Wednesday, August 31, 2005
First Day of Class
First day of class, yesterday, was good. It seems like it's gonna be an interesting class on second language teaching and theories.
The class is a lot smaller than last year. Last year, all of the 1st year graduate students, majoring in Deaf Studies, took core classes together. This year, we've been split to focus on our "specialty", which is sign teaching, culture and history. So, there's only 3 of us in sign teaching. However, Friday's class will be bigger since we'll be having class with Linguisitcs graduate students.
After class, I dropped off KT at the metro station for work. Came back to Gally and walked around the track. Whooo, it was humid outside!
Came home and watched Paragraph 175, which is a documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, about homosexuals during the Holocaust. Before the Holocaust, Berlin was literally an utopia for gays and lesbians, despite the fact that Germany already had a law against homosexual acts. This law was never actually enforced.
When Hitler came into power, the gays weren't really afraid for their lives. The reason was because one of Hitler's closest allies was Ernst Röhm was openly gay. Röhm was in charge of the nation's strong storm troopers. However, Hitler had a secret agenda for the troopers. Once Hitler had his strategy completed, he had Röhm executed and had the Paragraph 175 revised. That was when the homosexuals lived in fear.
Lesbians weren't really persecuted as much as the gays were. Lesbians were considered treatable, while gays were considered contagious. Therefore, over 100,000 men were arrested and were either sent to prison or concentration camps. This is when the pink triangle was born. They were made labor slaves or subjects for medical experiments, simply because most of these men came from a German Christian family, which spared them the horrors that the Jews went through.
I didn't get to finish this film because I had to leave to go watch a movie with KT, which I will get to it next. (Thank God for TiVo!) However, before I close on this topic, I should say that this film holds some value because today there are only about 10 men still living from that horrible time. (4,000 men survived from the concentration camps.) They deserve to tell their story.
Went over to Chinatown to meet up with KT to watch The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Hilarious film! I have to say that it was one of the best movies of the summer. It could've been a great, great movie but about the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, it lost its "luster". So, I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars.
Finally, I got to finish the Narnia Chronicles. Whew! I liked all the stories, except one. Overall, good book!
Now, I'm reading one that Kekua gave me for my birthday, Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House. It's an interesting book of well-known and little known facts on backgrounds, contributions, quirks and such on First Ladies from Martha Washington to Laura Bush.
Before I close, I just wanna say that my heart goes out to those suffering from the aftermath of Katrina.
ta ta for now...
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The class is a lot smaller than last year. Last year, all of the 1st year graduate students, majoring in Deaf Studies, took core classes together. This year, we've been split to focus on our "specialty", which is sign teaching, culture and history. So, there's only 3 of us in sign teaching. However, Friday's class will be bigger since we'll be having class with Linguisitcs graduate students.
After class, I dropped off KT at the metro station for work. Came back to Gally and walked around the track. Whooo, it was humid outside!
Came home and watched Paragraph 175, which is a documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, about homosexuals during the Holocaust. Before the Holocaust, Berlin was literally an utopia for gays and lesbians, despite the fact that Germany already had a law against homosexual acts. This law was never actually enforced.
When Hitler came into power, the gays weren't really afraid for their lives. The reason was because one of Hitler's closest allies was Ernst Röhm was openly gay. Röhm was in charge of the nation's strong storm troopers. However, Hitler had a secret agenda for the troopers. Once Hitler had his strategy completed, he had Röhm executed and had the Paragraph 175 revised. That was when the homosexuals lived in fear.
Lesbians weren't really persecuted as much as the gays were. Lesbians were considered treatable, while gays were considered contagious. Therefore, over 100,000 men were arrested and were either sent to prison or concentration camps. This is when the pink triangle was born. They were made labor slaves or subjects for medical experiments, simply because most of these men came from a German Christian family, which spared them the horrors that the Jews went through.
I didn't get to finish this film because I had to leave to go watch a movie with KT, which I will get to it next. (Thank God for TiVo!) However, before I close on this topic, I should say that this film holds some value because today there are only about 10 men still living from that horrible time. (4,000 men survived from the concentration camps.) They deserve to tell their story.
Went over to Chinatown to meet up with KT to watch The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Hilarious film! I have to say that it was one of the best movies of the summer. It could've been a great, great movie but about the last 20 minutes or so of the movie, it lost its "luster". So, I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars.
Finally, I got to finish the Narnia Chronicles. Whew! I liked all the stories, except one. Overall, good book!
Now, I'm reading one that Kekua gave me for my birthday, Secret Lives of the First Ladies: What Your Teachers Never Told You About the Women of the White House. It's an interesting book of well-known and little known facts on backgrounds, contributions, quirks and such on First Ladies from Martha Washington to Laura Bush.
Before I close, I just wanna say that my heart goes out to those suffering from the aftermath of Katrina.
ta ta for now...
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