Valentine's come and gone --

My J and I decided to spread our Valentine's celebration throughout the week -- yesterday was dinner at Chateau Verde. Then we're watching Constantine some time this week.

Dinner was amazing -- it was my first time there and my J had been promising to take me there for quite some time now and we finally got a chance to do so yesterday.

They had a special Valentine menu and we had their oysters (OMG, yum!) and seafood chowder (OMG, yum!) for starters. I had a salad and my J ordered the beef tenderloin. Everything was absolutely delicious. I didn't realize I was doing a commentary of the entire meal (which my sibs and I are inclined to do when we're in a new restaurant) until my J pointed it out.

I want to go back there on a regular day to try out their paella.

* * *

On a discussion of Murakami's "On Meeting..." --

My students had a blast! I never realized just how many questions this story would raise until we did a close reading of it in class. And the answers and insights -- galing!

We discussed the "problem" of the narrator's confession -- it begins "Once upon a time..." and we had to figure out whether that was real or not.

I got the best answer of the day from a student in my afternoon class (my more cerebral class, di ba E?) --

"The author is trying to capture the experience of falling in love and what we do when we are in love -- the reason for the "once upon a time" is to include the magic that happens when we fall in love. It is that moment of being real and, at the same time, unreal that those words try to contain. And it is up to the readers to believe in the magic or not."

Galing lang -- was so pleased with the discussions that day. ^_^

Am so proud of my Lit classes. *sniff*