September 29, 2014

Kevin's View  Ok, so laundry may not be that exciting by itself. But let's put it in perspective. Just over a week ago (Sep 20), Hillary posted a photo of her laundry day. While she has to do everything by hand, I start the water, throw things in and come back in a half hour. At that point, I transfer everything to the dryer and wait for the buzzer to tell me it's done. No three bucket system, no drying clothes outside and no worries about rain coming to soak the clothes again. I can go cook supper, watch TV, clean or any other number of activities while the laundry runs. We are still a world apart but there are many things each of us still have to do in our daily lives. Sometimes it looks really different between Kenya and Canada.

Hillary's View Teaching English should be a cinch, right? I mean, it's my first language, and I know it! WRONG! Quick, anyone want to tell me a sentence in the past continuous perfective aspect? Um... what? Or give me the rule about what order adjectives go in? Uh... I never got that lesson in school - there's a rule?! And sometimes tenses and other grammatical rules are called different things here, so I have to make sure I'm using the right labels and words. All this means that I have to study up! Today's task? Figuring out all the different ways to change an active sentence into a passive one and vice versa. Hillary is studying grammar. Grammar is being studied by Hillary. The order of adjectives rule, by the way? OSSCACOMP - opinion, size, shape, condition, age, colour, origin, material, purpose: I have an ugly, large, round, broken, old, black, wooden, Quaker coffee table. Not that I'd use all of those in a sentence, but try it out - you don't say a black old table, do you? It's an old black table. There's a rule, and these kids get tested on it!