SPANISH 1 HIGHSCHOOL

Folks,
Shame on me ! It is already Wednesday and I haven't sat down to share with you all about my Spanish 1 HS class. We started Tuesday 'cause the boys were still ATR doing the hay...but finally it got wet enough that MC said "go for it"....I had my class decked out in everything I own either Spanish or Latin. All my ponchos (precious to me, some of them given by my dear late Pa) and ruanas from Colombia given by friends long ago, some Peruvian llama wool ones, Ecuadorian belts and bags made by indigenous craftsmen,  fans from Spain and all sorts of nick a nacks, stuff that I brought back with me from my Arg. trip in '94...when Dad died...from my trip to Spain with PatLu in 05, I brought back some genuine castanets, flamenco dancers statuette, gaucho mates and bombillas (the silver straws used to sip the green tea with) a few materos (gourds) all given to me by my youngest sis. Marina who married an Argentinean and has rather forsaken her Brit heritage but no matter, she comes in handy for the traditional stuff.

Had plenty of yerba mate on hand, sent by her. With a hot water thermos and the materos and bombillas, we had us a tea party! literally, forgot to tell the kids (8 kids in 9th, 10, 11th. grades boys and girls - a lively group!) that mate has a very high concentration of caffeine, higher than pop or coffee, so by the end of the pm. those kids were flying! haha..

Had some video clips of Sevillians playing the castanets and dancing flamenco, they loved it! I certainly enjoyed myself. We had other types of latin music playing, tango, folk Argentinean, bossa , Brazilian, Andean indigenous, the sikh or Andean panpipes and a quena which I've had since a young girl. All very diff. instruments to play, but quite intriguing, they all tried their luck, some got some sound out of them. When I played my cd's with professional musicians, they were very surprised that such a lovely sound can be produced with such a humble instrument. The quena is just a hollowed out piece of bamboo or cane, the siku is a group of graded hollow cane pieces banded together into two columns, no blow hole just the top has a slit and one blows into these instruments as if blowing into a bottle when trying to get a sound out of the bottle neck...same idea...by placing your lips on the side of the rim and blowing a jet of air,,,,try it...you'll see what I mean. I also had 2 ocarinas which are truly Andean and can produce a very mournful sound. They look like a plump Pita bread, with some holes in them. Usually made out of oven dried clay....very unusual sound.
The castanets are also simple but very hard to play well...

The kids all dressed up and I took a picture of them. I think they think that we are going to play and have fun the whole year long! haha...well...I'll try and make it as fun as possible but we are meant to learn pre college Spanish for the first year, and hopefully take a second and third year too...
Looking forward to a great year with these kids!

hv a great day!

PS: That's my Annie standing on the chair....Joe Casey is in back w/striped shirt and Mexican sombrero, Lizzie Jepsen, Liv Geyer. Cody Williams infront of Liz and Jesse Geyer infront of her sister Liv, Katherine Nerbonne on the left with tan poncho. Kelly Milliron in Peruvian Andean knit hat.
All the kids wanted spanish names so I obliged...now I'll hv to remember who's who...haha!!