June: Savannah, staccato, and saber

The beginning of June found us still in Hawaii, but I learned how to avoid jet-lag when we returned: sleep 4 hours on a red-eye flight; get no sleep during the day (instead, buy groceries and rehearse conference talk); and work on a project until 10 pm. No, not my conference talk, but this farewell gift for Ivan's teachers:

Then it was time for conferences - two of the them! The first was the International Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) conference in Savannah. The conference was great and my talk was well-received. The city, however, really stole the show with its lovely squares and a FABULOUS lunch at Mrs. Wilkes, washed down with sweet iced tea (right). I was amazed I was able to fit everything on one plate - it's like Thanksgiving every day.

I was also able to sample local honey (favorites were the Sourwood and Black Sage), score a free mimosa at Garibaldi's Cafe (thanks to my tour guide), and visit Tybee Island for double-scored fried catfish and a swim (yes, I was missing my daily exercise on the Big Island!). Although the pralines I brought the boys were just okay, I relished the fried chicken (from the farewell luncheon) on my plane ride home. I felt like a character from a novel, traveling by train.

The second conference was the New Media Consortium (NMC) conference hosted, thankfully, by MIT. The focus on media in the classroom complimented very well with the WAC focus on teaching writing. I didn't give a talk at this conference, but I got the coolest T-shirt for helping with tech support (right).

Because the second conference was local, life became more normal after Savannah. I got the house in order, helped with a progress report, gave an undergraduate workshop, and used Easter chocolate in a recipe for malted chocolate chip cookies. Father's Day was honored with lots of sports for the boys (biking, climbing, fencing - see below), and the last day of school for the boys was celebrated with pizza and galloping-mommy zombie (me!) in the playground.

June was quite eventful for the boys. Nikita played well at his piano recital.



Ivan hosted his (stuffed) class mascot. Shelley demolished the Savannah pralines, and had a good time watching "Star Wars V." Unfortunately, she left before I introduced the boys to Bollywood ("Veer-Zaara") and Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends, book and CD).









Perhaps the most exciting thing for the boys, however, was fencing class. As you can see in their saber duel below, light saber practice comes in handy!