Visiting the Wild Life Habitat at the Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas

The Wild Life Habitat at the Flamingo Hotel, Las Vegas

We stayed at the Flamingo Hotel 22  years ago.


This time we revisited the hotel trying to recapture some of the magic moments we had with our teenaged children.

The Flamingo Hotel is quite a different hotel than what I cold remember.

















For one thing, I didn't remember visiting the wild life habitat on the hotel site.

There were a variety of ducks, fish, flamingos in the various areas of the habitat with explanations for each.

The wild life site is a quiet tranquil oasis in the middle of all the noisy gambling machines and other tacky things associated with this sin city.

Another really cute thing we saw was the colourful soaps fashioned into all kinds of delicious looking sweets treats that make you salivate at the sight of them.

These cupcakes were colourful and looked delicious, but they were not edible at all.

We enjoyed taking a break from all the hustle and bustle of this neon light filled city.




R.T.
Wild Life Habitat
Flamingo Hotel
Las Vegas, USA

Providing a Little Taste of Italy - The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas

The Treasure Island Hotel, Las Vegas

We love walking and we love architecture.  A walking tour  along the Las Vegas entertainment strip provided us the opportunity to do both.

We had our first delicious brunch buffet at the Stratosphere Hotel, one of the best in Vegas as recommended by our taxi driver the night before, we were not disappointed at all.










Walking along the Las Vegas Boulevard, we came across many spectacular buildings,

Many of the hotels in Vegas are built with a certain theme. One of our favorites was the Venetian, a casino resort hotel modeled and built with the theme of Venice in mind.















The Venetian hotel has a number of buildings with an impressive Italian facade.

The ceilings covered with classical Italian paintings in the Venetian  reminded me of the trip we made to Italian a few years back

We felt as if we were transported back to Italy.

The architects have created a small Italian medieval town completed with a very realistic indoor sky with patches of clouds hanging over the buildings.

Costumed actors strolled the town and performed on the stage in the piazza.

The most popular feature in Venetian has to be the indoor and outdoor canals with singing rowers in gondolas serenading visitors on the water ride.

The Venetian hotel is a magnificent hotel dedicated to the theme of all things Italian such as an Italian bakery, Carlos Bakery Shop, owned by the famous star of the TV show - Cake Boss.

A Spaghetti Cake at the Carols Bakery

We saw a cake decorator turning a ordinary cake to a piece of art right in front of our eyes.

This was a cake decorated as a bowl of spaghetti! How about that?










However, it also has a modern twist like the floor in the building.
Using dark and light colour tiles, the designers created a three dimensional design and an illusion.

Lobby of the Venetian Hotel

The Venetian Hotel is an interesting place to visit in Vegas.

R.T.
Las Vegas
U.S.A.

A Great Hotel for Families with Children While Vacationing in Las Vegas!

March 27, 2017

We are in Las Vegas!  After a few months of inactivities, we caught the travel bug and we are travelling again.

Our American Airline flight was delayed for almost an hour. We first flew to Dallas and from there got a connecting flight to Vegas and landed there at 11p.m.

By the time we checked into our hotel, it was well past 1a.m. Since there is a three hours time difference between Toronto and Las Vegas, we were a little concerned that might be this would affect my husband's sleep. But it didn't. Praise God!

We are not gamblers but we still enjoy visiting Vegas as there are a lot of things to see and do for visitors.



On our first day, we walked around the Vegas strip where most of the hotels are located and enjoyed a number of free shows offered in these places.

One of the highlights of all the shows we saw today was the ones at the Circus Circus Hotel theater.


A Hula Hoops performer from Russia did some excellent tricks first with one Hula Hoop, then two, three, maneuvering her body into four, five, and numerous hoops wowing the audiences.

After the Russian hula hoop performer, there were two young Chinese ladies showing off their amazing balancing skills on the unicycles on the stage.

Both ladies started riding around on their unicycles, then placed a few bowls and balanced them on their heads.

Standing from a distance, one of the performers started throwing the stacks of bowls one at a time with military precision towards the other performer.

Amazingly, the other performer  caught the bowls with her head and they landed safely on the other pile of bowls that were already being balanced there.

The audience was dazzled and they responded with a thunderous applause to show their appreciation.  It was quite a show!




After these fantastic shows, there was a show by a clown who delighted the young children.

Since we are still young at heart, we were entertained as well.

There were many shows scheduled throughout the day at the Circus Circus Theatre. It looked like a great assemble of performers from around the world.

Many people come to Vegas to gamble. There are casinos in all the hotels and gambling machines everywhere.


But you don't have to gamble if you don't want to and can still have lots of fun.











We find the Circus Circus Hotel very family oriented as it offers a lot to families with children and can keep them busy for hours.

There are many other things going on beside the theatre such as video games, midway games and indoor sports appealing to kids and teens.

We enjoyed ourselves at the midway and took part in some of the arcade games too.

 This ring toss game looked easy but it was not.  For a dollar, I got ten rings to throw at the glass bottles trying to land one of them into the bottle neck.  I couldn't do it but had tons of fun trying!

I wish my family had stayed at the Circus Circus Hotel when we visited Vegas for the first time some twenty years ago. Our children would have enjoyed all the shows at the hotel.

We can look forward to bringing our grandchildren here and sharing the memorable moments and great fun with them!


R.T.
Las Vegas
USA

How to Achieve Good Discipline with Uncooperataive Students

I know a few beginning teachers teaching ESL in Asia. Some have written to me asking for advice related to disciplining of their students. So I shared my experience with them.

