's just easier to him than speaking English.

And Skipper is just being a multilingual being, as a result of his story or missions...

Stuff like that =v=

#i want to learn so many languages #and it's becoming some kind of motivation #lol #tpom #rozkminy fandomowe #the penguins of madagascar #penguins of madagascar #i don't remember if i shared my hc about their nationalites so it's just like that: #skipper - german; kowalski - polish (ofc); private - british and rico - mexican #thought about it today at my german lesson - it was more important that actually listening what's going on

[idyoma]

The Best Ways to Learn a New Language

Some of the Best Ways to Learn a New Language

My name is Tamara and I have always been interested in languages, how people communicate and how we can interact even more by learning new languages. I was able to take an international exchange program in 2019 and I started taking this interest to a new level by learning and interacting with friends and people that I was lucky to get to know.

I continue studying and trying to learn from home and this is what inspired me to write this article to help more people achieve their language goals and share some of my favourite ways to learn a new language.

People often recognize that being multilingual is associated with career benefits, but did you know that language learning can also enhance your cognitive health? Too often, people graduate from school and leave foreign languages behind in the classroom. Yet, there are some surprising advantages to tackling language learning later in life, too.

As you learn a new language, you build up your communication skills, supercharge your brain with heightened activity in its language centers, and possibly even open yourself up to new work and travel experiences.  

Fortunately, today’s language learners have a wide range of instruction options, like Idyoma, that don’t tether them to a traditional classroom. Finding time to learn a new language outside the home can be difficult for people with full-time jobs and busy households. By learning a new language at home, you can adopt an instruction schedule that suits your time frame — and you can fit in practice when it’s most convenient for you. As you decide whether to embrace ESL or learn Japanese, Spanish, or French, keep the following information in mind to help you create a learning dynamic at home that supports your learning style. 

Best Ways to Learn a New Language

Benefits of being mulitlingual

Setting up your learning space

Top 10 tips for learning fast

Tips for teaching kids a second language

Why You Should Learn a New Language: The Benefits of Being Multilingual 

Although there are many new pastimes one might embrace — knitting or gardening, web design or data science — to fill time, learning a new language is both enjoyable and professionally useful. Today, the career marketplace is highly global.

Bilingualism and multilingualism can catapult your resume to the top of an employer’s list, especially if the company is international and relies on its multilingual staff to communicate across borders. Learning Korean or German can open up an entire range of job opportunities that you may never have thought of before. 

Of course, there are other benefits of learning a new language, too. Language learning actually enhances your mental health. As we age, our cognitive function can diminish just as our physical health can. But, language learning can reduce that cognitive decline, slowing its process as you forge new neural pathways.

When you learn a new language you can boost your ability to focus, keeping our minds alert and agile. Many people who engage in language learning report that the time they engage in the study actually improves their mood. As you focus on the enjoyment and challenge of your lessons, you’ll focus less on the stress of all things left undone, giving your mind the opportunity to recharge and rejuvenate from your usual anxieties and inner chatter.

Finally, you might opt to learn a new language so that you’ll be prepared to get out into the world and explore. Being multilingual makes you a more skillful traveler, building confidence and helping you navigate new, far-flung places for a grand travel experience. And learning a new language improves your communication skills — a core interpersonal and professional talent that’ll get you far in relationships, in business, and beyond.

 How to Set up the Ultimate Learning Space

Of course, before you start pricing hotels in Barcelona or Paris, you’ll need to begin language instruction. But before you hire a language tutor or sign up for an online class, prepare your learning space at home so that you have everything you need to support your learning goals conveniently in one area. If you have a home office, you can enlist that space to learn, but you don’t have to dedicate an entire room to your new initiative. A special niche in your bedroom, kitchen, or family room will also suffice. 

As you set up your language study area, you’ll want to ensure that it’s both quiet and comfortable. Distractions will prevent you from learning effectively. Opt for a space with good acoustics, since you’ll be doing a lot of language listening. Good lighting is important since you’ll be doing a lot of reading and writing. A desk or small table and comfortable chair are essential furnishings for your study area — but why not take your language learning space to an even more exciting level?

Whether you’ve opted to learn Hungarian or Turkish, why not set up your space with some international flair for inspiration? Add some travel posters to your wall, and keep a globe handy. Incorporate the spirit of your Spanish independent study with a Mexican blanket slung on your chair, or enhance your study of Chinese with some picturesque paper lanterns hung near your window. By creating a fun language learning space, you’ll have a special space with a retreat-like atmosphere that may very easily become your favorite place in the house.

 Top 10 Hacks to Learn a New Language

Once your study space is ready and you know what language you want to learn, it’s time to get down to business. Consider all the various applications available for learning a language at home. The following hacks will help you transform yourself into a multilingual virtuoso — or close to it! Keep them in mind as you develop your language learning goals and make your plan. 

Enroll in an online course

Formal instruction is a good option for individuals who prefer to learn a new language with a more-or-less traditional dynamic. If you’re concerned that independent study isn’t conducive to your learning style, consider this tried-and-true learning route. A formal course features highly structured lesson plans, assignment deadlines, and interaction with a teacher and classmates, albeit virtually. 

Download the app

You’ve probably seen the advertisements online for any number of language learning apps. Less formal than an online course, these apps still offer learners a rich level of instruction designed to help them progress at a clip. Apps are ideal for independent learners who don’t have time to meet consistently for an online class. 

Update your library card

Your local library system will have a wealth of materials to enhance your language-learning experience. Plan to borrow language dictionaries and picture books, novels, and even films in the language you’re learning so you can read, watch, and practice your listening skills. Check out materials in person or reserve them online and pick them up at your convenience. 

Quality earbuds, headphones, or speakers

When you’re learning to speak a new language, you need to be able to hear your learning materials clearly. A speaker that crackles or earbuds that cut in and out will compromise your learning experience. Plan to invest in quality listening devices so that you can hear instructors or your language learning app with crystal clarity. 

Use flashcards

Flashcards work for kids, and they will still work for you, too. In fact, if you have kids, you might want to enlist their help — invite them to quiz you on your German verbs after you quiz them on their multiplication facts. You can also find flashcard apps for literally any language you want to learn. 

Hire a language tutor

There comes a point when you might hit a stumbling block or a series of obstacles while learning a new language. Don’t despair! Check with area colleges, and engage a language tutor. This can be especially helpful if you’ve never learned a foreign language before or you want to stay on track and pick up speed as you move from beginner-level learning to the more complex, intermediate stages. 

Find a learning partner

Convince your bestie, spouse, partner, or friend to consider learning a language with you. When you have a partner, you can keep each other motivated and take turns studying at one another’s homes. Of course, ideally, you’ll want to find someone who’s just as enthusiastic about learning Russian or Portuguese as you are, so choose your language learning pal wisely. 

Listen to native speakers

One of the complaints that many students of languages have is that classroom and app models are too formal and not the stuff of everyday language you’ll hear on the streets of Rio, or Naples. Use your devices to track down native language speakers — like watching and listening to videos on the internet. This is particularly helpful if you plan to travel to the country whose language you’re learning.

Be kind and patient with yourself

Too often, people abandon their language pursuits because life interrupts them, and they find it difficult to resume their studies. Keep in mind that it’s okay to learn at your own speed and tempo. It may be asking too much of yourself to learn Italian in six months. If you need to adjust your goals, do it! The key is to keep going — and don’t be afraid to revisit old lessons when you need a refresher. 

Immerse yourself in culture

Language learning may seem tedious at times, especially if you’re struggling with tenses or complex sentence structures.

Maintain your motivation to keep learning by immersing yourself in the culture of the language. Learning Greek? Invite your best friend to a luncheon at your favorite Greek restaurant. Learning Spanish? Set Saturday nights aside for a tapas feasting! You’ll find that cultural immersion boosts your learning — and enriches your life.

Tips to Teach Kids a Second Language

Speak It 

If you speak a second or third language and you want your children to learn it, the first step is to speak it with them. Children learn through repetition. Consistency is necessary to develop a habit, so the more your kids listen to you speaking in another language, the easier it will be for them to grasp it.

Music

Just like for an adult, listening to music in a different language is one of the best tips to follow when trying to learn a new language. For both children and adults, starting with kid’s songs with easy and basic words can work best. 

Audiobooks 

For bedtime or nap time, you could aid yourself by using audiobooks. Following a story with the help of native speakers can work wonders for children to learn different intonations, accents, and vocabulary while also entertaining them.

Have fun

Doing fun activities in the language you are trying to teach your kids is another great way to help them grasp the language. If you grew up in another country, do you remember what activities you enjoyed when you were a child? You can plan a fun afternoon with games from your home country to do with your children. If this is not the case and you are just trying to teach your child to learn a new language, games with new vocabulary are always the best bet.

Video

Another good idea is to let them watch tv or movies in another language. Not only tv shows where they interact with the audience work, standard format movies, cartoons, and shows can help you at home, they don’t need to spend hours in front of a screen. This is only to aid you in the repetition, consistency, and the develop a habit side of the process. Remember it is important that they have access to other intonations, accents, and vocabulary for them to acquire the language faster. 

Space to Learn 

You can set up a special space for them to study. If they are being homeschooled, they would probably already have a designated space for their study work but if not, you can choose a corner in the kitchen, your home office, or their playroom for this purpose. 

Things to add to their study space:

Get them a small table or desk their size with chairs. 

Set up a whiteboard on the wall with markers for them to write down vocabulary words or to draw. 

Corkboards are great to stick images and vocabulary words to.

Shelves for their storybooks and dictionaries.

Be sure to have good light. 

Add color. Remember children’s classrooms are always colorful, this makes them feel in a fun and exciting environment. Bright colors stimulate the brain and can help children retain information.

Add storage. If you want to avoid clutter, add boxes or drawers for them to keep things they work with.

When is the best time to learn a language?

When young, human beings acquire new languages, they don’t actually learn them, so you could say the best age to learn a second language is as a young child. 

But even if it’s easier to learn languages as a kid, don’t get discouraged. Remember that you can achieve anything you set your mind to. It’s scientifically proven that learning a language as an adult can also have its advantages. As adults, we can follow and understand grammar rules, so learning in a more technical way is easier for adults than for children.

Learning a new language enhances your life in numerous ways while providing you with a marketable skill. As you learn a new language, you’ll develop new communication skills, keep your brain agile, and even discover new writers and artists to read and enjoy as you encounter them in your studies.

Before you know it, you’ll be fluent in the language of your choosing, and who knows where you could go from there?

Written by Tamara Segal

#best ways to learn a new language #new language #tips to learn a new language

[blysse-and-blunder]

5pm, jan 2, 2021

in lieu of a commonplace book

the first weekly roundup of 2021! very glad I began this posting project last week when I had actual things to talk about, because I spent this week in an untamed fugue state and knowing I’d want to write this has made me take breaks to think about other media!

reading I have a couple of different books on the boil right now, I borrowed Return of the Thief from @hematiterings and have ripped through the first quarter but I’m going to hold off expressing Thoughts until I’ve read more. Also spent some time with The Traveling Cat Chronicles which deserves to be read more slowly than I currently am. It’s prompting me to think a lot about translation, about how the translator has rendered the cat’s thoughts and speech into a register of english that feels less ~translated~ (more unaffected? more idiomatic?) than the humans themselves and some parts of the narration, and I really wish I had literally any Japanese at all to check what that might reflect in the original. I feel like this book is going to make me sad, which is why I’m reading it rapidly. 

listening episodes 90 + 91 of Critical Role’s first campaign, Voice of the Tempest and Vox Machina Go to Hell, and the TalksMachina eps for both. here again, I’m trying mainly to push through these so that I can get on to the second campaign, which just feels disloyal! but it’s true! after a certain character left (which made me cry while taking a bath, curse you Sam Reigel), I started quietly mourning the whole party so that I’d be ready to let go, even though there’s actually a lot of content left still. Really grateful for TalksMachina actually, even if I was skeptical when I first saw them in the feed-- the fan questions are helping me think more about the events of the episodes when I’m not actually super tuned in, and helping me assess the importance of stuff. 

watching so I finished the Untamed and immediately started watching the Untamed Special Edition on Youtube, rewatching the Netflix series from the beginning, and trying to convince people like @un-serial-writer to stream it with me... enough, this is not what you came here to talk about. @pep-squad-lizzie and I resumed our Wednesday night Haikyuu! sessions and finished the stuff on Netflix, and I’m very excited to see where the good good volley boys go next! nationals??! ah?! The ending of S2 was extremely tense and I’m still not sure I love how it went down-- you don’t want to win bc of your opponent’s mistake, you both want to do your best! YOI taught me that!-- but I have reflected and decided that it really had to have been a fluke that gave Karasuno the w, the match-up was too close otherwise. ugh.

playing Monday night was our D&D zoom ~holiday party~ where everyone came dressed up and I treated myself to a beer more than I usually have during a session, and we caught up to the Boss we’ve been Pursuing up the Mountain this whole time. Didn’t even end up killing her, though, because we got a talking to from a kindly but terrifying monk last time and our fighter took the ‘stop killing when you could communicate!’ lesson to heart. As a squishier bard, however, I spent at least two different rounds of the boss fight actually on fire so I was prepared to go for the jugular, but luckily we managed to subdue her and get out of combat without any of us dying. I think the next sesh is going to be mostly epilogue and I’m excited to see how we satisfy our mission without actually killing her?

making I glued my slipper back together where the sole was pealing off/ coming unstitched from the upper, and uhhhh that’s about it. going to have to revisit the starter soon, she is lonely :(

working on I may have failed horribly at doing paid work hours between Dec 28 and today and instead allowed mdzs / cql fic to nuke several complete days, but I did an hour of German translation each day for the last little while and I’ve worked on my lines for the Zoom play I’m going to be in next week. I still have to finish drafting that conference paper, also for next week, and make a conference schedule. And do some paid work hours. eek. January just started and I already can’t wait to get through it.

#I could have mentioned an untamed media thing for each of the first few categories but I didn't and that is Growth #in lieu of a commonplace book #weekly roundup

[marxsgrandson]

“You’re not Russian, you’re just American with some Russian blood”- my Israeli PS professor (who is neither Russian nor American nor knows anything about me)

Long post ahead: read it if you’d like but mostly just hoping there’s someone else who can relate to the feelings I’m about to express. So here goes:

Had an unbelievably shitty day today.

I’m in this one political science class. It always ends up somehow ruining my mood. It’s the one with the shitty German men who confronted me in a group after class accusing me of being uncritical towards the Soviet Union, being an antisemite (lol these aryan guys were calling me an antisemite. Like they’re confirmed non-Jewish) and being a dumbass for not idk sucking Gorbachev’s dick personally would be the next leap there. Idk if I posted that here, but it’s necessary context.

