The spontaneous standing ovation I received from 23 Taiwanese 4th graders when I finished reading Charlotte’s Web aloud to them. I never truly realized how much they enjoyed quality literature until that moment.
Reading books on teaching strategies and then envisioning me applying them in my own classroom. I seriously get the shivers.
Hearing my niece call me “Auntie Tare-Bear”.
Talking to my big brother or little sister on the phone and hearing their Southern drawls.
Actually, I love talking to my sister on the phone because we’re so close, that even though we’re only half-sisters, we sound almost exactly alike on the phone. I think the only way my mom can tell us apart is because of Caller ID. And when I come home, my poor grandma can’t tell us apart on the phone.
The moment my 2-year-old cousin read his first word, “hot”, in magnetic letters, after I had taught him the word two days before and showed that he had truly mastered it. I chose it because he said the word a bit. My relatives were talking about how he knew his letters out of sequence, but since he didn’t know the ABC song, another aunt said he didn’t really know the letters. So to prove them wrong, I put the letters H-O-T together, a word that he wouldn’t have seen in most of his baby books, sounded out each letter as I traced under it and then asked him for the word. Two days after my last visit with him, I took the letters out again, put them together and without prompting, he said, “Hot!”. Apparently he’s picked up quite a few more words. Another 2-year-old reader in my family! (I was the first one.)
The smile from a baby. A baby reaching out to me for me to hold her. That same baby putting her head on my shoulder. Okay, my former Chinese teacher’s daughter did this to me a few weeks ago. A couple of times. Of all the people in the room, she wanted me. Sigh.
Have I already mentioned that I love working with kids?
[quote=“ImaniOU”]
Have I already mentioned that I love working with kids?[/quote]I think you may have mentioned it quite a few times…Mind me it’s all good cause your post gave me the warm fuzzies. What an amazing teacher you must be.
–My newly painted purple bedroom
–Seeing the first real furniture I’ve ever bought in my bedroom
–My children (students) attacking me for a spontaneous group hug in the reading corner
–Feeling the heat from the hot sidewalk seep into me as I dry off by the side of the pool while eating a bag of sunwarmed fritos
–My new roommate volunteering to walk six blocks in the middle of the night to help me retrieve my bike that had broken down
–My CT giving me a cake for no other reason than because she thought it tasted good
–That scene in “Notre Dame de Paris” when Esmeralda meets Gringoire, the poet
[quote=“Persephone”]
–Feeling the heat from the hot sidewalk seep into me as I dry off by the side of the pool while eating a bag of sunwarmed fritos
[/quote]:lol:
[quote=“Persephone”]
–That scene in “Notre Dame de Paris” when Esmeralda meets Gringoire, the poet[/quote]
Oh my God! I absolutely love that musical. I first heard it and bought the CD while I was studying in Tours, France in 1999. I never expected that I would get to see it live and in all places, in Asia. Now I have the DVD of it and I turn on the French subtitles and belt it out with Helene Segara and the gorgeous Garou and Bruno Pelletier (in the “making of video”, he reminds me very much of someone I dated in high school with his goatee and long curly hair). I get the shivers when Garou sings “Le Pape de Fou” and the chord changes as he sings “Tu t’en fous, Esmeralda” (You don’t care, Esmeralda). Actually, the whole thing gives me the shivers. And Julie Zenatti and Helene Segara singing “Il Est Beau Comme Le Soleil”, the moment when their voices match as well as when Daniel Lavoie and Bruno Pelletier’s voices do the same thing in “Florence”.
I think my neighbors know the songs almost as well as I do…especially when I sing them in the shower…
Also, when I saw it here at the Taipei Sports Arena on its opening night this year, the guy who played Phoebus fell off the stage in mid-song. I think it was during “Dechire”. He was a real trooper and kept singing, even though there was some feedback from his headset. I would have expected to hear a “putain” or at least a “merde” before he got back up on his feet. It’s done wonders for bringing my speaking fluency up a bit and I’ve had fun translating the lyrics into English.
See, now you’ve got me started. I’m going to have to watch the whole 2-1/2 hours of it right now and get the shivers all over again. And then the making of so I can see Bruno and Garou without their stage makeup. I remember when Garou, Patrick Fiori, and Daniel Pelletier made rounds on the French talk show circuits to sing “Belle”. My host mother Annick was always singing along with the TV and sighing over how cute Garou was - even though he was young enough to be her son!
[quote]I think my neighbors know the music almost as well as I do…especially when I sing them in the shower… Oops! [/quote]I can’t believe what I read here. You are signing tunes from the Francophonie in Quebec while having a shower? Now that’s at least one thing we have in common.
Edit: Fiori is by far my favorite writer. Unless I mix him up with someone else, he’s the author of most tunes from the band called Harmonium. Are you familiar with this band? If you aren’t, then you are missing out on some of the finest music to ever come out of Quebec. Look em up on Kazza. Talking about warm fuzzies, I don’t think any band has ever done it for me as much as Harmonium did, and still does. Too bad they only have three albums.
I usually sing in French in the shower. Before it was L’Affaire Louis Trio or Zap Mama, but Notre Dame is much easier to sing. I don’t detect the Quebecois accent in the music, though. And I wouldn’t touch the Celine Dion version with a ten-foot pole.
Was it just me or does Daniel Lavoie (Frollo) seem very nervous throughout the show. He doesn’t seem much of a stage actor.
Another warm fuzzy…when Daniel Lavoie sings, “Je t’aime” for like five minutes without breathing.
Fiori is a writer. Both music and poetry but his voice isn’t very powerful indeed. It is said that when he wrote the album L’Heptade, he locked himself up in a bedroom for months on end without having any human contacts whatsoever. The poetry that he came up with is just…No words for it. Songs such as “comme un fou” or “comme un sage” in contrast are absolute classics.
Garou is pretty popular with older folks in Quebec but I think he does too many remakes. They market his voice more than anything else and they use popular songs in the process. Lavoie on the other hand is another very respected poet and signer in the Francophonie.
All of them have a way of giving me the warm fuzzies though.
[quote]I don’t detect the Quebecois accent in the music, though.[/quote]A lot of the more popular singers in Quebec adopt a more “fancy” French like accent in their songs. Not the case for Harmonium though. I tend to appreciate a blunt and honest accent that reflects better these singers roots.
Wow. I would have never guessed the Quebecois music scene was so intricate. The only thing I knew about Quebecois French is what I learned from my French Phonology course in university. Namely, the nasally twang and the alveolar-dental tapped r (as opposed to the uvular r in standard French).
<–Garou