Hello everyone! I hope everybody had a good week. I had a particularly busy week that involved chauffeuring my son and daughter to their after school activities (swim and diving team practice, piano, gymnastics, chess and robotics), attend to my mother who is 75 years old and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, work on graduate course assignments, and prepare our house for a fourth open-house which we have been trying to sell since November 2010.
I also substitute teach at two schools when they are under staffed due to teachers on vacation or on sick leave. One of the schools is a nursery school and the other is an adult ESL program at Belmont Racetrack.
Trying to maintain balance and sanity with all these obligations can at times be a bit hairy. Please understand that I am not complaining about my life, in fact I feel very fortunate for the life I have. I am very happy to be a "stay-at-home" mother so I can be there for my children whenever they need me. I also happen to have a wonderful husband who is very supportive and who enthusiastically encouraged me to pursue a second career in the teaching profession. Although my mother is 75 years old and has medical complications, she makes it possible for me to attend classes at night by watching my kids when I'm in school. So, even though I have a fairly busy schedule, life is still good.
My point in sharing this with you all is to impart to you another thing that I practice that helps me maintain balance and a good outlook on life. This practice is yoga. I have been practicing various types of yoga for the past seven years. It has helped me both physically and mentally in staying strong and healthy. The current form of yoga I practice now is Bikram. I attend a 5:30am class, for two hours, from Monday to Friday, and I rest on the weekends, from Bikram yoga that is.
Bikram is an intense form of yoga where classes run exactly 90 minutes and consist of a set series of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises. Bikram Yoga is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F (≈ 40.6°C) with a humidity of 40%, causing it to be categorized as a form of hot yoga. Although this is an intense form of yoga there are other forms that are not as extreme, like Vinyasa or Hatha, where one can learn breathing exercises and poses (in normal room temperature) that help you to meditate, relax, breathe in a manner that reduces stress, and most important learn to empty your mind and go into a complete state of relaxation called savasana.
I wanted to share this with all of you because we all lead very busy lives and can forget to take care of ourselves. Yoga has helped me and if you have an open mind and willing to try something new, like yoga, perhaps you can receive the same benefits I have been getting and achieve a life balance that can help you get through challenging schedules. Thanks for reading and... Namaste
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or clink on this link http://www.squidoo.com/yoga-101
Grammar point - One of many fundamentals we all learn in the English grammar is recognizing different parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. It is important to know these 8 parts of speech so one can analyze, understand, and construct good sentences.
The following are definitions of the 8 parts of speech along with example words illustrating a speech part.
Part of speech Function or "job" Example words
Verb action or state(to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can,
Noun thing or person pen, dog, work, music,
Adjective describes a noun some, good, big, red, interesting
Adverb describes a verb, adjective or adverb quickly, silently, well, badly, very
Pronoun replaces a noun I, you, he, she, some
Preposition links a noun to another word to, at, after, on, but
Conjunction joins clauses or sentences or words and, but, when
Interjection short exclamation,
sometimes inserted into a sentence oh!, ouch!, hi!, well
Practice Exercise:
After reviewing these terms and examples, go back to my post and try to identify as many parts of speech in each paragraph. There are six paragraphs in the post. You can create a chart that has two columns to record your findings. One column is for the part of speech and the second column is for the examples you have identified in the paragraph. You may not find an example of all 8 parts of speech in every sentence so you can use the notation of "n/a" which means "not available" as your entry in the column of your chart.
Have fun!
Example: Second sentence of the post reads:
I hope everybody had a good week.
Analysis:
Speech part Example
Noun - week
Verb - hope, had
Adjective - good
Adverb - n/a
Pronoun - I, everybody
Preposition - n/a
Conjunction - n/a
Interjection - n/a
After you have completed your chart analysis, create one sentence for each of the 8 parts of speech and underline the part of speech.
Example sentences:
Verb Ely’s ESL Space is a blog site. I like Ely’s ESL Space blog.
Noun This is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.
Adjective My dog is big. I like big dogs.
Adverb My dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.
Pronoun Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
Preposition We went to school on Monday.
Conjunction I like dogs and I like cats. I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.
Interjection Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well, I don't know.
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