Need of a laugh?

Just for a Laugh or two. Enjoy both videos.

Here is the real video

3 Years later

Greetings Blogger-

It has been quite a while since I last posted. After sitting here laughing at all my crazy posts that I had written when I was doing my undergrad I figured I should update a few things.

5 things to know

1. Teaching is not as scary as it may seem once you have classroom management down (Fred Jones is my Hero).

2. Life seems to always throw crazy-ness at you and you just have to overcome it.

3. No matter how hard you try to get over something, some things are just never going to leave you like loosing someone close to you.

4. You can knit your way out of a plastic bag. (see Plarn )

5. You can always start a new chapter in your life, but the hardest part is finishing what you have started.

So after all of that, it is exciting to see what the future has in store for us all.

As I was lesson planning for my 2nd grade class, I saw in the curriculm books about Carmen Miranda and a Jazz song called Jada. So in effort to bring the musician's work to life I jumped on youtube to find a great video of Carmen singing and Count Basis playing Jada. Enjoy.

planning a road trip check this out

Hello Friends

If you are planning a road trip some time and wish to see some odd things along the side of the road, check out this web sight. It is quite intresting.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

Happy Travels

A.V.

P.S watch out for the Muffler man!

running thoughts

As I sit here pondering what topic I should write on for my first paper for my summer class, I am finding my self wondering into other thoughts like, My family vacation, My new job and all the different things I have to do before I start school, my desire to knit right now or defeating the evil doers on Lego Indiana Jones. I am just having so much trouble focusing. So forgive this blog if it goes off topic. lol

I think I am going to live my life like Indiana Jones teacher part time and do one of my true passion in the other time. Only mine is not cracking a whip and fighting people. ;) I am going to continue to play my cello to improve on my skills so that I could play in them movie orchestras. :) Maybe play in one of them big summer blockbuster films. When that happens I will let you know! I have spent too much time thinking of all the things I can not do. Now I am thinking of the things I can do and setting new goals to reach in my life.

I am really excited for this years family trip. FYI our usual family trips are to California (L.A, or San Diego area), Las Vegas or New Mexico. This year as we pondered over our travel destinations we FINALLY decided to go to Seattle now for the 4th of July! Yea some place I have not been to. We are driving over there which is going to be interesting but I hope we can manage. We have a little bit more planning to do but from the looks of it, we are going to have fun! I had to laugh at my grandparents response to our destination. "what's in Seattle? You should go to New Mexico. " lol well we are expanding our horizons. Maybe next year we could go international! any suggestions?

As for my preparations for teaching. I feel so under prepared. This is one thing they do not teach you in Education classes. How to prepare for your first year....You get the training on class room management, lesson planning (sorta), pedagogy stuff, teaching methods but never really how to plan for that first year. Maybe it is something to be experienced and cannot be described. *Shrug*

I have been doing a lot of reading the last few weeks for my summer class...yes yes I have to take a summer class to full fill a missing class so I could graduate. I have been reading world literature from the first written stories of the Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greek, Roman, India, and China I am not up to the common era which starts at the birth of Jesus. So all that I have been reading is pre-Jesus! But I am learning new things like the Trojan war stories (the fake horse), the origin of the word Lesbian comes from the Greek Island of Lesbos, which was a popular place for women to be educated and they worshiped Aphrodite (famous woman poet Sappho- first to write Lyric poetry) , The origin of Buddhism is not in Asia like I had previous thought but in India. So it just proves that I only know so little about other cultures and this class has opened my eyes to the world, even though it is a lot of reading.

Also this summer i joined with my sister to participate in Co-ed softball. Now I have not played softball since I was in 8th grade but I remembered how much fun I had. Now the team I am on is called the Roots and I must say we do need to work on our batting skills (me included) we are good on the defencive side of things but hitting and getting points are somethings that we struggle with. But We can do it! so far we are 0-2 but it is still early on in the season! I have been having fun.

well I should get back to trying to finish my home work and think of a paper topic... have a nice evening!
MP

Blogger over hall

Hello Friends-

It has been ages since I last wrote here in blogger. My last few blogs were lame so I deleted them. Sorry for that. I must have been out of it.

Well i think it is time for an over hall of my blogger account. So over the next few days/weeks I am going to be working on a lot of things. Do not be surprised if you see less blogs on my archives.

For the mean time I will leave you with a bit of an update. My life has been quite busy lately and a lot of changes for me as well.

The big news:
I almost graduated now in May. I walked for the graduation and after a summer class I will officially graduate in August.

I got a teaching Job at a catholic school were I get to teach K-8 general music and do the music for the student Mass once a week.

So that is my big news. Other than that I am just enjoying my summer.
summer plans:
*Read for my summer class and hw assignments
*baby sit my 3 cousins (involves a lot of playing star wars, playing Wii Mario cart, boxing and bowing video games, playing with side walk chalk and reading books.)
*lesson planning
*exercising (running, Wii fit, swimming and just maybe wall climbing)
*Maybe a family vacation some were in the u.s.
*Summer softball! go Roots!

so basically i am taking it easy and getting ready for my new job....

well have a nice evening

MP

Deep dark secret

Greetings friends-
Hope all is well.
Okay I have a deep dark secret to tell... I get the weekly starwars.com Homing Beacon e-mails. Okay it is a bit geeky but I thought that this weeks was quite funny/cool. Here it is.




