Life Post: Week One of Student Teaching is Complete

The last time I'd posted, I'd been student teaching for two days, but the students hadn't started back yet. Now I've officially spent three full days with students, and I am, admittedly, exhausted. I knew I would be. It's one of the things I was told the most about student teaching before it began.

That isn't to say that things are bad. Things are actually really, really good. Considering what happened last semester and how I was placed somewhere and then had to switch because of circumstances, I'm really thankful to be at the school I'm at with the teacher I'm with. It's been a great experience so far.

However, it was just summer break for a couple of months, and aside from that, I'd gotten used to college where you rarely, if ever, spent an entire day in class. Being in class all day long again is an adjustment, and this time I'm standing a lot more than when I was a kid, which means my feet have been killing me this week. Although, if that's my biggest complaint, then things really are going well.

I'm excited to see what the rest of student teaching brings. Like I mentioned last time, I'm not sure how much I'm going to be posting since the workload is only going to increase as the semester goes on. I don't expect to disappear completely, but things here on the blog might be slow in comparison to usual. When I do post, I imagine it'll be life posts more than anything else. They're just easier to write. We'll see though. Only time will tell.

Life Post: Student Teaching

I've been rather MIA from the Internet for the past couple of days. I did manage to get a book review posted yesterday, but that and a few Tumblr posts have really been the extent of my Internet activity. That's because I began student teaching on Monday, and right from the beginning, life has begun to feel hectic.

The workload wasn't unexpected though, and it's really not that bad. There will be more work as the experience continues. I know the only reason I even feel particularly busy at the moment is because it was just summer break. I still have to snap myself out of that mode.

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned at some point in the past that I was unlikely to really talk about student teaching on here. That's for the same reason that I've never talked about any of my previous practicums here either. There's student privacy concerns, and on top of that, I don't know if it's anything that anyone would have an interest in unless they're in education. (Towards the end though, I may write up some posts about it that would most likely be geared as advice for future student teachers, since blog posts like that have really helped me a lot recently. We'll see.)

What I will say is that the first two days have gone well. The students' first day is tomorrow, so the past two days have been meetings and preparing for the students. While I have yet to see everything "in action", I do think the meetings gave me a great overview of how the school works before the students show up. Fingers crossed that the rest of the experience goes just as well.

I'm not planning on the workload of student teaching to prevent me from posting that much because I'm going to try to write as many blog posts as I can on weekends (not that I won't also be doing school work on the weekends) and then scatter posting them. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if posts do come out less frequently. We'll just have to see what happens as the semester goes on. It's a new experience for me, so I don't know what exactly to expect.

Book Review: Street of Eternal Happiness by Rob Schmitz

ISBN: 0553418084
Published: May 17th, 2016
Publisher: Crown
Received: Blogging for Books
Read from July 20th to 25th, 2016
Synopsis from Goodreads:

An unforgettable portrait of individuals who hope, struggle, and grow along a single street cutting through the heart of China’s most exhilarating metropolis, from one of the most acclaimed broadcast journalists reporting on China today.
Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city’s sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies. There’s Zhao, whose path from factory floor to shopkeeper is sidetracked by her desperate measures to ensure a better future for her sons. Down the street lives Auntie Fu, a fervent capitalist forever trying to improve herself with religion and get-rich-quick schemes while keeping her skeptical husband at bay. Up a flight of stairs, musician and café owner CK sets up shop to attract young dreamers like himself, but learns he’s searching for something more. As Schmitz becomes more involved in their lives, he makes surprising discoveries which untangle the complexities of modern China: A mysterious box of letters that serve as a portal to a family’s – and country’s – dark past, and an abandoned neighborhood where fates have been violently altered by unchecked power and greed.
A tale of 21st century China, Street of Eternal Happiness profiles China’s distinct generations through multifaceted characters who illuminate an enlightening, humorous, and at times heartrending journey along the winding road to the Chinese Dream. Each story adds another layer of humanity and texture to modern China, a tapestry also woven with Schmitz’s insight as a foreign correspondent. The result is an intimate and surprising portrait that dispenses with the tired stereotypes of a country we think we know, immersing us instead in the vivid stories of the people who make up one of the world’s most captivating cities.

Review:

This book was fascinating. While I expected the book to be interesting going into it, I didn't expect to fall in love with it the way I did. Schmitz talks to many different people who all live on one street in Shanghai, the Street of Eternal Happiness (it's real name translated into English). Often, having the stories of so many people told can make it easier to not fully connect with anyone, but that wasn't the case here.

