As the subject line says, once again I try to at least update my journal. (I-it's the thought that counts, right...? ^^")


Stuff that might have changed in my life since the last time I updated, in bullet points:

- I moved back to my old home town. It was nice living somewhere else, but in the end, I missed being
near my family too much to stay away.

- I'm now the teacher of a 6th grade and pretty much all of my students are sweet, but have difficulties with social interaction, emotional control and learning. (Otherwise they wouldn't need a special needs teacher as their class teacher, of course.) Which makes school always interesting - and infinitely exhausting sometimes. Also, one of my student's family belongs to an Eastern European part of the mafiya. - Yes, really. v-v"

- I'm having a bit of a rough time right now, because my dog died fairly recently. She was twelve years old (not young, but not ancient either, for a Beagle) and it happened very quickly and unexpectedly. She was fine most of the summer and then she started breathing heavily and the vet discovered that she had cancer of the lymphatic glands (a subform of leukemia). A week later, she couldn't breathe or swallow properly anymore and we had to put her down. :(

- Other than that, though, I'm doing fairly OK: I'm enjoying the late summer - early autumn weather and my home-grown tomatoes, beans and zucchini...

- ... which kind of alludes to my interests, which have changed a bit over the last two years: I've discovered my love for gardening! (I built a tomato-house, all by myself! - Yes, I'm very proud of that. ;P) I'm still reading fanfiction (I don't think I'll ever stop that), but am not fannishly involved anymore. I miss it a bit, but to be quite honest - towards the end, especially the Arashi fandom got far too big and far too busy for me and I started feeling pressured into keeping up with news and fandom-love, which resulted in me basically leaving the fandom for good. It was a nice time, but in the end, it got too much for me, and I'm not really interested in keeping up with a big, active fandom like that anytime soon.

- I'd still like to start writing again, though! Perhaps I'll look for a challenge in the next months? I think that it would be quite a lot of fun to do one of those again. ^-^


- And, after this tl;dr: HOW ARE YOU DOING, MY LOVELY FRIENDSLIST?! I've recently seen guingel update and I've also seen aatash update (hey you two, sorry for not having answered your posts yet, I've got them open in other tabs, I promise!), but I fear that most of my friendslist has moved on to greener fields (=tumblr and stuff). For those who're still on LJ, I'd love to hear how you're doing!

Huh. Apparently being stressed out about exams is good for my posting schedule, considering it's not been a year since I did my last post. I could still do without the exam looming before me, though. T minus 27 days, folks! >.<"

A few days ago one of my students unleashed some kind of pandemonium on us, when he took offense to ...something (which was just the tip of the ice-berg, he'd been antsy and moody for more than a week) and completely exploded, attacking other students, throwing chairs, shoes, pencils, scissors, demolishing doors, bathrooms... you name it, he probably did it that day. There was a point during it all when I had to abandon trying to teach the other students and had to block the door, because he was outside and trying to throw building blocks at the other students.

And the other students? Well, obviously they were a little bit bored, with all of our energy focused on that student, so they started to literally bounce around the classroom.
And say the word "bounce" as they bounced.
And then they started bouncing in a circle.

So there I was, standing at the door, with the sound of building-blocks-mortar and enraged howls of a furious student at my back, watching my other students going "Bounce! - Bounce! - Bounce!" while bouncing around in a circle.

...Welcome to my life.



Speaking of ...well, not exactly my life? But more stuff I've been thinking about (to distract myself from my exam): I recently read this meta-discussion post on homophobia in slash fandom, which I found very interesting, especially the stuff in the comments. The post argues that at least some of us slash fans (it's geared towards hockey fandom, but I think it's easily appliable to every other fandom as well) tend to think of ourselves as gay allies, because we read slash fanfiction, which can somewhat blind us to our own privilege and occasionally homophobic assumptions.

( Thinky thoughts ahead - beware of the alligators!Collapse )

[Note: I'm currently working with children with developmental and severe learning disabilities around the age of 10.]


