Hi everyone,
Update time. I pray everybody is keeping warm and doing well because its freezing over here - even the grass is frozen, everything goes crunch, crunch underneath your shoes. We didn't get a lot of snow this winter --thank God because Virginians are not used to snow and don't know how to drive in it--but the temperatures dipped a little last week and everybody kept indoors, wondering why we go to school in winter. But Americans know if they don't plan school calendars like this, they don't get four long summer months to shop.
It was great hearing all your voices over the Christmas break. Finally Bros Yinka and the Mos and I got to talk, breaking the telephone jinx after so long. I also want to thank Daddy, I think, for the wonderful, though peculiar, message I found in my voice mail several weeks ago. I saved it and decided I was going to tell you all about it in this month's update. Invariably, Daddy called my cell phone several weeks back while I was in class. The call immediately went to my voice mail. However, Daddy never hung up his cell phone on the other end - maybe he just slipped it in his pocket. Anyway, everything Daddy and Mummy (and a visitor, I think) were saying was being recorded. Then later Daddy left the room and went outside (I could hear his feet on the gravel), he then had a conversation with someone who I'm assuming was the gardener (Daddy told him mummy objected to the way the shrubs or flowers or something were trimmed). Then Daddy walked back to his office (I heard the door with the gauze net creak open) before he realized the phone was still on and then switched it off - and that was the end of the best voice mail I've ever received or heard. I've played over and over again and every time I hear new familiar sounds.
Over here, apart from the frozen grass :) everything else is going well. I'm teaching the online section of the playwriting class this semester and my students have gone from 6 to 8 and are all responding well. They are especially thrilled by the fact that I supply them with full breakdowns and comments on their story premises. Most professors never bother to give feedback to scripts, just grades, and the students all hated it. Writing is so perplexing and filled with tons of doubt and thus feedback is crucial. Writing students, I've recently discovered, write better when they know someone really cares about what they are doing - thus giving students feedback as become my philosophy. Funny thing though, since my class is online, I never thought I'd see any of my students face to face but then one of them, a lady in her 40s, tracked me down last week: "I'm one of your students", she said. And for a second I didn't know what she was talking about. And then it hit me: I'm a teacher - it felt weird. My other classes have started kicking up steam and my first big papers are also coming up in about two weeks.
Mum and Dad thanks for all the encouragement and help - it is the coolest thing in the world to know you have the greatest parents in the world, even if they are an 18 hour flight away. Akinyemisi - Rotimi called me a couple of days back, I think classes have started now. Segun also called, he says everything is "sweet.'
Bros Yinka and Moa - have a great time in Nigeria. Moyin, Modupe, Morenike - miss you all very much.
The Ofulues - Professor Yetunde Ofulue congratulations on the new job, next up dean of school of languages Open University. Bros Thony, Dara and Ehi - miss you lots.
love
bunmi
