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entries for 2002/10/02
volunteering and languages
Tomorrow I'm going to visit a Norcross ESL class to talk about volunteering there. I might take a class on teaching English, and maybe sign up to teach English in Japan
for a couple months. (Or anywhere with a guaranteed Internet connection so I can still run my business.) I'm not big on visiting other countries just for the sake of tourism, but I think if I had something useful to do there, it would be a lot more fun.
CARE is also offering volunteering vacations in Peru, which also looks interesting, but Internet access could be an issue.
Speaking of languages, Rosetta Stone software is some of the best I've seen. The lessons are
entirely in the target language (no translations). I worked through the first Japanese unit, and could actually read some hiragana
by the end of the first lesson, just from matching up what I was hearing with the words on the screen. (For japanese, you can
also present the stuff in romanji (latin alphabet) and kanji (ideograms) but romanji is too easy and kanji is a lot harder
beause it isn't phonetic). The Rosetta Stone software is incredibly expensive, but it's cheaper than Pimsleur tapes, and they
have a monthly subscription service for $20 a language. I plan to work through Spanish, Japanese, and German over the next few months.
They don't teach Esperanto, so I'm on my own for that. :)
To completely change subjects again, I'm also signed up for a Hands On Atlanta orientation for next Wendesday. It's at the carabou coffee in buckhead. Anyone else want to come? Sign up here.
7pm
water weight
I don't know how many people tell me that when I lose a large amount of weight from one morning to the next, it's water weight. Okay, fine. I have now lost almost 20 pounds of water weight, or about two and a half gallons. No wonder I'm getting smaller. :)
But I now think that sleep excess sleep didn't have much to do with it. I'd said earlier that the day I expected to gain weight, I lost it. Well, I expected to gain weight because I had a lot of sugar that day. Sugar forces the body to produce insulin, which stores fat. But sugar is also a stimulant, and I think that since I hadn't had any in two weeks, that's what triggered the weight loss. The same thing happened this last saturday, when I had two candy bars for a "cheat day". I woke up lighter the next day. Weird. :)