I've been doing a lot of research lately. Yes, again. I'm trying to clean up my dissertation so that it incorporates the concerns that my committee expressed. Dr. Mitchell is really a stickler for making sure things are all in order, which makes for excellence but also creates a lot of work. So I am doing a lot of work. LOL

And July is a busy month for me, research-wise. We are presenting at the Institute for Social Justice conference next week. By "we," I mean me, Rebeccah, and Jean. Now Dr. Mitchell is helping us (a lot!), so he is a part of this, too. We are going to try to turn this paper into our AERA paper. The proposal is due in 3 weeks, so we need to get going pretty quickly.

I've been writing and writing and writing for the last week, and for two days in a row, I met with Dr. Mitchell to discuss my dissertation and the conference paper. I should have known that this would suck up my entire days, but I had faith that it would only suck up a few hours each day. Boy, was I wrong.

It was exhausting. I am so tired...zzz

Monday morning was raining in Vancouver. Luckily, by the time I went outside, it had stopped coming out of the sky, and, though it was cold, it did not rain on me for the rest of the day. I got dressed and walked across to the street to visit Christ Church Cathedral, which is the oldest cathedral in Vancouver. It is a quite beautiful church. It is small but very nice. I took some pictures and left. Matt kept wondering why I was going to church on Monday. LOL

It was finally time to go to the Convention Centre. I snagged a comfortable place on one of the couches and worked on my paper a little bit while I was waiting for Dr. Mitchell. Oh yes, I still had to work on the paper. The discussant from Friday's presentation actually emailed me with some comments and recommendations for the paper (since he'd actually read it). We took some of his suggestions, so I had to make a few changes to the document before getting it ready for publication.

Dr. Mitchell showed up close to the appointed time, and we talked about the paper for a couple of hours. It is kind-of weird. At some point I realized that I am part of it all. I'm not just some student anymore. I'm a real researcher with real things to say. It's a kind-of weird feeling. I've been savoring it for some time now.

Dr. Mitchell went to do some souvenir shopping before going home, so I grabbed a quick lunch and went to another session. This one was on a new commissioned report on Title III. Also, Dr. Kenji Hakuda was the discussant, one of Matt's favorite researchers on bilingual ed. Matt was already at the session when I got there, since I was a few minutes late. The session was interesting but did not really tell me anything new. Also, the researchers did not even acknowledge that Title III has to do with immigrant students and only focused on English language aquisition. So that really just underscored the results of my research, that no one gives a damn about immigrant students and even the research community thinks it's enough just to teach them English. Matt got to shake Dr. Hakuda's hand, so he was all excited about that. I gave my email address to the researchers, so that they could send me the final report and also an older report that discussed distribution of funds. So far, I have not heard from them.

After that session, it was Matt's turn. He was part of a roundtable on charter schools. The room was packed with people and tables, probably 20+ tables in the room. Each table had about 10 people around it, including the presenters. Matt did a good job. I wasn't terribly sold on the other people's research, nor on the moderator, but it was a good discussion. Matt made a good show of it, and was even able to show off his smarts by giving suggestions to the other presenters. Sadly, Dr. Thorson could not be there, due to family issues. So Matt was on his own. But he did just fine.

Afterward, we were feeling triumphant. It was time to celebrate!


We walked back to my hotel to drop off my stuff. While we were there, I remembered that, because of the fire alarm situation from Saturday morning, I had coupons for free drinks from the hotel. Yay for free drinks! :) We decided to check out the hotel restaurant downstairs, which was very fancy and very expensive. But, oh, so good! We ate, talked, drank, and had a very lovely time. At the end of the meal, I surprised Matt by picking up the tab. :)

Sunday morning I awoke bright and early to return to the Convention Centre and learn something new! The walk was easy, because the local newspaper was holding a "Sun Run," and there were no cars for most of my walk. I knew that both Drs. Mitchell and Lalas were presenting at 8:00am, but I actually wanted to attend a session on immigrant education. Go figure. While waiting for my session, I ran into Dr. Lalas and his student April (who, I suppose, is Dr. somebody, too). April didn't know me at all, though I've seen her around. She incorrectly assumed that because I'm working with Dr. Mitchell, I was doing a statistical study. Honestly, one would think that someone who has a degree in Leadership for Educational Justice would be better about not labeling students, but, sadly, maybe she did not learn that central lesson. The session I attended was interesting and informative. It was not as policy-oriented as I would have liked, but I did learn some things and was able to take some notes on a few things.

