Sunday, March 9, 2014
Update on my snowboarding trip
So here's my update on my snowboarding experience. We went to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany for the weekend last month and stayed at Edelweiss. It was a beautiful little area and we were able to go on a few tours including the Neuschwanstein Castle.
The weather sucked. It was nearly non-existent so the mountain did not have much snow. The higher we went the better the snow, but some of the lower areas were basically dirt. The ride to get up to the higher areas was nerve-racking. I don't like heights, but thankfully we didn't take very many trips.
I fell plenty of times, but I had a ton of fun. I was with a group of 4 others, all pretty experienced snowboarders and skiers, but I was able to keep up for the most part. There were so many incredibly steep areas, and their Easy sections were not as easy as I would have liked.
I haven't learned very much, and my feet still don't get it, but at least I've figured out how to stay on my feet for longer runs. I wish we were able to go more often this winter, but I'm looking forward to next year.
-Brooke Coty
The weather sucked. It was nearly non-existent so the mountain did not have much snow. The higher we went the better the snow, but some of the lower areas were basically dirt. The ride to get up to the higher areas was nerve-racking. I don't like heights, but thankfully we didn't take very many trips.
I fell plenty of times, but I had a ton of fun. I was with a group of 4 others, all pretty experienced snowboarders and skiers, but I was able to keep up for the most part. There were so many incredibly steep areas, and their Easy sections were not as easy as I would have liked.
I haven't learned very much, and my feet still don't get it, but at least I've figured out how to stay on my feet for longer runs. I wish we were able to go more often this winter, but I'm looking forward to next year.
-Brooke Coty
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Brain on overload
So the Army decided to send me to school for almost 30 days which has been very stressful. I have been trying to manage keeping up with my school assignments as well as the assignments the school requires me to do. The school is designed to develop future leaders for the Army and we have a crazy schedule. I have been getting up at 0500 every morning and the earliest I have been able to leave the classroom was 2000. On top of that the computers there will not let me post my school assignments because the computers’ Java updates are somehow not working. I have been very stresses the last two weeks trying to maintain good grades in both schools. The one thing I learned from these last two weeks, is how to maintain good time management. The first week was very hard because everything was new, but I have been doing better in the second week. The funny thing is, we do not even have internet access in the building we sleep in, and I have to go outside with my laptop in order to post any of my school assignments. The good thing is, that I actually printed my syllabus, so I just sit in my room and do all my assignments on a word document first and then I go outside and post them to the conferences and assignments folder. At first it was a real hassle but I think I have it figured out now. Hopefully next time I am enrolled I do not get sent to a school at the same time :)
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Smells Like Rain
The darkness of the world I feel
the world I am a part of
Has closed out the way to my soul
It's harder and harder to feel real love
The height of the mountains,
the depth of the oceans
all contribute to the fact that
people fear sincere devotion
When it comes to being one
with the one you truly love
they see it as coming from here below OR
coming from Him above
While it is neither
and both all the same
The fear is what drives them
it drives them all insane
They lose grip on reality
they begin to go blind
they don't know what love is
Making it that much harder to find.
"I don't know if I love you anymore"
they say "If you are close to me,
I admire you, and adore you
But 'love' is too strong for me."
It hurts to hear the one you love
tell you they don't love you anymore
then tell you sometime down the road
it may be more than just "adore"
To smile and move on
is something we all must learn
for when we do not move on
we will surely burn
It may not be long
it may not be short at all
but either way it will hurt
and nothing we can do... but fall
I fear the future,
as I look out life's window pane
I stare into the grey-toned sky
.... it smells like rain.
Rain that stops progress
that I worked so hard to achieve
work that others close
seem to not believe
Rain that washes away pain
washes away fear,
rain that makes way for truth
as I stand looking here
it floods the very place I stand
my socks begin to soak
filling up my pails
and weighing down my yoke
I look into the sky
as the rain drops hit my face
finally i begin to wonder
have i found my place?
the fear that I am feeling
is it all from pain?
Search for an answer in the grey toned sky
..... it smells like rain.
the world I am a part of
Has closed out the way to my soul
It's harder and harder to feel real love
The height of the mountains,
the depth of the oceans
all contribute to the fact that
people fear sincere devotion
When it comes to being one
with the one you truly love
they see it as coming from here below OR
coming from Him above
While it is neither
and both all the same
The fear is what drives them
it drives them all insane
They lose grip on reality
they begin to go blind
they don't know what love is
Making it that much harder to find.
"I don't know if I love you anymore"
they say "If you are close to me,
I admire you, and adore you
But 'love' is too strong for me."
It hurts to hear the one you love
tell you they don't love you anymore
then tell you sometime down the road
it may be more than just "adore"
To smile and move on
is something we all must learn
for when we do not move on
we will surely burn
It may not be long
it may not be short at all
but either way it will hurt
and nothing we can do... but fall
I fear the future,
as I look out life's window pane
I stare into the grey-toned sky
.... it smells like rain.
