Tell us about your country

There were six students in class on Monday, and each student was from a different country. Including myself, we represented 7 countries. That evening, I was thinking about how amazing it is to work with people from so many far away places, each place with its own sights, smells, tastes, customs, traditions, memories, etc. I would love to visit each of those countries and see what life is like there.

I wonder what each of you misses most about the country where you are from. I also wonder what you like most about your current home in the United States. Please post a comment explaining one thing you miss about your native country and one thing you like about the US. Try to include a lot of details so that we can understand your experiences better.

Spellabration!

Students gathered at the Henry Strater Theater for the Spellabration spelling bee, part of the annual Snowdown festival in Durango.  This year's theme was "In Da Nile" (Egyptian).  I don't know if we look Egyptian, but we had fun putting on ridiculous costumes and trying to spell ridiculously hard words.  

Class trip photos

Thanks to Taka, Edna, and Benja for taking such great pictures!

Snowshoeing

On Sunday, most of Charlie's English class, plus Pedro, got together for an afternoon of snowshoeing in La Plata Canyon, just outside of Durango. We were inspired by the skiing and snowshoeing trip that Libby organized the week before. Please post some photos, Libby.

It was really a perfect adventure. Once we had rounded up enough snowshoes, we had to find a pair of boots that Raul would fit into. Fortunately, Nicolas brought a few pairs of boots along and one of them worked. With all the right gear (I'm glad it was 50 degrees and sunny, not 10 degrees and windy) we sqeezed into 2 vehicles and headed for the mountains.

It was amazing to walk up the canyon because we were actually walking in the riverbed but there was so much snow we couldn't see or hear the water below the snow. After going a couple of miles, we finally got to a spot where we could see the river, which looked like a big turquois slush puddle. We decided to stop there and hang out for a while.

Except for Benja and myself, it was everybody's first time snowshoeing. Everyone snowshoed well and seemed to have a lot of fun. There was great conversation, wonderful views, a little bit of tackling and wrestling in the snow, long jump contests and even a bonfire. Oh, and dirty jokes compliments of Benja. I think my favorite part was sitting around the fire and sharing all of the different snacks and drinks that people brought.

Thanks to everyone who was there for making it such an enjoyable trip; you're a wonderful group of people. It was great to spend time with you outside of the classroom and to be a part of your first trip to the La Platas.

I look forward to reading comments from others who were on the trip.

Charlie's English Class

Here is a class photo from a couple of months ago.

Free write

Choose from the list of topics that I have provided or write about anything that you want. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving Day

This Thursday is Thanksgiving Day.  In this country, the Thanksgiving tradition is to get together with family and friends for a special feast of certain foods.  You probably already know what some of those foods are.  The idea is to give thanks for the good things in our lives.

Go to a dictionary website, like dictionary.com, or wikipedia.com to learn more about Thanksgiving Day traditions and history.

After learning more about Thanksgiving, please write a comment to this post explaining what you are thankful for right now.

By the way,  in observance of Thanksgiving Day, we do not have classes on Wednesday.

Happy Thanksgiving and see you next week!