2011 Aims: October update

Here it is! the latest instalment of my 2011 aims! You can see the page with the previous months here.

1.I will give at least a 10% tithe in addition to any other giving I will do.
Confession time, I forgot to bring it to church on Sunday! But I have the money set aside I'm going to give it on Sunday. Another thought that I've been struck by recently is that it should be our "First fruits". I get paid in two sets, it would be easier to pray this money from the second lot but God want's the First fruits of my labour. So he's going to get my best. 

2. Making Prayer a stronger habit. 

Prayer has been an interesting issue this month, there have been moments when it has been great and moments when it hasn't. However thankfully the trend at the moment is on the up! I've added to the side bar a resource from the Joshua project to pray for unreached people groups and on a personal level I have started using a memo pad on my tablet to keep track of prayer requests. I have already seen some of them answered!
I'd love to prayer for you. So please leave a comment with a prayer request and let's see God answer them. 

3.Use skype more to chat to people back home/Britain

Again I have been using Skype lots this month, the only downside has been that certain people [aka family] have somehow missed speaking to me this month [with the exception of a couple of minute chat] as such this is my priority for skype! A family catch up!

4.  I will improve as an EFL teacher.

Well my three courses are going well. I prepared a seminar for the Lviv conference [but couldn't visit in the end] I did however get to lead a trial version at the school. I have prepared to run my language awareness course tomorrow. I have been teaching a full work load with no repeat classes and I have even managed to continue reading some of Scott Thornbury's how to teach speaking and teaching unplugged [by Luke Meddings and Scott Thornbury]. PLUS I have made early progress with "A Noobs guide to TEFL" and a few online progressions.
Best of all I've noticed changes in my lessons and I have remembered a few basic principles which have really improved the quality of them. All in all a great month.

5. I will improve my Russian.

Unfortunately I can't say the same here. I have certainly had some great speaking experiences and agreed to start a Russian conversation club with some other teachers but finding time to sit down and study [especially using on line resources when I have so little free time. However the slightly more worrying point is that I have probably spent more concious effort working on Spanish. I guess this is partially down to having Spanish language CD's and reaching a plateau in Russian. Hopefully when this conversation club becomes more regular things will pick up but otherwise I will just have to organise something at the weekends to make the most of my time then.

6. I will write more songs.

As stated before this aim is no longer being pursued. HOWEVER this month I am trying something new to do with creativity which is to write an ebook! More on that at the end of the month. 

7. Host a weekly meal at my flat.

This really has failed this month. I've attended two meals I feel but I haven't really had people round. As such I'm inviting people round this weekend to change that!

8. Regular and higher quality blogging.

This has definitely picked up. The second blog is up and running and I'm quite happy with it so far. I've also had the second largest number of views this month. 

9. I will get involved with some form of charitable work in the Ukraine.

Still searching for a new charity to be involved in. To be honest with everything else on my plate I haven't actively pursued this. 

10. I will make a Public video each month.

I posted my Video challenge 3 which hasn't really been taken on by anyone [and had very few views!] mainly due to lack of publicity. SO this is your time to shine! Let's invite people to contribute meals and to make this challenge take off!

Well that was last month. I'm quite excited about a few things I'm planning for this month but Time management is becoming an increasing issues. At some point I may have to reassess these goals again. In addition there are only two more updates before the year is over and next year will have to start with it's new goals. 

Why do you read this blog?

A quick question why do you read this blog?

What's good, what's ...not so good.

have you recommended it or not? Why did you/why haven't/wouldn't you recommended it to someone.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, In appreciation I'm posting a new blog post about going to a Dacha tomorrow.

Who am I writing for?

It is amazing how many coincidences you can sometimes have in a day.

Today my friend Andrew Brims wrote a blog post about the need to take a rest from busyness, especially online and issued a reminder that to be creative we need to apply ourselves to make this happen.

Just before this I had found a link to a person who had given away a free E-book on writing online (and all I, or you, had to do was sign up to receive his blogs weekly update. Bargain!) It was amazing how it seamed to speak and challenge me about my own creativity and motives.

A while back this blog was a political blog, sometimes pulled a few hundred visits ever day with it's various snipes at different political views and issues in the local news. I even moved across to Blogger to try and actually make some money out of this.

Fast forward to a few months after the election and when I moved across to the Ukraine and I realised that I had lost something. The joy of getting views had turned to the pain and lament at the lack of views I now received and my inability to write about UK politics due to the fact that despite having the internet at my fingers I was increasingly out of the loop and unable to make wise or insightful comments on the issues of the day [partially due to lack of time, partially through a sense of political disenchantment and wondering what I actually did think/feel in the current political climate.]

So I stopped.

I changed and started writing for the pure joy of writing [and the desire to keep people back in the UK up to date with what I was doing.] Writing became fun again although the monthly updates of blog stats and similar continued the reason was less for me after all I could see these without sharing them] and the fact that I would now at best get a couple of hundred page views a month and mostly from the same people didn't matter. I enjoyed writing and trying to write in a new a different way.

I think. and I hope you agree that my writing has actually improved during this time period. There is certainly a lot more of me held within the text that you see on the pages now. But I guess that is for you to decided.

The really interesting thing is when you compare this to my attitude to music. {to be continued)

May 2011

So here is the Blog round up of the month of May, I hope you enjoy it.

This month I have had most page views than I have EVER had before! With around 207 visits.
The top three countries were The United Kingdom, The Ukraine and The United States.

The most popular post was "My house shall be called a house of prayer." Which was helped in no small part by Andrew Brims mentioning it in his weekly email.

I did a total of 25 posts the month! [when I have set the target of only 8] and I even made a video or 2 !

My favourite post that I wrote was probably the parable of the dancer [and yet had very few views and no comments :( ]

My most commentated on article was for my video about what makes you feel yourself.


So comments, what did you enjoy this month? What do you want more/less of? How can the blog be improved?

TEFL resource: blog page

Something I have been meaning to make for a long time now and finally gotten round to creating is this, a Blog page hand out. The idea being that your students write down their blog post, or general writing, and then the other students can write in the comment section bellow. It still could use some polishing up but it will do for now at least. I hope you find it useful.

A quick reflection and update: 21/02/2011

Today's blog shall be very short as I have a few writing activities that I must do. These included the first of my International House Young learners course, A guest Blog post...well sort of. [more to be revealed later] an online training course, AND I need to do my regular planning as well. This is part of the reason for the brevity of the post today and will simply be a little update with some thoughts.

Work has become much more time consuming and the fact the office is further away from my house means that I end up spending the whole day out of the class [and I now have every day from 8-8 apart from Monday when I finish at 6:30.]

The weekend once again flew by with several highlights [not the basketball this week though!] including an amazing lunch with the other teachers, inventing a new Russian word [when trying to ask for the spiciest chilli a man had] and a very good sermon [once again] at Nadesda church.

I still haven't done the video I said I would and I am contemplating removing videos from my aims, I shall continue to reflect on this though.

The month is nearly over! This means I only have four months left on my contract! Where has the time gone!

Mobile internet can be really slow.

Hopefully the next post will be longer and more thought out. please comment or ask me a question.