When I was at The Wilds in the summer of 2006, we sang “Satisfied” with a new melody and four verses. The first, second, and fourth were available in the Himnos Majestuosos, and, with the help of some friends, I translated the third, which appears below. Note: I would love to get ahold of the arrangement or a commercial recording of the new melody that was used at The Wilds.
Pobre, yo quería riquezas
Y encontrar satisfacción.
Solo polvo acumulaba
Y aumentó mi frustración.
You never know what to expect on English conversation reports. They’re supposed to include the date, the student’s name, who the student spoke with, and for how many minutes. Sometimes students forget to include their name or the number of minutes. Sometimes the papers are decorated with flowers or hearts. For the last several weeks, one young man has indicated that he did his conversation time with his friend ___, a girl. This last week he clarified that she’s his best friend. Sweet! I feel like “Dear Diary.”
Cuando canta el Cristiano
William Cowper, Trad. Elizabeth McAchren and friends at UCLA
Si el canto del creyente se cambia en dolor,
Si en vano busca el rostro de Dios, su Salvador,
Hay veces que permite el Autor de todo bien
Que nubes se abran paso, señal de su sostén.
Al contemplar al Padre en dulce comunión,
Sin mérito alguno de tan gran salvación,
Nos libra de angustia; nos cubre con su amor.
Gozosos, afirmamos que nada trae temor.
Ningún peligro o pena a El sorprenderá.
Si viste a los lirios, también me cuidará.
Se fija en las aves, en toda creación,
Y a mí, su hijo amado, promete provisión.
Si ya no dieran fruto la higuera y la vid,
El campo sin cosecha y nada en el redil,
Con mucho o con poco, mi voz elevaré,
El tema de mi canto: en Dios, me gozaré.
En Dios, me gozaré.
LightSurprises3-20
Thanks to Saskia Garcia Moreno and all my friends at UCLA who helped with the translation.
This Friday, my drama students will put on a play called St. Valentine’s Day. The script is attached–in English and Spanish. Script sDay2; Guión sDay2SP
It doesn’t take much to brighten my day. While I don’t enjoy everything I see on the road, I love to recognize a piece of a toy that’s been loved too much. Last year, I think it was, I saw a giant plastic leg under a bridge. The doll must have been as big as the little girl who owned it. I can’t remember whether it was an arm or a head I saw on the sidewalk today, but it cheered me up, almost as much as my students, who are still working hard in month 11. This is the time when we’re especially aware that we cannot go on in our own strength.
Today, I asked my high-school English students several hypothetical questions. One was, “If there were one thing you could take with you throughout life, what would it be?” Some answered, “My Bible” or “Music.” One young man answered, “Clothes.”
Yesterday, my students read a paragraph entitled, “If I had my life to live over again,” showing someone’s regrets, such as not taking life so seriously, taking more risks, and eating more ice cream. I asked the students how old they thought the author might have been, and they said, “30.” When they saw the look on my face, simultaneously remembering my age, I believe, they started throwing out other numbers: 40, 37, 31.5. They explained that the author sounded immature (and not necessarily old and decrepit). I was somewhat consoled.
I am very proud of my linguistics students’ first paragraphs in Redacción de la lengua inglesa I. They worked hard—extremely hard—planning, asking for comments, revising, proofreading—to create unified paragraphs with interesting details. I praise the Lord for allowing me to see this excellent work from second-year students. I will list some of them below.
I learned a lot of things about God’s care when I traveled to Durango ten years ago. At first the trip was a very good trip and everything went fine. When we were on our way, our car started to fail, it stopped and wouldn’t start, we didn’t knew what to do, we were in the middle of nowhere, and we could not even step out of the car because it was a very dark night and there could be snakes. So, after a few minutes my dad decided to shake a piece of red cloth, but no car stopped. Finally, a big truck stopped and asked if we needed any help. We were so happy and grateful because we knew that the Lord was with us and that he was in control of every single detail that had happened to us; we saw that what the Lord wanted us to do through all this, was to share the gospel to the man that helped us, and we did and we were very grateful.
—Rut Noemí Garza Mata
I am, in fact, not generally supersticious, but something really strage happened to me. I never felt so scared with weird situatios until that day. These occurred four years ago on May 10th. We were going to celebrate Mother´s day at a restaurant and my family got there first, so I was in a hurry because I supposed to be there at 5:00 pm, but it was five already. I was getting ready and it was very lateI had that feelinh of knowing something bad was going to happen. I felt as though were near the house watching me , so I carefully locked the front door, but ten minutes later when I went from my room to the bathroom, I realized that the door was wide open.
—Alma Cordova Zarur
In my life, I never was escaped with my friends to a place where we had so many problems. I remember a day off, my friends and I decided to go to a beautiful river. We shouldn’t had gone there, It was a dangerous place for us; we found a big and weird animal that frightened us more than we could imagine.
—Vanessa López Sánchez
I had never seen my father so angry, until the day that I forgot to bring him a towel to the shower. It all started one day when I did not to go the school and I stayed in home with my dad. We were going to my grandparents’ house, so my dad told me to bring him a towel before he finished taking a shower. While may father took a shower, I was playing with the door of my house and forgot what he said; I was closing it and opening it again and again when suddenly the door closed, I was locked out, and my dad was inside without the towel! I was very nervous because I knew my father was angry with me, therefore I decided to wait and face the consequences.
—Karla Yareli Sánchez Baños
Last night, I asked my Stylistics students to write a poem titled “Aquí” or “Here.” We were all tickled with this one, by Eunice Herrera.
“Aquí”
Un espacio ocupado.
Un pedazo de mundo
buscando ser notado.
Parece invisible,
nadie nota su esencia. No habla.
El tiempo transcurre,
buscando motivos.
Susurra despacio:
¡Aquí! ¡Aquí!
Minutos más tarde, pierde el aliento.
El pequeño cucaracho ha muerto.
My translation:
A space occupied,
A piece of world
Longing to be noticed.
He seems invisible,
Nobody notices his essence. He doesn’t speak.
Time passes,
looking for a purpose.
He whispers slowly,
“Here!” “Here!”
Minutes later, he breathes his last.
The little cockroach has died.
Welcome to my blog, an area where I will share content created for or by students at the Instituto Universitario Mexico-Americano. I am the coordinator of the English program, but the main focus on this blog will be classes in the applied linguistics major. I hope this blog will be helpful to my students as an easy way to access class-related content and to share their work.
