Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I was wakened this morning by the thudding of horse chestnuts on the wooden deck outside my bedroom window.  A strong wind was whipping them all over the back yard.  I opened the blinds on a grey day and crawled back under the covers.  When I finally got out of bed and put on the coffee, it was without much enthusiasm. It seemed as if the only thing I’d be doing outside today was putting on the bike helmet and picking up horse chestnuts. I now wear armor for that job, after being struck on the head by a few of the spiky maces last year.  It’s not my favorite task.  Postponing the inevitable, I phoned Cathy Van to see how she’s recovering from knee surgery.  It seems as if all is healing as  well as can be hoped.  Then my phone rang.  It was Mo, wondering if I wanted to go for a bike ride with her and John.  Looking outside for the first time in a while, I discovered that the same wind that had shaken my horse chestnut tree had blown the clouds out of the sky and clear blue was approaching.  I got into my biking gear, helmet and all, and by the time they came to pick me up for the ride, I had most of the fallen nuts in a box.  We rode around Swan Lake and had lunch at a Thai restaurant downtown.  It was a wonderful fall ride and now the back yard is again littered with horse chestnuts.  It’s almost 3:30, so I’m going to dress and go to the library to tutor the 3 Korean students I have.  I’ll be back by 7:30 to finish this.  

Tutoring is getting organized.  I like the kids and am adjusting to the fact that from the point of view of English skills, the youngest, the boy, is the strongest and the oldest is the weakest.  She has a lot of trouble reading because she doesn’t understand complex verb tenses and her vocabulary is limited and yet she’s in grade 11 and has to do a book report.  I chose some books for her to try, and she’s going to see what her teacher thinks.  But no matter what, it’s going to be a struggle.  I can hardly believe she’s been here since January of her grade 9 year and has never had tutoring before.  Her mother should have done this earlier because she has learned a lot of bad habits from other kids and when you think of the sacrifice her parents are making with the dad working in Korea and the mom here with the two girls all that time, it’s a pity they didn’t start sooner to get more help in English for the oldest daughter.  The sister of the boy is in the middle as far as ability in English is concerned.  She speaks better than I thought she did when I first heard her.  She wears a device to straighten her teeth, which apparently makes her almost as unintelligible in Korean as she is in English, but her actual level of language and her vocabulary are good.  Unfortunately, however, she is studying French for the first time this year, and I’m trying to help her with that too.  It sounds as if all the teeth are going to tumble out of her mouth, along with some pebbles, when she tries to speak that language.  It’s going to be a challenge, but they like me and I like them, so half the battle is over.  I still enjoy working with kids and now that I am living alone I require the structure this teaching and the volunteering I do gives to my life.  It helps me to appreciate the hiking, biking and free time I have and gives me a sense of purpose.

The back yard littered with horse chestnuts again after the bike ride

Why I wear a bike helmet

Some of the last roses of summer

The best of the last roses of summer