Homing Beacon #198‏






"Luke Skywalker's original Jedi lightsaber, the famous movie prop from the Star Wars saga is now aboard space shuttle Discovery as it waits for its scheduled October 23rd launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.
The Jedi lightsaber has been carefully stowed away and will travel into space with the seven STS-120 astronauts to the International Space Station before returning to Earth 14 days (and six million miles) later to mark the legendary film's 30th anniversary.
During the two-week mission, Star Wars fans will be able to leave their best wishes to the space shuttle astronauts. Be sure to check http://www.starwars.com/ over the next few days for more information on how you can get a message to the shuttle crew and what the plans are for the lightsaber upon its return to Earth.
In the meantime, you can watch how the lightsaber's journey began as it left Lucasfilm's headquarters on its way to NASA in this video: http://www.starwars.com/video/view/000545.html"

My life...

Greetings-

Well what is new with me...a lot actually. It is now the 3rd week of school and it already feels like an eternity. I am back in routine of getting oh so little sleep and hurting everyday from playing my cello and riding my bike oh about 14 miles a week-no joke. I am writing this blog because I have not really been around long enough to talk to anyone and more often than not I find my self alone when I am actually around.

Things I have been doing:

Work (yea for early morning shifts): not much to tell except I get all my work tasks done in the first 30 min of my shift and the rest of the time I find ways to keep my self awake.

School: (Funny how we say we go to school be never say what we do, even though we spend many hours here)

7:20am-Ed class one-I get to work with high school kids at Rocky Mountain High. I actually get to work with all of the music departments with another classmate/friend of mine. We get to spend 1/3 of the semester with band, 1/3 with Choir, and 1/3 with the Orchestra. All the ensembles are the top ensembles of the music program, and we get to teach one lesson in each of the groups. This is quite exciting!!- Right now I am working in a groups researching education theorist- mine is Robert Marzano (Classroom Management that works-Assertive Discipline and managing Violence. interesting?...maybe

Ed class 2-personally this class is a challenge for me to stay awake in just because it is right after I get out of work and it is a bit long. we are learning how to write a curriculum and how to recruit students to join band/orchestra/choir- fun fun. you know learning the method behind the madness is not really all that fun sometimes.

now we go to all my ensembles

Orchestra:

well we have been preparing for our concert that we have in 8 days. That music is a bit challenging but I think that we sound really good as an ensemble. We are working a lot on sound, tempo (getting things faster and playing it all at the same time), Balance (we are a bit bottom heavy with all the cellos and basses), and building up endurance for the 3 pieces we are playing. Personally I am not to fond of the 2 modern pieces. it sounds okay in some spots but I am not a fan. I just am not a fan of most of the 20th century classical music in general.

Quartet:

I am now in a Piano Quartet. I love the people I am with this semester, but it is quite a new experience to work in a piano quartet. It is my first time working with this particular ensemble and it is cool to hear how the parts work together so nicely.

Cello lessons:

well I am currently working on my stuff for my Senior recital that is quickly approaching. Things are going quite well. I am pleased with my selections that I am working on and now my challenge is to make each piece sound great!

Steel Band:
(Teaching moment):

Now I get a lot of people asking what is Steel Band. Well Steel band is an ensemble here at CSU that is made up of Steel pan Drums. Now as you can see from the picture steel drums are mettle instruments that originate from Trinidad and Tobago (Not from Jamaica.)

Most pieces that are played on the drums are calypso music but we play from classical to contemporary. It can all be played. The pictures are of the Cello steel Drum. This is the one I play. It has 3 drums so it is quite a work out. I play the cello steel pan. I think they are fun. I am learning another one called the Double seconds so i am in the "newbie group". (they are only 2 pans) which is kind of nice change. so I get to learn a new instrument this semester. I am also in the rhythm section because it is cool. Even though our band is split up into 2 groups we are all always playing something so it just at what difficulty the music is at. This is a very cool group to be apart of.

Cello Pedagogy class:

I have not started this class yet but this semester I get to do "student teaching" private lessons. I am not sure when I will have time for this but, it is something I have to do.

So as you can see school is keeping me busy and out of trouble. Oh last weekend I got to take the PLACE (Program for Licensing Assessment for Colorado Educators) exam. This exam is for receiving my teacher licence) I hope I did okay on it. I felt like some of the questions were bogus and the test mostly catered towards vocalists. At least I am not the only one who thinks this. Us music kids think it was written by a non- music person and it is not a good assessment on our knowledge of Music Education. Anyways, I will not find out how I did for a few more weeks.

I am also trying to continue to get help with my reading through the Learning center but I have had no luck with them. So I think that am going to have to work on it on my own like most things in my life lately. I am sure doing a lot better at reading but I still feel like I am behind and would like that extra support. I guess you can not have everything in life that you want.

well if you stayed reading this I hope you are having a nice day and thank you for reading my blog. It is a long one but, I have a lot going on on this part of my life.

If you ever want to chat with me you can either try to find me in between classes or just instant message/facebook/myspace me or call if you have my number. -take care

-Manda Panda