Anyways today we were talking about Russia’s motive in x place and just jumping around to every unrelated topic about something about Russia because our class always gets sidetracked and never finishes the lesson we were supposed to do. And of course the Europeans were being pieces of shit.

And the prof said something like “I wish we had Russians in the class to offer maybe a Russian perspective too... like gosh that would be nice. Do we have any Russians?” And I sort of tentatively raised my hand half way because I’m half Russian and when she was looking around the room and didn’t see me, I said “I’m half Russian and this is actually something I heard and talked a lot about growing up, I could take a try at it”

“You’re not Russian, you’re just American with a little Russian blood” she said, dismissing me entirely as the class laughed like it was the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. I now realize what it means when people say they feel stung. I was paralyzed by those words and I don’t really know why. What makes it hurt more is that starting two seconds later she called on a series of five German douchebags to try and explain Russia’s motives and says “huh that’s an interesting idea” after each of them say something painfully obviously wrong. And I felt frozen.

If given the chance to unfreeze myself, I wish I said what I was feeling but didn’t have words for: “Hey. That’s not true. Russian was the language I said my first words in. It’s the language of my childhood and my soul. It connected me to something I felt distant from during the school day. I taught myself to read this language as soon as my mom taught me the alphabet as a little kid. I went to Russian school on the weekends when I was young. I worked hard to keep up this language even though I went through shit from my peers for it. I was the only speaker of this language I knew that was my age after the age of 10. The only other time I’d hear it was when my mom criticized me, wanted to manipulate me (because I told her she sounded sweeter in Russian so she used that to her advantage in making my life hell) bc my brother stopped speaking at a young age.

The only reason I have this connection is because I’ve never worked harder for anything else in my life. I took years of Russian lit courses (in Russian) at the local uni when I was in high school. Until then I’d only done math and reading (just for fun not for school) in Russian. Having learning and sight disabilities and being expected to keep up with both college and high school class and workloads was overwhelming at times. Like I was 14, this wasn’t an “easy A” as my friends joked, it was a college level literature course. But I loved it like nothing else. It was an oasis of peace during my adolesence just getting to hear my dearest language spoken by both native speakers and those who adopted it just because of their love for it. It was the first time I realized that this aspect of me isn’t shameful. Plus, the college kids treated me like I was such a hotshot because I grew up speaking the language and I was like a tiny 14 year old in a russia Olympic jacket and a bowl cut so that made my life. Just getting to be around places where for once, I understood everything that was being said in the exact emotion it was intended, having my cultural touchstones be the norm and that I got to interact with instantly more people in this language was really special.

Maybe what pissed me off so much is not only that I think it’s wrong, but that I think she’s right. My experience is different from a Russian experience, which is why I never claimed to be Russian even when I was the most Russian person in that classroom. My experience of being Russian (Jewish) (Italian)American is as much a story of love and connection as it is of shame and disconnection. It is the story of pain feeling inadequate to everyone, always. When I was six, kids were already refusing to play with me because their parents told them I was a spy or an enemy (which wtf who parents their kid like that) just because I talked about visiting my family in the summer (which is a normal thing to do) and gd forbid they live in RUSSIA. The bullshit hasn’t stopped since. My entire childhood, my mom was vigilant about who I was allowed to tell about being Russian because of it. I thought Russian a really important language to people here. I thought they cared about us. I thought someone else who didn’t have to care about us, fucking cared about us Russian Jews. How can a fellow Jew, an academic, not understand the inherent pluralism of Jewish and Russian experiences when she’s lived in this country surrounded by Russian Jews her whole life?

And I get it. I’m not technically Russian. I don’t have a Russian passport. I didn’t grow up in Russia and that still means there’s always someone more qualified to answer certain questions. But I didn’t think it was going to be some goyische fucking German. Cuz at least I saw saturated with these types of discussions about Russian politics, not being allowed to voice my opinion bc these are Russian jewish middle aged and older people lol kids don’t have valid opinions to them, but listening intently since infancy. I watched Russian news and tv shows (we didn’t have money for both English and Russian language tv so my mom chose the Russian tv channels) on the rare occasion I sat in front of the tv. I hung around Russian speakers more than English speakers (of my parent’s age and older) for most of my childhood until this year. And it’s not just the language, it’s the culture too. It’s the fact that no one around me shared these cultural touchstones growing up. and I didn’t share their American ones even though I grew up in the US.

But trips to Russia didn’t make me feel understood in the ways I craved it would. My family always commented on how amazingly I spoke Russian «просто без акцента!» (without an accent) *insert kisses from relatives you don’t even know who they are but they know everything about you* so I was always kind of aware that I couldn’t seamlessly fit in there either. Especially when in my mom’s small town, children who played with me had literally never seen someone with my color of skin and told me I looked “dirty” which catalyzed my whole washing my hands till my arms got dry and peeled and being frightened that I wasn’t getting “cleaner” and then getting diagnosed with my second subset of OCD at the age of seven. I had so many fond memories of my mom’s hometown. So much nostalgia. But I also have memories which pain me, like the many times I was chased out of stores or once in a doctor’s office because the person assumed I was Roma because of my appearance (like I said, small town). Things got even worse when the school I went to summer camp/summer classes in my mom’s hometown found out I was JEWISH. Oof. My mom convinced me that I was betraying my culture and my ancestors and alienating myself from my grandmother when I came out to her at 11, when I cut my hair after three years of her daily verbal harassment in my mother tongue (she knew it hurts more like that). She said if I wanted to continue “on this path” I would lose all connection to Russia.... “and you don’t want that, do you?” Suffice it to say, I got the message pretty young that I don’t belong in Russia either.

My whole life I’ve been translating half of my world to the other half of my world. And within each of these worlds I must translate my contexts many fold times more. (My Babushka still doesn’t know why I’m putting “poison” in my body for what she sees as a character flaw because she just doesn’t have the context for what ADHD is and the way I was taught to translate it in Russian is «дефицит внимание» or “deficit of attention/carefulness” which as far as she’s concerned is just an American invention for what could really be solved if I just sat more still.) And this has made my world so much richer to be lucky enough to have two native languages in which I learned how to express myself and gave me two whole realms through which to intimately understand the world and all of its nuances. You gain a family when you speak a language. It’s unlike anything else! It was even more special that I got to add Arabic at 12 and now Hebrew. I’m so lucky. But an inherent downside of being taught world views that conflict with each other in some very fundamental ways is really hard when you’re autistic and have ADHD because you have to juggle not just one set of social cues and norms, but two (or more, shout out to the multilinguals from childhood). It’s hard but it’s important and I’m so lucky that this was my birthright. I just wish people would take two seconds to try and understand. Or at least think about if something they said might make someone else feel like this, especially if they’re jewish. Like to ya it’s not a new thing to be torn in many directions. Even here where it’s the dominant culture, I expected her as someone who lives here and is an academic, she’d be better.

#jewish #class #school #study abroad #russian #russian jewish #queer #trans #russian jew #jew #adhd #autism #diaspora tag

[whats-the-story-tc]

22nd of January, 2020

"The One with the Madhouse and Her Eyes"

[LONG POST]

Another day, another flannel. Huh. All I needed is to complain.

Last night, at about 11:30 PM-ish, my cousin (who lives with us) came in, and we had a good long talk about what I'm planning for the future. When I mentioned the A level Literature thing, and that I'm scared of it, but I found it important to add that "my teacher is a fantastic person", so the only reason I was scared is my own abilities. Which is quite right. But on to today, the proof to my statement.

Pocketwatch Friend needed to talk to V, so there we were again, seeking—but this time, finding. She stood in the huge bunch of people in the part of the corridor designated for teachers, as with the second term starting soon, everyone is going slightly mad and needs to talk to everyone all at once. When we showed up, V greeted us with a "What can I help you [the plural] with? I don't have any time by the way, but what can I help you with?" Then I backed away, outside the glass door separating the teachers' area from the other half of that floor and let them speak. Later, when I saw V leave, she was visibly quite moody.

We spoke about her, Pocketwatch Friend and I. She brought how scared she was of V at first, like I was, but when she was taking an exam and V was very kind to her and tried to comfort her with things like "It's okay, I forget what the examples of this and that are, too...", she grew to love her. My case is quite the same although a little different.

Lunch break after fourth period, in front of our classroom. V is listening to people from the other class in our year recite their poems, I'm waiting for my friends. As we gather up and talk, and V is alone, she comes up to us with her personal schedule in hand to tell us the bad news—when our classes will be. Tuesday 5th, Thursday 3rd, Friday 7th-8th double. Yes, you've read that last one correctly. They put a double lesson of an important subject into the time slot where all the school celebrations are and where it gets cancelled most of the time, so basically, they ensured we will get fucking nowhere with the curriculum. V wasn't at all happy about it (she explicitly stated she didn't ask for this), even though she tried to be in good spirits for our sake and even grinned as we spoke to her. But when I looked into her eyes, I could see how tired she was.

Her eyes are a bit cat-like when she's tired or not feeling well, that's something I noticed. Her gaze is very sharp and kind of intimidating at first glance, but if you look long enough, or know her well enough, you can see all that weight of whatever's wrong in them. This is why I used to be so scared of her, because the piercing look is all I saw. But when she's feeling well, you can see all that wisdom and all that beauty I never really saw before I met her properly, in class. Now that is what got me sold on her, long before I even realised it. I have never met someone so beautiful before. And I might never will.

And now, something(s) that absolutely had my jaw on the floor and my heart pounding in the best way. The title of this blog has never, ever been more fitting.

New schedule for the new term. New teacher coming in for foreign English (from now on I'll just say foreign English and V's English to help differentiate), everything is a mess and not even the teachers understood what was going on around them, much less us. So some of us, in absolute hysterics because of the buffoonery going on, just went to V as soon as we saw her, as she was nearest. She made this face of "oof" when Debate Friend told her about some changes that were made. Then I asked her about the new teacher. She was the only one who knew this is a whole new guy, then told us "but don't storm your homeroom teacher. She's really not doing well." And there they were again. The concerned eyes. It was just a short look, mostly directed at me, but we understood immediately.

I kept on fuming the whole German class through, then immediately headed towards the teachers' lounge with some of my friends, to look for my (now ex-)foreign English teacher. Poor thing didn't even know our classes with her today got cancelled. She then went along to hug me and say "I won't teach you anymore", which threw me off, as I thought she hated my guts in the past 3 years. I'm gonna miss her a lot, and it's a shame our group got taken away from her, which neither us, nor she asked for.

But onto V. As we were waiting by the stairway leading up there, my homeroom teacher and V were walking there together. They may have just met on the way, but I honestly think V accompanied her on purpose, because... that's her. She would do it to anyone in a heartbeat. Plus, V is kind of our surrogate homeroom teacher mainly for this reason—to help the actual one, as she can't deal with everything all at once alone. Later, as our homeroom teacher came to us with "Don't ask anything", then proceeded to tell us everything that was wrong, V walked by briefly upstairs, shooting us a look. But as I was walking home, ranting to my Dad over the phone in tears from frustration, as the situation really was that chaotic, something else also happened. I'll just translate what Pocketwatch Friend texted me when I asked her to tell me. (Don't worry, she knows about the blog, though she's never read my posts as of yet. She knows I'm writing to you guys about this, and she consented.)

"I'm going down the stairs, there's [a girl from our year], [friend of ours] and Art Friend. I'm telling Art Friend that you spoke to [ex-English teacher] and she doesn't know what's really up, when V comes down the stairs with her cute little hat and looks at us. She shoots a small smile so maybe she can brighten the situation and joins our little circle, then says 'Don't be nervous, okay?' [...] Then I added that we're fine, but this uncertainty is a bit concerning. And that not even the teachers know what's going on. Her face lights up, I could almost hear her mentally yelling 'Finally someone normal!' #noego I can't exactly remember what happened then, but that much I know that after a short exchange she looked back at me/us from the bottom of the stairs saying that 'Don't stress and TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES'"

She then proceeded to tell me that she finds her cute and now she totally understands me because to her, V is like a big sister she can't wait to ask how her day was and if she could help her with maths. She really does understand the love part, too, though, and tells me every time she wishes she could help. (And called what I wrote about V after Friday beautiful, as I showed her the more private part you guys didn't get to see.) Though I think my case is just a step or maybe two less platonic than hers is, as I actually call it love, it's probably still just more of an extreme case of admiration.

But like... how could I not admire (or love or whatever this is) her? How could any sane person not? I called myself a guardian angel yesterday, but... I'm a demon compared to her. I'm in awe of her kindness each and every day, I really am. Hence the title. "All the little ways she cares."

I have no idea what I'd do if she was the one they swapped out without warning. But if we're going with the demon metaphor... I was frustrated and angry today. But then, I'd raise hell. For her? Without question.

~ S ♡

[Every story I share here, no matter how specific I get with my wording, depicts actual events from my own life.]

#tc #tcc #teacher crush community #female tc #female teacher crush

[katsukiyuuri-nikiforov]

Miscommunications in the Margin of Language

AO3 here

It takes Yuri all of 72 hours to realize other-Yuri speaks Russian.

It isn’t something that’s hard to figure out.

Of course, other-Yuri isn’t obvious about it. He never speaks it- though, if Yuri had to guess he’d say the pig is probably perfectly capable- and he doesn’t participate in the conversations between Viktor and him, never even going as far as to nod in the appropriate places. But he listens, and sometimes Viktor will give Yuri a correction, and other-Yuri follows the order without a second thought, straightening an arm, or standing up taller, even though he’s all the way across the rink.

And he listens to the conversations with a detached ear, occasionally letting out quiet huffs of laughter at some of Viktor’s more ridiculous turns of phrase. He just sits and listens, even as he appears to be doing something else; stretching or bandaging his feet before tying skates, or even just brushing Makkachin. Yuri knows from experience that listening to a language you don’t understand for that long can be trying; music is your best friend is foreign countries.

And when Hiroko mentions that other-Yuri studied languages and linguistics, well, it suddenly clicks into place, confirms what Yuri is pretty sure he’s known since the first day.

He doesn’t think much of it. Takes stock of the knowledge, adjusts his conversations with Viktor accordingly, privately acknowledges that other-Yuri is clearly very intelligent (Not only does he know three languages, but three completely different alphabets too. Yuri is fairly certain he wouldn’t have graduated without at least passing literate comprehensibility in his chosen languages (it doesn’t surprise Yuri in the least that he chose Russian) ) and moves on.

~

Yuri anticipates other-Yuri’s arrival is Russia with trepidation and excitement, in that order, not that he’d ever admit that out loud.

He’s found that Yuri is far better company than Viktor, quiet and supportive and caring in a way that doesn’t make Yuri feel like he’s being suffocated.

