Film rec, fic, and more literacy

[thrihyrne]

Last Friday my parents and I watched "Mao's Last Dancer," an engaging film that tells the true life story of a boy selected from his rural Chinese village to go to Bejing and trained as a dancer. Of course there's more, as he comes to the U.S., and I won't mention more except to say that Chi Cao, the lead, is amazing. If you enjoy watching dancers, especially male ballet dancers, you'll love this. He's incredible. There's a great interview with him here. For whatever reason this has brought back memories of my own life, since until I was about 16½ I really believed that I'd grow up and be a 'ballerina.' I did dance 3-4 days a week until that age, but circumstances changed and I focused more on singing. Not that I would ever have been good enough to be a professional dancer, but I was decent.

After 9 months of lying dormant, I've picked up my original fic again. Some of you are on that filter, so if you see something you've not seen in ages, that's it! It's been long enough that before I continue on (I wrote about 6 pages and posted them, but am pausing), I'm re-reading the story and writing down attributes of the main characters on index cards, as well as the vocab I'd created for the khorite world they're in. My challenge is simply to tell the story without any kind of intended audience in mind. With my fanfic, I knew the audience. This is different, and of course there's a part of my mind thinking, "Hey! This is unique! It could go to press in one form or another someday…", but I'm trying to hush that voice down and just let the characters speak. Always a challenge.

Tonight I'm going for 3 hours of training so that I can co-lead a citizenship class as offered through the local literacy council where I was leading the informal conversation classes. While I've been thinking primarily of doing an Oxford course to be certified to teach English o'seas if I go that route, it's come to my attention that there is an ESL program here at JMU. I think their focus is on domestic teaching, but I think I would be doing myself a disservice not to check it out.

And, one day late, but a very Happy Birthday to my very dear cim_halfling. So glad I was able to sing to you and chat this weekend! ♥♥

Comments

[darth-kittius.livejournal.com]

UMBCC has a surprisingly good ESL program also. And almost all the VA schools (including community colleges) have decent programs. Just throwing it out there -- it's worth looking into anyway.

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

Good to know! I was looking at Oxford in that it has a minimal time commitment, cost, and they guarantee a job in the countries you apply within 6 months or money back… hard to turn away from.

[sanba38.livejournal.com]

In Taiwan, all you needed was a bachelor's degree and a pulse...

[thrihyrne.livejournal.com]

That doesn't surprise me! My issue is that I want to go to what might be considered popular countries, though perhaps Iceland isn't all that popular to the general public.