Sylvia's Journal

Our local newspaper, the Cricket, had a write up and an advertisement calling on the town’s frequent travelers to share their adventures abroad with students during the school’s annual International Week in March. I answered the call and wrote that I could cover any number of countries. The foreign languages department chair received my proposal with great enthusiasm. I proposed two presentations and was asked to fill 3 periods, one repeat for a different group of students. I am taking the day off for this on March 11. I am excited; I haven’t taken my travels to school since Tessa was in 2nd grade.

Axel and I will present on Afghanistan. We suspect that most kids, if they know anything about Afghanistan, probably know only the worst. We want to show them some of the more endearing and magnificent sides of Afghanistan.

I will also do a presentation about Mongolia. It is a country that is seldom in the news. It would have been in the news, if there was such a thing, 800 years ago, when it was the world’s superpower. I will ask the students a series of questions and have them compete in teams. The prize? Bank notes from around the world that have no value anymore because the featured head of state is no longer among us; or that have become worthless for other reasons. Now these notes are only curiosities. Hopefully they provide for those kids that have never seen anything else than dollar bills a brief moment of feeling like a millionaire. Runner ups will get a handful of random coins, no longer in circulation.

I made my presentation on Prezi, a presentation application that I have always wanted to learn – I took the time to do so, a steep learning curve but fun. I hope it will work. I will have a PowerPoint as a backup, just in case.