Today I woke up, immediately settled into a zoom meeting teaching ESL to some adult learners from Boston’s Chinatown. It was a little bit strange being on the other side of zoom learning, but I think that’s one of my favorite parts of teaching this class, because I get the feeling of my professors. I developed so much more admiration for my Chinese teachers after I started teaching English, and I found myself using a lot of the same strategies they use on us, simply because they work really well. Anyway, after that, I had some curry for lunch, and settled outside on the swing, surrounded by a glorious leaf pile.
As usual, Sadie joined me. She’s so majestic, and she’ll get her staples out soon! Later, sophie also came out and we did some reading!
We migrated with our readings a few times, down to the pool (where I dozed a wee bit) and then onto the patio, where I dozed for around two hours. It was nice to nap, and sophie took this wonderful photo of me after I woke up, so it was clearly a very refreshing nap. Look at how happy I was with my bed hair hehe.
Then we headed out to play some tennis! This has been the 4th or 5th time I’ve gone with the Websters to play some tennis, and it’s wonderful to get back into a sport I literally haven’t done since the start of college. I think I played once, with Kat, last time I was in Vancouver? and so it’s been nice both exercising and also getting back into the game. Sophie took this photo of me for the weekly Kirkland House competition–last week, my Lox bagel photo won me an honorable mention but no real reward, so I’m going to keep trying. You might ask, “Lara, what is your left hand doing out so far away?” and to that, I simply must explain. I was taught to always point at the ball with my left hand when taking high volleys, but whenever I did that for the photo, my left arm was very neatly in front of my face and obscuring mostly everything. So in trying to focus on NOT putting my left arm up high, I ended up extending it to heaven-knows-where. That’s okay. It’s like a Ballet/Tennis combination photo.
After dinner, Sophie and I made Macarons! These are Vanilla cookies with a blueberry-lemon-clove filling that I very much made up on the fly, which was fun. I kept adding cornstarch in a desperate attempt to get this stuff to thicken up, but it’s delicious nonetheless.
Macaron posing in front of the ristra wreath was very important, too.
But now I’ve eaten so much sugar that my whole body feels kinda weird. Tomorrow I’ll prepare healthier foods, perhaps.