Nathan Xavier
April 09, 2019 11:42 AM
Beginner’s Herbology: This stinks by Nathan Xavier
Nathan Xavier hurried into Greenhouse One several minutes late. It was very rare for the Herbology professor to not meet and greet every student by the door as they arrived, so he was a little worried that they might have already wandered off, thinking class had gotten cancelled. Fortunately, as he entered, he saw most of them seemed to still be present.“Sorry,” he apologized, a little breathlessly. It had been a long fast-walk/run from the apperation barrier to the greenhouse. Dora had a her first high fever today, and he’d been worried enough about it that he popped off check on her over lunch, even though his mom had assured him she knew perfectly well how to care for sick babies. The seven month old had indeed seemed to be somewhat improved since that morning, but he was still glad he’d gone, so he didn’t have to be as distracted during his afternoon classes as he had been for his advanced students that morning.
“My apologies for being late. Your essays from last week.” He waved his wand and the pile of graded homework on his desk dispersed out to their owners. He preferred handing them out as each student arrived with a personal comment, but he’d missed the opportunity for that today, and this was quicker. “Overall, I was very pleased about your thoughts regarding the relative merits of different fertilizers, but please check for any comments I may have added and come to my office hours tomorrow if you have any questions.”
“Today, we’ll be running an experiment to see actual results of how fertilizer helps the plants, so we will all be planting some mixed flower seeds, including both magical and non-magical varieties. Aladrens will be fertilizing theirs with mooncalf dung. Pecaris will add dragon dung compost,” as he spoke, a piece of chalk wrote what kind of fertilizer students from each house were expected to use. “Crotali will use a plant waste compost made mostly from the hedge trimmings and weeds pulled from the Gardens here at Sonora. Teppenpaws will use the muggle fertilizer in that box there,” he pointed out a large yellow and green container labeled ‘MiracleGro All Purpose Plant Food’.
“You will each plant a pot of seeds, fertilize it, and label it with your name and House. You may chat together with whomever you like as you work, but make sure you use the right fertilizer for your House. Once you’re done, write a short a hypothesis - that’s an educated guess - about which House or Houses will see the best results in their flower pots. It only needs to be a sentence or two long, and it won’t be graded, but I will collect it and hand them back once the flowers begin blooming so you can check how accurate you were.”
The enchanted chalk also added these directions beneath the House assignments, using simple words and phrases so even those students who struggled with English should hopefully be able to puzzle through what was expected of them.
“You may begin.”
OOC: Welcome to Herbology! I hope you brought gloves and nose plugs today. If not, your student does know by now where to find extras in the class supplies cupboard. House points are awarded to class posts based of length, creativity, realism, relevance, and writing quality rather than your student’s displayed skills, knowledge, or behavior.
Subthreads: If perhaps not in the way I'd expect. by Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw with Johana Leonie Zauberhexen, Teppenpaw
Story of my life recently. by Jessica Hayles, Crotalus with Allegra Brockert, Crotalus
Duh by Topaz Brockert, Aladren with Felipe De Matteo, Crotalus
What's German for poop? (Hilda) by Sophia Priory, Aladren
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Nathan Xavier
Beginner’s Herbology: This stinks
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Nathan Xavier
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Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw
April 14, 2019 5:36 PM
If perhaps not in the way I'd expect. by Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw
Katerina was surprised not to find Professor Xavier waiting for the Beginner class at the door, but she did not start to become concerned until he became actually late. Everyone was slightly behind schedule sometimes, no matter how hard one tried to remain on the straight and narrow way, but actual lateness? Professors were not supposed to be late, and this one was her Head of House. Teppenpaws were especially not supposed to be late. Was something wrong?She was just beginning to toy with the ribbon tying back her blonde hair when Professor Xavier appeared, out of breath but apparently intact. She managed to put her hand up and catch her essay before it could smack her in the face or fall onto the table, and opened it without much anxiety. She expected good scores and usually got them, especially on homework assignments like essays, where she could carefully work out every aspect of the paper - grammar, spelling, vocabulary, synonyms, shapes of her English letters, and even how she spaced her words and lines across the parchment. One of the things she feared about Intermediate classes was how they were supposed to be so much more demanding than her Beginner classes - she worried that she might not have time to do everything so well, and that a less polished appearance might cause the teachers to give her lower marks.
