Escape the Ordinary....

As promised I'm going to start my Wikipedia Trails with Kaapi, or Indian filter coffee. Finding different coffees from around the world is something that I enjoy. Kaapi I read the articles on Wikipedia:  found here . The one thing I learned about Kaapi is the preparation. It is prepared in two metal cylinders. One has holes in the bottom so that when the coffee is pressed, it can pass through this porting. The other holds the coffee and has a metal disk in it to tamp down the ground beans. I envisioned it to be like a small version of a french press. It is then poured with a lot of milk and sugar. They also have a third metal bowl type vessel that they pour it back and forth in to cool the drink down as well as mix it all together. This is what Kaapi looks like: Source:  Wikipedia Jaggery The next article I read was on Jaggery. It's a type of sweetner they use to sweeten the coffee.  It looks really rather gross in it's raw form. Source:  Wik...

This week I decided to do the tech tip on embedding videos. This was something that I did for my project and then I saw that it was something we could write about for the tech tip! I embedded a video for my portfolio on Google Sites:  found here!  I thought this piece of music really conveyed the mood I was feeling when I wrote A Single Soul. Here is the video I chose: 2Cellos: Love Story It was pretty easy to embed a video. On Blogger you use the film icon and you can search from there what video you want (if you are using YouTube) and then double click on the one you want and it puts it in there. For Google Sites, you can click embed on things you want to add. On YouTube, when you click share video, there is an option to get the embed code. All you do is copy and paste this over and it puts the video in. Super simple. I'm sure there is a way to make it more fancy and hide the video and just play the song, but that is not something I dared to venture with this wee...

This week I decided to read the article 10 Ways Teachers Can Improve Their Sleep.  Found Here! Sleep is something I have always struggled with so I'm hoping this article will give me some tips on how to get more of it. 1. Find Your Optimal Bedtime Well this sounds easy in theory, but with my work and home schedules, it's dang near impossible to find one that works and be consistent with it. It says you need to get between 7 and 9 hours of sleep each night. I think I might have gotten 9 hours total sleep for the week! I like to stay up late and wake up late, but unfortunately, my work scheduled does not allow this. I have to get up at 4am everyday that I work. This one might not be something that I can consistently do until I find another job. 2. Get Into a Routine This goes back to the whole, find a bedtime thing. While I do love routine, I'm sure as hell not getting up at 4am on my days off. It does say that it is stressful for the body to pull the rhythms back and...

I chose this video:  3 Tips to Boost Your Confidence . It's Ted-ED video and I chose it because confidence is something that has come up a lot this week for me. My best friend and I both went through a very intense promotional process. I was putting in for a quality assurance position within my department and he was testing to promote to lieutenant. The processes were crazy! We both tried to help each other out and boost each other's confidence throughout the week. These tips might have been helpful just a tad before! At the beginning of the video, it describes where confidence comes from. I have always struggled with how to explain confidence other than just the simple line of believing in yourself. This video does a great job putting it down into words. It then goes on to explain the three contributing factors to how much confidence a person has. It talks about genetics, social environment and then how the choices we make, the risks we take and how we react to situations ...

So the image that I found the most funny was the one of distracted boyfriend. It was in the announcement for November 10th. It made me laugh so much! I have been working hard the last couple days to get caught back up in this class. Doing every single type of assignment all in one day. The meme is making a meme for extra credit versus doing a reading assignment. I just could relate with this soooooo much.  Here is the image. Not sure on the title, but this is where I got it from:  Blogspot The video I watched for this week was Why We Worship Trees:  found here! I knew that this was a big part of the Indian culture, but I never knew why. I now know that they associate different kinds of trees with different gods. How fascinating! I also really like the Epified videos. They are short and sweet and to the point, but they do a great job of explaining things in the India culture or retelling stories. I also like the illustrations that go with the videos. I like that styl...

I must say, this week has been rather productive. I have been able to do quite a bit of work in this class and catch back up. Still not 100% there, but I feel that it's not as overwhelming now. I'm in a good place and might still be able to pull off an A in this class if I can get my life together! I think that doing multiple weeks assignments at the same time, keeping similar types together, has really helped me catch back up. When I’m in the groove of commenting, I just go with it and comment until my little heart and fingers can do no more. However, if I keep going on it, then I can get six or so assignments done at the same time and that’s a lot of points that I’ve earned back. Also, have I mentioned how much of a life-saver the extra credit has been for this class? Without it, I would have failed a long time ago and been so screwed. I need this class because it checks off several boxes so that I can graduate. It also allows me to do a reverse transfer so that I c...

** I have also put this story on my Portfolio Page, found  here . The night air crackled with the heat. The coolness of the water clashed with the air and an eerie fog danced across the surface of the lake. Despite low visibility near the ground, the night sky shone bright. The moon bathed each surface in a pale-yellow glow. Every star painted the heavens with a brilliance that made her mind at peace, even if for just a brief second. This was her favorite time of the morning, when the earth was at it quietest. Adeline sat atop the banyan tree overlooking the lake. A heavy sigh escaped her lips. As the quiet crept in, her mind began to wander. She struggled to come to terms with her choices. Leaving her home in the city was necessary, but she was so lonely. The kind of lonely that made her chest ache in a way that made the hopelessness seem vast and never ending. She wondered if she would ever become numb to that feeling. She wondered if she would ever find happiness again. ...

For this assignment, I watched Epified: Krishna: Part A videos. In Episode 1, it explains the birth of Krisha and how be came about. There was a terrible king who ruled the kingdom and the people longed for change. The king’s cousin got married and there was a prophecy that their 8 th child would save the king from the death that was to happen to him. He was going to kill his cousin and his wife, but instead threw them in prison. Every time they had a child, he killed it. When the 7 th child was in the womb of the cousin’s wife, it was transported to the womb of another woman. Everyone thought that the cousin’s wife had had a miscarriage. The divine birth of the 8 th child is where this video ends. I would have to do more research on this one, but this could be told in China where they have a limit on how many children they can have. This might be able to be translated to that? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNe8Xg0G0lk&list=PLrWYQjLLbXchvrnCibGQXZjo3FLHppHWD&index=2 ...

This week for the “reading” I decided to watch some videos on YouTube that were retellings of The Mahabharata.   Found here In the first video, Shantanu the Unfortunate, the intro kind of explains that if you view the stories as how Karma works, then you will understand that everything is the result of what happened before it and the cause of what happens next. I thought that was a really interesting perspective to take on these and kind of explains how a lot of the stories interconnect. The first story, Shantanu and the Unfortunate, is how he married a woman and the woman made him promise that he would ask no questions about her judgement. After they were married, she drown 7 of their children. On the eighth, he questioned why she was doing this. She answered that she had promised to free 8 celestial beings from mortality for crimes that had been committed long ago. Because he has asked her questions, she left with the eighth child and he was devastated. I still think th...

For this reading assignment, I read The Giant Crab and Other Tales retold by W.H.D. Rouse. In the first story, Union is Strength, it tells a story about a man that catches birds. He sits by the water and when they get close, he throws a net over them. The birds come up with a plan to all work together and fly away with the net. They put the net on a bush and escape. This going on for some time and the man is sad that he is not catching any birds. But he realizes that if he waits, then the birds will start to bicker…and bicker they did! Soon, they were not working together at all and the man was able to take home his catch. I think this story is a short and simple example of why teamwork is so important. Obviously in this story it means life or death. However, there are all kinds of examples in real life that teamwork is the only way to accomplish a goal. Find the link for this story  here! The next story that caught my interest was The Quail and the Falcon. This is a ...