Suzanne Calling

Well, I took a final at 8am. I ended that class with an A. That's three down, and two to go. Then again, that wasn't silly. Nor was the trip to the bookstore to pick up summer textbooks and some Spanish study materials. That Spanish class had a written an and oral final. If you had a 92 overall after completing the semester and the written final, you're exempt from the final. I ended up with a 96.5, so I was exempt. Meghan got 100 in the class, she was also exempt and makes me look like a total slacker! However, my friend and classmate Meghan and I both expressed concerns about spending a month not speaking any Spanish before we begin the summer class. The summer class in which the instructor no longer utters any words in English. Both of us know how rusty we can get with a couple of days w/o practice and we're the ones who ENJOYED the homework and extra credit. I mentioned picking up some study guides on my own, but Meghan approached our professor and arrange...

Some thirty years ago, Madame Boucai gave us a homework assignment to assist us in learning body parts and articles of clothing. We got dittos of a boy on a beach and a girl in a store to label. Some of us colored them in, because it gave us an excuse to color something as teens. One girl in my class, Faith, painted the boy's fingernails pink and gave him earrings, something that wasn't very common in 1980. It was the source of Madame's joking for a long time after the assignment had been turned in. The method used to remember these worked very well. So much so that now that I'm studying for my Spanish final on Tuesday (with much better results than French), I decided it was time to make my own clothing page:

Fifteen weeks later, it has been a lot of fun learning espanol. A good professor, great classmates and several pointers have really helped me to do well and enjoy to the point that I'm looking towards taking three more semesters with this instructor-even though I only need to complete two. The first day of class, she gave some tips to help students in learning and I've used them all with great success. Of course, I want to push it a little more, so I was looking for other things to do. Starting small, perhaps use My Weekly Reader en Espanol? No luck on the web for that unless you subscribe, but then I hit up CNN en Espanol and that worked much better. I've also toyed with writing a sentence or two on the blog every day en espanol to keep the skills fresh for the month that we're on break between class sessions. It always makes sense to use what works for you and for me, writing helps things to sink in better. I'm just hoping it will keep things fresh for the ...

This past fall, there was an announcement on the college campus that caught my attention. Auditions would be held for a production of "The Vagina Monologues," and there would be a meeting for anyone interested in participating. Now, I know that my skills with the stage are definitely not on the floorboards, thanks to my high school days, but I did want to do something I'm familiar with and help out. That's how I came to be the light technician for this production. It was very different from my college days. Every few weeks, I'd climb 30 foot high scaffolding, crescent wrench in hand. It was attached to my belt by telephone cord because climbing up and down 30 feet every time that darn thing slipped out of sweaty hands. For each production in those days, we'd hang anywhere from 100 to 200 lekos and fresnels, place gels and gobos and then have the fun of doing lighting tech for a couple of nights to get everything just right for the upcoming ten nights that ...