What To Write?

The month of April has arrived . . . and I’m experiencing mild writer’s block at this moment. I know that much has happened this past week, but my mind is being slow today, wanting to make use of the sunny day rather than writing. Already, the third week of my second teaching practice has come & gone, with me teaching history lessons on the Spanish Civil War, the Abyssinian War, the first & second Anschluss attempts between Germany & Austria, and an economic lesson on production & productivity. I’ve become accustomed to teaching with the latest version of Microsoft PowerPoint, making it easier for students to copy notes, and letting me keep an eye out for troublemakers. According to my associates, my teaching has improved and I’m not in any hot water.

Since I don’t have time to prepare lunch in the early hours of the morning, I rely on Villa Maria’s canteen services & I have to admit, they do make good honey chicken wraps and club sandwiches. As well, the faculty put on a special Morning Tea, with savouries & treats, because a teacher was turning 30.

I'm aware that I haven't posted any pictures of Villa Maria but those will be forthcoming - I've just been paying more attention to lesson planning & preparation.

As always, I’ve been paying attention to world news & I was surprised to hear that the transit service in my hometown of Ottawa recently purchased several double-decker buses. Apparently, they can carry more passengers than the long articulated buses (I prefer calling them accordion busses). It’s a step in the right direction after the dreaded 53-day strike; all the city needs to do now is tinker with the proposed light rail plan before commencing expansion.

Parts of London, England are flaming because of people protesting the G20 Summit. It’s tough to agree with the voices of protesters when some of them think the best way to deal with the recession is vandalism. However, I agree that it’s unfair for the working class to suffer while fat bankers pocket huge bonus payments, like the AIG execs. Maybe it’s time we abandon the unfair spoils of capitalism & switch over to socialism? If the G20 leaders don’t want to be bothered by protesters, then maybe they should conduct their meetings via cyberspace. It’s the 21^st century: why are world leaders meeting face to face when it can be done through the internet with webcams?

Following in the footsteps of the current recession, my old laptop has crashed & won't start up again. There were times in the past where I could get around the Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) but I think this is truly the end. It's really not surprising since it was operating on Windows 2000 Pro! When I get a new laptop, it'll run either Windows XP Pro SP3 or the new Windows 7 that's coming out in the near future. I'm skipping Windows Vista.

After the Easter Break, I’ll be starting a new topic with my Year 9 Social Studies class: Life In Rwanda. It’s good that I mentioned it because April 7^th is the day of remembrance for the 1994 Genocide. Over a period of 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were slaughtered by militant Hutus with machetes while the world sat around & did nothing. World governments keep voicing the phrase, ‘Never Again,’ but have continually failed to stop genocides. The Armenian Genocide, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Rwanda, & now Darfur. If it were up to me, I would send covert special forces to pay unannounced visits to the leaders of tyrant nations & have them removed. So far, humanity is the only race capable of hating its own kind.

Bad things aside, many trees here in Middle Earth have been changing their colours, a sign of autumn & the eventual arrival of winter. It will be odd when I return to Canada because I’ll be leaving in winter & arriving in summer. For those of you in North America, yes, it is possible for snow to fall in July – just fly down to the southern hemisphere!