Hi everyone! It's Monday - time for @bloghomework :) This one's not hard at all. There are definitely two things I'm an expert in: taking care of tortoises and teaching English.
You all know I have two tortoises which I've been having for over a year now and two turtles that joined our family only a few months ago. To be honest at first I had NO IDEA how to take care of both of breeds, but time and the almighty Internet have helped me to become an expert. Let me share some of the things with you.
Many people have told me recently that they want to get one, however before getting one you have to avoid having several mistaken thoughts. Mistaken thought #1: tortoises are very undemanding animals and all you have to do is just feed them and look at them and take a selfie once in a while. WRONG! Tortoises are very complicated animals and if you want your baby to be healthy and live a long happy life you should recreate the conditions of the original habitat of the animal, meaning the right soil for the terrarium, both incandescent and UV lamps (to make them warm and to help them assimilate vitamin D needed for the strong shell), certain kind of food (different for tortoises (herbivores) and turtles (carnivores)) and stable temperature conditions. If you provide all this for your baby, both of you will be happy :) Mistaken thought #2: my tortoise/turtle doesn't need a special terrarium, it can live on the floor and run around my place which will be very cool! WRONG! Tortoises do love to run around the place and you can let them every once in a while to exercise and to have fun yourself, but you should make sure that you have warm floor, because tortoises and turtles are cool-blooded animals (which means they can't generate warmth themselves and absorb it from the surrounding source) and if your floor are is cold, it may cause kidney problems for your babies. Also, keep an eye on them, because they LOVE to bury themselves in everything they see, so you may easily lose them and you don't want that to happen, I heard too many storied of tortoises being stepped on (not nice at all, trust me).
That's some basic important information about having tortoises and turtles, there are definitely more things for you to learn, but you can find all of them on some herpetology forums and communities :) It sounds difficult, but in fact it's not and totally worth it!
As for teaching English...well it all came with the experience! Mostly it's a lot of fun seeing people's language improve, and coming up with new ways and ideas of untroducing this or that block of vocabulary and grammar, but over time it also hurts me, because I have to go over the same things over and over again. Also, explaining why certain phenomenon happens resembles opening up the body of someone you love and going through the guts, because students always ask: Why is it "I go", but "She goes"? Why is it "good" with one sound and "blood" with another one? etc. And trust me, they're not satisfied with the answer "Well it happenes so due to the historical developing of the language". But don't take me wrong, I love teaching :)
And wow, that blog got very long this time! Means @missy and @rambo came up with a great topic :)
Hope you didn't fall asleep while reading it :)
Your teacher and mother of tortoises,
Ivy <3
