Soup-Soupa Soup, Dupa-Soupa Doopy Doop. Up Next: Tortellini Chicken Soup to Serve the Colder Days! My Asian Spoons Arrived

Happy New Year to me! Ever since I spent time in Tokyo, Japan, I've loved eating at noodle bars and sucking down incredible broth. I think part of the appeal is the spoons they use, then the slurping sounds of finishing the last bits in the bowl.

I'm happy to say that the spoons I wanted for Christmas arrived yesterday - a gift to myself. Every since Sue McV turned me on to eating Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and Thai, I've wanted to order good spoons, and for a long time, I've used the cheap plastic ones I found in an Asian market. I was down to two, so opted to go fancier and buy four more. Now I can serve soup to four guests. They are as nice as I wanted them to be. 

Good weight, too. Deep curves for more deliciousness.

I finished week 3 of the winter session class and have just one more week left before the new semester begins. I also have to grade 20 research proposals very quickly during the first week of the Spring semester. It's hard not to resent all the important emails coming at me with demands for the first week of classes, when I haven't taken a break like everyone else, and I don't have time for parties, retreats, lunch-meetings, and planning sessions.

It's easy. I can't be there. Simple as that.

But I am excited by the 20 students I have and am ready to admit that the Action Research class is one of my favorite classes to teach, especially since it continues in the first summer session with Capstone. I love seeing everything come to completion (and it reminds me of the Culminating Projects I sponsored at the Brown for so many years. Sadly, colleagues voted to remove the Capstone to quicken certification, and so our students will not get the full preparation they deserve (even after other colleagues and I worked so hard to reinvent the sequence. Ah, but I admit, too - it's a LOT. But I love accomplishing the work and so do the students. It's like we're thrown an impossible task and we achieve it. It feels good in the end and they definitely are prepared for a sustained career of action research in their practice.

Alas, it shall be no more, and now we have to figure out what it shall be. 

As I told my students, today is the first TGIF of 2024, as last week doesn't count with the holidays and all. Now we're all in need of a weekend. North of us, they'll likely get a snow day, too, but we won't be so lucky...just a coat over the weekend.

And soup. Delicious, warming soup...with new spoons. I can't wait.