fonetics

tee hee! Today I spent first period trying to get my Spanish 3 kids to read Spanish correctly - making the right noises. It was very fun, most of them improved remarkably by the end of the period. There were 3 kids though, who I swear can't hear the noises that they are making. Their vowels are long and sloppy, their d's and b's are hard and harsh, and their tongues are bunched up and ready to strike any languid rolling Spanish sounds down where they should be uttered.

The story that I'm having them read is an excerpt from a story by a Puerto Rican native talking about memorizing a soliloqui in English. The best part of the story is that she memorized her soliloqui phonetically, not understanding the English that she was saying. So I had this poor English native speaker, reading English written phonetically in Spanish. It was quite entertaining, and I think that it helped her a lot! (For example "you" was written "llu" because that's how you would spell that sound in Spanish.) Lots of laughter and self-correcting!

Yesterday I got to play hostess to my wonderful sis and her kids, and then my friends from work spent the night because she lives far away and had a late meeting at school so I invited her over so that she would actually get a decent amount of sleep. It is such a joy to have a house that I'm comfortable in and not ashamed of. I love sharing this great place!

Please pray for me and my friends this weekend. We're going down to Mexico on Saturday to build a house. Love to all!