traveling around the world

This year at school, Ben's class has been learning about the different continents, and for the past few weeks they have been studying Europe. They asked for parent volunteers to come in and talk about places they have visited or lived, so I went in one day to talk about Russia. I went to Voronezh, Russia from January to June of 1994 to teach English to pre-school children (4-6 year-olds), and it was a blast! I love that it's given me many opportunities to go into the boys classes and talk about living there. I had lots of cool props like several Disney books in Russian; two matrioshka dolls--one with traditional paintings on it, and one of the Utah Jazz (from back in the day with Karl Malone, John Stockton, Jeff Hornacek, etc.); I had Russian rubles, their form of money; and many other things, including this beautiful teapot that my Russian family gave me when I left--I keep it on our stovetop as a decoration. Ben was so excited for me to come in, and he got to stand next to me and help me out by showing pictures, holding up props, etc. The next day all the kids wrote me thank you notes for coming in, and I wanted to include a couple of them in this blog. Can you guess which of the two below are from Ben?! (He still can't get enough of Spiderwick!!)

Then last week Ben talked Daren into coming in to talk about Austria, where he went on a mission from '90-'92. Daren didn't have quite as many props to show the kids as I did, but he won them over with his stories about the bone rooms at the cemeteries and by bringing in Lindt's chocolate truffles. Stories of bones and chocolate--it doesn't get much better than that!! These are a couple of their thank you's:

I love being involved when I can in the boy's classrooms, and they love it too.

On another note, I wanted to post this, which I copied from Alisha's blog: One of our favorite places, which you will know if you've followed this blog, is Pirate's Cove in Las Vegas. Some of Alisha's and Jed's good friends started a show called Nitro Circus, which plays on MTV, and this week they showed their visit to Pirate's Cove. They are replaying it all week on MTV, so try to catch it if you can. *warning: the guys are CRAZY...don't try their stunts at home!* **warning II: can cause serious side-aches from too much laughter!!**

This is an aerial view of Pirate's Cove, which I, again, copied from Alisha's blog--thanks!