Scene one:

Student A comes into the class.
Me: Hey, Student A!
Student A: *raises her arms in a clear sign of wanting to be hugged*
Me: Awww *bending down and hugging A*
Student A: * hugs me around the head, smashing my face into her saliva-covered shirt*
Me: Ungf. >.<"
Student A: *starts drooling on my head in joy*

I... I kind of felt like those characters in mangas who get their heads chomped on (WITH LOVE!) by some kind of animal/monster thingie. ^^"



Scene two:

[a discussion about babies drinking milk has been going on]

Student B: How do birds feed their babies the milk?
Student C: Birds don't give milk.
Student B: *worried* B-but - they're babies! They have to have milk! They'll die otherwise!
Student C: No, they just eat worms and stuff.
Student B: They can't eat worms, they're babies!

[a short time later]:

Student B: Ms Kegom, you've got to have a lot of milk, your boobs are huge!
Me: Actually, women only produce milk when they have babies of their own, so I don't have any milk right now.
Student B: *stares at me* But you've got to have milk! What are they *points at my chest* good for, otherwise?



Scene three:

[Student D and I are carefully counting the pips on a big die together]

Student D and I together: One, two, three, four.
Me: Great! So how many dots are there?
Student D: *beaming* Five!



...Yeah, this is basically my whole life right now. ^^" How are y'all doing?

OMG YOU GUYS, I'VE FINISHED UNIVERSITY!!! I'M FREE!!! AND A CERTIFIED SPECIAL NEEDS TEACHER!!!




I got a rose at my graduation ceremony!


( Read more...Collapse )

I'm halfway through my exams at this point (finished the written exams, have the oral exams ahead of me, should be finished in time for Christmas, if everything goes well), but because fate (...or whatever) apparently decided that I didn't have enough to do, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer recently.
Since both she and my grandfather now need a certain amount of care, I'm going to be around even less than I was before. (...Y-yeah, I'm not sure if it's possible, but I at least had theoretical access to internet before, which I don't have at their house.) :((((


So... kind of a fair warning? I know that some people don't like having people on their friendslist who don't post at least once every (or every other) month and comment semi-regularly, and even though I want to, I can't provide that at the moment, so if you'd rather de-friend me, feel free to do so. I won't feel slighted or offended or anything, I promise!





...Ugh, what a downer post - and that on Arashi's birthday! >.<" To end on a cheerful note, let me present you one of my favourite Arashi screencaps - enhanced with sparkles, because Arashi sparkles make everything better!

The first of my final exams (a five hour long written exam about the didactics of German language) is in two days time and I'm not-so-quietly going crazy with fear and nerves. And thus I thought: Yes, this is the right time to make a post about fic writing! ^^"


So, service announcement: I'm participating in the H/C Bingo!


See, I don't exactly have time to write fic (though, as Marion Zimmer Bradley once noted, NO ONE has time to write, you just grab what time you can get, even if it means writing on top of the washing machine while doing laundry), but writing has always calmed my nerves and I've been WANTING to write something for months now.

Only problem? Absolutely NO ideas. My muses have apparently taken a long vacation, or something.

So I thought that this H/C Bingo (hc_bingo - the idea for it has been taken from the "Kink Bingo" community) would be perfect, because while it's a challenge, there's no exchange, so it doesn't matter at all if I fail, and it gives me all those nice little prompts that I can write for! Oh, and it's a minimum of 500 words per fic, which is actually something I can write in a day or two! ^-^

That said... well, I got my card and...


( See for yourself under the cutCollapse )

So, I figured I maybe should start posting something when I'm sort-of absent from from the internet for some time, since you guys can't exactly look into my head. ^^" (Or, if you can, I'd rather not know... I think.)



Life's been a bit sad these last days, since we had to put one of our cats down last week. I know, logically, that it was the right decision, that he was old and sick and in pain and that it wasn't going to get any better, but it still hurt a lot to make that decision. It's part of our duty (I've been reading Terry Pratchett's book "The Wee Free Men" again, and the concept of "duty" in that book, this idea of doing something because not doing it is not an option - or a bad option, at least - really stuck with me in the last weeks), but that doesn't make it any easier and I'm still sad about it all.


