New Year! New Me!

First, let's reflect on 2020. It was one of the worst years in the history of humanity. Over 1.6 million dead worldwide due to Covid-19; that's a lot. Our whole life changed and wearing a mask became our new normal. Most people started working from their homes and everything went digital. We would never had taken this step if we weren't forced to take it. As for me, as a teacher, I started teaching online and gained tons of new skills. I also enrolled back in university to get my teaching diploma this year. So you can say that a lot had happened for me and I was able to invest a lot in myself.

As for 2021, I don't want to be super optimistic concerning the corona vaccine but I am hopeful that we will somehow get out of our shell. I want to keep on investing in myself, anything that improves my life and the way I live it. My first goal for the new year is to get my ILETS or TOFEL certificate. My second goal is to find the right shift in my career; that one is still a mystery, even I don't know it yet :) The third and final goal is to find the peace of mind that I am looking for. I will always be thankful for my health and the health of those around me.

As for you, the one who is reading this right now, I wish you a merry everything and a happy always <3

Peanut Butter Cheesecake!

I don't believe I've mentioned it before but I love to cook, especially desserts. Food is sacred to me, and I enjoy every single bite. In fact, food makes me so happy, and if you ever saw me angry this means that I am actually hungry. Now that you guys know how much I love to eat, let's continue. Unfortunately lately, I barely have time which makes me sad. But I want to talk about Halloween 2018 where I made my famous peanut butter cheesecake. Yes, we do celebrate Halloween, in fact we celebrate every occasion, just any excuse for us to gather as a family and enjoy our time. I remember this specific Halloween; I wanted everything to be perfect, typical Sarah, so I started decorating the day before. I literally transformed our house into a haunted house. We all dressed up and wore scary makeup and had the best time. I love cheesecake, and my signature cheesecake is the pineapple cheesecake, which tastes great by the way, but I decides to take a risk and try something completely new and dark just to fit with the theme. So I found this peanut butter cheesecake and it was literally the best cheesecake I ever tasted, so I will post the link for the YouTube video that I followed. Enjoy! 

This is how my cheesecake turned out.

Sugar Addiction

A few years ago, I discovered that a person can be addicted to sugar; yes, you heard it right, sugar. When you first consume sugar, you will feel very happy for a few minutes and then extremely depressed. For all my life, I thought that I had a sweet tooth, and that's why I eat lots of sweets and I add like five teaspoons of sugar to my tea. But then I came across a video where a person made this experiment and he stopped consuming sugar for a month, because it is really bad for the body, and the results were drastic for him. So, I wanted to try it, and I did. At first, just like any other addiction, I kept craving sugar, I had mood swings and I had trouble sleeping. After two weeks, everything changed. I became more active, felt more healthy and the cravings stopped. Even if I walked by any chocolate bar, I would take maximum one bite and it would be too much sugar for me. This was one of the best decisions that I made and I advise you to try it.

Tough Day (No filter)

Again, the same thing happens again and again. I guess it's new year fever where I suddenly get depressed and all that I accomplished simply fades into thin air and my mind only sees what I didn't accomplish. I start to self reflect, just weighing the good and the bad and that's never a good idea. I take myself into the darkest places in my mind where I feel worthless and a failure. I suddenly hate what I am doing and just want a job that I truly deserve and matches what I am capable of. I go on a job application spree until my head hurts. Then I give up and watch some YouTube videos related to skin care, astronomy, fatal cancer and anything that is irrelevant to what I am going through. I also reach out for friends when I am feeling this way, and just chatting with them is pure therapy. I guess this is how I cope with what I go through. 

I just had one of those days, and I feel awful, but I know it is temporary and tomorrow will be better. My life motto is to be kind to everyone, and I am not taking my own advice; I literally support everyone except myself. It's bad when you're mean to yourself. I guess I am still a work in progress. There is a trick that I came up with when you are feeling down, just list all the things you accomplished, then all the things you are thankful for. This makes me feel better because I have so much to be thankful for.

Christmas was different this year

Last Christmas, my whole family gathered at my parents' house and spent the whole day there. My younger sister and I had already decorated the living room and set up the Christmas tree. My older sister cooked a turkey with veggies and all of us made lots of desserts. I remember I made so many activities for the kids like decorating gingerbread man cookies and singing and dancing to Christmas songs. We played charades with the entire family including Mom and Dad. I dressed up as Santa, just like every year, and distributed the gifts. It was a normal Christmas Eve.

This year's Christmas was different. We wanted to keep the tradition, but there was no way we could have done what we did last year. Not all my family members were able to come because of COVID, so some just joined us virtually. Even the ones who came, they came with a mask covering their face where you can barely see any expressions. The kids weren't allowed to play but rather just to sit in one place with their face shield on. There were no feast and no dessert to minimize the chance of COVID exposure. Santa distributed the gifts, after sanitizing them first :). It was NOT a normal Christmas Eve but I am still thankful that all my family members were able to join and that all of them are in good health.

