Computer Lab Assignment

Use your Scholastic News paper.
1. Read "Debate of the Week" and "Sticky Situation" on p. 7. Choose one to which to respond.
2. Write a 3-sentence response in the comments box.
3. Click in the circle by Nickname.
4. Write your name in the Nickname box.
5. Click on the orange Publish bar.
6. Reread the story "Words for a Cause" on p. 3.
7. Go to www.freerice.com to donate rice and play a vocabulary game. When I say, "Stop playing with the rice," FREEZE. I'll come around and get your score. The person who donates the most rice gets a rice prize!
8. Give your Scholastic News back to me before you leave.

Tests Tomorrow

Study for history test--You filled out a study guide today. Use it to study.
Spelling and vocabulary tests--study your words.
Reading--your fluency passage is due tomorrow. Be sure to read it three times to someone.
See you tomorrow!
Love, Mrs. H

Tuesday Homework

Math: p. 284 (17-28)
Spelling: study words
Vocabulary: study words
Reading: fluency passage
You should have received information today about our upcoming field trip. Please read the 3 sheets and fill out the apporpriate information. If you have any questions, please write them down and I will answer them as soon as possible.
We'll have a special snack on February 14. If you would like to provide a batch of cupcakes or brownies or drinks, let me know. You are welcome to do that!
If you'd like to help our class out, you can send some paper towels. Thanks!
Thanks for all you do to support your child and me in the classroom. I promise to do my best to help your child be his or her best.
Love, Mrs. H

Computer lab assignment

If you were president, what would you do? What changes would you make? Tell me your ideas. Write three good sentences in the comment section. Remember to write your nickname.
Love, Mrs. H

No Homework Day...Basically

I didn't get to blog yesterday (sorry) because I had a doctor's appointment (just a checkup).

I say "basically" because you can always study your spelling and vocabulary words. We'll have a symmetry and transformations test tomorrow, too. If you need to study for that, look at p. 414 and study every set except Set D. And Monday will be the Science test. Don't forget to study for that.
Welcome to our new student...Javonte!
Love, Mrs. H

Thursday

Homework:
Math--p. 400 (24-25)
Spelling--study words
Vocab--study words
Science--test
AL History--test
Reading--fluency passage

Make sure to have all your work turned in to me so that you can participate in game day tomorrow.

Writing Prompt

1. Read "Debate of the Week" or "Sticky Situation."
2. Click on the word "comment" at the bottom of this blog.
3. Write three sentences to tell me what you think about what you read.
4. Mark "Anonymous."
5. Click "Publish Your Comment."
6. I will see your comment in my email.
Thank you!
Love, Mrs. H

Mr. Earl Arrives Tomorrow!

Homework:
Math--circles worksheet
spelling--study words
vocabulary--study words

We've started a new series of intervention reading groups. We're working to improve reading!
Tomorrow I will send home a fluency passage and a Weekly Preview. Sorry, I was not able to get them out today.

Tomorrow, you will receive a booklet in which to write the names and addresses of 11 people you know. This is the Mr. Earl fundraiser for which you will collect no money nor sell anything. Those booklets are due back on Wednesday. If booklet is returned completed, you will get two prizes. If brought in on Thursday completed, you will receive one prize.

Report Cards go home on Wednesday along with several other things that you need to get signed and return.
See you tomorrow!
Love, Mrs. H

I'm Home!

