We are having absolutely beautiful weather! I am feeling much better -- still coughing from time to time but my congestion is responding to Muscinex and I can breath again. I think I will survive!

Yesterday was ESL day and I had a great class. Last week I dropped three of my students for non-attendance but one of them showed up yesterday. She was very unhappy to hear that I had dropped her (to explain the term I told her I had erased her name!) She promised to be regular in attendance or to call if she could not come so, soft heart that I am, I let her back in.

We are working more on speaking and I was greatly amused to hear my students trying to pronounce the English words. I had a Spanish speaker from Columbia, a Spanish speaker from Mexico, a Spanish speaker who was born in France but lived in Mexico, and a Farsi speaker.
I would get four very different pronunciations of each word. The three Spanish speakers all sounded different! I had to laugh when my Colombian student pronounced upon as 'uppen.' I told him that was an original pronunciation!

I was surprised to learn that these students did not understand words like "upper," "lower,"
and "middle." Well, middle was "center" to them but I had just assumed they knew the other two words. Why? Why would I assume that? It just seemed so simple but if they knew things like that I wouldn't be needed, would I.

We also talked about current events -- I feel that I need to do that because they aren't keeping up with the news of the world and of our area. They had not heard about the Wed morning earthquake,(5.9) in Haiti, so we discussed that.

We worked on sight words -- before we started the French/Spanish speaker asked for me to put the alphabet on the board -- she is still unsure of it. That surprised me.

After the class was over two of the students told me it had been a VERY GOOD CLASS. I was pleased.

Next week Y will join our class -- he is from Cameroon and Belgium. I think he will be a good mix with our class.