hi jackin.

i am again hijackin time from my students who are involved in some really stupid sentence writing thing i made up in order to update my blog.

ha.

it's been raining for days. and i can only hope that it will not rain today when i have both kids millions of miles away from our home at their babysitters house. luckily, my students are paying a taxi home because they can't take me to the busstop after class. score.

we are considering a trip to cuba early july. it really depends on childcare and my visa availability. i have a meeting with the travel agent next week. we'd attend an education conference in guantanamo. but not the torture camp. just the city. no crazy american soldiers for us.

i am also planning a trip to florida.
i'm a traveling queen. that's what happens when i can save all the money i should be paying for internet.

and we continue

so, i'm sitting here while my student reads from her textbook - and i'm supposed to be coaching her through... instead i'm here.

updating this blog.

because we are still without internet and that's another story for a day when i have time to actually post about what its like to live in a country in the process of paving their streets and how the rest of the world takes a vacation while it happens.

be back soon.
well, as soon as the phone company allows it.

and we continue

so, i'm sitting here while my student reads from her textbook - and i'm supposed to be coaching her through... instead i'm here.

updating this blog.

because we are still without internet and that's another story for a day when i have time to actually post about what its like to live in a country in the process of paving their streets and how the rest of the world takes a vacation while it happens.

be back soon.
well, as soon as the phone company allows it.

queen of procrastination.

i've been in full moving gear for the past week.

we scrubbed the new place from top to toe. packed boxes.

oh, but the boxes.

we don't have enough boxes. not nearly enough boxes.

so, i packed and took a bunch of stuff yesterday. and some more today. emptied the boxes in a corner and brought the boxes back to our place to re-pack.

kind of a pain.

went to the cafeteria at the bus station to beg some boxes of pseudo-mother-in-law. she had none. went to the supermarket depot and it was closed. we were lucky enough to score some inside the store from the liquor-stocker which means we'll look like alcoholics on moving day.

and now, when i have the boxes, i'm on the internet instead.

maybe i should get back to work.

on the move...

to my 5 loyal blog readers.

have no fear.
we are still alive and well.
we are just in the middle of a move.
and we have a lot of junk. yes, junk. to pack into very few boxes.
the logistics of it are insane.

once i figure out how to fit it all in boxes and get it into our new place, get our internet set up and have a minute to breathe, i'll be back.

sincerely yours,
melanie

someone made god angry.

i had this whole post about the healthcare reform bill passed last night in the states. you know, a little pro, a little con.

and then the earth shook.

no, no, not because the bill was passed. it really, literally SHOOK.

for about 5 seconds and strong enough to get me out of bed and send our neighbors screaming and yelling to the parking lot (you'll probably never meet more dramatic people than dominicans).

it seems there are more important things happening in the world than the passing of a bill that may or may not come into being (because who knows who will take office in 2012 and what they will do to impede or proceed).

if you check out some of the websites that track quakes, you'll see that last night's 4.6 on the richter was just one of HUNDREDS of quakes since january's disaster in haiti. hundreds died in chile.

i'm not saying that healthcare isn't important... i'm just sayin' there's more happening in the world than CNN and FOX news project.

St. Patrick's Day Tot School

samil has been in love with his letter blocks this week. he's built towers, roads for his cars to drive on, thrown them at amely, and used this spatula to transfer them from the playmat to their home in an old used wipes box.

just a note: we use wipes boxes for EVERYTHING. all of the kids stuff is stored in old wipes boxes. plastics are expensive here, and this cheap (almost free) alternative makes it easy for me to organize on our budget.



the only day (besides the block photo from monday) that i was able to take pictures was st. patrick's day! (the camera somehow got packed in our neighbor's moving boxes after some water play with their daughter) we did a lot of activities - especially because amely decided to sleep in until almost 10am and samil and i were able to play together for almost two hours!

i've seen this sticker activity all over the place - but i got the shamrock idea at ramblings and adventures of a SAHM. i thought it was cool, samil... well, not so much. he put three of the stars on the lines, and then decided to fill the shamrock up with stickers. we had read a book the night before that had a sticker chart on the front cover page. when i pulled out the stars, he ran and grabbed the book and filled in the spaces that were empty.

i wanted to make a paper-bag puppet with samil from a pattern i had in my teaching box (from when i actually taught in a classroom) but it was missing a ton of pieces. i free handed what was missing and cut it all out. added some cotton to the mix (for his beard, of course).

samil loved this. but didn't want to color in the white pieces.

we mixed blue and yellow food coloring/water to make green.
yes, that's a snot-sucker from the hospital in his hand. i don't know why but we have like 6 of them in the house. i think that when amely was in ICU, i absent-mindedly put hers into my purse each time we were allowed to visit.
samil loves doing this - but we're having some issues with listening and samil keeps trying to drink the water every time we do this activity. our water is not potable and he needs to learn not to drink it. (and it's not just with transferring activities, he does it in the bathtub, too)

he also decided it would be more fun to put on the lid and shake the colors up.

i cut out these yellow circles a few weeks ago, attached some paperclips and sent samil looking for them with his magnet wand. he.loves.it. and he's extended the activity to collecting and THEN taking off the clips and sorting the coins from the clips.

we practiced counting shamrocks. still not a big hit.

patterning his shamrocks and "gold coins" was way more interesting for him.

we also played with some moon sand that my aunt had sent us awhile back. i completely forgot about it - it was hidden in the closet so samil couldn't get to it. i threw it in a tub and let him go - completely forgetting he had a glass of water there. i freaked out. for like 10 minutes. before i realized that it was moon sand and doesn't get wet. oops.

we have two tot-schoolish playdates next week that we're really excited for!
check out carisa's blog to see more totschool fun!