i heart board games

so back in the day, when i was living in maplewood, we used to have apartment dinners once a week or so. those were always fun times because a few people would cook together and then all the different people (friends) that lived in the building would gather in the cooking apartment to eat dinner together. i didn't realize how much i missed that group fun, until this last saturday. a bunch of people gathered at minjue's apartment and we collectively chopped veggies and cooked dinner - miso salmon, green beans + shitake mushrooms, and stir-fried squash + broccoli. i think it came out pretty well. and then, we played board games! i LOVE board games. and even better, we played TV edition scene-it. and then answered more trivia questions. i now acknowledge that i have spent entirely too much time watching TV. i know, not a big surprise. :)

it's been 3 days since i played flag football and parts of me are still feeling the pain. i know...me...playing flag football. i can definitely say that i learned a lot. for example, once you've been thrown the ball and you're running it towards the endzone, you can't toss it forward to another player. after i was told about this rule, the funny looks i got made a lot more sense. seriously, how was i supposed to know? i think my little brother would be horrified - he takes his football pretty seriously. the fact that i still hurt tells me that i need to start being more active. in fact, i'm taking part in "race for the cure" for breast cancer this sunday morning - a 5K run/walk. i'll be choosing to walk, briskly of course. maybe i'll even run...we'll see.

at my teaching assignment today, some students from another 5th grade bilingual class were dispersed into our class because their teacher was out sick and no sub showed up. these students are not as proficient in english as most of the students in my class. so, i look over and one of the boys from our class, eric, is talking with two of the boys from the other class and they're looking over at me and then laughing. this is never a good sign, no matter where you are. i can't hear them, so i figured i'd just let it go. later, at the computer lab, i figured out what they were talking about. the two boys, marcos and victor, couldn't believe that i spoke spanish and chinese and english. they didn't know who i was so eric had been telling them about me. i think for some of these kids, asians are kind of a foreign concept for them because almost all of the population at the school is latino. sometimes, i forget that i stand out. but what's been great is that i've been able to use who i am as part of my teaching practice and using that to get the kids interested different kinds of learning. hooray for cultural capital!