Exhaustion!!

Phew!  I'm done blogging about NTPRS!  I could blog about the War and Peace room, but Mike Coxon did a much better job of explaining the magic of that experience on his blog.  I could blog about the open mic night and how fun it is to see how talented we all are...  I could blog about my ongoing love affair with Blaine and Carol and Bryce and Laurie...  I could blog about the AMAZING lunch conversation I had about feminism, Islam, deodorant, etc...  But I'm tired.  I started back to in-service today, which meant 8 hours of being talked to about what we're supposed to be doing this year (none of which is super helpful to any of us).  I've spent the last two weeks sewing (with a real sewing machine!!!) chair caddies for my new chairs for my new deskless classroom (only to find out today that the chairs haven't arrived yet and that they are really hoping they'll come this week). 

So I'm going to call that THE END on my NTPRS blogging.  BUT WAIT!  I just remembered two things that I absolutely have to share:

1. My goofy roommate Andrea and I bought Bertos y sus buenas ideas (I don't speak Spanish) in Spanish and French.  One evening, before dinner, our silly heads decided to crawl into bed and take turns reading the book to the other in the language we don't speak.  Imagine volleyball reading, only instead of translating to English, the other person translated to the language we spoke.  For example, I read the first sentence in Spanish and then Andrea read the same sentence in French, followed by the second sentence in French.  We were amazed at how much we were able to understand this way and our pronunciation improved also!  When we got stuck, we just asked a quick question in English and continued on.  Our other roommate Julia thought we were nuts, so she took a photo:
   
2. On the plane ride home, I finished reading Bertos and also read Felipe Alou!  Great, fascinating stuff!  I only hope that some of us Frenchies get our creative juices flowing and write some good stuff to add to our list of awesome readers.

 

 

1. On the wa