Never stop smiling not even when you're sad,

someone might fall in love with your smile.

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

Where has the time gone?

I woke up remembering a poem I wrote when I was around 18.... A simple poem about Being Deaf... It had no title.

I sit in a corner
watching the whole world go by
Listening only with my eyes
and feeling everything with my heart

I may look like a loner
but that isn't so
I may seem depressed
but you will never know

This feeling of peace
I could never quite describe
Laughter and music
I may not understand

But I can feel happiness
from the smile on your face
I can feel love
from a warm embrace
I can feel sadness
when you shed a tear
I can feel all this
I just cannot hear


....I didn't write a lot of poetry after that. Maybe only for class. I don't remember the others but this one kind of stuck.

Fall is coming!!!

I love summer but fall is also rather a welcome sight - the changing of the leaves, the picturesque, instagrammable views :) FALL IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER!!!!!!!! Time to break out the boots, cardigans, sweaters, scarves. :) It also marks a year of being here in America and gosh, time flies by so fast!!!! 

I hope this will be a productive semester for me! Let's go, fall!

An interesting exercise

In class last week, for Educational Audiology, the Teacher played sounds when half of the class were Deaf. That meant half of the class were participating and the other half were just sort of staring at the Hearing people in the room, waiting for them to raise their hands if they recognized the sounds.

I found it to be an interesting exercise but also something that I wish were done differently so I could participate rather than gawk at my classmates. I guess my Teacher felt it was the best way to introduce a topic. :)

Revisiting life

I used to blog most days. I even used to keep a journal, handwritten, no less. Now life just seems to get in the way.

It was my goal to make it as a writer and in a way it did happen... albeit I never became famous like J.K. Rowling. I wish I had the courage and patience to see through a project as big as that. I wish I came up with the ideas all these writers came up with. I would love to be immortalized in a bookstore.

It is now 2014. After ten years, I'm not even close to being the person I wanted to be. Maybe life is just like that, never perfect, full of imperfections. In the span of 10 years... I got to be a magazine writer, an English teacher for elementary, high school and now college level. I graduated with an MA degree at one of the top universities in the Philippines - University of the Philippines- Diliman. Now I'm pursuing my second Masters degree by studying abroad in one of the most prestigious Deaf universities in the world - Rochester Institute of Technology at Rochester, New York. However, life is not perfect and I'm constantly plagued by so many things - financial difficulties, insecurities, and depression. I'm not even married yet and don't have kids! (All the while, my friends are making babies like there is no tomorrow!) In short, there is still so much I want to do in life.

It's weird, it took a television series for me to look back in my life, reflect and try to get my life in order. Kind of the time when I got hooked into Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings and it made me pursue being a writer and having that first masters degree. This time it is Colin Morgan and his television series, Merlin who made me rethink. While it is sort of sad that it has to take a whole television series for me to get my life in track, I like to think I'm a work-in-progress and that it took a lot to get me where I am today. Colin and Merlin were just merely a part of it. Thank you, Colin. You may never read this but thank you anyway.

......Yes, that's it.

... and on we go....

... The fish are jumping and the cotton is high... :)

Starting Over

I want to blog again!

It would be such a shame if I never got to write about the stuff that happens to me, never got to share with the world my adventures or misadventures as a Deaf girl. I don't know who would be interested to read such stuff but there is so much about life that is happening. Time goes by so fast, as is evident by the timeline in my blog. I started this in 2004 and then suddenly, I just stopped. Life happened.

By the time I got back, I saw so many themed blogs and thought, I could do that. I just have to figure out how to put tabs in my blog, to get stuff organized, you know? It's taking me forever tp do that because I always found aome reason or another. I never got around to doing it.

Now..... I would really like to go back! I miss blogging and I miss writing! It was my dream to be writer. Hopefully, it will still push through. The thing with dreams, it gives you hope, it gives youpromise, it gives life a purpose. So if you have a dream, don't let go. No matter how impossible it is, pursue it anyway. What have you got to lose, right?

And so... My diary continues! With it, my dreams!

Summing it up

Teaching has always been to me, a quest for never-ending knowledge. We are constantly learning, constantly looking for new ways on how to improve ourselves, always trying to do better than the last time. Every teacher gives 110% of themselves to their work and they do not ask much in return. We are not the highest paid people in the planet even though, when you think about it, most of the successful people in this world were taught, guided and molded by a Teacher.

This is why, when I was offered to take an online class that will be taught by teachers from Rochester Institute of Technology, I jumped at the chance to do so. Mainly because, even if I have already taken a degree on education and a masters on special education, I felt like I still needed to learn more. Besides this course focused on the education of the Deaf and that is what I wanted.

I like to think we all left the state of New York reenergized, grateful and ready to tackle on teaching challenges once more. Our visit to Rochester School for the Deaf and to National Technical Institute for the Deaf-Rochester Institute of Technology opened us to new ideas and encouraged us to be an even better Teacher. Thank you to the PEN NTID Team, the CEAD Team at DLS-CSB for making all this possible. Most of all to the teachers and students at Rochester School for the Deaf for letting us be a part of their world.