Day 73 Rainy Day

Today has been a rainy day.  I took a cab to school as usual on Wed., even though it's not dark at 7 A.M. anymore.  I get up at 5 anyway, and decided I did not want to get up even earlier to take the bus when I can go by cab for around 4 dollars, but came home by bus even though it was raining pretty hard because my friend Audrone was bussing it.  She gets off one stop before me.  I was pretty wet by the time I got home, but it wasn't particularly cold, so it didn't matter.

We spent 3/4 of each class today on the various past tenses.  The negative past of irregular verbs is particularly hard.  I think everyone feels so relieved to have learned irregular past that it is hard to comprehend that we English speakers really want them to say "I did not think" instead of "I did not thought."  Since I either never knew or have forgotten the reasoning behind the grammar rules I am teaching, I just say "Those crazy Americans, what were they thinking?"   Since that is mostly just remembering the pattern, we went on to an activity where they decided whether a sentence was correct or incorrect and how to correct it if necesary.  It was a review of previous lessons, so it was pretty hard for all of us.  When I had had all I could take, we moved on to vocabulary games.  We all enjoy them.

After the second class, I had tea with Daiva and Audrone.  Audrone asked me straight out if anything I saw on Sunday made me think her son is autistic.  I told her the definition of autism and asked her what she thought?   She said her sister -in - law is concerned.  I think he probably has some sensory issues, but don't so many of us.  I think she is going to make an appointment with a logopedist or a specialist in autism.  That should relieve her mind.

We went to dinner at the jazz club tonight.  It was quite good and very pretty.  We wanted to try it  before going on the week end for jazz.  It was kind of funny.  I think they may have been training a new bartender.  One young woman was making drinks and the servers were over at the far end of the bar sampling them.  I had had wine with dinner, but did ask if they make mojitos, just for future reference, you understand.  They do, they do!