So when Viktor asks him if he wants to come to meet Katsudon at the airport he grumbles a lot but agrees before Viktor has enough time to rescind the offer.

By the time they arrive, other- Yuri is already waiting by the carousel, watching as the bags spin past with an impatient expression on his face.

“Lubov! We’re here!” Viktor practically drapes himself across his fiancé, and Yuri tries hard to stifle his snickers when other-Yuri jumps, and pushes him off, before turning to Yuri.

“Yura! How have you been?” He asks, wrapping arms around his shoulders in a bracing hug Yuri wants to hate but can’t.

Yuri doesn’t bother answering in English, ‘Fine, now get off me!’

Other- Yuri raises an eyebrow, but shrugs and let's go, moving to grasp Viktor’s hand in his own. The old man doesn’t seem to notice, and Yuri can’t help but wonder if he knows yet, or if he’s really just that dense.

He wonders if other Yuri knows that he knows, or if he to doesn’t even really differentiate between the languages anymore then Yuri does when he spends enough time in an English speaking country. They start to blur together. He doesn’t care enough to ask.

Two days later and other- Yuri and Viktor are in the rink, up before dawn, and skating before even Yakov is there. Skating in Russia is different than skating anywhere else. They work harder, longer, and Yuri doesn’t think that other-Yuri is going to be able to handle it, but it’s noon already by the time Yuri gets on the ice, and they’re both still there, Viktor watching from his position on the rink- even though Yuri’s pretty sure he’s supposed to be warming up- as other- Yuri runs through his step sequences. Even Yuri admits they’re beautiful, at least, he admits it to himself, he’s always thought so, but the love lorn look on Viktor’s face has gone so past professional admiration, past coach-ly pride, and into sickeningly in love that Yuri shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions. He’s a child and the lust in Viktor’s eyes is most certainly not appropriate. He’s saved from possibly having to go to jail by Yakov, who’s screaming Viktor’s name the minute he spots him hovering on the ice. Other- Yuri doesn’t falter, only adjusts his position so he’s occupying the corner of the rink Yakov had just told Viktor his student could use. Viktor doesn’t seem to notice that other-Yuri’s already there, already keeping his position, only relays the message in English, and turns to face Yakov, but Yuri notices, and judging from the squinty glare Yakov is throwing the other- Yuri, so did he.

Practice continues in the same vein. Viktor and other-Yuri show up for practice at obscenely early hours for Yuri’s private rink time. Their practice over laps for about two hours, with other-Yuri’s cool down and Viktor’s warm up, and then Yuri disappears sometime in the middle- Yuri later finds out it’s for ballet, with Lilia, who genuinely seems to like him- only to return towards the end to watch the last of Viktor’s private ice time with Yakov, who also seems to genuinely like him. Yuri isn’t sure how other-Yuri managed it, but everyone at the rink seems to love him. He even heard some of the ice dancers whispering in the lunch room yesterday about how good he was for Viktor.

About two weeks in he’s pretty sure that everyone at the rink is aware that other- Yuri has at least a passing comprehension in Russian except his own fiancé, who continues to translate random phrases that he deems important. He catches Yakov speaking quietly with him in Russian over the edge of the rink, Viktor nowhere in sight, and while other-Yuri is definitely answering in English, he’s obviously having no trouble keeping up with Yakov’s brusk manner of speech.

It’s a struggle to decide whether to point it out, or watch patiently for it all to explode in a million pieces. He can just picture it, other-Yuri’s tomato red face when the truth comes out. Part of him wants to see it, other-Yuri’s impending embarrassment, but the rest of him knows that this whole predicament is obviously Viktor’s fault (maybe Yuri should have said something but really, it’s been obvious from the beginning!) So he decides it’s probably best if he asks because, like everyone else, he’s fallen for his stupid, irresistible charms and he actually likes him. Even if he’d rather cut off his own foot than admit it. He’s pretty sure other-Yuri knows anyways.

“Can I ask you a question?” They’re in the locker room. Yuri is starting later than normal today, and other- Yuri must just be leaving for his ballet lessons with Lilia.

Other-Yuri pauses in untying his skates.

“Of course Yura. Is something wrong?” He sounds so genuinely concerned, and Yuri wars with the desire to yell at him for it, or hug him. There’s something so unerringly disarming about his presence that Yuri’s had to stop himself from doing exactly that at on multiple occasions.

“I just- well.” He hates himself for his stuttering speech. He could blame it on the English, which he still tends to use with other-Yuri out of habit, blame it on the fact that he’s barely spoken it at all in months, but he’s pretty sure nobody would believe him, least of all Yuri, who is startlingly observant at times (and unsurprisingly oblivious when it comes to himself).

Other-Yuri is sitting up straight now, efforts of unlacing abandoned, and he’s got a frown so deep on his face Yuri thinks that he’s probably going to pull a muscle.

“Yura?”

“Yeah, just, Viktor doesn’t know you speak Russian.” He says it quietly, calmly, it’s probably the first time he’s said something to other-Yuri that hasn’t been screaming or an insult, but he doesn’t even look surprised. Of course he doesn’t. Because other-Yuri can see through him like he’s made of glass, knows exactly what he means even when he’s saying the exact opposite.

Other-Yuri visibly flinches, and glances surreptitiously at the door behind Yuri’s shoulder, like double checking that no one’s there to hear them. He looks so guilty that Yuri almost feels bad for asking. “No, he doesn’t”

Yuri doesn’t respond, only raises an eyebrow for him to continue.

“I- he, well. You know I studied languages, da?” And, wow, the fact that Viktor doesn’t know when other-Yuri is using Russian replacements for what he knows were once Japanese and, maybe once upon a time, English, colloquialisms without seemingly any thought is simply astonishing.

Maybe he thinks his boyfriend- fiancé says a voice that sounds uncomfortably like Viktor’s- picked it up from him, but they’ve only been in Russia two weeks. Maybe Yuri’s over thinking this, but, even if he is it still should be obvious. He doesn’t say any of this though, only nods, once, slowly, and waits for the Katsudon to continue.

“Well, he knows I studied linguistics and languages. My kaa-chan, ah… my mom, she told him, first week he was there, same as she told you. I honestly thought he knew for the longest time, Yuri, really. I wasn’t keeping it from him on purpose, I mean, I also speak French, a little German, conversational Thai, it’s.. it’s not uncommon knowledge in the skating circles that I’m, well, interested in languages,” Yuri almost laughs out loud here because interested is not the word. He would have used gifted, maybe. He’s allowed to admit these things in the safety of his own head. “anyway, he spoke in Russian a lot, those first couple of months, and it dwindled, a little, but it picked up again after we-” he stops, coughs, normally Yuri would complain but he doesn’t actually mind and right now isn’t the time. “Never mind, I’m getting off track. My point is, I thought he knew until Barcelona, when he started translating things for me, and even then I thought it was a joke, but then he started translating for Chris, who thought it was hilarious by the way because I love Viktor but my French is better than his, and when I finally realized… It’d been months, Yuri, and then I remembered everything he’d said in Russian and I realized those were probably not things I was supposed to understand. It wasn’t anything terribly interesting just, god I’m so embarrassed? And he still hasn’t noticed and-” His breath gets a little heavy and Yuri, in all his bluster and teenage angst, knows that his anxiety is worse than he lets on, knows because he understands.

“Hey, wow, Katsudon… Yuri. Can I touch you?” Other-Yuri pauses, then shakes his head and takes a deep breath.

“I- I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to…”

Yuri shakes his head raises a hand to pat his shoulder, remembers his original refusal, and drops it back into his lap. Yuri notices, of course he notices, and smiles at him, small and trembling.

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t mind. You’ll just have to return the favour sometime, da?”

Apparently that does actually surprise him, this small display of weakness, not, Yuri thinks, because it is actually a weakness. Because it isn’t, no matter what Katsudon or anyone, or even Yuri sometimes thinks. He isn’t sure if it’s Yuri’s own admittance of it, or the actual fact that surprises him though. It doesn’t matter anyways.

Other-Yuri sighs, and reaches out tentatively to grasp his his hand, nods solemnly. Yuri doesn’t bother pulling away, there’s no one else there to see it.

The conversation ends there. Yuri doesn’t point it out when Viktor continues to translate random snatches of conversation, although, he does roll his eyes more, usually in view of Other-Yuri, and has to stifle laughter when Yuri in turn shoots him exasperated, pleading looks behind Viktor’s back.

Other-Yuri starts taking him out to lunch on the weekends, when Viktor’s at the rink and it’s both of their days off.

Yuri still snarls and scoffs and hurls insults, but now other-Yuri just smiles sweetly and raises a challenging eyebrow, like he’s asking if that’s all Yuri’s got. (It isn’t. Of course not. But he doesn’t actually want to hurt the Katsudon’s feelings so…) They fall into an easy sort of companionability, and, he will even admit out loud, for Katsudon’s ears only, that he enjoys it.

He’s friends with Otabek, obviously, and Mila, sort of, and he had a handful of friendly acquaintances before he started doing all his course work by correspondence, but Yuri, (who has recently given him permission to call him Yuu-chan, if it made things easier (Yuri did, in private because he was sort of honoured- he looked things up alright?)) was different, he didn’t demand anything of Yuri, didn’t expect anything of him, and, when he was feeling particularly vulnerable, held up his promise without question. They were friends, equals, which is why Yuri is trying to signal him to stop talking.

They’re at the rink, it’s Viktor’s day off, and they’re standing at the boards talking. (Yuri had finally managed to convinces other-Yuri to actually speak Russian, instead of just listening, because he was never going to improve if he didn’t, Yuri had agreed reluctantly. (Turns out his Russian is perfect, if slightly accented with softer Japanese vowels, and, rarely, oddly pitched English sounding consonants)).

Other- Yuri is facing the middle of the rink, speaking loudly, because everyone else had left for lunch, when Viktor walks through the door. Yuri immediately switches to English, flicking his eyes behind other-Yuri’s head, but he doesn’t seem to catch his meaning. Continuing his complaints, slouching over the boards, and only blinking, surprised when Yuri switches languages out of no where.

Viktor’s getting close though, and he’s definitely going to notice, and as much as Yuri thinks finally, he doesn’t want Katsudon to be hurt, so he pokes him in the stomach and hisses.

“Yuu-chan!” At the same time that Viktor says “Yuratchka!”

The other-Yuri nearly falls over in his hurry to turn around, skates slipping out beneath him, barely grabbing the boards in time to keep himself up right.

“Vitya! What-” he catches himself, pauses, reassess, tries again. Yuri’s pretty sure it’s too late now though.

“Viktor what are you doing here?” It’s English this time, but Yuri can see the moment Viktor gets it. It’s the same moment that other-Yuri lets all pretences drop and thunks his head down on the boards.

“You’ve been learning Russian!” Or maybe not.

“What? Viktor, no.”

“Yes yes, I just heard you! You don’t need to hide it anymore. Was it supposed to be a surprise? I could have helped!”

Yuri can’t help the look he throws the Katsudon because really could Viktor be any dumber right then? He finds that Yuri’s already looking at him, but his gaze drifts back too Viktor a moment later.

Yuri’s tempted to leave, to skate away, but this is also horribly fascinating, so instead he sidles up to the boards and pulls himself up. Other-Yuri shoots him a half disapproving look, but he doesn’t say anything, Yakov isn’t here to get mad right then.

“Viktor, I didn’t need your help.” He says it slowly, like he’s hoping Viktor will get it without him having to say anything outright.

Viktor just frowns, one hand fluttering to his chest. “Oh.”

Other-Yuri sighs. Tries a different tactic. Yuri’s half way to blurting ‘he’s been speaking Russian as long as I have!’ but refrains. He’s just here to watch.

“Viktor… you know I speak French right?” Viktor nods, looks at Yuri like he thinks he’s trying to change the topic of conversation. “So.. You know you don’t have to translate anything when Chris calls right?” Viktor just blinks, like this is a surprise, and Yuri knows he’s not dumb. He really isn’t, he can calculate the exact angle and velocity needed to land a jump in his head, but sometimes he wonders how he gets through the day because he really just never bothers to think.

“And… You know I studied Languages in college?” Viktor nods, and Yuri thinks that maybe he’s starting to see a dawning of understanding in his eyes.

“So… Ya. I ah, honestly thought you knew? I guess? And when I figured out you didn’t I just- well, it’d been so long. I didn’t know how-”

“How long have you been able to speak it?” Viktor doesn’t look mad. Mostly curious.

“Oh, well. Ah… Properly? Only since my second year of University? But, my comprehensions been pretty decent since I was… 15 or 16 maybe? I started learning when I was 13.” Yuri looks proud, but also a little embarrassed to admit that.

Suddenly Viktor’s bright red and “oh my god you understand me.” This doesn’t make any sense to Yuri, but the other-Yuri goes a little pink and coughs, throwing a glance Yuri’s way before looking back at Viktor apologetically.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to, at first. And I mean, there were some things… Not exactly every day vocabulary you know?”

The doors bang open then, and Yakov storms in, followed by Mila. Yuri can just see the trickle of other skaters and coaches on the other side.

“Viktor! What are you doing here? It’s your day off. You’re distracting Yuri! Don’t think I don’t see you on those boards Yura! Suicides! And then I want to see jumps from both of you, Yuris!”

Viktor opens his mouth, looks at other-Yuri, who’s already skating backwards, and turns impossibly redder. “He didn’t ask me to translate.” He says, “He hasn’t, does everyone know?” Other-Yuri looks guiltier in contrast.

“I’m really sorry Vitya. Vicchan. I am I promise.” Viktor shakes head, beckons him closer, presses a kiss to his lips, still looking a little dazed, but then he turns to Yuri and… Oh no, what does he have on him that he’s going to use to turn the situation around? Yuri knows that look.

“So. You’re calling him Yuu-chan now?”

Yuri’s going to kill him. He doesn’t care if Katsudon will be sad.

#viktor nikiforov #yuri on ice #yuuri katsuki #viktuuri #katsuki yuuri #yuri plistesky #my writing #oneshot #drabble #language barrier #linguistics #i decided #to actually post this here to!! #fanfic #fanfiction

[brujeria-histeria]

Best Mates

Harry meets up with his Friend who he hasn’t seen in years. Hacy of course.

Packing was all done, now it was time to say goodbye for the long weekend. Maggie double checked his checklist and checked his clothes, Mel suggested the best coffee shops in the area according to her friend in that city and Macy... well sweet Macy baked him a sweet send off treat and gave him a thermos full of his favorite piping hot tea, with a blush. She had learned well from his tea lesson tutelage. 

