Big Day

[kurtdesign1]

I'm pretty sure that Grampa Kip is being a bit joking, here...

I am 100% not following this.
What are you responding to?

The original post. Methinks Kip was not being particularly serious about stress in the situation.

Yep, I imagine Kip's not one to air laundry about his personal feelings against helping a bunch of orphan children

[Kip]

For all the beauty of Palo Alto, mornings are special. The quiet. The breeze. The fresh air. The coffee. My goodness.





Sent from cigar country via smoke signal...

[Stewmuse]

For all the beauty of Palo Alto, mornings are special. The quiet. The breeze. The fresh air. The coffee. My goodness.





Sent from cigar country via smoke signal...

I remember those views... And how wonderfully quiet it was!

[kurtdesign1]

For all the beauty of Palo Alto, mornings are special. The quiet. The breeze. The fresh air. The coffee. My goodness.

Sent from cigar country via smoke signal...

I remember those views... And how wonderfully quiet it was!

I'm going to New Mexico tomorrow to do some fishing and can think of nothing more striking than the silence. I can hear footsteps in the rock or a car in the distance but it is fleeting; almost a highlight for the regular silence. It's odd that visual beauty is strengthened by the lack of another sense being stimulated. Odd but 100% true.

Thanks for posting them up, Kip. I can almost see that through the screen. It photographs incredibly well.

[Stewmuse]

We're also set to start teaching English at the school in Palo Alto beginning this Wednesday....which is kind of a big deal, at least to us. We're going to have around 100 kids total (broken up into classes throughout the day). I can't wait for the day when there are hundreds of little chicos running around the Dominican mountains with a hillbilly accent.

How's class, Mr. Fisher? Tell Craig to stop touching me. Can I go to the bathroom?

[kurtdesign1]

We're also set to start teaching English at the school in Palo Alto beginning this Wednesday....which is kind of a big deal, at least to us. We're going to have around 100 kids total (broken up into classes throughout the day). I can't wait for the day when there are hundreds of little chicos running around the Dominican mountains with a hillbilly accent.

Ian hit me! I want my mommy...
DC's picking his nose!

[IWinchester]

Craig started it!! Make frank share his cookie with me!

[Kip]

Teaching English is hard, with all the idiosyncrasies that come through a language with several root origins. Spanish speakers are accustomed to (mostly) hard, fast rules - because Spanish comes from Latin, the rules have few exceptions...and those exceptions generally follow an established pattern to preserve pronunciation, etc. The letters are pretty much *always* pronounced the same if you see them written. English, is friggin' willy-nilly.

Teaching to the kids at the school is pretty manageable so far. They're eager and well behaved, much to our surprise based on their behavior when we encounter them outside school (some are "handfuls"). However, we began the adult class this week. Our Spanish is pretty decent these days, and we can communicate effectively even if we don't have the finer details down. However, we're still speaking fairly basic to intermediate Spanish. We get by.

The thing that makes this incredibly difficult for the adults is the fact that 1.)some of them are not able to read and write. We'll be restricted to conversation to teach them, and without writing/reading it will be limited to conversational English as a goal for the time being. The fact that some are illiterate, coupled with our limits with Spanish is a hurdle. Secondly, some of the folks in the class are not even native Spanish speakers. There are Haitians in the community that will be in attendance, and *their* Spanish is secondary. They speak a creole of Spanish/French/African dialects. Teaching in my 2nd language to someone who is learning English through the lens of their 2nd/3rd language is really imposing at the moment...I had 4 years of French in high school/college, and have retained a very basic understanding of it - but the Haitian creole is far removed from traditional French. This oughta be fun...

[jledou]

Teaching English is hard, with all the idiosyncrasies that come through a language with several root origins. Spanish speakers are accustomed to (mostly) hard, fast rules - because Spanish comes from Latin, the rules have few exceptions...and those exceptions generally follow an established pattern to preserve pronunciation, etc. The letters are pretty much *always* pronounced the same if you see them written. English, is friggin' willy-nilly.

Teaching to the kids at the school is pretty manageable so far. They're eager and well behaved, much to our surprise based on their behavior when we encounter them outside school (some are "handfuls"). However, we began the adult class this week. Our Spanish is pretty decent these days, and we can communicate effectively even if we don't have the finer details down. However, we're still speaking fairly basic to intermediate Spanish. We get by.

The thing that makes this incredibly difficult for the adults is the fact that 1.)some of them are not able to read and write. We'll be restricted to conversation to teach them, and without writing/reading it will be limited to conversational English as a goal for the time being. The fact that some are illiterate, coupled with our limits with Spanish is a hurdle. Secondly, some of the folks in the class are not even native Spanish speakers. There are Haitians in the community that will be in attendance, and *their* Spanish is secondary. They speak a creole of Spanish/French/African dialects. Teaching in my 2nd language to someone who is learning English through the lens of their 2nd/3rd language is really imposing at the moment...I had 4 years of French in high school/college, and have retained a very basic understanding of it - but the Haitian creole is far removed from traditional French. This oughta be fun...

So forget the kids walking around with a Hillbilly accent, now we are going to have creole-hillbillies walking around to??? Heaven help the DR they don't know what they are getting into

[Stewmuse]

Teaching English is hard, ...

The thing that makes this incredibly difficult for the adults is the fact that 1.)some of them are not able to read and write. We'll be restricted to conversation to teach them, and without writing/reading it will be limited to conversational English as a goal for the time being. The fact that some are illiterate, coupled with our limits with Spanish is a hurdle. Secondly, some of the folks in the class are not even native Spanish speakers. There are Haitians in the community that will be in attendance, and *their* Spanish is secondary. They speak a creole of Spanish/French/African dialects. Teaching in my 2nd language to someone who is learning English through the lens of their 2nd/3rd language is really imposing at the moment...I had 4 years of French in high school/college, and have retained a very basic understanding of it - but the Haitian creole is far removed from traditional French. This oughta be fun...

So forget the kids walking around with a Hillbilly accent, now we are going to have creole-hillbillies walking around to??? Heaven help the DR they don't know what they are getting into

You will be assimilated into the collective...