For now, though, her grades were adequate and she had to pay attention to something else in order to follow what Professor Xavier was telling them to do for today. Her blue eyes started to widen with horror when she heard that Teppenpaws were supposed to use Muggle fertilizer - Muggles didn't even have magic to take care of themselves, so what kind of fertilizer must they use? - but then narrowed again as she frowned in confusion at the thing which Professor Xavier pointed at. It was...a big box, of some shiny material, with a colorful front. She read through the letters, sounding it out. Mir...no, that meant neither world nor peace in English. Mir-ah-clay Guh-roe? Gro, that would sound like 'grow,' but 'grow' had a 'w' on the end. And 'miraclay'...'miraslay'? What?
She approached it cautiously, then recoiled as soon as she saw the box's contents. It did not look like fertilizer, and it did not smell like fertilizer. It looked almost like a box full of tiny, badly cut light blue sapphires, or maybe blue topazes of some kind, and it smelled like....
She did not know what it smelled like, other than 'unpleasant.' The smell of regular dung was unpleasant, too, but in a different way. This seemed to burn at her nose, which she covered with her hand, her mouth twisting as she looked back at the box.
"Euggh," she complained, reluctant to touch it.
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Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw
If perhaps not in the way I'd expect.
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Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen, Teppenpaw
April 15, 2019 8:33 PM
I don't even know what to expect. by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen, Teppenpaw
The fact that Johana Leonie's English had gotten better was certainly not enough to save her from confusion in basically all of her classes. Herbology however, was both the most likely to see her messing something up, and her favorite for that reason. While she might go the entire class period without understanding something in Charms or Transfiguration, she was much more likely to mess up on a practical lesson like she might find in Potions or Herbology. In Potions, though, that usually meant danger. Herbology, at least for now, was the safer choice, and a favorite of hers.Today's lesson, once it began, was an exciting one for Johana Leonie. She had spent her life on the line between magic and muggle worlds, and her homegrown lifestyle meant that everything that could possibly work as a fertilizer had been tested at one point or another by somebody she knew. This was a lesson that she knew how to do in German, so it gave her a significant leg up in English; all she had to do now was figure out what the heck was happening.
She knew the name of her own house by this point, and got bits and pieces of what Professor Xavier was saying about what her house was meant to do, so she followed the student Dorian had told her would be nice (and who had thus far proven reasonably nice at the very least), catching up to her at the box of . . . whatever that fertilizer was. She knew it was a muggle product, but she couldn't exactly tell what it was. Looking at it more closely didn't help and smelling it was certainly a bad choice. She winced away from the smell and agreed with Katerina's assessment.
"That's smellt bad," she said. "Do you know what das means?" she asked, pointing at the label. "Miracle grow?" If nothing else, she was pretty confident she could read the words. She knew what grow was, and since English seemed to chop everything up and off anyway, it was probably one of those sorts of things. Like when people said "tonite" or "donut." She hated when they said that.
"It is okay that I work with you?" she confirmed, not entirely sure whether they were supposed to work together at all, and even less sure whether Dorian's friend that she only sort of knew would be interested in working with her anyway.
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen, Teppenpaw
I don't even know what to expect.
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen, Teppenpaw
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Katerina
April 17, 2019 9:33 PM
Fun with languages. Expect fun with languages. by Katerina
Mir-ra-cle. Mirakl. There! There it was! The word was almost the same between the two languages, though she thought it might be used slightly differently in context. She had forgotten how strangely the English character 'c' could be, had assumed it went with the 'l' instead of being a sound to itself, a transition between other parts of the word."Ja, ist in Ordnung," said Katerina with a smile and in heavily accented but smooth enough German. It was on the next sentence, which involved saying something she had not learned among common pleasantries, that she struggled more. "Das ist..was macht...blumes gut sein," she said slowly, inelegantly, working to put as much of her actual thought into German as she possibly could.
It was no small task for her; she had wanted to learn more German, but had not had had time before she had come to Sonora and been cut off from most formal study of languages altogether. She did not, however, flinch. When she had first started studying languages, she had not wanted to speak, and when Anton Petrovich had compelled her to give oral reports, she had done so with tears running down her face. This had continued for months, her teacher ignoring the weeping both during her speech and during the merciless criticisms of her grammar which had always followed. She, too, had ignored her own crying as much as she could, ashamed of herself over it. Eventually, she had learned to keep her eyes dry and her face smooth, and if she still intensely disliked knowing her grammar was bad, she didn't let it show.
She did, however, add "mein Deutsch - nicht gut," as something akin to an apology for the damage she had no doubt just done to Johana Leonie's language. It is what makes flowers be good was the next thing to baby talk, but how should she have known she would someday need to discuss Magl gardening things in German with a first year? Even Anton Petrovich might have forgiven her the lapse in syntax and vocabulary. Perhaps not publicly - to his pupils' faces, Anton Petrovich was extremely short on sympathy, and not much less sparing with compliments even for a perfect performance, something which made praise all the more valuable on the rare occasions it materialized - but maybe in his notes to her Mama, anyway.
