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Ah..... That's the sound of me relaxing. I play the piano for the primary (kids' organization at church), and all year long they've been working on a program to do during sacrament meeting. (Usually there's a youth speaker and a couple of adult speakers. This time the kids did the whole program.) It involves a lot of songs and a lot of small-kids-going-up-to-the-podium, as well as crowd control for the 40 minutes or so that they're up there. It was today, and now we have all survived! The kids did a nice job, and there are quite a few who will turn out to be great public speakers (as well as some who needed to be whisked away as soon as they realized they HAD THE MICROPHONE!! Whee!!). They all had a nice time, and our kids did well, even though some members of our family had to leave early due to pink eye and excessive toddler screaming. Ah, well.
In other news, a few years ago when we were in Germany, there was a family in our ward (church congregation) who were really interested in South America and wanted to move there. I gave them Spanish lessons (which was actually rather mind-bending--I speak both languages, but always from the point of view of English, and it was nearly impossible for me to work between the two without going through English. Just one of the peculiar ways our brains work, I guess.) The parents and younger kids moved to Paraguay, and the older ones, who were graduating from school, stayed behind to get started in further education/work. Well, one of those stay-in-Germany kids just got called on an LDS mission to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. A very cool place, if you ask me! And now all that Spanish is not going to go to waste. ;) I guess this was one of those cases where you're destined to learn the language, no matter which way you try to turn.
Changing topics completely all over again, my second son admires the inventor Nikola Tesla quite a bit. When I saw his autobiography at the library, I naturally checked it out. Wow, the guy sure had a lot of interesting neurological conditions! It seems like he had a significant degree of synesthesia, probably migraine auras, heavy OCD, possibly on the autism spectrum, and who knows what else. Oh, and he was brilliant. :) The thing I found so interesting is he didn't see all of this as a series of disabilities (I'm not saying synesthesia is a disability, just that the degree to which he seems to have had it was great, and sort of disruptive until he learned to deal with it). For him, all of these ways in which his mind was differently-wired were assets--ones he used to do marvelous things. Makes me look at "weaknesses" a lot differently, that's for sure.
In other news, a few years ago when we were in Germany, there was a family in our ward (church congregation) who were really interested in South America and wanted to move there. I gave them Spanish lessons (which was actually rather mind-bending--I speak both languages, but always from the point of view of English, and it was nearly impossible for me to work between the two without going through English. Just one of the peculiar ways our brains work, I guess.) The parents and younger kids moved to Paraguay, and the older ones, who were graduating from school, stayed behind to get started in further education/work. Well, one of those stay-in-Germany kids just got called on an LDS mission to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. A very cool place, if you ask me! And now all that Spanish is not going to go to waste. ;) I guess this was one of those cases where you're destined to learn the language, no matter which way you try to turn.
Changing topics completely all over again, my second son admires the inventor Nikola Tesla quite a bit. When I saw his autobiography at the library, I naturally checked it out. Wow, the guy sure had a lot of interesting neurological conditions! It seems like he had a significant degree of synesthesia, probably migraine auras, heavy OCD, possibly on the autism spectrum, and who knows what else. Oh, and he was brilliant. :) The thing I found so interesting is he didn't see all of this as a series of disabilities (I'm not saying synesthesia is a disability, just that the degree to which he seems to have had it was great, and sort of disruptive until he learned to deal with it). For him, all of these ways in which his mind was differently-wired were assets--ones he used to do marvelous things. Makes me look at "weaknesses" a lot differently, that's for sure.