Arduino

I decided to start learning something very different yet very innovative this time; Arduino. I chose it because I wanted to be introduced to something new and not related to my major.

It looks complicated, doesn't it? Well, it is not. It is simply an open-source electronic platform that you program to create interactive electronic objects. It is usually used as a prototype for a lot of inventions. Ain't that interesting? You don't have to have the actual device to work with Arduino, there is an online simulation (https://www.tinkercad.com/dashboard) where you can work virtually for free. 

I will be talking about what I have learned so far in the workshop and how will it help me in what I do. We started by reviewing the C programming language that I haven't came across in forever. Then I built my first circuit which consisted of led lamps, resistors and a switch. After few sessions, I started making my own circuits and programs. It became an addiction, but the good kind. We've tried a lot of electrical devices in the circuit like motors, sensors, led lights and LCDs.

If you are curious about this, I advice you to go watch some YouTube tutorials and apply them to the simulation above. Don't judge before you try :)

I am an artist!

I draw since I was able to hold a pencil in my tiny, little hands. I have so many drawings from my childhood that I wouldn't trade for the world. I continued drawing as I grew older and my drawings began to come to life. I never learned it; it was just all natural for me. But it's been a few years since I stopped and I blame myself for that. I guess I classified it as unnecessary, unimportant or a waste of time but I know deep down that it is not. During these few years, I was doing other artistic things, if you would call, like decorating birthdays parties for my nieces and nephews, editing videos, using photoshop and I even designed my own physics book. But I would really want to go back to drawing because I think it was the reason why I fell in love with art. I love drawing faces and I really want to keep on practicing until my drawings become as real as possible. You know sometimes I wish there were two or three of me, because I want to do so many things but I always run out of time. Or maybe if I lived on a different planet, mercury let's say, where days are longer, I would be able to do all the things that I want to do :)

Fly me to the moon

As far as I can remember, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, my answer was always, an astronaut. I was fascinated by the stars, the moon, northern lights and everything in the night sky. I wrote songs about the space and watched so many documentaries about the possibility of life out there. I was a dreamer, and I still have that kid inside of me. But now that I grew, I know that life limits you sometimes and not all your dreams come true. I still read so many articles about the latest discoveries in space and still stargaze at every chance. I am an astrophile; just staring into the stars makes me remember how small I am and how all my problems are meaningless. It gives me a peace of mind and serenity. I am not only in love with the look of space; I am obsessed with the science behind it. Back at university, I remember being amazed by Einstein's law of relativity, although it was one of the toughest courses that I took, and I wanted to learn more but I was limited by my major. I still believe that maybe one day I can pursuit my childhood dream, up until then I will keep on dreaming. Don't wake me up :)

My first online experience

Around March 2020, Lebanon was under total lockdown after the COVID-19 hit. All schools closed, and we were forced to start our online teaching experience. No one was ready for that, although the school that I work at is considered to be one of the best in terms of technology. But that doesn't mean that we haven't gone through many trials and errors concerning what works best for the students, parents and teachers. After finding the right combination of synchronous and asynchronous teaching and having a strong platform for the parents, students and teachers to communicate with each other, things began to run smoothly.

Now talking more about what this all was for me and how did I was able to manage. Even before COVID, I was already preparing PowerPoints for my classes at school and already using a lot of virtual labs and simulations to make my lessons more interesting. So when COVID hit, nothing changed concerning the lesson preparation part except for the fact that I had to buy a graphic drawing tablet to be able to clarify ideas more for my students.

As for the method of teaching, I used to make weekly pre-recorded videos and prepare a worksheet application on that lecture. Then during the week, I go live with the students to review the lecture fast and solve the worksheet with them. At the end of each week, I made a small quiz or a homework that was directly related to the solved worksheet. 

This was my new normal and it was hard adjusting and managing my time at home. But I would say that my online teaching experience was a success. Now sure it was tiring and exhausting but I was able to self-improve, work on my skills and gain new ones. So I am happy with how everything turned out and I am grateful that I was able to adapt quickly, work under stress and make the best out of a bad situation.

 

EDUC 561

Let me be honest, initially I was skeptical about this course for three reasons. The first reason was that I thought the course was going to be outdated because we have new technology rising like everyday. The second reason was that I thought that I was already doing great with technology to the extent that I didn't even need this course. The third reason was that the university changed the instructor like two times. But I guess third time is a charm because I can genuinely say that I did enjoy all the sessions and I don't regret taking this course at all. There was no better way to experience online learning than with this course and it helped me with my online teaching as well. I am now able to organize the way I use technology and use it in a beneficial way rather than superficial. I learned to work with new apps and websites like Polleverywhere, Goformative, WebQuest, Wordwall and Blogger. I even learned new things with the apps and the websites that I already use. Finally I just to say that I am forever grateful and thankful for Dr. Amal Farhat for all her efforts and hard work that she put into this course.