I didn't have time to blog about our last day in Madrid, so here goes:
We woke up late, as usual, and went straight (as straight as you can go on the Metro) to the Palacio Real, the Royal Palace. After standing in line for quite a while in the bitter cold, we were able to purchase tickets and enter the palace. It was nothing less than beautiful. What intrigues me about these places is the massive amounts of detail that centuries of master craftsmen have put into decorating the exteriors, furnishings, rooms (walls, ceilings, floors), dishes, clothes, whatever. I think America either never had that, after all we're only 200-odd years old, or we've lost it. The kings who occupied this particular palace all have put their own marks on the place so it has changed over time. There was a room for changing the royal clothes, a room for serving dinner to a very large party (the table in the room had 66 chairs around it and that only took up half of the room), a sitting room, a study, a throne room (of course), an ammunition and armory section, the queen's section, etc. etc. etc. For the Christmas season, artisans had set up a massive nativity using centuries-old figurines. Katie thought the room might have been the ball room, but a statue in the room seemed to disagree with that. We walked around it and saw various scenes of daily life in Bethlehem. At the end was the actual nativity. I noticed that the scenes contained figures with medieval clothes but that the nativity was set in Biblical times. A little conflict there, but it was lovely.
After the palace, we did a little more shopping and went back to the apartment. At the grocery store, we bought a baggett, some ham, and a tub of cheddar cream cheese. That was supper. Somewhere in the day, we broke down and had a (relatively) American meal at T.G.I. Friday's.
Ginny needed something American, and we all really enjoyed it.
After a 10-hour flight home, Katie and I arrived in Atlanta happy but tired. We hated to leave Ginny, and Ginny either didn't want us to leave or wanted to come home with us, but she will be home in the spring. She seems to be doing a great job with the English classes she's teaching to Spanish-speaking children and adults. She's just tired of being away from home and being away from a certain fellow.
I emailed Ginny this morning and told her that I'd left something in Spain...12 pounds! Yes, I toned up and lost weight. I may have to loose more before it really shows, but I'm motivated to do it now. It was all that walking, and we only ate two meals a day. Sounds like a plan to me.
Now it's time to get back to business...school. I've got lots to do before the kids come back on Tuesday. So...adios!

Trudging Through Toledo

We were trudging because it was raining. But not constantly. Let me begin at the beginning.
Our intention was to leave for Toledo at around 9:30. Somehow that just didn't happen, but we did manage to catch the Madrid-Toledo bus at 11:30. After about an hour ride, we entered the city. We bought a Toledo map and exited the bus station to start looking for things to see. Toledo is a city on a hill, so we had some inclines to climb. It's also a walled city, so we had to walk around the wall. We soon arrived at the gate, called Bisagra, to the old city and entered old Toledo. It was similar to Segovia, with tile-roofed stucco houses, wrought-iron "fences" over many windows, even blooming geraniums in clay pots in the windows. But the city seemed taller. We had to look up a lot to see the architecture. We came to a square (it was more of a triangle), bought empanadas in a small restaurant, and ate them on the street. Well, not literally on the street. Actually we were standing in a doorway where there was no action. Then ...surprise...a man tried to come out of the doorway. We apologized for being in the way and he said, "Buen provecho!" which means "good appetite!" That's the second time a stranger has sent us that wish as we were eating.
As we stopped to eat, we noticed several mazapan (marzipan) shops. We decided that marzipan was important to Toledo, so I determined to buy some. I finally did just before we left the old city. In the literature I read on the bus ride back home, I learned that marzipan had been "invented" by the Arabs and brought into Toledo where it found a home. Even the nuns make and sell marzipan (but theirs was more expensive).
Many of Toledo's streets were tiny, winding alleys. Ginny almost didn't get out of the way fast enough as one car zoomed (tried to zoom, he had to back up and take the turn again) past us in an alley. She said, "He almost squashed me!"
We had gone to Toledo to see the Alcazar (castle) and we did get to see the outside, but the inside was being renovated, so we were out of luck on that.
As we wandered through the city, we came upon the Toledo Cathedral, a palace, and several churches, monasteries, and convents. They were all centuries old and simply beautiful. We did get to go into Iglesia de Santo Tome (a Catholic church) to see the famous El Greco painting "The Burial of Count Orgaz". Ginny had studied it in school and wanted to see it. In front of the painting was the actual tomb of Count Orgaz. (Jane, did you get to see the painting when you were here? I thought about you as we walked through the town.)
It did drizzle off and on, but the sun came out a few times, too. All in all it was a beautiful visit and a very nice day.

