Thursday, June 19, 2008

social justice refrigerator

This deserves its own post.

While cleaning off my coffee table, I decided to hang Alan and Tina's wedding invitation on my refrigerator so I didn't misplace it.

Tina, you should be glad to hear that I used my "Stop Human Trafficking" and "10 tips for going green" magnets. (Granted, it was either those or a couple of magnets for EMU and U-M libraries or my Cyrillic alphabet magnets, but I thought you'd approve of my choice.)

Although I'm not trying to equate marriage and human trafficking...

summer vacation

Apparently going on vacation for a week is good for me. After spending a week with Tif in North Carolina, I got back last night. This morning, I woke up bright and fairly chipper, went for a bike ride, and have since been working at cleaning my apartment, as a) it needed it and b) Liz, Cary, and Jeff are coming over on Sunday for food before outdoor Shakespeare in the Arb. I haven't been this productive in a while (outside of work, that is, as I spent 7 weeks being productive at work and doing not-so-much when I got home). I have about a week and a half left before I go back for summer semester, and between hanging out with multiple friends in the greater Ann Arbor and Lansing, perhaps starting up again on scrapbooking, and going up home for a few days, it's going to go very quickly, I suspect.

Oh, and I realized today that the Ann Arbor Summer Festival is going on, and there are free concerts every night. Yay!

North Carolina was a lot of fun, even though Fayetteville itself seems to primarily be composed of sand, pine trees, and strip malls. Apparently George Washington went through the area once and commented that he was unimpressed, or something like that. But the downtown is nice, and we drove up to the Raleigh-Durham area via rural highways one day and went to the beach at Fort Fisher another day. It was fun and relaxing.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

almost done with the first semester

I'm exhausted (and judging by how difficult that was to type correctly, I'm really exhausted).

But I survived one end-of-the-semester party yesterday (10 kids, about 8 parents, and 4 or 5 younger siblings, complete with lots of snacks, all in a fairly small classroom). Tomorrow I have three more end-of-the-semester parties (all of which will be smaller), a scavenger hunt with the English Language Program that I've been the planning person for all semester, and a pizza party afterwards. It's supposed to be over 90 degrees. I get even more tired just thinking about it.

But then, I only have to go in on Monday and Tuesday to do wrap-up stuff, and then I'm off to North Carolina to visit Tif for a week.

~*~

I got this email from Reina's mom this week (Reina was the child who cried for over half an hour the first day of class):

Dear Sally,

Thank you for your efforts to teach my daughter .
She does not speak English very well, but she loves to attend your class.

After she arrives back at home, she said that she had a good time.
She seems to be happy,while She is doing homework.
We are looking forward to your next lesson.

Sincerely,

Tamami I.
(Reina's mam)


We've come a long way. And Reina's learned a lot of English in just six weeks.

~*~

Link of interest, particularly for Mom: Strange Maps.