Discipline – The first thing a teacher needs to do is to establish his or her expectations. I know in your situation, it would be a little difficult as the students may not understand you. Can you ask someone to translate for you when you are doing this discussion?  The most effective way is to have a class discussion about proper behavior and class rules.

Since you are teaching in a non English speaking country, you will need someone to translate for you so that students would really understand what you are talking about.

 Let the students tell you how they should behave, brain storm and write down these rules on the board.

They may come up with a lot, but narrow them down to
 5-7. Such as

-          Show respect to each other

-          Follow instructions

-          Don’ talk when others are speaking

-          Etc etc. Have students vote on these class rules  so that they feel ownership of them.

After the class vote on the rules, then write them down on a big piece of chart paper and put them up on the wall. When student break the  rule, refer to them on the wall.

Clear expectations must be the first thing you need to establish in the class.

Consequences – Rules without consequences will not work. Students need to know clearly what they are if they break the rule.

After the discussion on rules, then inform students of the consequences. You can discuss with the class  what should be the consequences, but you must have some prepared.

This is what we call Progress Discipline – discipline student in stages.

Our objective is to have students listen to you which comes from earning their respect. To earn their respect, students need to know that you care for them.

Therefore, the consequences are consequences, not punishment.

My consequences were:

1.       First offence – speaking  to student gently about the misbehavoiur; remind him/ her of the rules agreed in class.

If possible talk to student quietly and avoid embarrassing them in front of their peers.
Hopefully, the student's behavior would improve.

If after repeated warnings, misbehaviour persists then #2.

2.       Second offence – detention after school/ during lunch recess – talk to student nicely about the misbehavior, try to understand what the problem / issue is about this student. Speak with them with love and genuine care about them. Often,  I discovered that it was a cover up for students not to do the work because they did not know how to do the assignment but were too embarrassed to ask for help.

3.        Third offence – I called the parents and let them know about the misbehavior and ask them if there was anything going on with the student I should be aware of.
If necessary, I may invite the parents in for a meeting and try to resolve the issue.

When disciplining students, let them know that you care for them and want to help them with their learning. When the students sense a teacher’s compassion, care and  interest in their learning, they will respond to the teacher positively, respect him/her and listen to the teacher.

Positive reinforcement of students' good behaviour is also important. Try to recognize and reward desirable behaviour in class.  A certificate of good behaviour and other incentives can be used to motivate students to perform better.

Off course, don’t forget to pray for your most difficult students!

R.T.

Toronto

Canada

Picture credit - Google image search

Strategies for Dealing with Unmotivated ESL Students

I receive letters and emails regularly from new teachers asking for advice dealing with students. I try to help them as much as possible by sharing my experience with them. Here is one reply I sent recently to a beginner  ESL teacher in Korea.

" Motivating students who do not want to learn is a timeless problem for teachers all over the world. It was a problem for me when I first started teaching but as I got more experienced, I was able to apply different strategies to help my students to learn. We still have problems at the VBS camp each year and we try many different things to get them interested.

I would like to share some of the strategies I used in the past with beginning teachers and lay people involved in teaching children in vacation bible school. Hopefully they can try and adopt them in their teaching:

1.       Must know the students background

-          One of the reasons Ontario does not have standard textbooks or standard lessons for teachers is the belief that all our students are different culturally, geographically, economically and socially. Therefore, as a teacher, we must get to know our students and see what their interests and what they can relate to so that our lessons can be meaningful to them.

-          If your students are from rural/ farming communities – then your lessons need to reflect their backgrounds.  We cannot have one set of standard lessons for all the students regardless of their background.

-           

You can get to know your students’ likes and interests by doing a student survey. You may need to have it translated and give it in bilingual language.

I always find that the topical approach teaching method may work better for students who are less interested. For instance, I may plan a unit of lessons if I know a lot of my students are from a small farming community e.g. on Visiting a Farm – then all my teaching material, vocabulary, activities, pictures, resources would be to do with farming or animals.  Animals is always a popular topic among students.




I know Koreans love Sports, so you may want to do a unit of lessons on the topic of different sports – they are crazy about soccer as Koreans made it to the World Cup and Canadian Koreans were crazy in Toronto when the Korean team played on the day.  

Your students don’t want to learn English as they may not see themselves leaving their hometown going to far away places like America.

How about showing them some Olympic / World Cup clips on sports where Korean team, and athletes were featured. Talk about one day maybe they would travel to see their country to compete and cheer on them. English would come in handy when travelling.

2.       Friendly competitions among students is healthy – Divide students in groups according to their ability of English and prepare different level of activities for each group. Reward the first group of students when that group can follow instructions and work on their activities.

 The reward can be class time for some board games, time on computer and an occasional treat from the teacher .

There has to be some students in a class who want to learn. Group these students together and have them work on activities to their level and reward these students.

Pay attention to the students who are doing well and are listening to you. Your attention is also their reward. Hopefully, their positive attitude would start influencing the others.

3.       Student of the Week – I did reward students at the end of the week and recognize not just those who were the best but those who have shown improvement. I made up a letter and sent it home to the parents informing them that their child was chosen Student of the Week/ Month.

You would have to write that letter in both English and Korean so that parents can understand.

You need to sign it or put a special stamp on it or something. This system worked really week for me and saved my neck in my first year teaching Special Education students."

R.T.
Director - TECA
Toronto Education &
Communications Associates
Toronto
Canada

Picture credit - Google Clip art