Almost a Movie Moment

One of the inevitable implications of being a film student is the tendency to imagine your life as a movie. Although my five years of dedication to film studies and lots of wishful thinking has gotten me nowhere in making my autobiographical film dreams into reality, I will always maintain that it is a healthy and creative way to expend your brain power. As the hopeless romantic I think myself to be, most of my 'life as film' daydreams lean towards the genres of comedy, drama, and best of all, the musical. I would love nothing more than to have a movie moment where I spontaneously break into song and dance in the middle of the sidewalk and have everyone else join in. The reason why I bring this up is because yesterday I had a very strong urge to make my musical movie moment come true at the corner of Bank and Somerset at around 5 pm. Fortunately for the general public, I managed to restrain myself and channeled my musical movie energy into a spontaneous dress purchase and dinner with a friend.
Long story short, I was a pretty happy camper yesterday evening because I finished my 100-hour Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) course for Korea. Me and this course, see, we had a love/hate relationship that has lasted for the past several months. We had our good days and our bad days together. There were many summer afternoons when I felt obligated to sit in my dungeon apartment and write lesson plan after lesson plan instead of lounging in the park and reading a book or spending time with friends. During times like these, my inner diva would often get the best of me and these afternoons often consisted of whining, sighing, and dramatic expressions of exhaustion on my part. Of course, all of these antics were just practice for my autobiographical movie debut.
And it wasn't just how much time I put into the course, but also the content. Above all, grammar totally kicked my butt and I still feel the bruises. It was so surprising to realize that although English is my native language, before I started the couse I would have never been able to describe the difference between direct objects and indirect objects if my life depended on it. It made me realize that just because I can speak, read, write, and understand English effortlessly, it doesn't necessarily mean that I can teach others to speak English as well; It requires alot of planning, organization, and thought on behalf of the teacher.
 Although we had a fairly tumultuous relationship, I have to admit that taking the TEFL course was one of the best decisions I could have made to prepare myself to teach in Korea. It completely destroyed my confidence in the English language and then built my confidence right back up again, and now I am more convinced than ever that I can take on anything that the students throw my way, especially with my new Grammar for Dummies textbook (yes, I'm not afraid to admit that I bought it).
But enough of school talk right now, because I am free for the rest of the summer! BOOYAH! Now I am free to catch up on all the things I have listed on my 'Summer 2011 To Do' List, which includes cottaging, reading, paint by numbers, writing in my blog(!), relaxing, more relaxing....did I say relaxing? I am going to relish with gusto my last two weeks in Ottawa, a city that has found a place very close to my heart.