lucy gets an english tutor

Hola! Como esta? Muy bien, gracias, y usted?

I've been learning a little Spanish this week and thought I might start today's post with the only phrase I've mastered.

It's been a long and busy week. I've had ESL classes from 7:30 to about 3 each day and then have about 4-5 hours of homework each night. These classes are 3 credits each; I'm doing 6 credits worth of class time and class work in two weeks. We are moving very quickly, but even though we're halfway through, we still have TONS of work. Together with the three other teachers from WL in the class with me, I made a To Do list of things I needed to finish for these classes before Monday. It's about 10 items long. I'm ready for the weekend break and hopefully I can get everything all finished.

In one of these classes that I'm taking, we're talking about common grammar and pronunciation problems that English language learners have (Spanish speakers, for example, commonly put a /e/ at the beginning of words that begin with /s/--espeak, estudy, etc.) We've learned about common areas of problems for various languages and have talked about how to correct these problems. Yesterday the teacher had us watch an episode of "I Love Lucy." It is the episode where Lucy decides she wants their baby (unborn at this point) to speak proper English so she checks out all of these books so she can learn. Ricky comes home and questions her on what she's doing. She comes back with this really fancy, formal response that Ricky says isn't English. They argue back and forth about English, Lucy telling Ricky that he's not allowed to talk to their child until he's 18 and Ricky says the same thing about Lucy and English. It was a riot! It fit perfectly with all that we're learning and was the only thing this week that didn't have a hint of "boring" involved.

Last night I went to see Ben and his dad play softball. I speak honestly when I say their team is not really that good, but it was fun to see them try. I'm generally not a huge softball fan, but it was kind of fun being in the atmosphere...except for when the other team kept swearing.

Tonight I'm a single woman; Ben and his dad went to our ward's Father and Son's camp out. I'm going to take Zeus and we're sleeping over at my mom's. Apparently she has lots planned for us; I'm excited.

I've been sitting at my computer since I got home at 3:30 and decided right now that I'm going to be done with homework for today. My brain has reached a limit and can no longer take any more. You wouldn't know reading this, but I've had to press the "backspace" button more times in this one paragraph than I think I've ever hit in my whole life.

TGIF!!