So today at school we went apple-picking. It was adorable. Since only one of the children is verbal (i.e. uses verbs), the entire bus trip involved "Look- apple tree! Look- barn!" ...they pick up new words quickly. It's amazing to watch them improve because it's so rare to see a learning process from the very beginning. For example, Bee suddenly started speaking English today! It was as though she had been sitting on the carpet listening for the past month and just decided that today was her day. Anyway, it turns out that she knows the numbers 1-10. Isn't that just a little bit miraculous? A month ago she was living in a refugee camp in Laos.

I'm having some problems with the two native-Spanish-speaking students. I speak Spanish to them for clarification purposes, but I'm so rusty, so I avoid complex verb conjugation. Anyway, because they hear me speaking it, they assume I'm one of the adults who knows how and start rattling off sentences to me! Most of the time I pretend to understand what they're saying ("Sí, Stephanie!") and then take a minute to work it out. I think Yahayra caught on today because I kept pushing her higher on the swings when she was saying that she wanted to stop (in my defense, I think she was using a subjunctive command form). I felt like such a bilingual fraud! Oh well. For most of the kids, I have no idea what they're saying to each other so they don't even try to speak to me (Have you tried Hmong? It's tricky). Anyway, our bilingual Hmong aid is going to pick up his fiancee in Laos tomorrow, so it will be interesting to see if he acts differently next week. It will be interesting for her too, I'm sure, since apparently she's only 21 and speaks no English, and he looks like he's about 50.

I'm going to go carve the pumpkin I got at the orchard. Tomorrow my friends and I are all rallying for Kerry (he's visiting again) and then John's coming to stay for the weekend.

PS- Has anyone seen the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire? Well, if you know me, you know that he's my favorite, and his message -that debate shows have become simply partisan stereotyping- is so true. I'm tired of politics...even if GWB wins, at least that means he'll have only four more years to screw up the world. If John Kerry wins, it will be one huge party on Nov. 3rd!