Mostly because of this, I haven't really had much energy to do anything in the last week. Instead, I watched some Arashi shows (not many, though, because... I don't know whether I'm the only one to feel like this, but the newer prime-time shows are just a bit too much - too loud, too bright, too many guests - for me... I miss AnS), Criminal Minds episodes (since there's nothing for being depressed than even more depressing TV, apparently), some old Disney classics (including "Almost Angels", a movie from 1962 about the Vienna Boys Choir, which is in English but with all the songs sung in German and most of the actors having a German accent - it's kind of weird, but cute in a "The Sound of Music" way) and indulged myself with P.G. Wodehouse's "Mike", which is awesome because

a.) it's P.G. Wodehouse
b.) it's a boarding school novel (...I like that genre, OK?)
c.) it's about a boy from a family of cricket fanatics, going into a cricket fanatic school, and cricket makes everything better. (Seriously, you gotta love a game that is played in all-white clothing on muddy fields and has breaks for lunch and tea-time!)


(If you'd like to read it, you can find a free Ebook copy on Project Gutenberg here.)



*waves* I still love you all, even when I'm not around much! Don't forget, OK?

Hey, friendslist! Again I've been playing dead when I'm not, which is something you really don't deserve, because you're all such lovely people and I honestly don't want to ignore you, even when I do!

It's just that life, or rather, university, has been a bitch (and please excuse my language, but there's no other word for it right now) in the last weeks (VERY short version: decision-making people at our university have been using some of us students as pawns in their fight with one professor, to the point that we've started thinking about taking legal action against them) and my mind has been completely occupied with that.



But sometimes, when life, or even just one aspect of life, is really frustrating and stupid and makes you want to tear out your hair, there's something else that shows you that all is not as bad as it seems and that really, there are things in the world that are just plain GOOD.

For me, this was the "KettenreAktion" (translation: Chain reAction) that happened yesterday:

In a peaceful protest against the German government's plans to continue using nuclear power despite the unclear future of the nuclear waste and the frankly FRIGHTENING state of some of the older nuclear plants, more than 120,000 people from all over Germany and from surrounding countries built a human chain between the nuclear power plants of Brunsbüttel and Krümmel.

( Cut for some more informationCollapse )



You know, no matter how you think about the issue the protest was about (though if you, like me, lived pretty near a nuclear power plant that has had three incidents with fires and some kind of leakage in the last ten years, and which the government STILL wants to keep using, you'd probably feel very much like me about this...), so many people getting together peacefully and taking a stand against something they don't agree with, and being a part of that - that's an absolutely magical feeling.

And maybe it's stupid, but it gives me hope that, no matter how much fighting there is in this world, and how much pettiness and cruelty I see around me, there's always that other side, that idealistic side of humanity that decides that it can do something to make this world a better place and that somehow, despite the odds, actually manages to succeed.



To give you an impression of our human chain and the general atmosphere during the event, here's a video showing some parts of the chain that some of the organizers made yesterday evening:

( Cut for videoCollapse )

Hey, y'all, just a short warning notice:

I just got an email from a friend's email account, which had a link that sent me to a site selling Viagra. She didn't send that email, so it seems like someone tampered with her account.

Now, I don't know whether my email-account got compromised because I clicked on that site, or not, but I'm not taking any chances. For those of you who have my email address: If I send you an email with a link and I don't write anything else in that email (like what the link is about), please don't click on the link!

I kind of thought I'd try to catch up with all of my comments (and all of the posts you all have written over the past month) before I wrote a new entry, but I think Women's Day is a good reason to break the silence, don't you? ^-^



Anyway, as my contribution to the day, I offer you:

Kegom's List Of 7 Female TV Series Characters That Influenced Her While She Was An Impressionable Young Girl



Disclaimer: I own none of the pictures I posted here; they were all acquired through Google because I don't have the series in question on my PC and thus can't take screencaps. If one of the pictures belongs to someone reading this and they wish for me to take it down, leave me a comment and I will.




( Warning: Don't click if you don't want to know just how completely NERDY I <s>am</s> was in my youthCollapse )



I had originally planned to do this with characters from literature, but then I realized that I spent a huge portion of my youth reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Swordsister" anthologies and huge amounts of other novels from at least two centuries, which featured great heroines, and I would have far too many characters to choose from, so I decided to keep it to TV characters (I didn't watch that much TV, so that was manageable); and I have to say, I'm quite pleased with the end-result. It really showed me just how much those characters influenced me.


And, of course, I'm curious, m'loves. What heroines influenced you when you were growing up?