Saturday, April 10, 2010

Staying steady

Hi all,

Well, we keep on plugging away. I'm busy with CTP, which is a College Transfer Program for my school. In brief, we train the students in the classes to be able to survive university and college in Canada. For example, we teach them how to write academically, how to avoid plagiarism, to take good lecture and reading notes, skimming, scanning, etcetera.

It's a lot of marking, to say the least! Between essays, presentations, and other minor pieces of homework (by minor, I mean only one page), I find myself rather busy!

Still, it's interesting work, and it certainly pays the bills.

On a bit of a depressing note: our cat, Amy, is sick. She has several large bladder stones that we only recently became aware of, and thus, she is on pain medication and a special diet to try and break up the stones.

We're hopeful it will help. We cannot afford the surgery to remove the stones, and thus we are faced with an ugly choice should the diet not work, whether to let her live on in pain, or to put her down. She is not an old cat by any means, and has been a loving member of our little family for three years. We are therefore quite reluctant to put her down, but, as my partner has noted, we don't want her to suffer constantly for the next however many years she has left.

We are therefore praying and hoping that her stones will break up with this medication she is taking. Any and all prayers and well-wishes from you, dear readers, would be appreciated on this!

On a positive note: I recently got my acceptance letter from OISE, which is the Teacher's College associated with the University of Toronto. Bachelor of Education, here I come. I've debated about whether or not to go and get my B.Ed for some time, but given that the ESL field is not well-regulated, and that pay scales continue to be moderate at best, I'm looking to eventually move into the public system.

I start in September, and so I will continue to work in ESL until that point.

Hope Amy gets better soon, and talk to you all again, soon!

Chris