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Katerina
Fun with languages. Expect fun with languages.
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Katerina
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
April 18, 2019 6:44 PM
Across the board! by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
Johana Leonie beamed at Katrina, remembering why she liked the girl so much, when she got a response in German. Katrina's German was about where Johana Leonie's English was, maybe even better, and it made her feel like she knew something special and valuable to hear somebody else have to try so hard."Danke," Johana Leonie said, pouring her gratitude into her voice. "Es ist dünger? Die Blumen werden schön sein," she decided, looking at what they had to work with. Now that she knew for sure that it was fertilizer, she was confident that the rest of her statement was true; these flowers really were going to be beautiful.
"My English is nicht good," she said. "Do you not worry. Ich verstehe."
With her brother planning to attend Sonora the following year, Johana Leonie felt the onus to work hard to be helpful for him when he arrived. Beyond that, she hated to think that she hadn't improved at all, while he'd been taking this whole year to improve his English after Johana Leonie had warned her parents how difficult everything was without it. He would certainly have a leg up, and she would take every friendly face and willing conversationalist she could find.
"Moy russkiy ochen' plokhoy," she added for good measure, although it was hardly a pretty sound with her accent. She hadn't needed as much Russian as English in the healing work of her family, but there were those who came to them for help, and she liked to learn key phrases like Where does it hurt, can you understand me, do you have any candy, do you like music, I suck at your language, and other important phrases. As it turned out, the sounds for being in pain were pretty universal.
"What color flowers magst du?"
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
Across the board!
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
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Katerina
April 21, 2019 10:07 PM
We can start with fun with homophones. by Katerina
Katerina's eyes widened in surprise when Johana Leonie suddenly spoke Russian. Dorian spoke Russian - sort of - and Tatiana spoke Russian, of course, but even hearing 'my Russian is very bad' from someone else was a surprise, and not an unpleasant one. She had come here to learn, and so she tried to avoid speaking Russian or even thinking in Russian, but there was no denying that it was good to hear it unexpectedly. Sometimes, she thought she didn't miss speaking Russian so much as she missed hearing everyone else around her speaking it."Ich mag Gelb," said Katerina, still working slowly in German. "i - ach, und - " she corrected herself, starting to say 'and' in Russian before remembering that it would make no sense to Johana Leonie - "und rose, und lila." She smiled suddenly. "You know the English, 'red'? You say 'rot' in German? If I say 'rot' po-Russkii, this means 'mund'," she said, pointing to her mouth just in case she had the word for 'mouth' wrong in German. It amused her that the Russian word sounded so close to the English and German words, while meaning something very different. "Po-Russkii, the color, it is krasnyy," she added. "Welche Blumen magst du?"
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Katerina
We can start with fun with homophones.
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Katerina
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
April 22, 2019 6:26 PM
I feel so validated! by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
OOC -- As usual, full disclaimer that I'm using Google and Google Translate and promise nothing by way of linguistic accuracy.IC --
Johana Leonie felt like she might break into dance in that moment. Not only was Katerina entirely patient with her poor Russian, but she was making every effort to use German, and she was excited to talk about the fun things that came with multilingualism (although Johana Leonie would hardly consider herself proficient in any more than one language).
She was practically beaming the entire time Katrina spoke, and she hoped it was encouraging at least. "Das ist gut!" she told the girl. "Ich mag auch Gelb, Rose und Lila. Ich mag auch Rosa," she added, wished she were wearing anything pink today. "It is odd when the words are the same but they are not the same," she managed in English. "The mouth is a little red, oder...?" she asked, the German ending slipping oddly onto her English question.
"Krasnyy," Johana Leonie attempted, the word feeling odd in her mouth. "I can say, Po-Russkii, Kakogo tsveta eto bylo? Meine Eltern sind Heiler," she explained with a laugh. "The people with hurt or sick lose very many things."
Suddenly, the sheer hilarity of what was happening struck her. "We must sound like we are angry. Nein... verrückt... we are mad? That is odd im Englisch. We must sound like our minds has gotten lost, als wir alle po-russki, Deutsch, und Englisch sprachen." The mixed sentence, We must sound like we've lost our minds, speaking Russian, German, and English all together, made Johana Leonie's head spin and she giggled.
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
I feel so validated!
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Johana Leonie Zauberhexen
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