Homework

Homework has become quite an every night routine in our house. As a child I remember the nights that my mom sat with us to do homework. Usually all night. She did not have my dad to help, or at least he did not help consistently. I don't know how she did it.. There are nights that I am alone with the girls (like tonight) and there are afternoons that Alex is alone with the girls. But for the most part, both of us are at home every night helping with homework. It is a revelation to me how difficult it is at times for two people who have master's degrees to figure out what the homework is every night, translate the math book, review vocabulary, read books, etc. There are nights (like last night) that it takes us two hours to go through Milena and Mirellen's math homework. In our house it takes two, because Alex can do the Math, but I can translate the text. The problem is that when you translate you also have to have some understanding of what you are translating, otherwise it makes no sense to the person who is receiving the message. Also, there are differences in how English and Spanish is written. A couple of years ago I read this article that explained the differences between both languages. Most of the time when people are communicating in English in written form, the author wants to lead the speaker to discovery so he/she bases the message on what the audience does not know. Spanish is very direct and tells the audience what is there to know. Here is an example:

In a brochure in English you might see something like this: "Want to get involved? Call this number". In Spanish this would not work, because the audience assumes that this is a yes or no question and there is no further explanation for this. This would have to changed to "To get involved call this number". I would not say we are efficient at doing homework yet, but we are getting better.

This past weekend I visited my dad again. He has been in ICU for three weeks. If you are reading this blog I ask that you say a prayer for him. He is very delicate. Saturday I was there and there was a nurse that was awful to him. She was the least humane nurse I have every seen. She was a robot and seemed disgusted to work with my dad. We talked to the patient advocate, she would not even let us go back there to see him. The next day he swelled like a balloon and almost died because she had pumped so much liquid into him. I was lucky to not have been there to see that. I don't think I would have reacted positively and would have demanded a lawyer. My parents don't want a lawsuit but have plenty of things that have happened where they could sue.. It was awful. I could not sleep that night or the next day.

Thursday is Sucena's birthday. We are not celebrating until Saturday. We are doing something very simple. Have not had much time to do much about it. My work is crazy this year. I don't sleep enough and don't exercise anymore. People tell me to take care of myself. It's hard to do this when so many people depend on you. Thank God I got my mom's genes and hardly ever get sick.

We have not posted pictures in a while. We will take some of the birthday and post them.

Thanks for Reading.