Teaching Gigs

Carnevale(Fat Tuesday) at the Preschool - Every Tuesday Kelli and I go to the Preschool close by and teach the 3, 4 and 5 year olds a little bit of English...mostly colors, animals, fruit, etc. (Side note: The past 2 Thursdays, we've gone to the school and had breakfast with the teachers of the kids, and they were very thankful, as were we, and today when we came to teach, it was even more special than before.) Anyway, Fat Tuesday is a big deal in Italy so the preschool had a whole day planned to celebrate this event so they said we didn't need to teach English but would love for us to come participate and see the costumes. Kelli and I only stayed for a little bit, to say hello and take pictures of the adorable "Spain" costumes. The same day, the nursing home close by that we've been helping out at, invited us to their Carnevale party. Laura made a video of that and I think this link should work: facebook carnevale video

Turkey Dinner - For Thanksgiving Dinner at the Bible School, we, of course, had turkey and one of our friends, Elizabeth Watley, donated a few and we had one huge one left over so we put it in the freezer to save for another day. At the end of February, it was time to take the big bird out of the freezer and invite our students/friends/strangers to feast on this turkey. We decided to have it on a Thursday, since that is the day we have set aside specifically for visiting students, church members, or anyone we think would be encouraged by a visit. The rule was, everybody invites any 2 people you want...kind of a, guess who's coming to dinner thing. I invited Lisa and her son. Lisa is a lady that is a student of Debbie's really but she has been coming to Monday Night Bible Study and church since January. We really did invite lots of different people...I even asked the the lady that works at the grocery store but sadly the guy who was supposed to replace her had called in sick so she had to work a double shift. I go to that grocery store at least 3 times a week so it wasn't completely weird that I asked her. This was a great success and I think we will do something like this more often for Thursday visits.

Library Reading - When there is a Harding Group at the HUF villa, they volunteer every Friday for one month at the local library to read a book in English to the kids of the community. Usually, they are gone for at least 2 Fridays of the month so we go and read the kids a story instead. The kids are so curious and eager to show what they already know about English. This month, they were only gone 1 Friday so we read Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?.  After Peter 2 read the story, we split up into groups and reviewed the vocabulary and talked about other animal names they knew.  Then we played several games, a matching game, a relay game and then animal charades(act like an animal and the other kids had to pick what it was). 

Renata's Class - Renata is one of my students that teaches English at a middle school close by and has been coming to the Bible School for over 15 years. She has been a good friend since I've been here and has even invited me and the other female avanti workers over to have dinner with her family...always a treat. Anyway, she mentioned the possibility of me coming to speak in one of her classes so the kids could practice listening and learn a little bit about the United States from an American. At the end, they asked questions about Texas and one of the more interesting questions was about how I fell about the Death Penalty and if it really does still happen in Texas...yikes. I'm not sure if I was thinking about the death penalty at their age. I did get to inform them that Chuck Norris is not as tall as they might think, that he is only about 5'10". I got to share with them why I was in Italy and how I got here as well which I made sure it would be ok to say something like that beforehand because you all know how it is now in public schools, you never really know what's ok and what's not. I had a great time and I know Renata really appreciated it.

That's all for now. Love you guys!