Harry was going to Seattle for the extended weekend to do important whitelighter business. He was only comfortable going making sure each of his charges pinky swore to call him immediately should any problem they could not face alone arised. He was excited himself because he’d be seeing an old friend he hadn’t seen in a couple of decades.  Louis Aznavour Jordan, a french born whitelighter who had been his partner in crime for a long time. 

Louis’s charges were often connected or close to his charges, up until he was assigned Fiona. They had many adventures together and in whitelighter years Louis was 10 years his senior, although they both died at the age of 37, Louis was born in 1910, whereas Harry was born in 1920. With country pride an all that, some wouldn’t think a Frenchman and an Englishman would get along so splendidly but they did. Louis was a dashing man, of course with an air of old fashioned charm and the handsome face to match, he had wavy slightly lighter brown hair than Harry, but was the same height as him and some would mistake them as cousins.”

After hugging each the girls goodbye, a kiss on the cheek from Maggie and squeezing Macy a little extra tight after he heard her breathe him in, he snapped his fingers and made it to a “checkpoint” in an alleyway and then emerged from it hailing a cab to his hotel. He got all checked in and made his way to the meeting spot in a reserved restaurant and looked around eagerly for Louis. 

“GREENWOOD!” He heard that distinct voice yell across a room full of Whitelighters. 

“JORDAN!” they shook hands and embraced warmly. “Good to see you old chap.” Harry smiled. 

“Likewise Mon Amie. Look at you, Whitelighter to the Charmed ones! I’m proud of you.” he praised him honestly. The pair continued to compliment and catch up on their way to a table where they ordered tea and finger sandwiches. 

“So, what’s it like serving the Charmed ones?” Louis leaned in. “I heard they are very cute young ladies.” Harry grew uncomfortable at his words, not because Louis was being offensive, because they were ......cute and Macy in particular made him blush a lot with how......cute... she was.

“Louis please, have some respect.” he blushed. 

“What? Word gets around, I heard they’re very talented and smart too. The youngest one wants to be what a psychiatrist, the middle one is almost a professor herself and the oldest one a doctor. Jackpot of charges.” he said sipping his water. “My current charge, bless his heart, is wants to go live in Salem to feel his ancestors before him, yet the boy is too scared to drive.” 

“I don’t blame him, people drive worse today than back in our day.” Harry replied. “And yes, I have great girls, they’re Darlings, mischievous and hard headed, but Darlings.” 

“Aren’t they all, hard headed and conniving?” Louis laughed.

“Mmm,” Harry hummed sipping his tea “Maggie the youngest one, truly is the definition of a younger sister, if it weren’t for the fact I’m almost 100 years old I’d swear she’s mine, she’s an angel but uses her big doe eyes to get her way when I won’t budge, she’s still compassionate and huge sweetheart and all she wants to do is help, she’s wise in her own ways.” 

“Children, always made you a softie.” Louis chuckled, 

“She’s 19 but yes in relativity to me, a child.” he scoffed. “Mel is the middle child, she’s hard headed and headstrong but I respect the hell out of that girl and she’s very smart, she takes no mess from anyone, not even me but she’s still so sweet when she doesn’t think anyone notices, she’s gained that aspect of kindness from her mother.” 

“Mmm sounds like my old charge Randie, remember her?” Louis asked, not particularly needing an answer. 

“Macy is the eldest and she’s...wonderful. She’s insanely smart, her I.Q. is impressively high. She’s a scientist, she went off to college at 16, you know.” Harry praised, and Louis noticed a shift in Harry’s demeanor. “She loves to bake and do nerdy little awkward things like watch corny 90s tv shows. And she’s so strong, she mastered her power in almost no time.”

“Hm,” Louis stared intently at Harry, who had a small smile grace his lips. “You have a crush on her don’t you?” 

“What??” Harry whipped his head up. “I, I do not, Louis, don’t be ridiculous.” he scoffed. 

“Greenwood I have known you since 1965, and I know how you look when you meet a girl you fancy and I know how you look when you meet a girl you really really fancy. And right now it looks like you really really fancy the eldest.” Louis said biting his sandwich nonchalantly. 

“I, well, um, well you know I can’t...” Harry sighed, there was no use in lying to Louis. They’d both known each other through each other’s relationships, even his relationship with Charity “Its not like I can actually date her, Louis, yes she’s gorgeous and smart, but she’s my actual charge and I’m.... like an old man compared to her. I was alive well before she was thought of.” Harry slouched in his seat. 

Louis understood Harry’s apprehension of course, Harry never dated a charge, not only was it against the rules but Harry for the most part would date around with mortal non magical women until it was time to move onto the next charge, well until he met Charity. 

“Harry, mon amie, if you go through your whole whitelighter lifespan worried about a fully grown adult woman being in diapers in the 80s or afterwards, you’ll never get laid again.” Louis sipped his tea a matter of factly, “My rule is 30 or older. Never younger personally. We feel, things Harry. Unless you want to be celibate you don’t have to be. We need love in our lives too, you know as well as I do our lives can be lonely, when you go home to your bed at night and there’s no wife or husband... no kids interrupting your sleep to climb in bed with you, if you’re lucky the least you could get is a cat or a dog... we’ve had all these things before probably... why should we be loveless servants, we’re more than that, and there are no elders around anymore. We’re free to love who we want.”

“Thank you Louis, but I don’t know if she really wants me in the same way I want her.” 

“Take time to feel her out, does she act differently around you, spend time with you outside of magic training and demon hunting?” 

“Well... she bakes me special treats, we have tea time and tv show bingeing together, we cook together, we listen to the opera together, sometimes the crystals that are brung into her lab for testing will be very old and the ones she finds as old as 1920 she names them after me, like Harry the 3rd.” Harry mused, a smile forming. 

“When did you first get a crush on her?” Louis had never seen his friend so happy.

“Mmm, probably after I first met her, and got to know her, and how she used science to solve problems along with magic. Of course I wasn’t head over heels, I fancied her a bit, but she was into another man at the time which eventually didn’t work out..”

“Well, mon amie, I say go for it. It sounds like she may be sweet on you back. I love to meet your amour and the other Charmed sisters one day.” 

“I think when i get back I’m going to ask to spend more time with her. I hope you meet them too, and I hope you fall in love like I have.” Harry sighed.

“I did, but you didn’t like me back.” Louis winked. 

“Hush up, you cheeky man.” Harry laughed

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Louis’s name is based on one of the two french actors/entertainers I know and I like them alot Louis Jordan and Charles Aznavour. I described him to kinda look like Louis Jordan though with Charles’s curly hair. Also I know more German than French and I’m not really good at Deutsche either lol

#hacy

[spine-buster]

I Thought You Might Be Mine (Ricochet) - Part V

January 16, 2018 Orlando, Florida

Iris was conveniently left out of the loop.  She had no idea what was going on.  No idea what was happening.  She thought, at first, that it was fake news.  That he would have told her beforehand.  That he would have mentioned something so she didn’t have to find out through the internet through a headline.

Trevor “Ricochet” Mann Joins WWE Performance Centre.

On the outside, she maintained her cool.  There was a lot of buzz and energy around the Performance Centre because Candice LeRae and War Machine had also signed.  But on the inside?  Iris was freaking out.  Freaking.  Out.

She had texted him at least twenty times since the press release had gone out, each message getting progressively more vulgar since he wasn’t answering her.

Is this real? Are you for real right now? You signed and you didn’t tell me? Okay, so you definitely signed.  Why wasn’t I informed?! Are you going to be here today?  It says you are but are they just saying that? Trevor you better start answering me. BITCH!!!! Candice is here too!!!! WHO CARES ABOUT YOU?! TREVOR MANN YOU BETTER ANSWER ME RIGHT NOW you sumbich ANSWER.  ME.  BITCH.   RICK O’SHEA I’M GOING TO PUNCH YOU WHEN I SEE YOU WHY AREN’T YOU ANSWERING ME!!!!!!!!!!!! IF YOU WALK IN THOSE DOORS WITHOUT TEXTING ME FIRST I’M GONNA SKIN YOU ALIVE WITH A POTATO PEELER I’M GONNA CUT U UP SO BAD U GON WISH I NO CUT U UP SO BAD ok I see how it is

She could barely concentrate on her work.  The thought of him being in the same building without her knowing occupied most of her thoughts.  She wondered if he would ask to see her, or if that would be seen as unprofessional on either of their parts.  People knew that they were best friends, though – so it couldn’t be deemed unprofessional.  Right?

She spent her time pacing in her office and obsessively refreshing Twitter on her phone to see if there was any more news to do with his signing or his showing up at the Performance Centre since he wasn’t answering her in any capacity.  She was trying to see if he had been spotted at the airport or something.  Maybe one of the novice recruits had tweeted something out.  God, she felt like such a stalker.  

Just as she was about to open another search tab, a loud knock came at her door.  “Miss Capshaw, are you in there?” she heard William Regal on the other end.  “I need to speak to you for a moment.”

“Come on in, Mr. Regal,” she called out, switching her screen to a lesson instead of Twitter.  She even went so far as to pretend to ‘look busy’, a move she learned from George Costanza, and shuffled some papers on her desk.  

The door opened slowly, and William Regal stood in a suit in the doorway.  “You have a visitor, Miss Capshaw, whom I believe you know very well,” he said, a small smirk on his face.  

When Trevor appeared beside him, already decked out in a WWE shirt and shorts, Iris jumped up from out of her seat.  She tried to remain as calm as possible, but her sudden movement made both Trevor and William chuckle.  “Trevor!” she smiled from ear to ear.

“Is the potato peeler you’re gonna skin me alive with in your desk or what?” he asked.  

The rhetorical question garnered a chuckle out of Regal.  “I’ll let you two catch up and I’ll be back in five minutes.  I think someone has some explaining to do,” he nodded his head towards Trevor before leaving the room, closing the door half way.

When he was gone, Iris ran to Trevor and jumped into his arms.  He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face into the crook of her neck, letting her scent intoxicate him.  It had been so long.  So long.  “Hey, baby,” he whispered.  

“Is this a dream?”

Trevor chuckled.  “I told you I’d follow you wherever you go.  Just took me a bit longer.”

Had he ever lied to her?  He even kept his promises he’d said in the heat of the moment.  “You actually signed here.  Why didn’t you tell me?”

He set her down but kept his arms wrapped around her.  If it were up to him, he’d be touching her all day.  “I have to keep some things as a surprise.  Makes life interesting.”

Oh, did it ever.  They were finally living in the same city.  The possibilities now were endless.  She wouldn’t be constantly asking him where he was in the world so she could work out the time difference.  She’d know where he would be.  And she’d probably be with him.  At least when he was in Orlando.  “Do you have an apartment yet?  A hotel?  Where are you staying?” Iris asked.

Trevor couldn’t help but laugh.  She sounded exactly as she did four years ago when they first met each other in Japan.  “Where have I heard that before?” he winked.  “I’m closing on a place in about a week.”

She gulped.  He was really here.  He was staying.  She brought her hands up to cup his face.  “I can’t believe this, Trev.”

“I know.  It’s nuts.”

“You should come over tonight,” she blurted out.  Now that she knew he was here, and here for good, she wanted to spend as much time with him as possible.  “We can order in, catch up, all that good stuff.”

“I’m never gonna say no to that.”

When Trevor knocked on Iris’s apartment door with two bags full of sushi, he was already thinking about what they could do together next.  He’d already managed to drive his everyday car and was using it to get around, but he still had his retro Mustang to drive to Orlando from Paducah.  He wondered if she’d be able to get two days off to fly out to Paducah with him and drive it down together.  That time together, alone, would be a luxury he’d pay a million dollars for.

When Iris opened the door, she was on the phone.  She greeted him by giving him a hug and let him in her apartment, but she made no attempt to end the conversation.  She was speaking Spanish, and she spoke it with such life and passion that all Trevor could do was stand in her kitchen dumbfounded, listening to her talk.  He’d heard her speak her vast array of languages before – English, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Persian, Cantonese, and Japanese – and every time it was music to his ears.  She could speak Klingon and make it sound good.

By the time she hung up, Trevor had already laid out the sushi, gotten plates and cups, and was sitting down at her coffee table, flipping through the channels on the TV to see if there was anything good on to be playing in the background.  Judging by the fact that she was speaking Spanish, he knew she was more than likely on the phone with her mom, who was originally from Cuba.  

“Sorry about that,” she said as she approached the coffee table, taking a seat directly beside him instead of across from him.  “You know my mom.  When she gets going she really gets going.”

“It’s all good,” Trevor said.  “For someone who hasn’t been home for more than two weeks in five years, you’re allowed to talk to your mom all damn day.  You could have kicked me out and I would have understood.”

“Who would eat all this sushi though?”

Trevor gave her a look.  “Don’t think I can’t eat all this by myself.  You remember that Korean barbecue restaurant.”

Iris snorted.  “They almost kicked you out cause you wouldn’t stop eating.”

“Exactly.  So all this sushi is nothing to me.”

She nudged him with her elbow before grabbing a pair of chopsticks and breaking them apart.  Trevor watched as she took the entire tray of red dragon rolls and unloaded seven out of the eight pieces onto her plate.  He gave her major side-eye.  “What?” she asked.

“Am I gonna starve?”

“Bitch shut the fuck up!” she screamed, causing Trevor to throw his head back and cackle.  “I will fucking end you.  You don’t even like red dragon rolls!”

“Whatever, girl.  Just eat your food.”

Iris rolled her eyes.  She was so fucking happy.  So fucking happy.  Sushi was in front of her and Trevor was beside her.  What more could she want?  What more could she need?  “So anyways, when’s Tessa coming in to celebrate with you?” she asked.

Trevor shook his head.  “She’s not.  We broke up.”

Iris didn’t even bat an eyelash at the statement.  She stuffed her face with a piece of sushi.  “When are you guys getting back together?” she asked, knowing their routine.  It was all too familiar.

“No no,” Trevor shook his head.  “There’s no getting back together.  We broke up for good this time.”

That made Iris pay more attention.  “What happened?”

“She thought it was selfish of me to sign with WWE because she wants to sign with Impact.  It made me realize she’s that person who thinks that another person following his or her own dreams instead of her’s are selfish.  And I absolutely cannot be with a person like that.”

Wow.  So this was it – this was the end of Tessa and Trevor.  She couldn’t believe they had finally, finally called it quits.  Despite their breakups in the past, it always felt inevitable that they would get back together – they always managed to work it out.  But something in Trevor’s tone told her he was done – there would be no turning back from this decision.  He’d made the decision to sign with the WWE and move down to Orlando for himself and himself only – to follow his dream, and nobody else’s.

“I’m really sorry, Trev,” Iris said, setting her chopsticks down.

