2011

Happy New Year! What good would a blog dedicated to new things be without a new years post? It's 2011! When did that happen? Ten years ago I was a high school freshman...yikes! Tan viejo!

Things I'm looking forward to this year:

April: trip back down to the DR to visit my friends and students! Might have to make a post on good old Don't Drink The Water! just for kicks.

May: My best friend is getting MARRIED!

Summer: I'm hoping Natalie # 1 moves herself over to the East Coast so we can get a place together and start the Nat Flat. Also, I'm turning 25. That's a quarter of a century. I'm thinking birthday party?

November: On November 11th in 2001 my friend Jenna and I sat in a Subway marveling over the beauty of the day's date, 11/11/01. We decided to write down where we thought we'd be in ten years on a napkin. I still have that napkin. We're going back to Subway to read what we wrote :)

Resolutions? I don't really have any...but some things I would like to do:
-write more letters to people.
-get my cousin back from Kenya at some point.
-start the Nat Flat as previously stated
-visit friends in Seattle, Chicago, and Michigan. Or one of those.
-complete the requirements for MD teaching certification
-go on a date. Or a few dates. It's been like two years, so I'd be down for more than one.
-find my sister a boyfriend.
-get my motorcycle license

A decent list, si? I could go on. But I think these are reasonable goals/interests.

Well, I have a meeting to be off to. Love going back to school on weekday nights! Booooo.

Deck the clothes!

I'M BACK! My dwindling number of readers I'm sure are thrilled. I'm a little excited about this post though. In the past year, someone let me know about New Dress a Day, which has been my new favorite blog to read. Marisa goes to thrift stores and yard sales and finds cheap and mostly ugly pieces of clothing, which she then alters and wears.

I'm a fairly decent sewer (hooray, I have a feminine quality!), and an excellent cheap spender. Unfortunately I have no time. Enter Christmas Break to my rescue! Let's back up. For some reason my mother decided to offer me a heinously colored "dress" (sack) from the 80s:

(FYI, I'm wearing pants under it...I'm not pregnant as it appears.) So this pale pink stretchy knit fabric apparently passed as socially acceptable wear back in the day. Ew. I was going to pitch it, or sleep in it, when my inner creativity starting working.
New Dress a Day made me think that perhaps I could
venture into the land of fabric dying, which I've never done. With my sister's support I headed out to Michael's, and bought some Cherry Red RIT dye.(If you try this, use stainless steel...trust me on this one.)

I did some snipping and hacking and sewing...and Voile! I created my Christmas Eve dress:

(I am, obviously, on the right.) Again not pregnant...maybe it's just the fabric. Remind me to suck in my stomach for pictures.

Tre cute, no? I had a good time, and I feel very resourceful!

Hope ya'll (who am I kidding, "all"?) had a fantastic Christmas! Here's to a happy 2011!!

PS on 1/20/11: I got a better picture of the dress:

Feliz Navidad...

If another one of my students asks me if we can sing "Feliz Navidad" I'm going to scream. There ARE other Christmas songs in Spanish! I would like to present one of my favorites, introduced to me by Brewer, entitled "Mi burrito sabanero". This doesn't actually mean "my tasty burrito" as you might be inclined to think it does. It means "My little grasslands donkey." Enjoy! And Merry Christmas!



Lyrics (and hence why this is a Christmas song) can be found here.

Embarrassed...

I'm aware that I'm heinously overdue for an update, but I'm up to my overly-mascara'ed eyelashes in Christmas shopping stress. I seriously don't remember being this overwhelmed last year. It was like a couple orders online, bam, done. All the presents were at my house waiting for me when I finally got home after my 24-hour adventure from Santiago to Miami to Charlotte to BWI due to Snowmageddon Part Uno. Just remembering that little venture makes me want to change my clothes and take a shower. Yuck.

Anyway, maybe once I have a better handle on Christmas shopping I can add something interesting on here? Perhaps?

Couple random thoughts:
1) I seriously need to start my Christmas shopping in early November next year.
2) The commercialization and amount of people in the stores overwhelms me.
3) I do not want to even think about looking at my credit card bill.
4) Avatar: The Last Airbender was way better than Avatar. I don't care what the critics say.
5) Tonight I opted for movie by myself in my house instead of going out. Am I 40??
6) I am ridiculously excited for Ravens vs. Pit-of-hell's burgh tomorrow. And Jets vs Patriots Monday! Big weekend for football!

