A-Lo

I felt a little like J-Lo's manager yesterday, shuttling Aliya (A-Lo) around to her "appearances". She had the day off from school because the new kindergarteners were coming for orientation. She started the day (in her new Hannah Montana dress, wedge heels, and freshly painted nails) as Mystery Reader for Adlani's class. She read If I Had a Gorilla, and also Punk Farm, which is a pretty tough book and includes words like "rehearsal", "finale", and "footsteps". The only word she got stuck on was "microphone". The kids were spellbound.

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Then it was off to Maria's Spanish immersion preschool class to read a couple of David books. If you're not familiar with David, he's a sometimes naughty boy who resembles Adlani at least in spirit. Maria was very surprised at Aliya's Spanish and reading abilities, as in addition to reading the book she pointed out things and explained what was happening in the pictures to the kids (in Spanish). When David runs down the street naked (I told you he resembles Adlani!) his mother yells for him to come back inmediatamente. She had to practice that one a few times but she didn't stumble over it during the story.

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Our next stop was kindergarten orientation at school, where she got the royal treatment from Mrs. Shea and Mrs. Gonzalez. She did a great job with her prepared speech and then spent the rest of orientation with me giving her the hairy eyeball from the front row as she fidgeted and giggled. She is 6 after all. One of the dads came up to me afterward and said, "You must be so proud...she's not even my kid and I almost started crying." Only one tear escaped during her speech but it was a pretty big one.



These are the wonderful ladies responsible for Aliya's kindergarten success - Señora Robles and Señora Rodriguez. Aliya loves them so much and is really sad about the school year coming to an end. She told me that you learn a lot more when you like your teacher, because you're not spending all of your time thinking about what you don't like about her and you can spend more time learning.

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