Our Journey Quickly Approaches

Our journey to Auckland is quickly approaching. Months of planning has taken place and we are looking forward to the eighteen hour plane ride departing Chicago, Illinois on July 10, 2010! We arrive on July 12th - July 11th will never have happened for us! We will start our journey with attendance at the International Reading Association's World Congress on Reading. At the World Congress, we hope to learn as much as we can from both workshop presenters and those attending the event. Teachers and researchers from around the globe will be in attendance. We are going to focus on those workshops that address instructional strategies for bilingual students, as well as struggling readers.

After the World Congress, our Auckland adventures will begin! We have planned tours of the Waitomo Caves (home to the glowworm - which really does exist), an Auckland Warriors rugby game, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, a Maori cultural performance, the Auckland Zoo, and Waiheke Island! Our most daring adventure will be the Rainforest Express Tour. We had hoped to stick with public transportation on our trip, but through several google map searches and skype calls learned that we would have to drive. Jennifer (being the one with a driver's license) will be driving on the other side of the road in the other side of the car with Pilar acting as attentive navigator! Pretty exciting and a little nerve wracking, but we can do it!

Our school visits will be one of the highlights of this trip! We are going on a group school tour with the International Reading Association, in addition to our own trip to Rosebank School in Auckland. Rosebank is a Docile 2 school with both Maori and Samoan bilingual classes. We hope to establish a sister school relationship between Rosebank and our school in Chicago!

We would love for all of our friends, family, and colleagues in Chicago to follow this blog while we are away. We have both switched our phones over to international plans for the month, but calls will still be $1.99 per minute! Even receiving text messages will cost a bundle! We'll be posting to this blog daily. Five more days until our departure...