Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Thank goodness for yoga


This, my friends, is what greeted me in my car this morning. With the wind chill, it was -7* when I walked the dog this morning. It's way too early to be this cold! And way too early to have this much snow.  I'm going to a conference in Texas this week. I'm not really ready for it and that was stressing me out. But now I just want to be somewhere warm and where the ground isn't snowy/icy. And hopefully I'll finish my presentations and packing in time... 

Yesterday morning when I was loading my bags of books into the car, I stepped on the edge of the recessed drain cover in the middle of our driveway (which I didn't see because of all the snow). And twisted my ankle pretty badly. Ugh. Thank goodness for yoga and all of the balancing work I do there. My ankles are nice and strong. Don't get my wrong - it still hurts a lot, but I think it's only a mild sprain instead of something much, much worse. (For a split second I thought I might have broken it, that's how crazily it twisted!) 

On a happier note, classes have been going well. We did a fun activity in my evening class last night where everyone wrote a few sentences about themselves in the first person, then we passed the papers around and they read sentences about each other in the third person. It was really neat to get to learn a little more about each other while practicing grammar!  In my morning class today we talked about holiday celebrations/traditions. Next week we'll be having a Thanksgiving potluck and I'm looking forward to seeing what my students bring in. (One brought in cookies today - always a treat!) Now if only the heater in that classroom would start working. My poor students were all bundled up in their winter coats and gloves during class today!

Finally, I just wanted to share an example that illustrates why I like the term "ESOL" (English for Speakers of Other Languages) instead of "ESL" (English as a Second Language).  My afternoon class is an absolute beginner (level 0) group. I was chatting with one of my students before class today. She's from a country where she grew up speaking two languages. Her mother immigrated to that country, and my student knows the language of her mother's native country, too.  So while she's a very beginner in English, it's already her FOURTH language. I am seriously impressed! 

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