Showing posts with label Sermon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sermon. Show all posts

Monday, January 14, 2013

High School Memory: Religion Teachers

When I was in the first year of High School, we had this super cool and fun and funny religion teacher. He was a big, tall, dark-skinned man with glasses. He had HUGE hands (he could hold a basketball with one hand) and yes, he loved basketball so much. His body did look like the body of an NBA player. He used to throw lots of jokes and each session was fun, so all the students loved this cool and laid-back teacher. Each teaching session was just as laid-back and relaxing and fun as the teacher himself.


He resigned when I was in my second year of High School for some reason (I can't remember anymore), though he did start teaching us first. In my second year of High School, I was in a notorious class. There were around 40 students altogether in a class and there were 7 other classes. This religious teacher was replaced with an older, serious guy who was rather "rigid" in teaching the class (Who wouldn't if they were compared with the first teacher?). 

He started off the first day of teaching by citing some rules and I could feel the whole classroom's spirit went down drastically. He was a systematic teacher, so he wanted us to write down systematic notes as well (if I remember correctly, the notes would also be a part of his grade system for us). He'd write plenty of notes on the blackboard (yep, back then we still used chalks and blackboards) and he also expected us to write down a weekly Sunday sermon report in our own respective churches and he wanted us to add the church's stamp on the side of each report. We had to give him this report each month or so for him to check. And of course this weekly report was also a part of his grade system. 

I remember that one day one close friend (let's call her P) who was in another classroom had forgotten to write down one Sunday's report, so frantically she asked for help. Fortunately for her, one classmate was active at her own church, so she had the church's stamp with her at that time. So P copied that classmate's Sunday report and added the stamp. Problem solved! So she thought at that time. After all, there was no guilty conscience because she DID go to her own church that Sunday. It's just that she had forgotten to write down the report that week.


After the teacher took all the reports and returned them, he asked P to come and meet him and he gave her a punishment (I can't remember anymore what it was, but it must've been related to writing more reports or something like that). Apparently the Sunday sermon report that she had copied was the sermon that had happened in the teacher's own church and he knew that P wasn't a member of the church. Doh!!!

Anyway, back to the teacher and our class...after being taught by this second teacher for a while, my classmates became more and more restless. They were unsatisfied and they wanted the first fun teacher to come back to teach us. One day out of nowhere a classmate gave me a slip of paper filled with my classmates' signatures. On top of the paper somebody had written: "We, the students of class 2-8, want to protest about our current religion teacher. We want the first teacher to come back to teach us bla bla bla bla bla..."

glitter-graphics.com

I felt pressured. Even though I liked the first teacher better myself, but it was a tough call to finally sign the paper. I didn't want to be the odd one out, you know? I didn't want them to think that I was rooting for this second teacher (which wasn't true), but I did respect him as a teacher and human being...but anyway, in the end I signed it anyway. Apparently after all our signatures were there, someone took it to the headmaster he he he he...

And yep, not long after that the headmaster asked us all to come to his office separately (his office couldn't possibly hold all 40 of us at once, so first he called all the boys and then the girls). Diplomatically he reasoned with us about why the first teacher couldn't be brought back and that we should give the second teacher a chance. I don't remember anymore what he had told us, but he managed to appease us all anyway. I gotta hand it to the headmaster, though, who was able to be the peacemaker only in one sitting and it even took less than half an hour 'coz I don't remember being in the office for a long time. Actually, it was the first time ever that I had ever been in the headmaster's office ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Thursday, May 21, 2009

A List of Events...

Sorry I haven't had time to blog-hop. I was feeling a bit under the weather so I took a nap every day after coming back from work. The library's closed tomorrow, so tomorrow I'll have some time to blog-hop. Let's do some recap about the things I've been doing, shall we?

1. Last Saturday we went to my in-laws and as I was walking across the field to take pics, I saw a creature moving so fast nearby (approx. 2 metres away from me). Since I knew it was moving too fast for me to take a solid pic, I decided to take a video instead. I still didn't know what it was after I took the video, so I showed it to my MIL, who said that it was a "kärppä". I looked it up in my dictionary and it means an "ermine/stoat".

Here's the video clip:



Here's the link if you want to see it in HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWxfcg_uqtE

I've taken some pics off the video, but unfortunately they're not too good, but here they are anyway:





I was actually trying to get good pics of these hares when I came across the ermine he he he...As you can see, the mother hare's fur has turned more and more brown as time goes by.



I also took these pics:






2. Went to the birthday party late from my in-laws' place. The birthday girl was so eager to ask me to colour some princesses with me HA HA HA...She also showed us all her gifts and her beautiful dress and she sang a few songs for us! :-D We both got a hug from her, too! SO SWEET!!! :-D

Oh, almost forgot...while we were colouring some princesses, she told me, "You colour the pics very well."
I said, "Why, thank you. You've done a great job, too."

Then she said all of a sudden, "I think you have a beautiful voice."
I was SO surprised to hear that, but I managed to say, "THANK YOU, you have a beautiful voice, too...And face, and hair!"
She nodded. :-D

3. Went to church today for the first time to hear the sermon and I must say that I didn't get the sermon except for some phrases here and there. I understood the songs more than the sermon 'coz I could read the lyrics from the hymn book. I understood the MC better than the priest who gave the sermon 'coz the MC is a woman, so her pronunciation is naturally clearer than the male priest's (if you know how Finnish language sounds like, you'll know that it's harder to listen to a man's voice when speaking rather than a woman's, esp. if the man is using a microphone and you can hear the echo of his voice).

As the church has this program for foreigners, one of the priests had invited us to come to lunch at their camp site after the sermon was done, so four of us went there with them. We had a nice lunch and there the priest also gave us a short sermon (this time I understood the sermon MUCH better 'coz it was a small room and no microphone was used).

Then we were interviewed HA HA HA HA HA HA...The priest asked us some questions and she also encouraged other people to ask us questions. Interesting. It was SO hard for me to try to explain my life in Indonesia, 'coz EVERYTHING is SO different!!! Anyway, we had a good practise to speak Finnish, though he he he he...

OK, I think this is long enough. Time for me to read some Finnish!!!