Guitar, Spanish and T'ai Chi Chuan lessons

I started the second session of guitar lessons with the adult education program in our area. The five (down from the original seven) students in my last class all returned. I guess our little group is doing really well. When we ended our last class, we played through the piece we worked on - "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison at full tempo. The next level class was waiting to start their lesson and were there for our run through. When we left they all asked how come they weren't playing like we were! Pretty funny. We started a new piece last night - "Don't Think Twice" by Bob Dylan. We learned 2 new chords - Fmajor and Aminor. Our practice is to work on smooth transitions.

For studying Spanish, K told me about this really neat book called "Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish" by Margarita Madrigal. The technique she uses smiliarities in language and allows the student to participate in creating the language you are learning. It builds vocabulary very quickly and you start speaking much faster than using the more traditional methods I have tried.

I started the second sesson of T'ai Chi lessons about 3 weeks ago with all the graduates returning to fine tune their skills. I've tried to make the classes more drop in friendly. I've developed a short introductory form that students can learn and practice that introduces a few of the more recognizable movements - earth rooted hands, push hands, shifting weight and breathing practices. Each week any student can join us to learn the forms I am teaching that day. The more advanced students can practice the complete form and the students dropping in can practice the forms they have learned. In time hopefully they will learn all 24 forms and be able to string them together.