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Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Many U.S. schools finished their school years this week, releasing their young back into the wild, to feed off what information they might find there.  If any of those young happened to check the Internet news, they may have found confusing guidance.

MSN.com this week features an article about today's prom-goers and their increasingly Hollywood tastes.    A featured website offers custom-made dresses starting at $489;  teenage designers can submit their own ideas online in the form of jpgs, generally stills taken from Oscar nights, designer ads, and music videos. 

One 17-year old girl commissioned to the website her dream dress, taken from a Gwen Stefani video.  The dress cost her parents $600, but why not, it was her senior prom.

“Once I put it on, I thought it just looked great on me,” David said. Her father might have objected to the price tag at first, but she says, “He said I looked beautiful. I know he liked it.”

And here is the moral of story #1:  if you cry enough tears, your financially-strapped loved ones are bound to find a way to give you what you want, if they really really love you.  (Where there's a squall, there's a way. ) Because, ladies, in the end, all that really matters is that men find you beautiful. 

Personally, I like this story better, from CNN:

A pregnant student who was banned from graduation at her Roman Catholic high school announced her own name and walked across the stage anyway at the close of the program.

...

Cosby was told in March that she could no longer attend school because of safety concerns, and her name was not listed in the graduation program.

An interesting side note:

The father of Cosby's child, also a senior at the school, was allowed to participate in graduation.

The moral of story #2: if you're going to get pregnant in high school, and graduate anyway in spite of the overwhelming odds, do your best to ensure that you're the male half of the couple.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

I've started tutoring ESL students a few nights a week after work, in order to make rent-paying time a little less stressful. I began with my first student this past Friday. His English is excellent, but we are working mostly on pronunciation.

Teaching English was rewarding in Japan, because as my students and I slowly built a communication bridge, we got to know each other, gradually gaining the language to reveal to each other our personal quirks and stories. It was fascinating to see what was divulged over time as they gained the language to tell me what was going on in their heads, things I never would have unravelled from my own cursory glances through Japanese For Busy People.

Teaching English in America is differently rewarding, in a way I had anticipated, and was looking forward to. People can actually use what they learn right away, and use it to make their lives better and easier! It's fantastic!

Friday, I drilled my student on "r"'s and "l"'s, one of his problem areas. Yesterday, his second class, he told me how his practices were going.

"I am a smoker," he told me, holding up for my inspection a pack of Marlboro Lights. He smiled widely, and seemed unusually excited about the pack. "I always go to the store and ask for Marlboro Lights. It is very difficult to say, 'Malroo- Mar- Marlboro Lights' and they always hand me a pack of Reds. I practiced pronunciation all weekend, and today I went to the store, and it was the first time they did not hand me Reds, but Lights!"