Are you ready for the Spelling Bee?

Here is what I did this afternoon at work...

It's a bulletin board to get our students excited about the Spelling Bee that's coming up on June 16th and 17th. I was told last minute to put something together really quick for the bulletin board...and to be honest, I didn't have enough of the same shade/type material available to do just one color (this bulletin board is HUGE) which is why I picked out so many different colors. I know it's not the sexiest bulletin board that I'll upload to Pinterest but it's not half-bad either. I'm actually pretty content with the way that it turned out.

It is designed to be interactive and catch the students' attention. After I vertically stapled the royal blue, sky blue, lime green, canary yellow, and tangarine orange butcher paper, and put up a thin border with black posterboard...I took hot pink butcher paper and pasted real photographs of different things that the elementary school kids are used to seeing on a daily basis. Underneath each one is a surprise....note the "LOOK!"

The students can lift up the photographs and see if they guessed the spelling correctly. Afterward, my hope is that they'll try to guess all six spelling words and get their fellow classmates involved too. (We'll find out on Monday!) Some are more difficult than others. I put up six different words representing the six different elementary school grades at our school.

Here is one my students are definitely familiar with...

I also put an encouraging phrase up above each one, since that's how I roll.

My 5th graders actually took these pictures for a countable nouns vs. non-countable nouns project we did earlier this year. So you could say that this bulletin board is partially....reused? (Remember the three R's!)

I'll probably go over the words again with a thicker permanent marker. But here's how it looks for now.

These are photographs of actual spelling words that they'll have to learn for the Spelling Bee too. So it's basically a mini-practice session for them.

And finally....I am aware that wrist and watch should be together. I will fix that pronto! You have my promise! 

That's about all for now. I'll post more pictures next week of how everything went and let y'all know if the bulletin board actually worked in sparking an interest in spelling like I hope it does. Comments/suggestions welcome! Goodnight!

Ejotes y "Bendiciones" (Green Beans and "Blessings")

Today I ran into what some people would call....a bit of luck, and what some others, such as my coworkers Rebecca and Faby, like to call "benediciones (blessings)." 

At 6:36am this morning, I got off the 45 minute bus ride and started walking the several kilometers it takes to get to work, as usual. However, this time, a vegetable delivery truck made an insanely fast U-turn and a whole sack of green beans fell out of the back onto the cold black asphalt close by where I was walking.

I yelled and waved and jumped, but the driver just waved his hand out the window as if to say that he knew but didn't give a, "you know what." He then apparently pressed his foot full force on the gas pedal, and sped off no less than 20 miles over the speed limit. People kept walking by going about their business. Taxies and busses avoided colliding with the bulky road hazard by nearly jumping the curb. I decided to act. I walked right into the middle of the street....and grabbed the thing.

I felt weird for a split second, wondering if I was doing the "ethical" thing. And then I started deducing the current wave of information that suddenly presented itself...

1. The driver clearly saw me and the fallen goods. 

2. He refused to stop and in fact, sped off. 

3. I dragged the 50 kilo sack from the middle of the road to the sidewalk.

4. It's mine!!

I rejoiced at my newly acquired bounty. I even started chanting "finders keepers, loosers weepers," like one of my 5th graders. A passer-by who saw the whole event laughed and quoted "su pérdida es tu ganancia," which translates to a "their loss is your gain" sort of thing. 

I started slowly, painstakingly dragging the awkwardly heavy load in the general direction of the school. It had to have been 50 kilos. (Google: 50 kilos = ? pounds.) I spotted Zacatecas taxi cab number 79 and motioned politely (and perhaps a little frantically) for him to help me and my rather large amount of green stringy vegetables. He helped me lift them into the trunk. And eventually lifted them out again at the front gates of the school. I dragged the bag to my office and thus began a vegetable sharing spree.  A dozen teachers, janitors, students, and parents went home with a gallon sized zip-lock bag loaded with green beans. I was so giddy. And to my surprise, so were others. As my sister, Victoria, said, "It's like [I] got to be the Santa of green beans!"

4 o'clock came and went. I eventually clocked out and left work. There are still kilos upon kilos left in my office for more bean gifting happiness tomorrow. I'm writing this blog entry on my way home now, with about 5 kilos of green beans in my purse to share amongst family. Looks like it's green bean casserole, green beans with pearl onions and bacon, and vegetable stew with green beans the rest of the week!

Random fact: Right now, fresh green beans in Zacatecas, Mexico are at $13 MXN/kilo and $3.50 USD/pound in Texas, USA. (It's so cheap here because they're grown locally.) That's about $650 pesos in green beans. And if this had happened back home in the states....it would have come up to the equivalent of $350.00 dollars...in one of my favorite vegetables.

I've had a rough month, y'all. I really feel like it's about time some "bendiciones" or whatever you want to call it, get sent in my direction. I'll take it, in whatever form I can get it...even if it's in the form of green beans.