A Week in the Life of...

Hola!

It's a long weekend here--Rosh Hashanah on Monday--so the kids get Monday off.  It always cracks me up that we wait so long to START school, then right off the bat they get a long weekend for Rosh Hashanah, then NEXT week they'll get Wednesday off for Yom Kippur.  It's a choppy September.

SOCCER.  Of course our soccer news is for Kara.  Background is, the town has soccer teams for all ages of kids.  The season is appx. 10 weeks: 2 practices a week, + games on Saturdays.

The Middle School also has a soccer team, for 7th and 8th graders.  (Kara is in 7th grade.)  Practices are after school 4 of the 5 weekdays, + games during the week after school.  So Kara was already on a town team, and she wanted to try out for the school team, too.

Tryouts were last week, 3 days.  20 girls can be on the team, and they "favor" the 8th graders.  FIFTY girls showed up to try out!  14 of the girls who made it were 8th graders.  So they chose six 7th graders, and...Kara made the team!  She was so excited.  Congratulations, Kara!  :)

TUTORING.  I also started tutoring English Language Learners (ELL or ESL) again, at the same 2 elementary schools where I worked last year.  I will work 2 days a week, with children grades K-3.  We are still in the "testing" phase, to see how many additional kids including summer move-ins and new Kindergarteners, we will add to the students who receive services.  The Kindergarteners are so little!

I have been thinking about getting my ELL certificate, so I could be an official "ELL teacher."  I need to take 2 standardized tests, pay fees, and have my transcripts sent to them.  It's kind of a long process, and a little arbitrary.

My degrees are also from 20 years ago, for Pete's sake!  They may laugh and say "time for you to start over."  I took the 1st standardized test last week.  The 2nd test is specifically about English as a Second Language so I'll have to either take a course or study by myself about the theories, etc. behind learning second languages.


CAR MAINTENANCE.  Frank took the car over to help the girls in the church youth group learn about maintaining your car.  Checking the oil, other fluids, jumpstarting the car, etc.  They had quite an extensive list, and I think they learned a few things they did not know before.

TARANTULA.  Ok, I'm going through photos and I thought this one was cool.  That's Frank's ring so I know it is him, but I can't remember what trip this was, exactly...?

GRANDMA.  And I'll end with this Blast from the Past: Thanksgiving, 2002.  It's our family reunion, and her's a photo of Grandma with all of her great-grandchildren!  This was almost 10 years ago.  You can imagine, that now we have 2 more in the group, plus all the kids have changed.  (Grandma, of course, has not!)  These same great-grandkids are graduating college and serving missions, or married and starting their own families!  Grandma is 101 for another 3 months.  You can click on the photo to enlarge it.  Love you, Grandma!

Have a great week, Kari :)