Tuesday, June 12, 2007

'06 - '07 Highlight: Drama

This year in drama was a personal highlight for me, since James and I took our first stab at playwriting. What did we come up with?

"The Knight in Shining Buttons" starring Matthew Geary . . .

An arrogant young knight buys a beautiful vest with golden buttons. Little does he know, the vest is enchanted. Every time he is mean or proud, he loses a button. The knight must learn some valuable lessons before all of his buttons are gone!

The 8th graders did a fabulous job. In addition to the play, we added an 8th grade drama class this year. This was a fun class to teach, and lays the foundation for 9th thru 12th grade electives. This summer, I'm getting ready for three new drama electives: Theater Movement, Acting II: Shakespeare, and Worship Drama. In the meantime, James is earning money for improvements to our auditorium by starring on a television program. He's the host for several episodes of "Fun with English," a program designed to teach people English.

And of course, we had the spring play. The cast included some veteran actors, as well as some who had never been in a play before. They were brilliant. So, all in all, it's been a great year for drama.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

movie picks

This week, we enjoyed a rare treat--a trip to the movie theater. The closest movie theater is a 2-hr drive, and our favorite one to go to is in the Solo Grand Mall. We've seen three movies there: "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "Narnia," and, most recently "Pirates of the Caribbean 3." Pirates was a huge disappointment, for unnecessary brutality and difficult-to-follow plot. In fact, it's getting more and more rare that I watch a movie that I really enjoy. Our other movie options are a rental place in town, where we can get many of the new releases, or borrowing from friends--although sometimes this involves very sketchy, pirated versions. We were once at a friend's house watching Batman, when suddenly the movie skipped ahead 20 minutes, and Batman started speaking Russian.

Still, I sometimes come across movies I would recommend. Here are mine from this year (at least, I saw them for the first time this year. I don't keep up with the box office, so I'm not sure of their actual releases):

1. "Stranger than Fiction" with Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, and Dustin Hoffman. This story appealed to the writer in me, and my own strange journey with my characters.

2. "Finding Neverland" with Johnny Depp as author J.M. Barrie. Considering I spent several years of my childhood waiting for Peter Pan to show up at my window. . . . That fairy bit gets me weeping every time.

3. "SIMONE" Very funny, and an interesting commentary on our society's worship of superstars.

4. "Keeping Mum" with Rowan Atkinson. A bit more questionble in content, but also very funny.

Honorable Mention: "Ella Enchanted" not brilliant, but got me dancin'!

I'm interested to hear your picks.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Musim Panas

Greetings from Mona, a.k.a. buncis manis,

This morning, I grabbed a stack of 200 flash cards and shoved them against my forehead, hoping that a slot would magically open and accept the download. When the attempt was unsuccessful, I made a cup of coffee and attacked the stack the old-fashioned way, feeling the poignant crackle of my wrist popping with each new word. In linguistic school, I was taught that this is the worst way to learn a language. Unfortunately, I happen to be a tactile learner with mild social anxiety. So three years in, James (an outgoing, auditory learner), is yacking away with everyone he sees and I'm left staring blankly, mouth agape.

Not long ago, I thought I would never achieve fluency in a second language. But I've made it my summer project to become conversationally fluent, and am approching it systematically. So all over our house are stacks of little blue cards, and when I go out, I carry a pen and my little notebook with the picture of Jesus on the cover.

Two nights ago, I met the grandmother of some of my students. When she and her husband retired 8 years ago, they moved to Turkey. She had never learned a language before, but she began to conquer Turkish, one of the more difficult languages in the world. Now she's handling it just fine. She said that they have a saying in Turkish which means "Never give up." Well, we have a saying in Indonesian "sedikit, sedikit," which means "little by little." One little blue card at a time.