His face was locked in a concentrated stare as he focused all of his energies on the ten pins silently standing at the end of the lane, awaiting and certain and swift demise: almost like prisoners standing before a firing squad. Taking a deep breath, Frank’s 235 pound frame slowly eased into motion as the ball was gently and purposefully drawn back, cocked and ready for action. Then exhaling, his body fluidly began propelling itself forward; arms, legs and torso all working together to provide a maximum velocity. As Frank reached the foul line, he released the ball, his body straining to give it one last bit of energy.

Upon the release, a satisfied grin crept over Frank’s face. It had been a good night. With five straight strikes in a row, his luck was strong tonight and he felt confident that this bowl was a winner. The ball crashed into the pins, sending pins sprawling in every direction. All the pins had been decimated, racking up yet another strike. Frank performed his victory dance and raised his hands to high-five his onlooking friends. The fires of his enthusiasm were quickly doused with the apathetic glazes of his friends. One of friends put his arm around Frank and said soothingly, “Frank, we’re happy for you, we really are. Maybe tomorrow you can play without the bumper guards!”. Frank sighed…. baby steps; baby steps….

The other day I found out about Plinky, a service that sends you a daily writing prompt. It can also link into various different social networks. However, I just use it for its writing prompts. Hopefully this will get me to practice / improve my writing and I can blog more! I created a new “musings” category and I’ll be putting all my writing from Plinky in there

EDIT:

I also found the One Minute Writer. I’ll be using both of these. I can take one minute every day to improve my writing

The students with the lowest English levels go to special projects so that they can be in a smaller class and more personalized attention. I am teaching special projects and I’ve been really enjoying it. Today we went over body parts and the students practiced tagging each other and labeling each other’s body parts. It was a lot of fun

Today we also had coffee hour where we invite the students over to the teacher dorm for coffee and time to visit. Here is a picture that I took of Laura’s class

I had a good conversation with a student today at dinner. He was talking about the Olympics and mentioned the Beijing Olympic slogan of “One world, One dream”. I asked him what the world’s one dream was. We talked for quite a while and he told me that I have a lot of wisdom. I told him the source of all my wisdom.

I have one prayer request: please pray that I have a good attitude about things. God reminded me that every moment is a choice. Everything that happens to me I have a choice on how to respond to it. Please pray that I will choose to have a positive attitude. Thanks!!!

Every weekday night during a TIP session, we have clubs. This gives thestudents a chance to focus on a particular subject and learn vocabularypertaining that subject. I usually teach Science club . When I firststarted TIP, the clubs were 5 days, but they have now been boiled downto three days to allow the students to go through more clubs.

Here is my usual lesson plan:

• Day 1: Robots - We watch clips of robots and discuss various facets ofrobotics
• Day 2: Robots (again) - The students design their own robot andpresent it to the class
• Day 3: Bridges - The students build a bridge using chopsticks and thenwe see which bridge can hold the most books

Most of the students that come to Science Club don’t like science andthink science is boring. But many of the students leave having a renewedinterest in science

Here are some photos that I took from last week’s Science Club