Playing school!

As a child, I spent many hours playing school in my bedroom. I would line my dolls up (including my Cabbage Patch dolls Brenda Patience and Dougie Teddy- laugh Cabbage Patch sure knows how to name em).


My sweet Dad even made me a grade book and a pointer to make it even more real.


Now I really am a teacher! This is my first year teaching elementary Spanish and I often feel like I am playing school again. Only this time, the students can talk and this makes all the difference! If there is one thing kids do well it is talk!


Kids can say the funniest things. I have been asked numerous times if I am Mexican! I am trying to teach them that everyone who speaks Spanish is not Mexican.


The first week I asked them to name some countries where Spanish is spoken. The answers were rather pitiful. Maybe it is the Olympics, but several claimed that they speak Spanish in China.


But my favorite story of all is the first grade class with an Indian student named Sham. Another boy in the class pointed to him and declared, "He speaks Spanish. He is Mexican!" Sham vehemently protested, "I promise, I'm not Mexican!"

Oh dear, here we go again with the whole Mexican thing...

In the middle of the woods...

When I first moved here after we married I got a job at the local library. I was the "floater" which meant each day of the week I was assigned to a different branch in one of the surrounding towns. Wednesdays I always dreaded! I was sent to an almost dead little town with hardly anything more than a gas station and the library. Today though, I returned to this town and unbelievably even found myself thinking "I could live here." Here is why...
Deep in the woods on the banks of the river is a little cabin.
With an amazingly chilling spring feed pool!
A dear lady from church lives there and invited the youth for an afternoon of fun in the refreshing water.
Ronnie, my big fish, hardly left the water.
The diving board provided endless entertainment.

And the cozy cabin was perfect for a relaxing Sunday afternoon!

Ronnie and I both agreed, that it would be wonderful to have such a retreat one day, even in what I thought was a horrible little town!