……. I think it was the 4th of July.  Sorry.  That song just popped into my head as I was writing this title.  Or was it Saturday near the park.  Yikes, move on eric.

Shakespeare in the Park?  I’ve seen this kid (blue sleeve T shirt), around the park regularly.  He seems to be quite the story teller.  I can’t begin to keep up with what he’s saying, but I can tell you he must be very entertaining.  He was speaking in a very animated way and the people who were gathered were laughing and shouting their encouragement.  He went on for quite a long time and seemed to gain energy and momentum from his audience.  A budding thespian me thinks.

The park is always a good opportunity to practice my Spanish with kids.  They like to engage visitors and they could care less if you get all the words correct and in the right order.  Oh, and they like to try to sell you stuff.

Today included a special opportunity to have the roles reversed.  There were a lot of small groups of junior high age kids roaming the park conducting interviews.  They are all learning English in one of the language schools and their assignment was to seek out English speakers and ask them questions.  It was fun and interesting to have the shoe on the other foot and be the one who was helping with finding the right words and sentence structure.  Like all kids, they attacked this project with varying degrees of self assurance, timidness, humor, seriousness, and in some cases fright.  This is a good time to observe that the learning of English is continually growing in Guatemala and thought of with increasing importance.  My sense is that knowing English is one of the new survival skills for the new generations of Guatemalans.

On a completely different note, I see that winter seems to finally be arriving in Minnesota.  I feel no need to rub it in, just be careful out there.

I am well and hope you all are too. 🙂