I had texted Matt earlier to see what he was doing, but he'd had a long night and was sleeping in. After the session, I went down to the exhibits and walked around a bit. It was mostly books and software. I have no need for any of that software right now, and I didn't want to bring any books home in my suitcase. So although it was interesting, I did not really feel sad when Matt finally showed up to the exhibit hall.

We decided to have lunch in the food court. Matt had Subway (yes, again), and I had a taco salad/tostada thingy. I hesitated to have something even pretend Mexican in Canada, but it wasn't bad. Typical food court food. We had lunch and then I went to see Dr. Mitchell's presentation. Matt went to another presentation with Dr. Thorson.

The session was interesting. It was about segregation. Dr. Mitchell's research was interesting and, I think, useful. About the time that he finished presenting, Matt and Dr. Thorson showed up and sat in front of me. Dr. Thorson didn't like the idea that the woman was presenting (that Rodriguez v. San Antonio was a race issue and should have been argued as such), and he said it was "stupid."

After the session, we talked with Dr. Mitchell and his dad, as well as with some of the other people a little. Dr. Mitchell was talking with his parents about dinner, so I was going to leave, but he told me to wait. While I was waiting, I had a chance to talk with Dr. Mitchell's mom. She looked at my nametag and said, "Oh, you're from the University. Are you a student?" Dr. Mitchell stopped in the middle of his conversation with his dad to say, "Oh, she's not just a student." Her eyes grew wide, and she said, "Oh, you're *the one*." I didn't even know how to answer that. I just kind-of laughed. She said, "My husband says you did a great job the other day." I thanked her, and she introduced herself to me as "The *second* Dr. Mitchell. *He's* the first one," she said, pointing to her husband. "I'm the second, and *he's* the third," indicating my advisor. I laughed again.

Dr. Mitchell (the third one) wanted to talk to me about submitting our research for an article. We made an appointment to meet the next morning, and I went off to find another session. I wasn't really into the roundtables, so I checked out the posters and then decided to go back to my hotel. I stopped by Staples and the drugstore and picked up a few supplies on the way back, and then I took a LONG nap. I woke up only to go to McDonalds and pick up dinner. Then I stayed in for the rest of the night, watching TV, hanging out online, and doing some research on education policy journals. It was a good day, but I was tired!

More adventures ahead. Stay tuned...

The airplane was pretty full, but pretty much everyone was quiet and well-behaved. No crying babies or obnoxious children. I slept for part of the time, but the flight was pretty bumpy--a LOT of turbulence. I was glad that the flight only lasted 3 hours.
I arrived in Vancouver, BC, at around 12:30pm, got through customs pretty quickly, retrieved my bag, and took a cab to my hotel, the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. It is a VERY nice hotel. Everyone here is very polite. I checked into my room and promptly took a nap. zzzzzzzz................

This is Beau, one of the hotel dogs. The other hotel dog is Mavis.

This is the front of my hotel.

You can see the hotel reflected in the glass building next door. Pretty cool, right?

Hey, I was tired...I woke up and asked the concierge for the nearest grocery store. I walked there and bought some groceries, also picking up dinner at Subway. Unfortunately, I did not have the time for a fancy dinner. Instead, I had to spend some time cleaning up my powerpoint and making a few adjustments to the paper itself. I also spent quite a bit of time on the phone with Dr. Mitchell, just making sure that we had everything all worked out.

Oh, by the way, here's a cool thing that you should know. My room had a mini-bar, but it was one of those pressure-sensitive fridges that would charge you automatically if you even moved something in the mini-bar. But I wanted to go to the grocery store and get some supplies so that I wouldn't spend a small fortune in eating out. So I called housekeeping and told them I needed somewhere to store my insulin (which was partially true--I preferred to store it in the fridge, but the type of insulin I take is good for 28 days out of the fridge). Almost immediately, someone from housekeeping arrived with a little mini-fridge for me to use. Yay! I did put my insulin in it, but I also put in my snacks. LOL
The first day of my trip went well, and I got a good night's sleep on the VERY comfortable bed. Find out about Day 2 in the next post...

This is how I feel...

Here's an article on a weird study that studies how attractive men find women wearing different colors. So weird. Guess I should be wearing red more often?

Can babies tell the difference between "happy" and "sad" music? Does an infant really know whether a piece of music is in a major or minor key? Well, according to this article, the answer is yes. Although the article gives vague descriptions of what pieces are considered happy and sad, I'd love to see the list of songs that were used. I would also like to know why THIS is the type of research that is funded instead of other things. But that's just because I'm feeling cynical today.