Traveloteacher

Fall has arrived here in State College, with  its spectacularly beautiful red foliage. In Croatia there are no trees that turn red in the fall, but  yellow and brown in lots of different shades. That's why the Croatian word for fall JESEN bears the color of yellowish-brown in my mind. FALL of course has the color of red. Having lived here for 2,5 months now, fall is the word that now comes to mind before autumn. The color of AUTUMN is, for one reason or another, orange. But when I think of words,  it's not only the color that they have, it's also the feeling that each word carries. Jesen is in my mind a bitter-sweet mixture of shorter, darker days and the end of summer on one side and on another, there's this intoxicating scent of autumn fruit that I usually buy in the farmers' market near my school.  Fall is a different kind of bitter-sweet. It's composed of nostalgia, of loneliness and longing, of multiculturalism and a long-time dream come true. If yo...

Europe and European teachers were in the focus of my activities over the past days. The fourth learning event, Augmented eTwinning Reality , developed and run by the compagnons de route , as Bart likes to call us, took place in the eTwinning learning lab. Our first event was great, our second event was even greater and the third one was the greatest (so the participants!). So, yes, after the third event, as Bart wrote in his  post  : " This is the third Learning Event Arjana and I organized, but this one is really special. We have never seen so much enthusiasm, so much creativity, so much innovative attitude. It’s a learning roller coaster." and while preparing this fourth event I felt rather panicky because 200 hundred seats for the event were taken in just a few hours. I didn't know if we would live up to the expectations of the participants, who, I was pretty sure, expected us to push the limits even further, beyond the superlative ... to the augmentative or to...

I really do my best to write my HHH diary on a weekly basis, but it's been almost  three weeks since my last post because I simply didn't find the time to sit down and write. The things are busy, very busy here, what with the regular classes that I attend, the meetings that I'm invited to, the presentations that I give, the proposals that I write, tons of emails that I  reply to, the eTwinning learning event that I'm right now co-hosting, the potlucks that we organize in my apartment, the talks I attend are just a few of my activities here at Penn State. Next to all of that, I got to go places over the past two weeks! First, we all went to West Virginia on a team building activity. There I did two of my firsts - roasting marshmallows and horseback riding! Both were amazing! Then my sons arrived for a visit and we went to Niagara Falls, Atlantic City and Philadelphia. All wonderful trips. We saw a lot of sights and enjoyed it immensely. ...