Day 4

Wednesday is a short day, the kids go home at 1:30 but we have to stay until 3. I pleaded sickness (cough, cough) and left early. We have 2 full weeks of testing the little children: Math which is writing numbers to 20, making patterns, simple addition, days of the week, and shape recognition. For Language Arts we ahve to test them on letters names, letter sounds, reading high frequency words (25), reading (level 2), writing at least a sentence, and penmanship. I am lucky I have only 15 kids because every test has to be done one by one. The challenge is giving the other 14 kids something to do so they don't interrupt constantly! It all takes a loooong time and we all (teachers and kids) get frustrated and cranky.

There's way too much emphasis on testing, most especially in Kindergarten, I just don't think they should be given so many tests. I have 3 children that are still 4 years old (one of them is turning 5 tomorrow), let them be children I say :)

Day 3

I went back to school today, my sub yesterday only had 11 children, there's a lot of flu around the school. One kid in the next K room got viral meningitis, and one in my room had head lice. Fun!!! Notes were sent home notifying the parents of all K children. I can feel tomorrow there will be a lot of absences!
I feel better but still cough a bit and took a long nap when I got home. Marv cooked catfish and it was very good.
Good night!

Day 2

Today November 2 is called "dia de todos los santos" in Spain, and is a holiday. People go to the cemetery and make a party of it, in a way. The whole family goes and take flowers and eat and drink. An honor their dear departed.

What I miss of this day, is the typical food we eat, in Catalunya we ate "panellets" They are little round cookies like little balls, most are made with marzipan. My favorite one was the one studded with pinenuts. I am craving them :)

May all my family and friends that have left this world rest in peace.

Daily Blogging

OK I will try to write something every day. Not much to say for today, been in and out of bed all day. Outside was a fantastic day, but because the DST it gets dark way too soon.

We ordered Thai to go, pineapple rice, kai koowah, and pork satay. It was good.

Now watching the Big Race, then back to bed.

And here's a picture of our new sofa bed :)

Happy Halloween! Marvin and I spent the day in bed, we both have a cold, or is it the flu? We turned off the lights at night so we wouldn't get trick or treaters since we didn't feel well enough to go out or to "treat" the goblins.

Did any of you get dressed for work? What did Tristan chose to be this year?

Don't forget to change the clock back one hour tomorrow. I think in Europe DST was last week.

By the way, today was a totally gorgeous Fall day, in the high 70's and sunny. No snow for us.... ;)

OK, back to bed. Hope your day was fun!

Weekend in Encinitas

This weekend we went to Encinitas, Berkley Hart had a show Saturday night which we have seen already twice, called "O Berkley Where Hart Thou?" It is a great show with music and fun, and it just seems to get better every time.

Marvin and I stayed in a great little Bed & Breakfast called Moonlight Inn. We were upgraded to a suite, it had a queen bed and a single bed, and a full bath with tub and shower. We had a nice view of the waterfall from our room and we fell sleep with the sound of water running, very tranquil. The beds were super comfortable, and in the morning they served a wonderful breakfast of freshly baked croissants, eggs, yogurt and a plate of fresh fruit, cantaloupe, strawberries, grapes and honeydew. Yummy.

On arrival to the B&B and after resting for a while, we went out for lunch to a funky restaurant called "El Callejon", Marvin had cochinita pibil, and I had chicken tacos with guacamole. After lunch, we put the top down in the SSR and cruised down the coast to Del Mar. It was such a lovely day, the sky and the ocean were deep blue, the temperature was about 75 degrees, gorgeous day.

The show started at 8:00 and we left the Inn to meet Jennifer, my friend from school. We got to the venue and Lizzie was there to welcome us. Jeff's mother and step dad were also there from Florida, also Jeff's grandfather. We had good second row seats and met a few of the performing artists. They all told us how wonderful Lizzie is, as if we didn't know that already :) She did a great job or organizing and getting things ready.

The show was great, Dakota Berkley and Miranda Hart sang with their respective fathers who couldn't be prouder, they did a nice job. We sang along to a couple of songs, and the grand finale had us all standing up singing "You are my Sunshine". Everybody enjoyed the show very much.

On Sunday, Marvin and I drove to San Diego via La Jolla, again with the top down, and visited with Lizzie for a while. She was a little tired because she stayed up cleaning after the show was over. Soon after we went back home.

It was a very enjoyable weekend.

Changing rooms

I think I already wrote we were thinking about changing the "office/futon" room into a "study/bedroom". What I had not thought about is all the work it entails. Marvin and I have been working moving stuff around, oak furniture is heavy and we seem to have lots of it too!
So far we have moved Marvin's desk and file cabinets into his bedroom. We had to move some of the other furniture around, and it will go into the other room. We had decided to get a sofa bed rather than an actual bed because most of the time nobody will be sleeping there, and that way it will be just like a sitting room and it will be easy to convert when we have guests :) We went out looking at furniture stores and found one we both like, it's corduroy sort of light brown and converts into a full side bed, it's pretty comfortable, Marvin said he can see himself sitting there reading. We would also have to move bookshelves around etc etc. And also we have a little dilemma...will the sofa fit through the door?
I'll keep you posted.
On to a different subject. I have read 55 books since January 1, pretty good eh?
I have read 2 books lately written by Catalan authors, the setting is Barcelona. One is called "The Gaudi Key" is sort of similar to the Dan Brown books of Templars and knights etc. but the central figure is the Sagrada Familia and works of Gaudi, so I enjoyed that part http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/e/martin-esteban/gaudi-key.htm.
The other book is called "The Angel's Game" which is a prequel to "The Shadow of the Wind" http://www.carlosruizzafon.co.uk/
That's all for today, have a good night everybody :)