Sweden Trip 1

Those of you interested in reading up on our Sweden trip and who have most likely written me off as some kind of nimwitted yahoo who made the promise to update but who has forgotten because I am too busy or have taken on this European-minded attitude and so I can leave it til later, well, you've got my brother to thank for this. I got an email from him earlier--one short sentence: hey, where's the update?

Here's a portion of my trip: I visited El Paso (Ysleta Elementary, specifically) where I got to meet some very enthusiastic and great writers--go sixth graders! Thanks to Mrs. Hernanadez, Mr. Silva, all the other fine teachers there who are very student-focused and about real literacy. Anyway, I've got no pictures of that visit to upload because I seem to have lost my camera on my last hours there. I recall very clearly taking some great shots of J reading his poem about his friends' noses (what a great revision he put together!), A finishing the reading off with another poem, and everybody else in between. Some nice shots of the mountains. But all gone unless Rich Yañez, magic man, does some kind of mumbo-jumbo and it appears as if out of thin air. So, no pics of my part of the trip. I'll tell you, too, that that Heathrow, if you can avoid it, do so at all costs. I thought some US airports were a hassle, but not compared to this one. Oh, easy enough to figure out, but how many twists and turns can there be in one building to get to the place where you need to be? But the people are nice enough. I did get to Gothenberg safely and mostly on time, so thank God for that. I did get to Sweden down one bag, but that was delivered this afternoon. That's my part of it--Tina has't lost her camera, but she has been having a hard time transferring her pics to my brother-in-law's computer (that is a Swedish set up, so the keys are all over the place and all kinds of others that I have no clue what are: ä§ö¨¤). So give me a sec and I'll try to figure it out.

For my friends in India (Tigy and the rest), the folks in Sweden drive on the right side of the read like we do in the States, they don't have as much traffic on the road, elephants don't have the right of way because you just don't see them, and hardly a Swede uses his car horn to warn other drivers that they're about to create a lane where there isn't one, so no driving videos. Sorry.