More observations:
*When Spanish people meet or say good-bye, they give each other dos besos, that is two kisses...one on each cheek. I've gotten to do that twice now with Ginny's roommates.
*The paper towel and toilet paper rolls are shorter than those at home.
*You can't easily find zip-lock bags or ice here.
*When you get on a bus, either everyone sits in their assigned seats or everyone ignores their assigned seats. The only way to know the difference is whether or not someone fusses at you for sitting in their seat!

Day of Rest

We took the day off today to lay around, read, and cook. We really needed the rest after all the walking we'd been doing and the late nights.
Gin and Katie went to the only open chino and tried to find the ingredients we needed for our vegetable couscous casserole recipe. They ended up substituting a lot of things. We didn't know what we were going to end up with, but we persevered. Our obstacles: we didn't have most of the required ingredients, we couldn't understand all the instructions for making the couscous (they were in Spanish), we had a funky Celsius oven that would only heat up if the timer was turned on first, we had to translate from customary units (cups, teaspoons, Fahrenheit) to metric units (grams, Celsius), and there were three cooks in the kitchen.
We mixed things together the best that we could and put it in the oven. While it cooked, I washed spinach leaves, and Katie and Ginny tried to make flan for dessert. It was flan-in-a-box, but again the instructions were in Spanish. They mixed and cooked and poured the flan into the prepared cups. It was getting thick, kind of like pudding. Then I remembered that the instructions said to add sugar. So the flan mix had to be poured back into the pan, reheated, and sugar added.
By the time the flan mix was poured back into the cups and placed in the refrigerator, it was time to take our casserole out of the oven. It smelled good and didn't look too bad either. We spooned it out onto the spinach leaves on our plates and enjoyed our meal. Yes, it was good. However, Katie didn't like the garbanzo beans we'd substituted for the black beans, so she removed them.
Later, we had the flan. The taste was good, too, but Ginny didn't like the texture. I guess we messed that up when we recooked it. Oh, well.
It was a fun cooking experience, we all learned what couscous is, and three cooks in the kitchen worked out quite well this time.

Happy New Year!

