Monday, August 29

Up at 6:30 to get ready to go to water aerobics. It was a cloudy and cool morning for traveling up the hill, past the steets of Gwynn and Bearette, to the parking lot far distant to the gym.

I don't mind the walk to the pool in weather like this, but I won't appreciate it as much on hot days, or when winter winds blow. The pool was pretty chilly this morning. We learned that the boiler is still not doing its job, though maintenance is furiously working to repair it.

Nevertheless, a lot of us are braving the water for the privilege of swimming and doing aerobics. Twenty-one of us showed up this morning. After the session, I noticed that all the parking lots were completely full. Good thing water aerobics is early in the morning when parking spaces, though at a premium, are still available.

Back home, once I was ready for the day, I spent time before lunch reviewing the lesson plan for my student this afternoon.

We didn't cover much material this session, because the student wanted me to look at a pre-test she had taken a few days ago for a beginning English class at the college. She did pretty well on the multiple choice test, but she wanted me to explain the questions she missed.

She and her fellow students (six total in the class) don't like their teacher. They feel she isn't taking enough time to explain things to them. The teacher is probably required to cover a certain amount of material during the time alloted to the course, so she can't linger very long on any one lesson, and she can't work with the students one-on-one.

We, on the other hand, have no time restrictions, so we can work at her pace and according to her needs. I'm willing to help her understand the material from her other class, as long as it doesn't interfere with what I'm supposed to be teaching.

Today, too, the subject of vegetables came up, and when I mentioned we would be having butternut squash and okra for supper, she indicated that she's not familiar with okra. She looked it up in her Spanish/English dictionary, but still doesn't know what it looks like. I'll take an okra pod with me for the next session, so she can see and touch it.

We spoke of the weather in our state. She has not yet experienced winter in this part of the country, and she's looking forward to it, because she loves cold weather. In her country of Venezuela, it is extremely hot in the summer. She said that homes and buildings have air conditioning, as they do here, but in that country the folks turn the units way down so that it is not just comfortable, but so that it is very cold.

She also talked about her weekend, including visiting with her husband's family, and swimming in a creek, which she enjoyed tremendously.

All of this might seem like a waste of time, but these conversations are as important to advancing her command of the English language as regular lessons.

Back home, Mother had baked our crop of butternut squash, because several of them had fallen off the vines minus a stem, so the tops were oozing, which indicated they might soon deteriorate. Better to get them into the freezer.

We enjoyed a few of them for supper, of course, with fried okra from the garden, leftover potatoes from Saturday, and sliced tomatoes from the hydroponic farm.

Mother went home afterward, and Hubbie and I watched TV, including a Lifetime Movie Network feature called, "Haven't We Met Before>" Based on a Mary Higgins Clark novel, a man under hypnosis claims that in a previous life he was unjustly hanged for murdering the husband of the woman with whom he was having an affair (the wife actually did it). Today, he admits to several recent murders as the reincarnation of the hanged man, who, over the years has been murdered several times for having affairs with the reincarnations of his past lover. Now he has fallen in love with a law student who seems to be his lover reincarnated. He is also taking revenge on the descendants of his killers. Twist ending.

The second feature we watched, a 2006 Lifetime Movie Network feature was, "In her Mother's Footsteps." A woman inherits a house in which she soon begins seeing images of women being murdered. She discovers that her visions may be hereditary.