“You don’t have to be sorry.  It was a long time coming.”

“You invested two and a half years into that relationship.  She’s met Cameron,” Iris said.  “I know this is probably better for the both of you in the long run but you’re still allowed to feel sad about it.”

“That’s the thing though…I don’t feel sad,” Trevor revealed.  “I don’t exactly feel liberated, or happy, but I’m not sad about it.  We were going down two different paths.  She couldn’t acknowledge why mine was important to me.  She couldn’t acknowledge that I wanted to live my dream.  That’s it.”

Iris didn’t know what to say.  On one hand, it was a long time coming, like Trevor said earlier.  On the other hand, breakups were never nice.  She’d met Tessa a handful of times over the years, however briefly, and she seemed like a nice enough girl – whether or not Tessa was putting on airs and graces, Iris would never know.  She would never know what Tessa was like in private with Trevor.  And she would never find out.  

“So have you and Ryder set a date for the wedding yet?” Trevor asked suddenly.  “It’s been like, what?  Almost a year since you two have gotten engaged?”

Iris tried to look anywhere besides at him.  “Uh, no.”

This was going to be an interesting conversation.  “Why the hell not?”

“He um…he’s working really hard and it’s leading to another promotion soon, and he wants to get that promotion before we get married.”

‘This dude loves work more than he loves you’ Trevor thought.  He wanted to scream it into her face.  He wanted to scream it from the rooftops.  He wanted to call Ryder and scream it into the phone.  He wanted to rent one of those planes that fly a message from the tail and have it circle her apartment for an entire month.  Why couldn’t she see it?  Why wouldn’t Ryder just break up with her?  He was chasing promotion after promotion.

“We have decided to do it in Manhattan, though,” Iris revealed.  “At least that’s been decided.”

“Well that’s a step,” Trevor tried to say diplomatically, but Iris could hear the sarcasm in his voice.  Now they’d have to wait another two years to get any venue in Manhattan.  

“Can we…can we not talk about it,” Iris mumbled, fiddling with her chopsticks.  

“Why not?”  

“Because I know you don’t like him.  And I know you wished you had met me eight or nine months earlier than you did so that I wouldn’t have met him,” she said.  “But we’re best friends instead.  And I love it that way.  I love that we’re so close and we can talk to each other about anything and it’s never weird.  I only want to talk about happy things tonight because tonight is cause for celebration – nothing else.”

‘We were lovers once, too’ Trevor wanted to say.  He was still unable to get that night out of his mind, almost a year later.  We were lovers once, and it was beautiful.  And I would do it again in a second.  Instead, he found himself nodding his head.  “We good, baby,” he agreed with her.  “Shoulda told me it was a celebration cause I would have bought some Dom.”

“Joke’s on you because I have Knots donuts on the counter.”

Trevor watched as Iris loaded the dishwasher of their plates used at dinner.  With sushi and donuts sitting in his stomach, he was ready to plop down on the couch and not move for a solid three hours, or at least until everything digested.  He and Iris had taken their sweet time with eating, catching up on every aspect of their lives and work.  He showed her how his house was just a short drive from the Performance Centre, and therefore just a short drive from her apartment, too.  Then he thought about how much time could be spent together due to the simple fact they lived less than fifteen minutes away from each other, and he got even more excited.  

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” Iris asked as he was lost in thought.  “Are you in a food coma or what?”

“I’m just thinking about all the fun we’re gonna have in Orlando,” Trevor smiled.  

Iris smiled too, loading the last dish before closing the dishwasher and jumping up to sit on the counter.  “We’re gonna have such a great time.  It’s no Tokyo, but it’ll do.”

Trevor walked over to her slowly, keeping his eyes on her as he stood in front of her, between her legs.  He brought his arms up and around her waist, inching closer to her.  She brought her hands up and rested them around his neck.  Trevor looked up at her, taking in the sight of being so close to her.  “It’s taking every ounce of self restraint in me not to kiss you right now,” Trevor said.

“Good.  Because you can’t.”

“I know that,” Trevor digressed.  “Ain’t exactly happy about it, but I know.”  They didn’t break eye contact, even for a second.  “We can still cuddle though.  We always cuddle and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  That’s our thing.”

They had a lot of things, that was for sure.  Tokyo.  Sushi.  Brownies.  Donuts from Knots Bakery.  Cuddling and Brooklyn Nine-Nine.  “Let’s go,” she found herself saying, and she couldn’t conceal the smile that appeared on her face when she saw the smile on Trevor’s.

He picked her up from the counter and she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her towards the couch.  He saw down first, with her on top of him, and she rearranged herself so that her legs were in his lap and she could lay her head on his chest.  Trevor’s arm was wrapped around her, his hand already finding her exposed skin from where her shirt had ridden up, while the other rested in between her thighs.  She thought back to the last time they were in this position and the…actions they had gotten up to.  Iris knew that Trevor would never expect it to happen again, but she did wonder what was going through his mind as they cuddled so close to one another.  She could never tire of cuddling with him, but he always managed to find a way to make the opportunities more touchy and intimate.

When the cold open of season two of Brooklyn Nine-Nine began to play, she focused her attention on the TV.  Joke after joke, laugh after laugh, they stayed wrapped up in each other.  Trevor would joke that she was exactly like Boyle, her favourite character, which caused her to laugh even more.  Throughout the night, his hands wandered slowly, his left finally settling into playing with her hair while he placed light kisses on the crown of her head and forehead.  

Iris never asked him to stop.  

When it was almost one in the morning, the sun having gone down hours ago, the giggling and laughing becoming fewer and farther in between due to the fatigue from the day, Trevor’s hands were still playing with her hair, his lips still firmly planted on her forehead.  

“Iris?” he whispered, making sure she was still awake.

“Mhm?” she mumbled back to him faintly.

“I don’t care where we are in the world.  Tokyo, Orlando…I don’t care if we’re in the Sahara Desert or in the middle of fucking Kazakhstan.  Wherever I am with you is where I’m supposed to be, and I know I’m gonna be having the time of my life.”

Iris smiled, biting her lip nervously.  For the first time that night, she moved so she could look directly at him.  “I feel the same about you, you know.  Whenever I’m with you I’m having the time of my life.”

When Trevor smiled, she smiled back at him and went back to resting her head on his chest.  She could feel his lips kissing her forehead before he whispered, in a soft, faint whisper, “I love you baby.”

She didn’t freeze.  She didn’t gasp.  She didn’t overthink.  What she said next was pure instinct.  An automatic reaction.  Something she knew.

“I love you too.”

@wrestlewriting @wrasslin-x @thegenericluchadora @thewriterformerlytaggedas@fan-fiction-galore @anerdysouthernbelle @spot-of-bother @amaranthine-reign@baleesi @flnnbalor @smuppies @sarahmatthews7 @daintymissdevitt@newjapan @corey-renee @running-ropes @balorsomega @karleedaniels27@kazuchika @ileana0300 @alexahood21 @ohcristimhookedonhavocimsodunne@fembxt @heelturn-timesten @kaitlynwwefan @50shadesofadamcolebaybay@50shadesofkennyomega @chasingeverybreakingwave @thyestean-feast @thecandicej @devittsbalor @sp00kylesley @danahart @sietefinns@kaydee-kayyyy @powerbombshell @swedish-strong-style @blondekel77@irish-newzealand-idian-dutch @nickysmum1909 @houndofjustice-imagines @wwesmutdonedirtcheap @wweximaginesxd @indywrestlinglover-life @mandi512 @kakakatey @ourscratcheddreams @sleeplessandcynical @badame124 @thevixeniris @fabulousrockstar @lunatic-sambrose @caramara3 @crossfitjesusinskinnyjeans

#wwe #ricochet #ricochet fic #ricochet imagine #wwe imagine #ricochet fan fic #ricochet fan fiction #ricochet fanfic #ricochet fanfiction #wwe fic #wwe fan fic #wwe fan fiction #wwe fanfic #wwe fanfiction #itymbm series

[languageswithlogan]

Sunday night talk - 3

Another week has passed, and I’ll start this review by looking at the goals I set for myself:

complete at least three chapters of textbook

Nope. I realized that I was going too fast. I need to take more time with each chapter so that the grammar will stick. I completed two chapters though.

learn at least half of the Memrise course

Yep, did that. Although I have to admit I forgot about that until today and then did it all in an hour or so. That’s fine though.

study physics

I actually did and I’m very proud of myself because I had zero motivation for it. Besides I remembered that I’m allowed to bring one sheet of paper to the exam, ob which I can write ANYTHING beforehand. So I’m writing down what I think is important, and whatever I can’t get into my head goes on that paper.

put podcasts on walkman

Nope, I gave up on that. I’m going to put them on my phone instead. That will also eliminate the “ah dang, I wish I had my walkman with me” thought because I rarely go anywhere without my phone.

Okay, so that’s how it went with completing my goals. Besides that, I did my usual Memrise stuff. My mom doesn’t even ask what I’m doing anymore when I randomly whip out my phone and start learning vocabulary.

Oh, and I translated a song from Russian to German and English! I had tried before, with the same song, but I wasn’t good enough yet to do it. Now I could translate it with the help of a dictionary and a grammar book. There’s still two things in the lyrics I’m wondering about, but I’ll get there.

I haven’t done anything Danish in a while. I kinda put that on hold to focus on Russian. As of now I only do my Memrise stuff so I won’t get too rusty.

Coming across things in Russian and actually understanding them makes me so incredibly happy. I also see a lot of stuff that I don’t understand yet, and that motivates me to work harder.

So, like last week I’m closing with tasks for this upcoming week:

complete the summary of the first six chapters from the textbook

complete two more chapters

100 words in the Memrise course

continue doing one or two Duolingo lessons every day (just for that little extra practice)

listen to at least one podcast every day

do some Mondly

put the verbs from the textbook chapters in verb notebook

work on culture notebook

#langblr #logan makes progress

[paraclete0407]

Pretty sure I'm going to become Catholic if I don't die from Delta tonight - I've been thinking about it my whole life and I feel awful contemplating how much time and how many people I've lost.  Recently I concluded what might have been my last intimate love-relationship with someone - the last person I feel I ever wanted to marry, m y first true Christian fellowship, it's just  over now.  Night is falling over Milwaukee.   I drove to Chicago today, it was very foggy.  I remembered riding the bus in to Seoul in 2012 and reflecting on Aurelius Augustinius' adage that this vast dark world overwhelms our being / soul and at the same time our soul protests or rebels against this whole world.   Till recently I might not have considered enough the awesome scale of God the Father or the size and depth of Hell.  I didn't realize how lessons learned are not only challenging to apply, but important to magnify or amplify.  America feels like a huge trap, all these warrens.  Everyone was told for decades life is small, everyone is equal, don't judge, it'll be OK.  Suddenly everyone is trying to be everybody else's father, teacher, answer-machine, certainty-source.  Traffic is insane, weaving, filtering, cutting off.  People think they are professionals making astute snap-judgments - like military officers giving commands.  It is reaction, 'expressive individualism.'  Ill-bred people; I am ill-bred too.   I also never apologized to God till today or considered that He might have defended me in my years of meekness against everyone who either wanted something from me or was keen to write me off for lack of go-getting masculinity.   I actually feel as if I owe an apology to Holy Mother Mary for her solicitude.  Suddenly I realized that a few sacred important people in this world have been thinking, knowing, believing much as I have but they're far away and I have no means to go and be with them.  I don't even know how to account for the last 9 years of my life.  I rebelled against every teacher and father; I cope with rejection horribly; I've always doneless than I could; I always stop knocking. I have an extreme temperament, severe, grave, but always act the moderate.   Lately it seems as if humanity is dimly aware of the fact that Covid is a Judgment and that it could have something to do with racial war, class war, gender war, identity politics, generations, history, as well as religious divisions at least where I am.  I don't like talking about Roman Catholicism because the way in which some clergy passed kids around is blindly incomprehensible; I remember Pope Francis using the phrase, 'consecrates a Black Mass.' Over the last 5 years I slowly improved myself but technology changed so precipitately and everyone now seems to understand everything already.  Everyone is sophisticated and look through people and guess at their underlying motivation or 'rhetorical purpose' and background in ways I used to relish maliciously doing in college but since quit as I wished to err on the 'sweet and obvious side of the light' and rather renounced intellect and guile.   I don't know what Koreans are like anymore either which saddens me at a personal level.  Did they all become cynical?  Do they look down on white men now?  Recently a scholar whom I wrote to in the past EY Pastreich wrote about totalitarianism in America and I felt like, 'I was going to be the answers-man who dealt in certainties in an age of relativism and probability' but it all went to someone else; nor did I realize how certain Science and statistics had become.  

