HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Now here in Ireland there of course were no signs indicating it was Thanksgiving since they don't celebrate it but the sun was shining and it was a beautiful clear day and that was enough for me to be in a happy holiday mood. Although it was extremely cold and the sidewalks were very slippery I took my time walking into town this morning and enjoyed every moment.

Also, here in Galway, you don't expect to see many, if any, celebrities. But today I stopped by the river to take yet another picture or two of the beautiful multi-colored row houses along the water and when I turned around and there in front of me was a beautiful blonde women and her ruggedly handsome husband both smiling hello at me as they passed by. Now it would not be hard to recognize Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard on the streets of Hollywood or even New York City where you expect to see celebrities but in Galway, Ireland it's a bit more difficult and certainly a surprise. The only reason I knew instantly it was them was because Aiofe, my classmate from the ESL calls is friends with Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard's daughter, Hanna and tomorrow both Aiofe and Hanna graduate from the Masters degree program at the University here. It was a fun surprise to see them up close and personal and like the rest of us who visit this beautiful city it's hard not to take a long walk around the waterfront even when the weather is so bitterly cold.

I met my Spanish students, including a new girl, Alba, at 11:00am. It was a very productive four hours and I am continually impressed with their dedication to learning English. Alba had lots of specific questions like when do you use "either" and "neither." I had just gone over this same thing with the other girls a lesson or two ago but they were just as interested in going through it all again. This seems to be a difficult concept and I realized that we really don't use the either/or and neither/nor that often in our daily conversations. It's just as easy to say "You can have this or that" than to say "You can have either this or that." And think about it, when was the last time many of us used neither/nor in one of our every day conversations.

Now Marisol, out of the blue, decided to tell me about her roommates. I'm happy when any new topic comes up becaue it's great practice for them to talk as much as possible. So Marisol has three roommates and she said the women who she shares her actual room with is old. I said "well we don't usually say the person is old it's just not polite. We usually say the person is older and that pretty much takes care of it." So we continued on with the conversation and she explained that her youngest roommate is about 23 and she, Marisol is 31 and the roommate who she initially referred to as old is 42. Now Patricia and I both began to laugh because Patricia knew I was 43 and clearly Marisol didn't. Marisol than tried desperately to get out of this embarrassing predicament by explaining that I misunderstood what she meant by old. She was trying to say that her roommate is ONLY 42 but looks and acts like she is 62. She has aged far beyond her years apparently. Marisol and all the other girls tired very hard to reassure me that I was not old and that I did not even look like I was 40 I looked more like I was in my early thirties. That was nice attempt to make things better and it's a good thing Marisol is such a sweet person in general or I might have to hold this "old" thing against her. Just kidding!

Patricia who is very precise about everything I teach her and everything she hears around her so when I said "I'd been" she stopped me and said what is the "Ben" you keep talking about. You say Ben this and Ben that." Now I was confused for a moment and then spelled out the word "been." She smiled and said you mean "been" pronouncing the e's like in "green." I had to laugh and applaud her for being correct and for catching my poor pronunciation of the word. I'm telling you I can't get away with anything in this group because they are so happy to point out when I'm wrong. They always do it nicely so I never mind but also I think it's just a confidence booster when they can pick up an error and correct me because usually I'm correcting them on something just about every minute or so. I think it's very good for the student to be the teacher from time to time and clearly I must be more careful when I speak.

So after my lesson I went to the Budding Cafe to help Ellen with her children's holiday party. She invited some kids and their mom's to come and make gingerbread cookies and have hot coco. It was a lot of fun and the kids really enjoyed themselves and ate almost all their cookie creations. Hana who works for Ellen and is from the Czech Republic brought her 5 year old twins Katia and Muriska who were adorable and were very industrious making almost 15 cookies between them.

Jean Marie met me and we went to this charity food tasting at the same hotel where our gym is. It was very crowded so I went to the hotel pub and had some cheese and cold cuts while I waited for Jean Marie who didn't spend too much time there either because the crowd was out of control and the room was stuffy.

So the day passed in the complete opposite way my Thanksgivings usually do but change is always good from time to time but next year I hope to be in Boston eating my Aunt's incredible home cooking.