New Year Tripping in Taiwan

Ok. I know it's been about 6 months now since I came back from Taiwan, but I finally finished the video of my trip. I make these long videos mainly for my family back home because I know they're the ones who are most interested in knowing how my life is going and what it is that I do on my trips to other countries. 


If you're not a family member but are still interested in watching my longer videos, congratulations! You're on my list of cool people. Not that it's a requirement for being on the list, but it definitely gives you a leg up. 


=)

We're Gonna Chill...

Some of you may think that teaching English as a second language might be boring. There are a lot of grammar lessons, a lot of vocabulary tests, and a lot of slow-talking involved in what most people think of as ESL classes. Well, not necessarily. 


It doesn't have to go that way. There is a lot of that stuff involved in my classes, except for the slow-talking. I refuse to slow down to a condescendingly slow speech speed. But aside from that, there is a lot of room, I think, to play with the language and have fun with the kids. I do, of course, teach the kids the "proper" way to speak, but we also joke around a lot and they now understand such things as, "Art thou ready, my dears?", which they get is a very old way of speaking. Another thing that I do with them is that I randomly insert different colloquialisms from different places so that they get a sense of how the language is actually used by native English speakers rather than just how it's done by the book. In this case, I inserted one of my own colloquialisms from back home. 


Enjoy!  =)


P.S. Most of these kindergarteners didn't speak or understand any English a couple of months ago. I think their homeroom teacher, Stacey, and the rest of us have been doing a pretty good job (if I do say so myself).

Where In the World Am I From?

*Sigh*

There's something that has been on my mind for years now but has been really bugging me recently. Ever since I was a kid and I started school, I have been hyper-aware that my last name is not very common in the U.S. My schools never had any other students with my same last name unless they were my siblings. This was, apparently, also the case for hospitals because once when my mom went to a hospital in L.A. and someone took her name to check her in, they immediately felt the need to call a nurse who had the same last name and was shocked to meet someone else with the same surname. She very briefly interviewed  my mom about her last name and exchanged phone numbers with her. This was probably not standard hospital procedure, but it goes to show how uncommon we are in the U.S. And we're even more uncommon here in Korea. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one in the entire peninsula. It's a very lonely feeling. 

Anyway, I know that my family is from Mexico and my dad, specifically, is from  Michoacán . I've been there before. It's a beautiful place. But that's not where my family name comes from. It's not an indigenous American name. It's a Spanish name. That much is obvious to me. I do, as most other Mexican people, have Spanish blood in me. I have done some research throughout the years, and found that there's even a valley in Spain called Valle de Tena. The problem is that I can't, for the life of me, find out what the name means. What's the etymology of the name? Who named that valley so? Why? I can't remember where it was that I found this, but I think I remember "Tena" translating over to "tent". So in essence, Valle de Tena would translate to "Valley of the Tents". The problem is that I can't remember where I got that from and I can't find it on the internet anymore. 

There's another thing that I wonder about. It seems that during the Middle Ages, this valley in the Spanish  Pyrénées was swamped by "rebels" who were trying to escape Romanization (Christianity). This included many Muslim people. So then, is there a possibility that Tena is an Arabic word? How do you say "tent" in Arabic? Had the valley already been named by the time the Moors got there?

To bring it back to more recent times, I believe the first Tena went to the Americas in the early 1700's. I imagine it must have been a man named Manuel Tena because just about every Tena family in North America has a couple of Manuel men in it. I, myself, am no exception. My youngest brother is Manuel, my dad is Manuel, my grandfather is Manuel, and I imagine it goes on and on. I see a lot of Manuel Tenas on the internet whenever I google. 

If you have absolutely no interest in genealogy, then this blog probably just bored the living hell out of you. Sorry. lol. They're just thoughts that I randomly have to put down in writing because I don't want to forget them. I think that in all of the travel plans that I have, I'm going to have to include a trip to Michoacan, Mexico so that I can ask to look through official government archives and piece together my family tree. I also have plans of living in Spain for a couple of years. So if that goes as planned, I will have to do more research into the etymology of my family name while I'm there, cuz it's driving me nuts!!