I have a lot of flaws like sensualism, aestheticism, expectation of unending maternal unconditional love.  Ever since 18 I relied on the same few pieces of music to hold me, Franz Biebl's 'Ave Maria,' Praetorius' 'Es It Ein Rosentsprungen.'  Biebl only wrote a few pieces of music in his life. I don't know why in the past decade I went to war with the world when meekness had seen me through for a long time and kept me surprising everyone who said I wasn't doing enough or getting with the times.  I'm really dumb, blind.  I also accumulated various cupidities and preciosities.  It's pathetic.  Today there are race-wars, class-wars, gender-wars, identity-wars, age-wars.  Covid I still feel is just anti-Asian racism though - I can't see it any other way and I always, always lose my motivation for studying or reading about anything but the history of Western imperialism.  I don't want to speak ill of Protestants b/c I read Metaxas' Luther bioraphy at least in part and the cynicism of that priesthood... but 'Heil Hitler point 1' in Milwaukee is like 'Joshua and genocide' every day, showing no mercy.  I love John Piper, John MacArthur, RC Sproul I only wish I'd listened more like 35 years ago.  But.  Chest-beating.  However the fault is mine for I'd be more masculine if I simply abided with probity by the rules of Scripture and subjected myself to wholesome discipline.  I don't know why I'm so skitting of everything. Honestly I'm a Satanist - in the Baudelarean sense and otherwise.  There was a student I worked with in KR who reminded me of the poem 'Benediction' which is 'bad sauce' but poems like that and K-Pop stuff like Aespa or 'Lamborghini Angels' by Lupe fiasco is kind of 'advanced, ultramodern' religious contents.  I can't say more than that b/c those are real people and also part of my 'patrimony' or simply my experience as a man / human; specific responsibilities. One thing I really regret is in past I always tried to blow my family off with cheap gifts which was 'pozzed' b/c cheap gifts and fake gifts and twisted as opposed to linear gifts is part of what's wrong with all of Europe Germany Netherlands et cetera.  Like, 'I have a perfect idea- nah, let me f--- it up to personalize it or sth.'  Milwaukee's obsessed with ethnography like 'Wales has mining and its own language' but they never ethnographize German culture which is all about hiding your virtue and doing less than you can - 'be more than you seem.'  But why?  It's completely diametrically anti-biblical to hide your light.  Anyway criticizing the Church when 4 million people died and my own DNA (Dutch) just got an 800% spike in Delta infections might seem kind of idle / academic but lit-crit is sth I've been doing all my life.  Why wait? I keep thinking of 'Lincoln' lately which is not a great movie and Kushner says a lot of dumb stuff.  But the 'now now now' and 'millions unborn' is absolutely epic and it's what is going on right now all the time.  Today I got lost in Chicago while trying to report to the ROK Consul General literally to discuss matters fro mthe past as well as literally to tell them to evacuate Koreans from Milwaukee (most of the ones I knew in past are already gone).  Right now I wish I could make myself as little but perfect a box / chamber as possible in which to exist like a prison-cell just to I stop wrecking my own chances.  I also remembered a Sowon hyper-fanfic called 'My Brother's Type' about someone I knew who used to like these leggy lissome slightly remote types but decided to trash their own taste in women (nothing wrong with changing mind per se but) and deciding B-52's and gangster / clan / tribal conspiracy is better than being open and honest.  Ironically 'B-52' was a nickname given to Chairman Mao by I think [I forget]'s son since he had a huge stomach that dropped out all kinds of murderous ideas which again I can't see any other way but that's the origin of Covid.  I was thinking of all these snice things to say about my carpet-bombing-philc family but thta's pozzed too at this point I just need to get baptized and hopefully plenary indulgence(?) before  Iget flamethrowered in my containment-zone.  I remember this picture of a Vietnamese woman with a crashed B in the background; I read 'Fire Road' and 'Ru' with that boy named Pascal and I read 'Pensees' over and over and over again like, 'Finally my friend.'  if I live to be even 51 or 52 I really want to go back to Asia or even just K-Town LA; I miss all my friends; I hear them, Protestants don't need me, Milwaukee doesn't need me, I'm just a 'little flower' or something.   I remembered today the face of the person I most wanted ot marry and the day we went on this kind of 'communication session' with a chaperone(?); went home and started reading Proust feeling 'everlasting gratitude.'  Never finished Proust nearly.  I bought a Korean language version of 'The Remains of the Day' which was the other novel I read that year and remembered trying to interpret 'South of the Border West of the Sun' in terms of a geographic-anagogic sort of Dantean-Northrop-Fryian system that would turn the title in to 'Before the Beginning and After the End.'  Sitting in the meditation-garden of the Church of Peter and Paul and just thinking of sailed ships and corners turned but that too was years ago.  I don't even know how to work gas-station pumps anymore.  Remebering the last words of someone from a vanished era, the 1990s when we thought that every little people could have their own republic and now the passive resistance people in Myanmar etc. are all getting jailed by dictators.  Richard Holbrooke with his arterial dissection, 'I love so many people.'  Maybe I should just wait outside the local church gate all night; little kids from Syria in France and such are sleeping in parks.  IDK why I stopped letting myself be acted on b/c my typical 'seizure of agency, self-coup' modus operandi is to headbutt immoveable objects and feast the obese.  I should've been a Jesuit or Cistercian, love Bernard of Clairvaux, 'Honey and Salt,' love Augustine who seems to be watching over the whole world right now, 'an intellectual giant,' hoping we will all remember Original Sin and the 'curse in hope' instead of thinking of C19 as somebody's technical error / lack of being a smart Democrat... I also liked 'Humana Vitae' to say the least; Koreans always talk about love of life and I realize death and evil and the Devil are things I should've taken more seriously in the past but... Anyway I also noticed how people are scrambling to conceptualize everything in terms of 'oxygenation' nowadays.  Concept of 'holiness' related to separateness but what can that mean if not integrity when we're all part of the metabolism of the Earth.  I'm saying too much now I always do too much or too little.  The future appears to be cereal-grains and the consciousness of chains.

I keep thinking about writing a very long letter explaining everything that led me to this point in my life.  There is much reconciliation, mitigation.  A while back I felt as if I were able to hold in my mind my entire life and somehow be aware of my coexistence or coevality with people who had been thousands of miles away at the time when I was in ES admiring the principal and there were images of stairs, windows at mid-stairs, but maybe I'm still avoiding or disclaiming personal responsibility or failing to see myself through the relevant / pertinent eyes.  

[i-need-a-place-for-my-thoughts]

20201121

it’s been a while. how’ve you been? i’ve been having a fucking time and a half

here are some things that have happened since the last time i wrote

- I quit my old job a couple months ago (fuck that place man my last day was absolute shit, glad to be out of that bitch of a place)

- I got a new job and went though downsizings and somehow survived

- i made a new friend and she’s fucking amazing (potentially making more friends as well)

- got light headed/tunnel visioned, (very weird experience), when i tried to start conversing with someone (i was able to talk with him before but it’s hard for me to start conversations and talk to people)  

- i’ve been taking japanese lessons to try and review and improve because i really want to get better to have deeper converations. i also have bought more language books than i probably need but who the fuck really cares. i’ve been meaning to get back into my german more, i also took a slight interest in russian as well as french and perhaps spanish cause the language app that i use added on latin american spanish. and get back into korean as well

- i’ve been talking more with this guy i work with (that i really want to be friends with) and i may or may not be catching feeling for him and i fucking hope i’m not. i can’t handle liking someone again, it only ever ends up in sadness

- i started this sort of project, it’s embroidery and i want to make a mask based off of someone’s design. it sounds bad when i say it like that, it’s mainly me being inspired to make something that i think looks cool. in no way shape or form would i ever credit myself to the design, or sell it because it’s not mine. this is a train wreck. it’s just a personal project, a sort of fan art? i guess? fuck i’ll just shut up about it

- i’ve had lots of ups and downs lately and it sucks. maybe because it’s me putting myself down, getting discouraged a shit ton mainly. also not liking how my body looks. i feel like i have too much extra weight and it keeps me from feeling confident/comfortable, and i also feel like i have too much body hair, and i don’t know what to do.. maybe i could talk to a doctor to see if there’s anything that maybe be off balance with me... i hate it here

- i’ve recently started to think about college again, i want to try and get maybe my generals in so i can have my associates in and complete, so then when i finally decide on what i want to do, i can do that. i keep having this reoccurring thought about mechanical engineering, so i might actually look into that a lot more

- i’ve been working lots of overtime lately, and that’s okay cause i want the money. cuase i want to work on getting myself a new car, preferably with 4 wheel drive cause it would be nice and convenient to have. and also to save up to have a good amount incase of emergency, and to be able to save up for my trip to japan whenever it is that i can go. and having money to try and go to college whenever that may be, i kinda hope soon

- also am starting to have mixed feelings about co-workers, one of which was honestly kinda pissing me off, he was being real fucking inconsiderate but i couldn’t say anything, i’m not gonna get into that too much

okay so i want to talk about this guy at work real quick. so he’s really funny and i really want to get to know him better, the problem is is that he doesn’t really answer questions about himself. like, i have no clue what type of music he listens to, no one does, maybe one person at work who is his friend, but the closest i got was why he doesn’t say anything. he told me that it was because he got annoyed with being asked these questions (multiple times in a day) that he just decided to stop answering and then soon began to enjoy the frustration of people when they couldn’t get him to answer. he’s such an interesting character, but he’s really funny. every time he starts to say something about himself, i try to listen in, i just really want to get to know who he is, what makes him, him, ya know? my sister thinks he likes me though, and i don’t know what to think. some of the interactions we have makes her believe that, and maybe he does or maybe he doesn’t. i want to write about him, and i doubt anyone will find this, but i don’t how much is okay for me to share? i mean, this is a completely innocent talking about him, but i dunno, maybe it is okay to say a few small things. maybe talking about our interactions is okay. i dunno. i’ll write what i think is okay to share. there is something that happened today that i do want to mention, so i had heard once from someone that he spoke spanish. and i had heard him say his name with an accent and maybe say one or two words to this one person, but today that same person (that i heard him talk to before) had said something to him in spanish to which he started to reply in spanish, he was kinda quite but i tried my best to listen because i really really really love to hear people speak in other languages, its just so cool to me, especially to be able to hear him, because i think people’s voices (and demeanor) change when they speak a different language. but then someone had called attention to it and then he stopped, which made me really sad, and i don’t know exactly how i would be able to ask if i could hear him speak, especially cause i understand how it is to have someone know you are learning/can speak another language and then immediately are asked to say something. he’s probably been asked that a lot too. but then he was saying to the person who had brought it up that it was his secret (as in he doesn’t just go around telling people that he can speak spanish) and to me it is really important to not tell people information about another person, especially if they ask you not to, or if it seems like they don’t want it to be shared. it’s not my secret to share so i won’t share it, and also don’t bring shit up if people aren’t saying it themselves, they might not tell you that they don’t want it shared but they trust you to not say anything, a mutual trust of “this is between us because i don't normally share things about myself but i trust you enough to tell you but i’m not explicitly going to say don’t tell people but that doesn’t mean you can go around telling people” (example, i was sitting with my co-workers eating pizza and the topic was brought up about smoking, mainly because we saw another co-worker have a vape and a cigarette at the same time, and one of my co-workers was saying that it’s really unattractive when someone smokes (especially a girl). now, i’ve vaped before, and i didn’t feel like sharing that information in general, especially after that comment, but someone else started mentioning how they vape but don’t smoke cigarettes, but then they turned to me and said “hey you’ve vaped before, do you smoke cigarettes??” and i felt very awkward when that happened, and i tried to save myself by saying that i don’t do it very often, it’s only once in a while (which is true) and it’s only to do the french inhale cause it’s cool and fun when you are able to do it. it’s best to pretend that you’re the only other person who knows that information and just keep it to yourself. i’m sure they didn’t have any ill intent when they said and was just asking and what not, but i really didn’t like that that happened, especially because 1, i didn’t want to share that with this group (i didn’t want it shared in general but it got out once by someone else trying to be inclusive), and 2, the guy i might be crushing on was there.. i don’t know if that changed his opinion of me, i really hope not, but we have interacted more since then so maybe it’s okay. something that happened that made me happy though is that we’ve had physical contact (mainly instigated by him). once he was asking where my friend was cause he was gonna surprise/confuse her by wearing this box on his head, and i said where she should be, and thought he was just gonna go but he then turns more towards me and says “wanna come with me?” and it made me so happy, i said yes and went with him. but while we were all chatting together he was explaining how one of our bosses kept messing around and tapping his shoulder and then moving to the other side to trick him, and he tapped my shoulder and i was like  w o w , because i didn’t expect him to do that, and then the next day, we were interacting a lot (more than i had ever done in a day, mostly because i’m god awful at talking to people in general) but during that day at work i was going though stuff and i didn’t even realize that he had come up next to me until i felt him push into my arm and say “boop”. it sounds weird to say, but that was amazing to me, cause for one, again, i didn’t expect him to do that and sometimes physical touch like that is nice to me. and then later he made me smell his jacket twice cause he was upset about smelling like a co-worker (he had also said, before this, that he needed to wear it to make it smell like him which was funny hahhaha) just gonna admit and put this out there, but he does smell really good. and today he was kinda pushing into me again and this time i pushed back slightly too. on a slight different note, i had a dream with him in it where we were laying in a bed together just embracing and he had his head on my chest.. me and my lonely self really enjoyed that, and thankfully that wasn’t interrupted, i would’ve loved to have just kept dreaming about that, but the dream changed and i was woken up by my alarm to get ready for the day. i just need an extremely long hug really fucking bad my dude. it’s not even funny anymore

i’m sad as fuck dude

and sometimes i really hate being aware of it, it try to keep myself from spiraling, but i’m also told to just let myself feel how i am feeling, but i get even more quiet than i already am and shut down so much. its.. i don’t know how to explain it.. it just sucks  

i would really like a significant other right now. if i could have someone make me feel the way howl’s moving castle does, boy fucking howdy that’d be great

i feel like there’s more i could talk about.. oh yeah, my japanese tutor/friend though i was drunk once while we were talking cause i had been excited to tell him about my interactions at work, so i was talking more than i usually did and it was surprising to him. i also feel like i might’ve overshared slightly, i hope that didn’t fuck anything up and make him feel weird. but i think i’m maybe kinda improving with my japanese, i need to learn some more vocabulary and some more grammar structures, so when we talk it won’t be half english the whole time

i also need to draw more.. damn.. and make things. like art and food. i want to make macaroons, i know they’re tricky to make, but i want to try and get good at making them  

this seems like a long update, but that’s okay, i’ve been meaning to write some stuff lately, and i guess tonight was the night, and i might just write more in my journal for some other things, that seems like an okay thing to do. 

i hope everyone is doing okay and staying safe out there, i think i’ll leave this here for now, remember to get some sleep, stay hydrated, and eat some good food, take care y’all,

until the next update guys, bye bye

[paigemoonlma32]

Development within Heathers

Throughout the years of Heathers, the musical has been adapted through different performances, For example: 

"You're Welcome" from the 2018 West End Production of Heathers the Musical replaces "Blue," a song on the World Premiere Cast Recording (Heathers The Musical - "You're Welcome" (Unknown, 2018). "You're Welcome" was initially written by O'Keefe and Murphy for the High School edition, but was added to the official show beginning with the 2018 London production. O'Keefe and Murphy preferred "You're Welcome" as they had come to feel that "Blue" was a bit lazy, and had inadvertently trivialised the lead character's fears (given that Veronica is cornered by two drunk, entitled high school football stars who refused to hear the word "no"). While "Blue" contained no dialogue for Veronica, by contrast, "You're Welcome" allows Veronica to express her fears and solve her problem, defeating her assailants decisively. As well as providing a more empowering alternative for Veronica, the new song remedies the way that "Blue" was often considered as "treating date rape as a laughing matter" and presenting sexual assault or harassment as "boyish antics", due to the comical nature of the song (Heathers: The Musical, 2020). 

