Writing with Grace

Serve up your own slice of life story. Link up at Two Writing Teachers.

Shim Hyeonsoo (Grace) is visiting from South Korea. She will will be with us for eight weeks as a part of a program that partner's with my son's school.This weekend, I set up my laptop keyboard so that it toggles between English and Korean. We are learning how to convert from English to Hanja with a click of the mouse. Grace is going to blog on her Korean blog so that she can share experiences with her family.



She is learning English and she is learning English relentlessly. We play word games. We talk about our days. She reads in English. We does homework in English-- she is here during her school's vacation. She attends fifth grade and does the almost the same homework, as best she can, that the other children do. She says she does not have to write the essays. And I think she's gotten a pass at memorizing songs in Spanish. Still. She .Is. Amazing.

She's better at English than we are with Spanish (and two of us at home have studied Spanish a number of years).  I knew she knew more English the first time we went to church. I was holding the hymnal open and pointing to the words and Grace was singing at my side. She can read menus and fearlessly orders at restaurants.She uses an electronic dictionary and is quite the Ruzzle opponent.

We love having Grace visit. Two years ago, her brother John spent two months with us, so it feels like another member of our family has come home.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about one little word for 2014.  Grace arrived two weeks ago and I love how she has re-focused us on what matters. I'm leaning toward grace.