Spanglish

I have forgotten to write about James' Spanish class! We signed him up for once a week Spanish lessons at daycare. I'm so excited! Last week was his first class and I asked him what he learned. He told me "yellow sun". Well, I kept prodding and he finally told me he learned about the "sol", which is Spanish for sun! He also keeps saying something like "azooo" so I think he might mean azul, or blue. Maybe they learned the colors?

I'm very happy that he will be exposed to some Spanish early on. I hope that they'll continue to offer the Spanish classes or we can find some other class that he can attend. I heard that his future elementary school is a Spanish immersion school, so I'm really hoping that's true and that they'll keep the program at least for a while. You just don't know with budget cuts and things.

A class picture was sent home with James yesterday. I took a picture of it for you all to see. I just don't know how they managed to get all of the kids sitting reasonably still!! James is the cutie near his favorite teacher, Sheana, on the right.




Jim said that James is able to point out each kid in the picture with their name. He has many friends :)

Now, I don't love pictures of myself. I took this other picture because I'm finally wearing a COLOR and maybe you can see my hair a bit better. A teacher just complimented me and then called me "rude" in the same breath. She told me she loved my hair and wondered if it takes me a long time to style in the mornings. I said not really, I just let it air dry and that just takes time. She said, "How rude!" and laughed. She said she wished her hair was so easy :)



I also wanted to write about an experience I had yesterday. I was invited over to the high school to participate in a Latino student event and guest speaker. They are having some Latino boy gang issues and they had a Youth coordinator from Centro (a Mpls organization) come over and speak to the students, all Latino students regardless of whether they are in gangs or not. He was a great speaker and spoke a lot about pride, familia, education, and learning our History. I have to say that I was quite inspired to read and learn more about Latino culture and history. I just don't have a clue about some things!

The students responded well to him. This man has walked in their shoes and he had lots to say. It didn't hurt that the young ladies thought he was cute too :)