While researching about the change I came across a thread on the social media app Reddit titled “Removing Blue from Heathers was stupid” (deleted, 2019). Straight away this proves that some of the audience members were not pleased about the change. Other comments within the post stated “It made no sense for people to be offended by Blue, but not by literally the entire rest of the show, which presents a lot of dark/serious topics in a humorous way, because it's a Satire!” (Derp_8, 2019). “It is disturbingly rapey” and “It sounds nothing like a Heathers song. They're all supposed to sound like 80's songs but this sounds like 90's” stated another user (Goth2002, 2019).  Laurence O’Keefe and Kevin Murphy stated in a ‘PLAYBILL’ article on March 22nd 2018: “Some thought “Blue" was wonderful and all in good fun. Others were offended, feeling we were treating date rape as a laughing matter (O’Keefe and Murphy, 2018). After listening to both songs and watching multiple performances of both I personally prefer ‘Blue’. My reason is that ‘Blue’ is a very comedic song. As much as they are singing about wanting sex and how much Veronica makes their balls blue, Kurt and Rams interactions are mainly to each other. During the majority of the performances for ‘Blue’, you will find Veronica standing up stage looking whilst discussing what they are singing. However in “Your Welcome”, Veronica is stuck in the middle of the boys which is why she is thinking about getting out of the situation (Heathers, 2019). For me personally, “Your Welcome” implys more of a serious date rape senorio over two boys singing to eacher about the desire to have sex. I presume my opinion could be different if Veronia was stuck in the middle again, however, she is normally at a safe distance as previously stated (Heathers, 2017). 87 fans of Heathers the musical took to vote to say whether or not they liked the song change. 5.7% of the fans liked the change of the song, however 94.3% did not like the change and still prefer “Blue” (Thoughts On Heathers Replacing "Blue" | Heathers Amino, 2017). 

A new song for Heather Duke, "Never Shut Up Again", was also added for the London run, replacing the "Blue (Reprise)". For the 2017 workshop, there was a different song to replace "Blue (Reprise)", which became "Big Fun (Reprise)", part of which is now included in "Never Shut Up Again". Never Shut Up Again is the first time we really hear from Heather Duke and how she felt about being treated badly. Duke sings the Lyrics “I bit my tongue so long, I learned to count to ten” which gives the impression of how long she has let the anger build up inside of her due to Heather Chandler never letting her speak. In the next verse, Duke compares Heather Chandler to the ‘Wicked Witch of East’ from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ when she sings “A house dropped on her head, The witch is dead! Ding Dong!”. After research I also found that it is a reference to the line “Killing Heather would be like offing the Wicked Witch of the West. Wait East. West” which is a quote from the original 1988 film of Heathers where Veronica is writing in her diary about how she wants to kill Heather Chandler (Barry, 2019). The chorus of this song that gets repeated is “I will never shut up again”, this is because Duke from the beginning of act 1 is told repeatedly to shut up by Heather Chandler. However, now that Chandler is dead, Duke is rejoicing that she now has the power that chandler had. This is symbolised by Heather Chandler's red Scrunchie (Heathers, 2019). 

In the last week at The Other Palace, the authors added a new song after "Shine a Light (Reprise)" called "I Say No", in which Veronica finally dumps J.D. when he proposes a return to murdering. In this she tells him "you need help I can't provide" and walks out on him. The song remained in the show for the Haymarket run and was released on February 15, 2019. One audience member stated “This is EXACTLY the type of song this show needed. I am ALWAYS here for giving Veronica more backbone, and calling out JD on his shit. It gives ‘I Am Damaged’ a whole new meaning now, which it DESPERATELY needed. Now he’s like movie JD: he doesn’t actually love her. He loves her means to an end” (Alabba, 2019). Throughout this song Veronica is realising that JD has been using her emotions as excuses for what he has done. For example, she sings “But you’re still using me to justify the harm you do”, this is linking back to the scene where JD has just killed Kurt and Ram, and then he asks Veronica “Did they make you cry? Well they can’t now”. He also states “You wanted them dead” to make Veronica feel more guilty so that he can comfort her again (Rios, 2018).

With Heathers having such a teen based audience there has also been a “Heathers (High school Edition)” released. “After seeing the Off-Broadway production several times, we knew that Heathers would have a cult following among teen audiences and fans of the motion picture, due to its focus on the important issues of bullying and teenage depression.” says Samuel French executive director Bruce Lazarus. “We believe that Heathers 101: High School Edition deals with these themes in a meaningful way, which will resonate with our high school audiences” (GIOIA, 2016).  Changing songs such as ‘Blue’ to ‘Your welcome’ is one of many ways to make the musical more suited for the high school edition. However, certain songs such as Dead Girl Walking stayed just directed with a different intention. ‘Dead Girl Walking’ changed to be less about a teen girl’s final sexcapades and more about “a girl driven to say, ‘To hell with it!’ by despair and fear” - brought to light the show’s themes, which function as important lessons for the high-school students (GIOIA, 2016). An article from The Atlantic stated “Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the Broadway version really gets the genius bleakness of the original. An early preview of the musical Heathers reveals that Veronica’s monologues are now big numbers about how high-school can be suffocating. None of the songs have the film’s creative profanity, or even a tinge of satire. It’s a sad thought, Heathers turned into a mere Glee episode about suicide” (Zilberman, 2014).

Fun Facts about Heathers:

The actress who played Heather Chandler in the original film of Heathers died at the age of 32 from a brain tumor. “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?” is one of the most famous sentences that comes from Heathers. There is a true meaning behind the sentence, and it appears to be an “unfortunate twist of fate” (Arnold, 2020).

The movie was originally supposed to end with J.D. blowing up the school and then everyone would have prom in heaven while drinking blue punch. Apparently, the studio rejected this ending because they thought it was too grim (Arnold, 2020)

The initial script featured more violence. When Waters finished his first draft of Heathers (which was the first script he'd ever written), it was 200 pages long, which would have roughly amounted to a three-hour film. The body count was higher, too; not even the editor of the school newspaper survived. Waters admits that the first draft of the script shows how Veronica was originally more twisted than she is today. The reasoning for the slight change of character is because Winona Ryder, who played Veronica, delivered something slightly different in the auditions by adding “warmth and empathy” to the character (Cormier, 2015).

Westerberg High was named after The Replacements' singer-songwriter Paul Westerberg. At one point in the film, Christian Slater's character J.D. says “color me impressed,” which references a song by The Replacements (Cormier, 2015).

J.D. tells Veronica that the “ich lüge” bullets he'll use to scare the school jocks will do just that - scare them - when, in fact, they're intended to kill them. ‘Ich luge’ is german for ‘I'm Lying’ (Cormier, 2015).

The movie of Heathers was becoming a TV series to premiere in March 2018. However, the series was shut down due to the event which took place at Parkland, Florida, which became a “challenging subject” because of the shooting and using gun violence in the series (Cormier, 2015).

[scarlet--holmes]

For the Aph ambassador, what kind of fairytales and folktales do Ukraine have? And what are some of the most beautiful poems there?

Thank you for the question! Ukrainian folktales are indeed interesting. They can tell a lot about life of Ukrainian people in different periods of time and traits that were appreciated or criticized by them. 

One folktale that I clearly remember from my childhood is Лисиця та Журавель (The Fox and The Crane). The story begins when the Fox invited the Crane to have dinner with her. Since they are different types of animals, they use differnet types of dishes. The Fox thought it would be entertaining to make fun of the Crane and give him the dishes that she used (they were flat and uncomfortable for him to eat from). The Crane was very upset and disappointed, so he decided to pul the same prank on the Fox as a revenge. She didn’t see that coming! The Fox was really angry and ended her  friendship with the Crane immediately. The moral of the story is that one should never make fun of problems that other people have (otherwise one will end up lonely). You can read a translation of this story here (it is more detailed there). 

(Source: x )

Another common Ukrainian tale is Рукавичка (The Mitten). Long story short: an old hunter lost his mitten. A Mouse found it and decided to live there. A bunch of other animals joined her (such as a Frog, a Hare, a Fox, a Wolf and a Boar). When the Bear got into the mittem it ripped, so the animals had no place to live in. There is a Russian saying “Бесплатный сыр бывает только в мышеловке” (There is always free cheese in a mousetrap/There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch) which explains the whole point of the story. Here is the best translation of the folktale so far. It is quite different from the one in the post, but the main point of the story is pretty much the same. Thanks @darkumbreon9 for finding this version!  

(Source: x )

One of the most popular folktales is Колобок (The Little Round Bun). Once upon a time an old couple had nothing to eat. They decided to bake a bun. However the Bun was alive. It escaped and met various animals on his way, all of which threatened to eat him. But no one actually ate him, because he sang a lovely song and ran away. The last animal he met was a Fox. She was sly enough to fool him (by telling that she was deat and couldn’t hear the song, so she askes him to sit on the top of her nose). At the end of the story she ate the poor Bun. The story teahces us that we should not be trust creepy people as the Little Bun did. You can read the translation here . 

(Source: x )

There are also a lot of other interesting Ukrainian folktales, such as: Коза Дереза (Nibbly-Quibbly the Goat), Лисичка-сестричка та Вовчик-братик (Sister Fox and Brother Wolf), Царівна Жаба (The Frog Princess) Івасик-Телесик (Ivasyk-Telesyk) and many others. We share a lot of folktales with people from Russia and Belarus, because of our Slavic origin. 

And now fairytales! Some of the authors, that wrote fairytales are Леся Українка (Lesya Ukrainka),  Іван Франко (Ivan Franko), Борис Грінченко (Borys Hrinchenko) and a lot of others. They also made translations of foreign ones. Fairytales written by French, German, Brittish, Italian and Russian authors are also well-known here in Ukraine. 

It would be a shame to talk about fairytales and not to mention байки (fables). Their task is to criticize bad behaviour in order to teach people some important lessons. Григорій Сковорода (Hryhoriy Skovoroda) changed the way fables are treated in Ukrainian literature. One of the most significant fables written by him is Бджола та Шершень (The Bee and the Hornet). The Hornet told the Bee that it was stupid because it was still working, even though that work was dangerous for the bees and they had no profit at all. And the Bee said that it enjoyed the work and that is the only thing that matters. As a moral of the fable I want to cite a famous Chinese philosopher Confucius: 

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”.

One should enjoy their job and do not listen to other people that judge them because of that. 

That is all for today’s post! I will talk about poetry in a different post next time, because I didn’t want to make this post too long. I hope the information was helpful and the tales interesting! 

#aph ambassador #hetaliafandomhub #aph ukraine #aph #hetalia #ambassador nastiy #ukrainian culture #ukrainian fairytales #ukrainian fables #sweetpeachydreams

[iwantedtowriteyouthis]

It's been 10 days since my 10 day retreat. (Edit: actually, 20 now but I didn't get to paint this draft until now!) I haven't yet been able to draft up my thoughts for this blog, but I will. And life, in the meanwhile, carries on.

I spent my first days out with with Mohit, a local Puneite who, almost as soon as the Noble Silence ended, invited me to stay with him and his family in a suburb of the city. He wanted to tour me around the important sites, but admitted that he hasn't yet been himself. We would have to hire a tour guide. Not a problem, I said lead the way!

We started by going his place, for a home cooked meal, to have a tour and look at his family mementos and childhood drawings. I got very excited about the cutlery holder which I imagine is fairly standard in Indian homes, but which represented to me the richness of the treat I was getting to experience. They don't have these in restaurants or hostels, where I chat mainly with foreigners, or on occasion traveling Indians. Home life - the settled-in and staying-put life in another country - It's not normally accessible! I was stoked to look around the kitchen and fridge.

Mohit brought me to the local shrines and temples, snapping selfies and sharing his life stories. We drank sweet lime juice from the street vendor he visited in his school years, a vigorous man caught in time, plying the same crowd on the same spot; his mechanical press, cracked cart, and faded umbrella other relics from those days long past.

We visited his old school, well-regarded for fostering leadership qualities in its well-rounded, only male students. It reminded me of my own high school, though dustier, on larger grounds, and with 50 students crowded into each classroom. Unfortunately, we arrived too far ahead of the final bell, and left before I could investigate an empty classroom and interview an Indian teacher.

Still driving around in search of 'unmissable' experiences, we went to the German Cafe near the Osho compound, which was the site of a terrorist attack a few years back. In fact, we later discovered, this day was precisely the 10-year anniversary of the event. A small vigil was up on the sidewalk, but it was business-as-usual inside.

I'd been craving a massage after the long painful sits in Vipassana (yes, craving - I know enough to name it, but I indulged myself anyways). They were offering them next door at quite a low rate, and the quality was consistent. But good enough! We returned home for a simple meal, mediated, then went to watch a movie at the cinema, deciding that Ford vs Ferrari was the most appropriate option available.

I should fast-forward a little. The next day, after extended farewells, I ran some errands in Pune (experiencing and overcoming the standard litany of logistical challenges), walked past the Osho compound itself with its red-robed foreign acolytes and forbidding perimeter walls, and took my overnight bus straight to Palolem beach, heading directly to Kashish Yoga on arrival to reunite with my wife after two weeks apart!

Lindsay and I spent a weekend together at Patnem beach, walking-distance south of its more popular neighbor. Great eating, swimming, shopping and catching up. I joined her for two days at her Yoga teacher training all-inclusive (reading her copy of Little Fires poolside while she was busy in classes), then one night beachfront (where we returned a few days later - the second weekend), then left for two nights at the Tribe eco-resort a few km north of town.

Here we'll slow down again, because Tribe really captured my interest during my too-short stay. It's a fledgling project, just beginning to become a sustainable business. But they've been in the business of sustainability for a few years now, organizing beach cleans and dog spaying/neutering, creating a wildlife sanctuary and reintroducing biodiversity into an ex-cashew plantation. The main dorm is an open-air raised wooden platform beneath a thatched roof, with impressively effective bug nets cocooning the single mattresses. Private living spaces are simply shacks of varying sizes spread throughout the property, with reclaimed fabric curtains and short ladders.

There's a feeling of immersion, being well removed from the beaten path by distance and dirt roads, as well as a different mentality - not to *take* enjoyment from the natural wonders of the Goan landscape, but to *give* it the richness back after decades of exploitation.

There's also community, with volunteers coming to stay for months at a time to build, restore, and support. One couple from Quebec offered yoga and a Cacao ceremony during my short stay. Everyone shares what they have. It felt good to offer my Ambigrams and I Ching readings to the folks, and then, the morning I left, a formal Acro lesson - my first ever!

This Acro class deserves an explanation. Lindsay had volunteered me to teach her classmates some moves, and it was important to me to do it right. These are full-fledged 500-hour teachers, almost, after all! I planned a flow that would be accessible to beginners, but included some challenges for any who could master the basics. I strategized how to introduce concepts in a sequence that was logical and safe... And then I fretted some more! Wouldn't it make sense to practice teaching the class? I went round after breakfast on Saturday morning to advertise my offering... The time came, and so did the people! They listened, they tried the things. They gave each other insightful feedback and good spotting. Nobody got hurt and folks seemed to be having fun. I'd say it went pretty well!

Later that afternoon, the embodiment professionals were a touch more prudent, conscious of their comfort boundaries, learning lots and having fun, but feeling more secure with me basing or spotting and guiding through the trickier moves. Also a good class, just a bit more 'me' centered. This does wonders for my ego.