After finishing this book, I felt like I'd been consumed by everyone's stories. The people whose lives you learn about fall into a variety of demographics. There are young and old who were born during varying stages in China's history, and there are also different social classes and different experiences.

Even when you connect with books that tell a multitude of stories, some typically stand out more than the others to you, but I didn't experience that with this book either. Everyone's story was just as fascinating as everyone else's, and I wanted to hear about everyone so much that I was eager every time it switched to someone else again.

If you're looking for a book that will reach your soul, I think this is one of those. I would also highly recommend it for anyone who wants to read real stories about life in China. The author is American, so this is a book told by a foreigner instead of a personal story about life in China by a Chinese person. Still, it's an excellent book for what it is, and I would recommend it to just about anyone.

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review.

Pokemon Go Book Tag

Aentee from Read at Midnight created a Pokemon Go book tag that I'm incredibly excited to be doing today. (Like everyone else, I've been completely sucked in with Pokemon Go recently, and as I'm writing this post, I even have the app open beside me. I just couldn't resist.) She also created the awesome graphics in this post.

This question is impossible for me to answer. Honestly, I've loved reading since the days I was being read to because I couldn't yet do it myself. While I have memories of quite a few of the books I used to read back then, I don't remember many titles. I know that I loved the Bernstein Bears and some different Disney books and this Winnie the Pooh series we had. That's as specific as I can get. By the time I can remember specific titles, we've moved into my late elementary/middle school favorites

If we still have those books, then they're packed away somewhere, so I can't easily go and look through them either. But there were quite a few, and I don't know if I had one stand out favorite book until I read Harry Potter at around age eight. By then I already loved reading though.

I've seen plenty of people who've done this tag say Harry Potter, but I have to follow them and say the same thing. Like I said above, Harry Potter was the first "favorite book" that I remember having, even though I already loved reading.

Harry Potter managed to take over my life. I started begging my friends to play Harry Potter games at recess. Whenever I was able to choose our game for the day, it was Harry Potter themed in some way. Then I discovered fanfiction, and I went from reading it to writing it, which was the first story I wrote outside of school.

Then there were the fan sites and the fan discussions online. People aren't getting when they say that the Harry Potter fandom is a huge part of the magic. I still love it today, but I was lucky in that my childhood was during the golden years of the Harry Potter fandom. I have so many fond memories of both the books and the fandom that surrounded them. That's never going to change.

(Speaking of Pokemon that are everywhere, I do not need another Rattata, guys. I know they're purple, which is my favorite color, and they're based of rats, which I love. But I have enough at this point.)

I'm going to have to go with Divergent. When it first came out, I kept hearing great things from other people, both in the online book community and in real life. I fully intended to read it, but it was one of those books that I just didn't get around to.

Then the last book came out, and I began hearing negative things about it. Then the movies kept coming out, and the last one didn't do so great. I don't know. People don't seem as enthusiastic about it anymore, or maybe that's just my own skewed perception. All I know is that I'm not as eager to check the series out as I was in the past, but I still might. I'm not sure.

I'm having difficulty coming up with something for this one. Of course, I notice sometimes that books have similarities, but I can't think of one that particularly stands out as being like other books.

Maybe I'll just say Sarah Dessen books in general. Her books are all rather similar to each other. You know that certain elements are always going to be there, and you pretty much know the ending when you start reading. I still find them to be enjoyable, and I'm always excited to pick up another one.

Right now, this is just about every series for me. I've managed to get in the middle of so many series at the moment that one of my goals for this year was to not start anymore until I'd finished quite a few of them. How is that going? Well, I did start one new series, and I have the Infernal Devices trilogy sitting around waiting to be read. (I don't know if that counts as a new series technically though since I have read the Mortal Instruments, so in a way, it also works towards my completing more series goal.)

I have to admit that I'm not typically intimidated by size though, whether it's one book or a series. I just never really think about it, so I'm not sure I'd ever be hesitant to start a series because of how many books are in it. Not unless we're talking about something with like dozens of books.

I've spent all night reading Harry Potter, Twilight, and Hunger Games after new releases, but I have to admit that I haven't done something like that since high school. I just don't really stay up all night to read anymore.

When I got to college and had a roommate, I would often stay up later than her, but I was always worried about keeping her awake, so I would usually go to bed quickly after she did. Maybe that broke me out of the habit of late nights.

Actually, I've been having to adjust my sleep schedule recently to prepare myself for the coming school year and student teaching (much earlier nights and mornings), and the whole thing has made me feel like a boring adult. So, there haven't been any late nights for me recently. It's a bit of a shame. I miss it sometimes.

