Are You My Mother?

This month I've been taking a course to teach Spanish children reading in English through phonics and vocabulary teaching...making "reading natives" in the sense that every single word they read is a word they already understand orally. It is interesting, a combination of review and new concepts. For the end of the month long course we have to represent a story for the class like we might do with the children and present a song and phonics plan to use with the book. Here are some props I've made. It's been a fun day.

Apart from doing kid things and cleaning, I've also looked at more wedding dresses. Pretty!

Countries Rise

I'm sure you all have read, listened to, or seen the news about the uproar in the MidEast. Egypt peacefully protested and succeeded in removing their dictator of so many years. Libya´s people are painfully revolting. Morocco, Spain's neighbor to the south, is beginning to awake as well. I've been so near and yet so far from it all.

A young woman close to my friends has been living in Egypt for better half of the last year, engaged to be married to an Egyptian. When the protests and revolt began, her grandmother and friends called and called, worrying about her safety, what would happen. Thank God there was no need for evacuation of Spanish citizens, so she is still safe there and will be married this spring surrounded by family from Spain and friends.

Can you imagine living in such history-making circumstances? Living in such nerve-wracking and yet exciting times? What would you do: stay at home nursing the pager given to you by the embassy, sneak a peek out the window of the protests, catch the next plane home, join the protests? Or if it happened in your own state? It's beyond my imagination. So close and yet so far away.