Freewrite

I have the students writing and so I feel guilty if I don't write.  I need to take the advice I give to them: Just write.  Don't edit yourself.  Don't worry about where your writing takes you.  Just keep going.  Having finished Othello essays last week, this week is Rome preparation week: readings on writing and on Rome to get inspired to be writing fifteen minutes per day next week in their blogs.  Yesterday in class their prompt was to write for ten minutes on sei giorni, the six days that they spent in Italian school last week.  (Italian students go to school from 8am-1pm six days per week.  Luckily, Paradiso does not have those same hours.  Phew.)  The few posts I read last night mentioned ongoing chatter in classes; kids who were kind and eager to hear about American life; making lists to pass the time; feeling scared; feeling excited; making Italian friends.  I need to not read all their posts.  If I do, I'll feel the need to respond to every story, and I'll our Rome school week in the hotel reading student blogs rather than going out and about.

The students are homesick.  Thanksgiving is this week.  I never liked missing holidays -- not when I was in college and in Rome for junior fall and not when I was thirty-years-old and spending Christmas with Daniel's family in New Mexico.  It's not that the traditions were any more special than anyone else's, but they were ours and they were home.  So I'm aware of this as Thanksgiving looms just two days from now.  The SYA students are bummed and stressed about preparing Thanksgiving dinner for their host families.  If I don't mention Thanksgiving, I'm wondering whether our kids will feel the pang of not being at home with extended family.  I'm thinking apple pie and vanilla gelato for breakfast; sliced turkey (yes, cold cuts) and french fries for lunch with the Macy's Day Parade streaming in the background; dinner with our visiting friends at a restaurant by the beech woods.

But for now, my ten minutes of writing is up, so I'll go check on invocations and write later.