Payoff! And Other Ramblings....

Guess what I found out today? My girl can read!!! Yep, it's true, W can READ! Not really well, she is in the beginning stages of sounding out words phonetically, but she can do it! This is so amazing to me! Two years ago when we met, I gave her a crayon and she did not know how to draw, did not recognize her written name. She was a blank. I have watched her progress with every visit and since she has been home she has been coloring alot and been interested in her scholastic books that I bought for her. I realized she understands the concept of addition, she just needs to go to the next step with it ( I still have not found an abacus, I'm now looking online) But we are struggling with language somewhat. She has finally realized she is going to have to learn English, that her new world is not going to do it her way (Creole). So she has been putting more effort into basic vocabulary. Today out of the corner of my eye I saw her looking at a piece of paper, and she said 'popcorn'. I took the piece of paper from her and saw that it was a shopping list from a few days ago, and I had written popcorn on there. She was able to sound out a couple of other items. Later we worked with some new alphabet flashcards, and the item was spelled out on the back of the card. She was able to sound out a good deal of these words, although admittedly 'igloo' and 'x-ray' were pretty foreign to her. This ability is going to help her with language, and I actually think she realized that. I think that's why she started showing me.



Recently I have been cleaning out my email because my son said my 10000 emails were messing up the system (ya think???) and I deleted the batch from our yahoo group (a very long time ago) where people were saying M would never get a school going at the creche, it wasn't going to happen, etc, etc, etc. Well, that was wrong, it DID happen and IT IS producing results. And little ML is not too shabby either. She can count to 100 and she knows her letters. The language thing is easier for her just because she is younger. I don't, however, think she can read yet.



For all our arguing, I miss our old yahoo group and the way it used to be. Because there also used to be alot of support there. What happened to that?



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In unrelated news, I was glad to know they found this guy over the week-end. Even if they did find his body 3 MILES FROM MY HOUSE! This entire tragedy occurred while I was gone. I got an alert from UGA on that Saturday night, but I thought it was about bad weather. Although I did think it was strange that I did not get another alert saying all was well. I just figured, 'this is Haiti, signal probably did not come thru and sure am glad I'm not flying up there tonight if it's bad weather.' Uh, no, it was not bad weather. I did not know a henious crime had been commited or that there was a nationwide manhunt on for this guy until Monday when I got back and heard it on the radio in my car. I can't even describe my shock at that point. Things like that just don't happen around here.



Anyway, not knowing his whereabouts, and knowing his house/property were not far away was creeping me out. What a horrible tragedy, what a horrible thing for he and his wife's children and for the other victim's family members, and for this community as well as the UGA community. I'm extremely relieved it's over.