As you know, yesterday was New Year's Eve. I wanted kebab for lunch, so we went to a kebab restaurant called Sindibad. I was expecting meat on a stick. What we got was delicious, but it wasn't on a stick. This is what they do: they tightly press meat pieces (chicken or lamb) together until they have a 2-foot tall barrel shape. This is what they skewer and put on a vertical spit. The meat rotates in front of a burner. When someone orders kebab, the meat for their kebab is shaved off the barrel and put on a flat bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, and dressing. It was a messy concoction, but Katie and I enjoyed our kebabs and Ginny enjoyed her duram (like a tortilla wrap).
We spent a good part of the day walking around the city (Katie and I will have the best legs in Hayden). Ginny wanted to stop by a used English bookstore, so we went there. Unhappily, it was closed. Then we walked what seemed like several more miles to an ancient Egyptian temple (it was closed, too) that was surrounded by a park. There we sat and rested. It was very nice and relaxing. Then we headed back and stopped for ice cream in the Puerta del Sol. We knew we would be out late last night, so we went back to the apartment to rest before heading back to the Puerta del Sol for New Years.
I must say that last night was the craziest New Year's Eve I've ever experienced. I might compare it to going to Times Square in New York City to watch the ball drop except that I've never been there. Just seen it on TV. Ginny's friend, Biz, joined us as she had just arrived back in Madrid from her home visit to Memphis. We put on our sparkly hats and feather boas (Biz borrowed a crazy wig that Ginny had) and we all went to Puerta del Sol, along with all Madridians and a host of Italians, to usher in the new year. At the Puerta del Sol is a huge clock tower on a building. I guess that's the reason everyone goes there. It's also a very large open area. As we walked toward the clock, it became more and more crowded. Police were there to keep the crowd in check and, at one point, my bag was searched for glass bottles. I didn't have one. It seemed that everyone was drinking. Some had obviously been drinking for some time. At the glass bottles check point, if you had a bottle, you had to open it, pour the contents of the bottle into a large plastic drinking glass that the police and sanitation workers provided, and toss your bottle into a garbage bin before you could continue on toward the clock. They didn't want to deprive anyone of their alcohol, but they also didn't want anyone breaking bottles in their New Year's celebrations. We found a spot to stand on the side of the street so we wouldn't, we hoped, get washed away in the tide of people. Ginny had bought us small cans of 12 peeled, seedless grapes for the occasion. At each midnight chime of the clock, which we could barely hear, we ate a grape. Doing this is supposed to bring good fortune for the year to come, the same as eating black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year's Day. I dropped one grape, and ate two at one time, so I don't know if my new year will be fortunate or not. I assume I'll have one really crappy month...can't wait to find out which one.
At midnight, fireworks were shot from the clock tower, a big "Feliz 2008" sign appeared below the clock, and everyone screamed. And there was kissing and dancing and yelling and pushing.
At about 12:15 we decided to try to head back home so we headed toward the nearest Metro station. This would prove to be the trying part of our night. We literally had to hold onto each other to keep from getting separated as we pushed our way through the crowd and as people in the crowd pushed their way through us. For Ginny, it was a frightening experience because of her time earlier in the year at the Tomatina when she was also in a crushing crowd. But I don't think Katie nor I were ever afraid. (We've decided that we came to Madrid for new experiences...some would be good but some would probably be bad.)
The Metro runs until 1:30 AM so we figured we probably had time to get home before it shut down. But there were so many people who wanted to travel around the city, too, to home and bars and parties, so we decided to take a round-about route on the Metro. It was nerve wracking, and a couple of times we were packed in the Metro cars so tightly that we didn't have to hang on. The crowd held us upright.
We finally arrived at home at about 1:30. This was when I discovered that my camera had been lifted out of my pocket. You know, at the square and on the Metro I kept thinking, this would be a fantastic opportunity for a pickpocket. Well, he or she must have read my mind, because someone else now has all my New Year's pictures along with my camera. It is upsetting, but I've determined not to let it ruin my time here. We had already copied most of my pictures onto the computer, so I'll have those. And I'll have the pictures that Ginny took. I have to say, "It's all good" and I really did pray that the person who has my camera will run into someone today who can lead him or her to a salvation relationship with Jesus.
So that was our New Years experience. I must say that it was a good time, it was exciting, but I doubt that I'll ever consciously do it again.

More observations:
*Everyone here wears scarves around their necks during the winter. Men and women. Everyone! There are some beautiful scarves and they really dress up a coat. A scarf does make a difference in the cold, and I'll probably continue to wear mine when I get home.
*Also, most of the young women wear boots.
*Everyone I've seen seems to be in the acceptable weight range. I've not seen any obesely large people. I guess it's all the walking. One of my New Year's resolutions (Ginny decided that we needed at least two resolutions each, and she made us write them down) is to walk a mile at least three times a week. Maybe that will help me trim down a bit.
*I think these small one-way side streets could actually be two-way streets, but people park on each side of the road, half on the road and half on the sidewalk. This also makes for narrow sidewalks. We usually walk in a line and watch out for the speeding drivers. I haven't yet figured out how the drivers know which way they are supposed to drive on the streets...no one-way only signs.
*And drivers here use their horns a lot. If someone is holding up traffic, cover your ears. In Segovia, we saw a lady get out of her car, march up to the offending driver, and give him an earful. I would be a nervous wreck trying to drive through this chaos. But no one seems to mind the horns...they don't take it personally.
*Yes, they do have McDonald's here, and KFC and Burger King. But there's no way we're going to eat there. We can do that at home. Sorry, Trent, we've not seen a Subway yet. I know that breaks your heart.
*I've heard that, in Europe, anything goes. This seems to be true. People do and wear whatever they want and are not put down for it. Us Americans know we fit right in because several times Katie and I have been spoken to in Spanish and the speaker expected a response. We always had to defer to Ginny who, I think, speaks Spanish like a native.

One of Ginny's resolutions was to learn to cook this year, so we're planning to make a couscous casserole for dinner using a recipe from one of the cookbooks Katie brought Ginny for Christmas (assuming that a store will be open from which we can purchase the necessary ingredients). We'll let you know how that turns out.
Happy New Year!