One more low-key weekend at the beach, with plenty of sun and sand and sea, tasty treats and resort-like treatment at our small hostel, then a strange jilted week ahead. I thought I might catch Carnivale in one of the four major cities it's in by overnighting in Margao on Monday. Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that the parade had passed through prior to my arrival, and had already moved north. So instead today I am on the train to Hampi, the not-so ancient capital of the Vijayanagar Empire, now an extensive city of ruins. They say one can spend months there fully taking in the majesty. I'll be racing through in a day and a half. Luckily the travel, though long, is relaxed. Soon we'll say long to the South of India and the heavy heat. We've begun to book our stays in the mountains... So stay tuned for the next adventures!

Graham

P.S. The man below me on the train to Hampi brought an electric kettle for the journey!

[review-that-film]

Wonder Woman Review - Spoilers

I have always loved films, being whisked away on great adventures, emotional romances, stomach hurting comedies and all those in between. Because of this love I have decided to start writing reviews for those films that, in my opinion are must sees! So what better than to start with one of my favourites of the summer, and definitely my favourite super-hero film to date.

To sum up Wonder Woman simply: It was Awesome! From the brilliant character developments to the empowering soundtrack this film has re-defined superhero films. It is a great film for all the family to enjoy. There is something for everyone, from brilliant fight scenes, emotional character interactions and lots of comedic moments. Patty Jenkins’ interpretation of our fearless heroine is a turning point in this genre of films and I cannot wait for the next instalment with her at the helm. Please be aware of spoilers ahead. 

When we are first introduced to Diana, Princess of Themyscira, we can immediately tell that she is a strong woman. I liked that the storyline is her remembering what happened after seeing the original photo of her and the team in World War 1. Having the photo sent by Bruce Wayne was a nice touch, which keeps this film within the DC Universe, without it seeming forced. This allowed us to fully concentrate on Diana and her story. One of the things that makes this so great as a superhero universe film, is that it can stand alone. You don’t need to have watched any of the other films in this series to enjoy it.

Themyscira was a beautiful set and you could really feel the serenity that came with the island but also the strength of the people through the architecture, fortress-like and practical.

This film is not only made up of battle scenes, there are some very funny moments, usually between Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. I particularly found their conversation on the boat, while journeying to London, great, considering a lot of it was ad-lib, made it all the better. Lucy Davis was brilliant and I always looked forward to what she might say next. The whole sequence when Diana is in the clothes shop is hilarious and when she is given glasses as a way to conceal her identity was a nice reference to the iconic way for a superhero to attempt to do the same – which always, for some reason, works. The waving off of this idea was great as so many of us do laugh at the fact that no one seems to be able to tell a superhero’s identity because of them.

The alley fight scene was a great way of introducing Steve to just how great a warrior Diana is. It showed us a lot about Steve’s character as he was initially putting himself in between Diana and the danger showing that even if he is a bit arrogant he is a good guy. When he realised she could handle herself, his role changed to helping her where he could, quickly adjusting our view in a lovely way as his character developed in a short space of time.

It was very powerful and brought home the severity of war to both Diana and the audience when the team embarks upon their mission. I believe scenes like these are always needed in war films since, as the audience, it can sometimes be very easy to forget, as we are watching a fantasy film, that this war did actually happen and was a great tragedy.

Without a doubt, my favourite scene was no-man’s land. Usually when a female character lets down her hair, in any role, it is used as a way to sexualise the character, but not here. What we get to see, thanks to some great camerawork and directing, is the determination and fearlessness that our hero has for what she believes to be right. As a huge Lord of the Rings fan my mind did go to Eowyn in this sequence with the line “I am no man” ringing in my head. Not only did it show us how powerful Diana actually is but allowed us to see the sort of characters Steve, Chief, Charlie and Sameer actually are. For a group of people who have known her for such a short time, they realise that Diana can handle herself and she doesn’t need to be saved and this allows them to do what they know they can do best. The fighting sequence when Steve uses Themyscrian battle tactics was a nice touch and showed us that he is the sort of character that would take notice of other cultures and use this to help him.

Now, I have to talk about “That Scene”. From the beginning, we all had the feeling that poor Steve would not last the film, what with Diana throwing away Bruce’s note to immediately look at the photo, the way they zoomed in on Diana and Steve’s faces and how Steve told her under the influence of the Lasso of Truth that they were all probably going to die. However, none of these hints or niggles in the back of the mind could prepare us for the emotional goodbye that would ensue. I thought it was very powerful that when we first see the scene where Steve says goodbye, we don’t hear what he is saying, just as Diana doesn’t. This built the tension and let us feel as Diana would have, giving us even more empathy for her character, as when he dies she doesn’t know what his last words were to her. I liked the small touches that Pine put into his acting. In particular, when he is running away from Diana, she shouts his name and he momentarily pauses but he doesn’t look back and keeps running. This shows us how brave and smart he is. He knows that if he were to turn back and see her one last time, he wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done to save everyone. I’m sure some people don’t understand why it had to be Steve and not one of the others, and if I’m being honest I initially thought this too. But, having thought it through, it had to be Steve who made this sacrifice because of the character that we have got to know over the course of this film. Steve, under all his bravado, is the self-sacrificing type and this sacrifice was one of the pivotal points in Diana’s characters. Gal’s acting when she saw the plane explode was excellent, you could feel all the despair, anger and just pure anguish that Diana was going through, all this was done without any dialogue. It was also very powerful that at the time Diana was at her lowest, when considering listening to Ares and killing Dr Maru, this was the point when we heard what Steve’s final words were. “I can save today. You can save the world” for quite a simple line, it held so much power and emotion. To me, this line encapsulated what Wonder Woman stands for, there will always be people that can save the day, but Diana is the one that will always be able to save the world.

One of the most important character developments in this film for Diana happens after she kills German, thinking him to be Ares, and sees that nothing has changed. She has always had so much faith in her quest and the loss of this faith allows her to grow more as a character. She is prepared to stop fighting all together for what she had believed in and it is only Steve that is able to give her a reason to keep going. I thought it was very fitting that it was him who would bring back her faith as he is the one who has been helping her to understand the world of men, it is almost as though it is his last lesson for her, meaning that she now understands everything she needs to know to save mankind.

I think my favourite quote in the film by Steve has to be “If you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing, or you can do something”. To me it sums up this film, all those in our team didn’t have to follow Diana but they decided that they could do something to help others by following her and so they did it, in whatever way they could. It is also so important because of the time when it is spoken by Steve. Diana is asking him why he would want to return to the war and I think this is what really cements in her mind that she is doing the right thing in helping a group of people she has never met, even though it means she has to leave her life in the Themyscria behind.

After Ares was defeated, it was very powerful to see the ‘scary’ soldiers take off their gas masks and reveal that they were only young men. This reminded us that the majority of those fighting in World War One, on both sides, were just young men following orders. I feel that this can sometimes be forgotten in films set in this time.

I particularly liked that the big villain of the film, Ares, was not the person that we all thought it would be. In so many films, the villain is stereotypical and can be seen from a mile away. Having him on the side of the ‘good guys’ was a brilliant idea as not only did we not expect it but it showed us that not everyone who appears good and just turns out to be.

On first hearing the collaboration between Sia and Labyrinth “To Be Human” I thought it was a good song with a lovely melody but nothing great as I was not sure how it tied in with a super hero film. However, after seeing the film, the lyrics were perfect and summed up the message of this film. I absolutely loved the soundtrack to this film. It was empowering and made me feel as though I could go off and save the world myself. To me, this is the feeling that the viewer should have when watching a superhero film. It portrayed the mood of the film without being too aggressive, which is the message that was being put across. Diana is strong and powerful but never aggressive.

To sum up, I thought this film was a brilliant portrayal of a female super hero and I would recommend to anyone, even if you’re not a fan of superhero films, to go and see it. Without a doubt it is a game changer for the genre of superheroes and I cannot wait for the effect on films to come. 

Thank you very much for reading this. I’ll end my first review with the closing dialogue of Wonder Woman, spoken by Diana, a great monologue to finish the film and get us excited for what’s to come. “I used to want to save the world. To end war and bring peace to mankind. But then, I glimpsed the darkness that lives within their light. I learned that inside every one of them, there will always be both. The choice each must make for themselves – something no hero will ever defeat. I’ve touched the darkness that lives in between the light. Seen the worst of this world, and the best. Seen the terrible things men do to each other in the name of hatred, and the lengths they’ll go to for love. Now I know. Only love can save this world. So I stay. I fight, and I give for the world I know can be. This is my mission, now. For ever.”

#wonder woman #film review #gal gadot #chris pine #patty jenkins #dc

[englishforward-blog]

10 Most Used Words in English

I was wondering what the 10 most common words used in everyday English language are, both written and spoken and if learned, whether it would make the process of learning English simpler.

But it’s not as simple as it seems, so I thought I’d switch the whole thing around and start with how many words there are in the English language, and then work back from there.

A good question to ask here would be “can we actually count how many words there are in the English language? “

What actually determines whether something is an actual word or not, and what if the word has two meanings, would it be counted as two words, and if a word is hyphenated, is that another word? Is duck one word, or two (a noun meaning ‘a kind of bird’, and a verb meaning ‘to crouch down’)? If we count it as two, then do we also count inflections as words e.g. ducks = plural noun, ducks = present tense of the verb). Is duck-dive a word, or just two other words joined together? Is duck dive really two words, since it might also be written as duck-dive or even duckdive?

Can we also count the many different dialects of English in different parts of the world that aren’t recorded in the Oxford English dictionary as part of the English language? What about common words we use every day in English from other languages?

When you talk about food in English, you’re almost guaranteed to use French words. Here are some common words

à la carte: when you want to order individual dishes which are not part of a pre-established sequence of courses.

Menu

Omelette

Apéritif

Café

Restaurant

picnic

Bon appétit

Hors d’oeuvre

Vinaigrette

Some German words we use are

Delikatessen (proper name for a deli)

Poltergeist (ghost)

Dachshund (breed of dog)

Bagel (a type of food)

We use many Japanese words in everyday English conversation too

Typhoon

Tsunami.

Karaoke

Emoji

Futon

For an official opinion let us refer to the Oxford English dictionary which records 171,476 words that are used today, and 47,156 words which are obsolete. There are also about another 9,500 arbitrary words.

That’s almost a quarter of a million distinct English words.

If we take into account all the sub-dialects and colloquialisms, the total will probably get closer to over half a million English words.

So with such a formidable list of possible words to learn in English where do we begin, and how do you tackle learning the English language without getting totally demoralized and giving up before you start.

How many words would you need to know to be able to listen in to and participate in a basic conversation? 300 words? 500? Definitely not a quarter of a million.

Now it seems more doable, doesn’t it?

Learning English does not need to be complicated, in fact, there are ways to simplify the process.

As a start, the most relevant question to ask yourself will be “What will you spend your time doing with this language?”

The ideal system for learning English is based on three elements in this order…

1. Prioritize what to start with

This refers to the reason you want to learn English. A simple truth is the first thing you need to do — decide what to learn, based on how much you’re going to use the language, listing and prioritizing what is important to you as an outcome.

2. Decide what your Interest is

This is a filter but you need to put in place that will help you decide on how to progress with your learning, with lessons you take focusing only on things that are of interest to you or things that you will likely be using in the future with regards to the English language.

If you’re not focusing on areas of interest for yourself, you are probably going to find that the monotony associated with repetitive learning soon creeps in and you’ll be disillusioned and unmotivated to progress when you get bored.

If you don’t have any interest in medicine, how long will you stick to an English course that focuses purely on medicine and medical information?

In other words, you can have the best process in the world but it means nothing if you don’t stick to it.

3. Figure out and decide which Process you will use to learn

We can waste so much time trying to learn something instead of spending some time before starting out trying to figure out what the most efficient system is for our method of learning and retention. Once you figure this out you will save you hours and hours of frustration and will progress at a far quicker pace.

We’ve homeschooled both our children for the last seven years. Initially, when we started we followed a very strict curriculum based on a K-12 outcome, and we found that both the teachers (us ), and the students ( our kids ) hated the learning process and each day was a chore. It was not as we signed up for! If we had continued on that path we would not have lasted a single year.

So what changed?

We found a topic that was of interest to them and focussed their learning around that topic. We live next to and love the ocean, kitesurfing, and surfing, and when we used this as the focal point we suddenly found that education was a joy.

They learned about weather patterns, geography, the oceans, cultures, wind and waves and in the process improved their reading and writing, maths and science as well as their research skills.

After everything we’ve discussed, this all this boils down to vocabulary and in a word: words.

Borrowing from the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule, where would you get the best value for your time exchange?

As a student of English the following words would deliver the greatest value to you as a factor of time spent vs progress in English. I’d like to share two lists of English word with you, as commonly spoken words are somewhat different to commonly written words

The 100 Most Common Written Words in English

the

of

and

a

to

in

is

you

that

it

he

was

for

on

are

as

with

his

they

I

at

be

this

have

from

or

one

had

by

word

but

not

what

all

were

we

when

your

can

said

there

use

an

each

which

she

do

how

their

if

will

up

other

about

out

many

then

them

these

so

some

her

would

make

like

him

into

time

has

look

two

more

write

go

see

number

no

way

could

people

my

than

first

water

been

call

who

oil

its

now

find

long

down

day

did

get

come

made

may

part

If you learned the first 25 of the above words you’d be able to recognise about 1/3 of all printed material in English. Learn the whole 100 on the list and you’ll recognise 1/2 of all written material.

Now you’re driving down the road reading billboards, recognizing newspaper headlines… and if you get to know the first 300 most commonly written words in English and you’ll recognise about 65% percent of all written material in English.

To improve your conversation the following list shows the most commonly spoken English words

The 100 Most Common Spoken Words in English

a, an

after

again

all

almost

also

always

and

because

before

big

but

(I) can

(I) come

either/or

(I) find

first

for

friend

from

(I) go

good

goodbye

happy

(I) have

he

hello

here

how

I

(I) am

if

in

(I) know

last

(I) like

little

(I) love

(I) make

many

one

more

most

much

my

new

no

not

now

of

often

on

one

only

or

other

our

out

over

people

place

please

same

(I) see

she

so

some

sometimes

still

such

(I) tell

thank you

that

the

their

them

then

there is

they

thing

(I) think

this

time

to

under

up

us

(I) use

very

we

what

when

where

which

who

why

with

yes

You

Your

I ask you a simple question: how long would it take you to learn the 10 most used words in English?

If you have an answer to that question, the next step is a simple one…with the right motivation how long would it take you to learn and memorize both these lists above? Just 200 words…1 week? 1 month? 1year? And how would this fast track your English skills? How much closer would you be to your English goals?

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