Rain that stops progress
that I worked so hard to achieve
work that others close
seem to not believe
Rain that washes away pain
washes away fear,
rain that makes way for truth
as I stand looking here
it floods the very place I stand
my socks begin to soak
filling up my pails
and weighing down my yoke
I look into the sky
as the rain drops hit my face
finally i begin to wonder
have i found my place?
the fear that I am feeling
is it all from pain?
Search for an answer in the grey toned sky
..... it smells like rain.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Saturday, February 15, 2014
The grass isn't always greener...
I am having quite a difficult time writing this health argumentative essay. I have a few topics chosen, with corresponding articles. I cannot, without great effort and pain, provide an argument for the opposing side of the author's opinion without siding with him/her, myself. I have written a few drafts that have been scrapped due to the flippity-floppitiness of my argument; not to mention the lack of a solid thesis. Being able to see both sides of the argument can be a good thing in settling disputes, however it does not work that way when trying to argue your point.
I plan on having a set opposing view of the topic. I am currently attempting a dietitian's approach for the topic of a specific type of diet and how it does not work as advertised, along with supporting works provided by nutritionists and doctors. I need to work on certain writing techniques for this essay: shortened paragraphs, summarization, and order of statements. When writing about my own topic, about something that has me distraught, I am well-off and able to provide accurate responses and arguments; I am a decent author. When provided with a set subject and given timelines, then I run into problems.
I read the chapters as assigned from our textbook -- this isn't the problem. The problem is applying something I have read if it is not scientific, algebraic, or technological. I focus too much on minor details and cannot "summarize" as well as many others instinctively can. This not only affects my writing ability, it affects the way I "skim" through articles to get the main idea; my focus begins shifting to points that I deem "important." I also don't like reading anything that isn't "interesting" to me, which is anything not scientific, algebraic, or technological. These topics are very specific on items and require much focus on minor details, so I excel at them.
I feel that through this class, even having a hard time, myself, keeping-up with the class, I have already learned a lot about writing techniques. I found myself prone to over-utilizing commas, misusing semicolons, and mainly bringing-out the foreigner in me by creating unnecessarily long sentences. I have, however, stopped switching tense while writing like I did in High School. Not everything is bad; there are many good points.
I feel that I have been a foreigner learning English my whole life, and have been very bad at it, but really good at learning other languages. I understand the struggles incorporated with learning this terribly difficult language. I hope that by the end of this class, I will be able to, without researching how-tos, write a decent enough essay to pass pertinent information along in a mature, proper manner, with minimal mistakes.
What are some of the problems others have found within themselves through this course? What are some of them that were fixed?
I plan on having a set opposing view of the topic. I am currently attempting a dietitian's approach for the topic of a specific type of diet and how it does not work as advertised, along with supporting works provided by nutritionists and doctors. I need to work on certain writing techniques for this essay: shortened paragraphs, summarization, and order of statements. When writing about my own topic, about something that has me distraught, I am well-off and able to provide accurate responses and arguments; I am a decent author. When provided with a set subject and given timelines, then I run into problems.
I read the chapters as assigned from our textbook -- this isn't the problem. The problem is applying something I have read if it is not scientific, algebraic, or technological. I focus too much on minor details and cannot "summarize" as well as many others instinctively can. This not only affects my writing ability, it affects the way I "skim" through articles to get the main idea; my focus begins shifting to points that I deem "important." I also don't like reading anything that isn't "interesting" to me, which is anything not scientific, algebraic, or technological. These topics are very specific on items and require much focus on minor details, so I excel at them.
I feel that through this class, even having a hard time, myself, keeping-up with the class, I have already learned a lot about writing techniques. I found myself prone to over-utilizing commas, misusing semicolons, and mainly bringing-out the foreigner in me by creating unnecessarily long sentences. I have, however, stopped switching tense while writing like I did in High School. Not everything is bad; there are many good points.
I feel that I have been a foreigner learning English my whole life, and have been very bad at it, but really good at learning other languages. I understand the struggles incorporated with learning this terribly difficult language. I hope that by the end of this class, I will be able to, without researching how-tos, write a decent enough essay to pass pertinent information along in a mature, proper manner, with minimal mistakes.
What are some of the problems others have found within themselves through this course? What are some of them that were fixed?
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Welcome
Welcome!
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.
~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977
Welcome Students. Lets start writing!
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My second trip was at an indoor place in Germany. It was so crowded we just sat there in the ice for about an hour unable to really move. I have never seen so many skiers in all my life. Most of them were just standing there talking, taking up space for the hell of it. The fake snow was solid ice in some patches making a fall pretty painful. Once you got to the bottom of the 30 second slope, there was easily a 15 minute line to catch a long ride back to the top. We spent more time waiting in line and waiting for the crowd to move than we did snowboarding.
So here I am, now looking forward to our next trip which will be Valentine’s Day weekend. I can’t wait to be on an actual mountain again after our last experience. I still pretty much suck at snowboarding, it’s like my feet just don’t get it. I honestly don’t mind falling ever few seconds because it’s something my husband and I can laugh at together. I remember I was so nervous at first that I didn’t even want to go. My husband had to push me out of the house, telling me how I can’t learn if I don’t try. In the end, I’m glad I did go and try something new, and I’m glad that it’s something that I can now share with my husband.