I always have to choose Ron and Hermione for this sort of question. I have a lot of OTPs now, but they were my original, which means they'll always hold a special place in my heart. I think Ron and Hermione also managed to have a huge influence on what I typically love in fictional couples. Whenever I read a book and two characters manage to remind me of Ron and Hermione, I'm probably going to ship them together.

I recently read all four books of the War of Princes series by A.R. Ivanovich and fell in love. Perhaps it was because it was the first time in possibly forever that I had read an entire series so closely back-to-back like that. (Even if an entire series is out, I tend to read them more spaced out because I won't even buy the second book before reading the first.) It's an action-packed fantasy that I absolutely adored.

This is difficult because I'm never sure if my answer would hold true if we did start getting spin offs. I was excited for both Fantastic Beasts and Cursed Child, but now my excitement for both seems to have fizzled out. With Cursed Child, I've actually become scared about whether or not I'll like it, so while in the past I would have always chosen Harry Potter for this, I'm not so sure anymore.

I might say the Shadowhunter Chronicles by Cassandra Clare. I know I'm not the first person who's given that answer for this question, but it's true. She already has a done of spin-offs in the series, and I like that they focus on new characters while giving glimpses of the old. Maybe it's because the spin-offs were already out when I began reading Mortal Instruments, but they feel less high-stakes than the Harry Potter spin-offs do for me, which allows me to enjoy them without worrying.

After following Maureen Johnson on Twitter for years and thinking she was awesome, I finally picked up her Shades of London series, which was the first of her books I'd read. I had high hopes because I enjoyed her tweets so much, but I was also worried.

I'm not a scary story fan. Mostly because I get scared too easily. So putting "Jack the Ripper" in the synopsis wouldn't typically be a good way to pull me in. I doubt I'd ever have picked it up at all if it hadn't been for Maureen's Twitter account.

Wow, am I glad I did pick it up. That series is one of my favorites, and it's the only ghost story that is remotely close to being one of my favorites. I love those books so much, and I'm eagerly waiting for the fourth.

There are a number of them. One would be the Infernal Devices trilogy. I enjoyed the Mortal Instruments, and a lot of people say they enjoy TID even more than TMI, which has me extremely curious.

I could list a number of other series too. My TBR list is intimidatingly long.

I wish I owned all of the Harry Potter editions, not just the collector's editions. I know I'm not alone in desperately wanting the boxed set where the spines form a picture of Hogwarts. Plus, I'd really like the anniversary editions.

Admission: I rarely feel particularly excited for debuts. It's not even that I don't read debuts and enjoy them. I do, and I do feel a certain level of excitement. I just don't get the same level of excitement as I do for authors I've read before. It's hard to pinpoint one debut here because, while I'll often think a debut sounds interesting, I'm not sure I could label myself as "very excited" for them.

I have a number of them. Sarah Dessen is one, and of course, J.K. Rowling. Those are probably the two that were my first auto-buy authors. Sarah Dessen's books were actually the first YA that I ever read.

100% I have to say the next Shades of London book by Maureen Johnson. I read the third book after it came out, so I haven't been waiting since the release. I don't even think it's been that long, but I'm so eager that it feels like it has been. I really can't wait for the next book. It may wind up being the first book in a long time that I stay up all night reading when it comes out.

And that's all the questions. I'm not going to tag anyone specific, but if you want to do this tag, feel free too. Plus, make sure you check out Aentee's original tag post if you haven't already read it.

Life Post: The End of Summer

Since I wrote about my laptop's hard drive crashing, I feel like I need to write an update. I have Chromebook now. Since I'm so used to having a Windows computer, I was a little nervous about it. So far though, I'm really happy with it. There are downsides to having a Chromebook for sure, but there would be with any computer. As I've only had the computer for a few days as of right now though, I'll probably write more about it later and how I'm liking it.

Other than that, I've really just been busy thinking about school beginning. The past day or so the nerves have really hit me hard, so it's become one of the only things I can think about. I feel like there is so much that I need to do to prepare, yet logically, I don't know what else I could do.

Of course, I've also been packing. It's strange since I have to stay with my sister for a bit before I move into my dorm, so it's like having to pack for two different stages. It's difficult trying to figure out which things need to go up now and which can go up later. Plus, I think it's leading to me forgetting things more. At least, I feel like I've packed less than usual, and I don't know if that's because I've just cut things down or if I'm forgetting stuff that I'm supposed to have.

That's the bulk of what I've been doing the past several days. Well, that and playing Pokemon Go. Soon, school will start, so I'm sure I'll become extremely busy. I'm excited, if a little terrified.