Guest Blogger Rayna

Of course, part of our Homeschool ELA program has been to journal, write reports, etc. So, I (Bev) thought we should make use of one of those reports here. Why reinvent the wheel? It may be interesting to hear an almost-eight-year-old's perspective anyway. So here is Rayna's latest writing assignment.

My Time on a Cruise Boat

In the beginning of May, we went on a cruise boat for five nights. The ship left from Barcelona. Barcelona is a three hour train ride from Madrid.

The Ship

On the ship there were 4000 people and 15 floors. We were on the 8^th floor. Our room had bunk beds that came out of the ceiling. Very cool! Our room was very small and had no windows, but it was good enough.

The first thing we did was explore the ship. There was a climbing wall. I climbed to the very top and rang the bell.

There was also a sports court and a Flo-Rider for surfing and boogie-boarding, but I was too short to go on it. There was a mini golf course. I played on it only once. It was fun. I really liked playing in the Arcade. I played air hockey twice and Mario Kart 2 two times. It was fun. I was in a class every day at 8:00 pm that was called Adventure Ocean. You would play games, do crafts and learn a little bit of Science every day. There was also a water park, a whirl pool, swimming pools and hot tubs. The whirl pool was really fun!

There was a dining room that was very fancy. The waiter would pull out your chair and put your napkin on your lap for you. I dressed up for a few suppers. I loved the pineapple and lychee chilled soup! I tried the garlic soup, but it wasn’t my favourite. I always ordered off the adult menu because I wanted to try new foods, not macaroni or chicken nuggets on the kids’ menu.

There was even a skating rink. I skated for an hour…it was super fun!!!!

Oh, how I loved the ship!

Shows

I had fun watching “In the Air”. People danced and sang and climbed ropes and swung on them. It was awesome and so cool!

Another show was figure skating. It was also awesome!

I also had fun watching “ImaginOcean”. It was a glow in the dark puppet show. Very cool!

Places We Went

We rode the ship to France to a place called Cannes. We walked up a lot of stairs and saw a view of the city. It was beautiful!

The next day we docked at La Spezia, Italy. We took a train to Cinque Terre which is a park of five villages in a row by the sea. We hiked on a skinny path up and down the side of mountains.

After, we ate Italian pizza and Italian ice cream called gelato. It was delicious!

The next stop was Civitavecchia, Italy. We went on a train to Rome. I was expecting it to be greater but it was still exciting. We saw where the pope lives and we saw him do a speech.

 There were so many people in Rome that we could not see things properly. We took a double decker tour bus around the rest of the city. I thought the Coliseum was awesome!

The last day we sailed and stayed on the ship all day.

Barcelona

When we got back to Barcelona, we stayed in a hostel which is like a hotel, but different. It was my first time in a hostel. It is like a house with many bedrooms and a few bathrooms and a kitchen. Our family all shared one big bedroom.The breakfast was really good!

We saw Sagrada Familia which is a church, but it was cool and really really big.

We also saw where they had the Summer Olympics in 1992. They were making it into a motorcross course or something for the X-Games in a few weeks and a half-pipe.

This is where the Olympic Flame would have burned.

At Park Guell, we saw interesting things. Most of the things were made by Gaudi, who is an artist and architect. He does lots of mosaic art and his stuff is very unique. I loved it!

 We went on a gondola across the harbour area. I thought I was going to fall off, but it was just because I was a little afraid of heights. It was very high and we looked way down. It was creepy and fun!

This trip was awesome and fun and exciting and a good experience, the best week ever!

Miscellaneous Update

At long last, it is gardening weather here in La Granja. Today we spent the whole day outside, mowing grass, weeding flower beds, making all green and growing things look as glorious as God created them to be. All five of us were out there, working together and it almost felt like we were back in Canada. It was one of those moments, like washing dishes or sweeping the floor, when home does not feel an ocean away and life is life, wherever you are.

Have I ever mentioned how much I love gardening? Most know that we live on a five-acre property in the country and yard work is not a toil for us. There is no more perfect day (except a beach day) for me than sunny, warm, digging in the dirt, watching things grow and being up close and personal to the amazing wonders of God's Creation. Bethel is a little treasure inside a village, with beautiful green spaces and places to sit and enjoy them.

With several retreats under our belts, we have become quite adept at sweeping, mopping, making beds, cleaning bathrooms, setting tables and doing dishes. We have even learned to make a few Spanish dishes like lentejas, tortilla patata, guizo and arroz de cubana.

One interesting thing we have learned during our time here is how to serve God with our hands. Without enough language to speak to the heart or share deeply, one can still minister to the hearts of people through our actions and attitudes. We were encouraged by one of the retreaters during Holy Week who shared that she had been blessed and challenged by simply watching us work.

During the Holy Week Retreat, we even had an all-Manitoban kitchen staff as we were joined by Megan, who stopped in for a week on her way home from Capernwray Bible School in Alicante (on the south coast of Spain). She was easy to pick out of the crowd at the train station, even though we had never met her, as she was blonde, tanned and wearing shorts:) We were hoping she brought the sun and warm weather with her, but it has taken until now for that weather to arrive here in the interior of Spain.

