The party was a great success and felt very real to me – except the food 🙂 I had decorated the place a day before. After the lesson, we went into the garden and the Islamonline.net manager, Breathe Swindlehurst and I gave short speeches and handed the framed certificates (see picture) to the students one by one. Then, the student who had built objects in this course showed the others around in the small exhibition and we all talked about them. Dennis wanted to know more about the board game and students explained and played it.
We even had a “friendly” griefer visit us at the party (the one in the uniform). His flying and jumping around like wild (which was probably meant to scare or make us nervous) would have been annoying during a lesson but at the party it was more fun. When Dennis (British) and I were chatting about the word die/dice, the friendly griefer from the US even offered an explanation. At one point though, he felled compelled to say “We are watching you”, I guess meaning the US army vet group he belongs to with “we” and present Muslims with “you”. This group’s favourite hangout is Islam-related sims and a member of the same group in full-compat gear approached me once with the same nervous flying and jumping around and wanted to free me from my oppression :-D. We’ve become friends and he confessed that he has given up because nobody wanted to be freed.
We had all fun with the dressing table that lets you select gestures which your avatar then performs in front of the mirror (see Dennis in the pictures). One student was riding his bike while others preferred sitting on the bench and chatting or playing tic-tac-toe.
The party was, of course, a huge opportunity to practise speaking and chatting in English and even the quieter students participated more actively.
More and more guests were arriving but at one point at around 1.30 am, when the conversation started switching to Arabic and French more and more, and the virtual black teach didn’t help me stay awake, I left the party and cleaned up after I had spent a nice day at the seaside – in Real Life mind you.
I thought the party was terrific as well!
I was happy to see the students talking and discussing in English!
And the presentations before them, during Lesson 12, were terrific. I loved how everyone was able to present their idea so nicely. They felt comfortable doing it and that showed they were more comfortable with talking in English.
Excellent work Nergiz!
hi Nergiz
I’m glad your celebration party was a success and that you could manage even difficult situations. You’ve gone through all experiences!
I could not see the pictures of the party shown here, do you know why? there is no sign that might say I do not have a special software to see them, just the window looks empty.
Wait for your comments.
Kiss!
alicia
Thank you Breathe and Alicia!
@Breathe, student said indeed that they feel more comfortable now when speaking English. I think one reason why they did so well in the presentation was that they could choose a topic they were interest in and, thus, were eager to tell something about it.
@Alicia, that’s good to know. Thanks! Is it only the graduation party that you cannot see or all pictures (there is one slideshow for each lesson)? I don’t know what the problem could be. Most people I know, can see the pictures but one other person also told me they couldn’t. Did you try a different browser? That often solves the problem. If you still cannot see them, you can go directly to the picasa link: http://picasaweb.google.com/NergizKern
Hope this helps. Let me know.