Tomorrow is Zach's last day of Kindergarten. Regular readers might remember my obsession with a song called "Graduation (Friends Forever)" by Vitamin C. At the time, I thought that obsession was about his Preschool graduation and the start of Kindergarten. Yeeeeah........................I was wrong. I mentioned before that I have seasonal CDs for my car. The summer CD starts with that song. I STILL can't get through it without crying.
We joined the town pool this year. In the past, I would look around for people I knew in High School. Now, we look for Zach's friends. He loves to swim like I always have. I can still make it pretty far underwater. The secret is to stay as close to the bottom as possible. Once you are in the middle of the water, you'll be out from underneath it soon. The longer you can stay on the bottom, the farther you'll go!
I talk a lot about how this town is my life and in a lot of ways my sanity. Your life easily gets wrapped in this town. There is so much to do. There are so many nice people to know. Once you start in the public school, your life evolves around this town. That happened for Zach this year.
You are very likely to have a happy childhood here. That's why so many return when they have families. They want to give their kids the happy childhood they had. Last Saturday, at the pool, I was sitting at the table we always took as a kid and was crocheting like my babysitter used to. Like many elementary kids before him, Zach was playing shuffleboard. The pieces look old. They could have been the same ones Josh and I used when we were dating. Literally.
Even my maid of honor is hooked on this town! She hung out here a lot when we were in high school. She grew up in another town. Ironically, the same town my babysitter lived in. We graduated at the same time. Since then, she has taught Spanish in two of the four elementary schools. Unfortunately, not Zach's. He'll be learning Mandarin starting in September. I have met the teacher. She is a very nice woman!
I learned Spanish in middle school, high school and college. I'm not that good at it, but I can sometimes hold a conversation. When I started taking Spanish in school, my parents got me a computer program called "EZ Language". It had Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, and Russian. Each language had a test section so sometimes I went strait to the test section to see how well I did. I liked doing that for all six languages.
What I had:
http://www.amazon.com/IMSI-EZ-Language/dp/B00SQEST78/ref=sr_1_2?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1434674789&sr=1-2&keywords=ez+language
Before Zach was born, I saw one with a huge amount of languages on it. That was the updated EZ language CD. The link is below. But it was too expensive. At the time, I saw it in Staples. Staples doesn't have it anymore.
http://www.amazon.com/IMSI-730526354089-Easy-Language-61/dp/B00007LVF8
Every now and then I search for free software to learn various languages. I'm most interested in:
Spanish
French
Irish
German
Italian
Mandarin
Japanese
Russian
Sudanese
Hebrew
Indian
Sign Language
Morse Code
I don't know why. These are just the languages that draw me to learn. I think Spanish should be required for all 1st - 12th students. However, I think Mandarin should be required for all business and Engineering majors.
I wonder how Zach will do with Mandarin. I hope he likes it! I'll be curious if it makes him want to learn any other language too. I'll continue to search for that free software! I really liked the layout of the EZ language program though.
In the meantime, Zach will enjoy his first summer as a town kid. So far, it looks like it's going to be almost identical to MY town kid summers! GOOD!!! Because I had WONDERFUL summers as a kid!!! If you knew me in high school or are a parent friend, come say "hi" if you see us!
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