I'm teaching a new course this period. It's a CLIL course together with Biology. I thought it starts next week, but no! It starts tomorrow. Oops? Lucky me, lesson one is sort of easy to pull out of thin air.

Listen, flist. I want to make my students read some sci-fi. Hit me with recommendations of good/classic science fiction short stories in English that are available for free online. I've got The Veldt by Ray Bradbury first on my list, but what else? I'd like to make them read Gibson (for no other reason that I like Gibson, to be honest, but I don't have to tell them that) but availability is an issue. 

January Journal questions: 


 

Oh, this one is easy. I was a telemarketer for the first year after I moved to Turku and out of my parents' house. I hadn't gotten into University on my first try (entry into Finnish universities is exclusively by entrance exam), but I didn't want to spend a year at home doing nothing. I wanted to Be an Adult and Live My Own Life. Up until then, my only job had been working during harvest with my parents. Working the harvest includes 12-hour days of physical labour in hot barns while being stung by various insects and itching from the dust and hay. It's grueling, unpredictable, stressful and uncomfortable. I don't like physical labour at all. But I would make it my freaking career at the drop of a hat, rather than ever have to work in telemarketing ever again.  
 

Somewhere between 9 am and noon. It's light outside, and the day is still full of potential. It's when I'm at my smartest, I find. 

 

Metsän äiti (Mother of the Forest) by Anne Leinonen. It's a liminal fantasy novel, and I love it to pieces. When/if translated to English at some point, I urge everyone to pick it up. 

The Captive Prince by C.S Pacat. It's, uhm. It's nice. 

I didn't have a prompt for today, and today's Snowflake challenge didn't tickle my fancy, so I'll just write a regular old little entry. The point is to try and write every day, right? So I'm keeping with the spirit of January journal.

Today was the first day of teaching after Christmas holidays, and all in all it went a lot better than I expected it would. The holiday had clearly been good, since the kids were focused rather than wrung out and restless. I, on the other hand, really could have done with a nap. I must have been nervous about getting back to work on some level because I started the day with only a couple of hours of sleep under my belt. ASMR, Potterless, boring newscast, guided meditation: nothing helped. I'm not at all the insomniac type, so it was a weird night.

The day's highlights include:
- A class of 38 16-year-olds having no idea who Ewan McGregor is. I'd like to try and cobble together some kind of exercise using clips from Moulin Rouge and Trainspotting. It could be fun. Not sure about the educational value, though.
- My Gmail filling with notifications about all the new DW connections I've made in just a few days.
- My corner shop still selling riisipuuro, despite the holidays being technically over.
- Not having to leave the apartment at all today now that I'm home. I miss my dog, but when the weather is like this, I'm really happy he's still at my sister's for another week.

The day's lows:
- I got three extra credit essays handed in, all of which were terrible. I genuinely can't tell if this one kid is really this terrible, or if he didn't read the story and is trying to cover it up. I also have no idea how to ask him which it is without possibly killing his motivation to try and do better in the future. I mean, he voluntarily wrote an extra credit essay. Why would someone try to cheat on something like that? Right?
- The schedule for this week. Thank heaven it really is just this week.
- My Great Marvel Re-watch getting off to a bad start. I can't find Iron Man on Netflix, Viaplay or HBO. Boo.


( My thoughts on Captain America: The First Avenger )