Fall fruit

Words cannot express how cold it is. It's interesting; in the back of my head this past year I knew in theory it was cold up here, but I'm not sure my skin registered it. And now, it's a rude awakening. One which is only going to get worse, seeing as it's only November.

There are two silver linings to the weather getting colder and days getting shorter. One is pumpkin, which I could discuss ad nauseam, but I won't.

The other is one of my favorite fruits: pomegranates! I wish these things were available year round, but alas, only in the fall. They're super tasty and super healthy. One of the girls at my old job thought they looked gross on the inside, but she was kind of a bitter negative person anyway. And had clearly never eaten a pomegranate.

Granted, they take a looong time to peel and whatnot, but the reward is big. They have a huge amount of antioxidants, as well as potassium, and vitamins B and C. It's also low in calories and sugar.

If you haven't tasted one, give it a shot! If you have, let this post remind you of the pom wonders and inspire you to pick a few up the next time you're at the grocery store.

Lettuce choose...

Awesome. It's almost 8 pm, and I haven't showered or started the monstrous load of grading I have to do. Oh well. I'm trying to keep up on blogging! My mom read my blog and was INSPIRED to buy quinoa!!! I have changed a life through my blog. Even if I happen to be squatting in her place of residence.

Anyway, before I get onto my (brief) thought for the evening, I want to express how awesome my family and friends are. I can't even count how many people have prayed for and asked about my Praxis test on Tuesday. I had students, siblings, parents, friends around the world pray for me. All of my coworkers asked. I got a call from out of state to see how it went. I feel super loved :).

So, quickly, I'm going to offer a short rant. I got into a familiar debate with my mom over iceberg lettuce vs. greener leaves tonight. We've been through it before. Up until about two seconds ago, I was about to say iceberg lettuce has no nutritional value. A quick Google search proved me wrong! Apparently it does have SOME value. Just not alot. And less than Romaine or Spinach leaves. Here's the thing; if I'm going to be eating salad, a food I only consume to be healthy, I want to be as healthy as possible. Thus, I'm going with the greener choice. Also I HATE the texture of iceberg lettuce. If I wanted to eat cabbage, I would eat cabbage.

That, my friends, is all I have to say for now on this matter. I have kids to teach tomorrow and I need to give them their papers back!

Quinoa

What?? I don't even know how to pronounce that word. That is what you're thinking. Or at least that's what I'm betting you're thinking. Let me help: keen-wah. Looks like this:

Except super small. It's a grain grown in South America that my fantastic cousin Kaylie first mentioned to me before she left for Africa. I kinda thought, oh I guess I'll cook it sometime when I have time...and we all know how well that goes.

But I kinda thought I should give it a shot, and I spent a long time googling before I figured out how to spell it. Anyway. You don't care about all this. Let's fast forward: a woman at work gives me a box and I google 'quinoa recipes' and make a nice mexican-style quinoa dish for my lunch two weeks ago. And it's good! I like this stuff. It has a nutty, grainy texture, and goes well with alot of flavors. Here's the important part: quinoa is high in complete protein, which apparently means it contains all 9 amino acids. (Good for me and others who don't eat meat.) It's also gluten free, which doesn't matter as much to me, but definitely matters to people with Coeliac's disease (don't worry; I had to search that spelling too).

So today is week 2 of cooking quinoa, and I went off of a fruit recipe. I love cinnamon! And spending a year without apples has made me appreciate them more. It looks yummy, and with the walnuts I think it will be very filling.

If you're up for a little adventure, or just something different in your diet, I recommend giving this a shot! I found it in the organic section of Martin's near couscous and similar products. It's admittedly a little expensive ($4.29 for this 12 oz box), but I think it's worth it. If you're buying and eating white rice, I won't even begin to tell you how lacking it is in nutrients. The same goes for regular pasta. (Now whole-grain pasta is a different story. Especially if it's Nature's Promise.) So hopefully you're all cooking wild rice and/or spending 4 hours using your pasta machine with local eggs and whole grain flour to whip up your own pasta. But if you're not, you should give this a shot.