We're also pretty proud of ourselves, adapting to a few differences and being inventive. For example, syrup (for pancakes, French toast, etc.) doesn't really exist here. Neither does Ranch dressing. And the brown sugar is very coarse and does not melt the same in cookies and other baking. So we have made our own syrup! Do you know how easy that is? Just 1 part water to 2 parts sugar, boil and then add vanilla or butter or whatever you want to flavour it with. We even found some maple flavouring in the cupboard that is obviously from Canada! The rest of my family has not been able to substitute oil and vinegar on their salads as well as i have, and we managed to survive on Caesar dressing which is the only creamy dressing available here. But thanks to a care package brought by my parents we are making our own Ranch dressing from the powder envelopes. And did you know you can make your own brown sugar? Since the white sugar is nice and fine here, we add molasses to it (and I forget if there is something else) and beat it well and voila! brown sugar. Thank you, Google, for knowing everything about everything.

Yes, Google is one of our best friends to help us adapt to living abroad, but our Best Friend has also been teaching us a lot. Apparently God didn't think we had learned to hand over all of our planning to Him enough in Fall when we waited on Him to make it possible for us to come to Spain. So, not only did we arrive in Spain later than we thought, we are also leaving sooner than we planned. It has been made very clear to us that He has another adventure and work for us to do for Him in Ireland! At the end of May, we will head over to another country to help a church show their community what it means to live your life for God ~ putting your life into His hands, obeying what He asks you to do, and trusting Him with all the details.

Speaking of details, on my To-Do list this week is to wade through the thousands of pictures taken on our unforgettable trip last week, by cruise ship, to France and Italy. So stay tuned for that :)

Spelling Lesson?

For the most part, I have always liked Language Arts. I love grammar and spelling, and too often, I find myself proofreading things (yes, I’m one of those!). It makes me shake my head and tisk, tisk, when I find a spelling mistake or verb tense inconsistency in an article or novel. The jury is still out for me on the whole new lingo and increasingly acceptable “incorrect” language stuff in today’s modern electronic world. There is a part of me that thinks it is fun to write/type in a casual, conversation way, with a few incomplete sentences and the occasional “bot”, “gotta” and “foto”. BUT, I do want my kids to learn all the proper ways of language, spell things correctly and learn what prepositional phrases and hanging participles are. They can save the "cool" language for cutesy notebooks and sparkly gel pens, and I guess texting :p

ANYWAYS, that wasn’t really what this post was supposed to be about. I should really quit babbling about something I am not really qualified to babble about. Do you know how many teacher family and friends we have? LOTS!

THEREFORE, back to what prompted this post…I’ve been teaching the girls Spelling. That, combined with us experiencing a new language here, has revealed some interesting things.

~ Never realized before how much we speak in clichés and “expressions”. Try translating “This tool makes pruning trees a piece of cake” or “Emery is a Jack-of-all-trades” or just plain old "That's cool!"

~ Spanish vowels, and many other things in the language, are so nice and consistent. 5 vowels: a,e,i,o,u and each one makes the same sound EVERY time. I cannot even begin to count how many different vowels sounds English has. AND, (girls, never start a sentence with "and") you pronounce every letter in Spanish. There are very few, except maybe 'h', silent letters. Don't even get me started on all the silent letters in English.
caught
fought
weigh (okay, I got started, but I'll stop there.) Oh, and get a load of this English word:

PHOTOGRAPH

It starts and ends with the same "f" sound, but not an "f" to be found in the word.

~ Yes, there are a few words in Spanish where the same word can have multiple meanings, but English is a real pain in the butt in this area (another expression hard to translate!). Macy's Spelling Lists (Grade 5) lately have been a real eye-opener...Homographs and Homophones. Now there's some gooders!! Homographs are words that have a different meaning when you put the stress on different syllables:
rebel
conduct
record
permit, to name only a few. If you stress the first syllable, most of them are verbs (action words, for those of you who aren't Grammar Geeks like me). If you stress the second syllable, they often become nouns (those are persons, places or things). Isn't that crazy? Homophones...we all remember those thorns in the flesh: words that sound exactly the same, spelled differently, very different meanings:
to/too/two
their/there/they're
where/wear
profit/prophet
medal/meddle
bolder/boulder
cellar/seller, again only a few.

~ Rayna's lists (Grade 2) seem like easy words, but have you ever stopped to think how many different ways English creates the sound "oo" as in "zoo"?
grew
blue
zoo
two
to
fruit, but NOT in "build"
And that's just one of probably hundreds of sounds!!!

To sum it up, the girls have verbally expressed, on numerous occasions, how eternally thankful they are that God chose to place them in a First Language English family. They both agree that English must be the hardest language to learn if it is not your first language. In Rayna's words:

I don't know how I ever learned to speak English.

And I was so young when I started!!