Studying stinks....

Yesterday I picked Katie up from volleyball and she was in a bad mood.  First of all her phone kept crapping out on her, so she was having a hard time getting in touch with her friend to schedule a study time that night.  This girl's mom was only letting the girls meet at the park ... and at 5:40 it was 108 degrees.  No thank you ma'am!!  I told Katie "listen, she can come to our house, or you can go to her house."  Well, this mom "apparently" said no to either one of those choices -- so I said no to the fact that Katie could go to the park to study when it's over 100 degrees.

So, .... that meant I was Katie's study partner last night.  We had to study Central America and South America countries and their capitals.  I took Spanish in high school.  My Spanish teacher had a cool jingle/song to work w/ all these capitals and countries.  For the life of me, I could only remember "Costa Rico, San Jose" .... not much help!  Tried to remember the acronyms as well for these countries, and again, a big flop there as well.

Finally working with flashcards that Katie made, we were able to work for an hour -- "What is the capital of Peru?"  "Lima!"  On and on and on we went.  She kept getting mixed up on Puerto Rico & Costa Rica.  Nicaragua and Mangua.  Before I knew it, I was finding ways to help her remember the capitals:  NicaraGUA and ManGUA both have the same last three letters.  She finally remembered.  I had to resort to using .. uh... some letters that COULD mean a bad word.  B.S.  for Bolivia and its capital.  Sad... I know, but she remembered it! 

However, our enemy was Costa Rico (San Jose) and Puerto Rico (San Juan).  Agh... those two countries and their capitals.  Over and over again she was getting it mixed up.  Even me singing the song I learned in Spanish 20 years ago didn't help (didn't help that I only knew one sentence either....)  Finally, I said "COJO!"  COsta Rico's capital is San JOse (CoJo) -- and Puerto Rico's capital was San Juan.  So, once she was able to get Costa Rica's capital -- we were OK w/ the other.  Whew!

Then it was coming up w/ an acronym for memorizing where the countries were on the map.  GROAN!!  Finally resorting to the internet for help.  We came up with (for the Central America)  Go Eat Hot dogs Near the Coast of Panama.   The South America part was a little harder ... but we found one!  "Very Cold Elephants Put Pretty Brown Underwear Around Children".  Sounds ridiculous, I know .... and we had to change some of the letters around (it was very cold elephants put pretty underwear around children's bottoms" -- but Katie wanted the B (for Bolivia, I think) in the order it was going around the map.

She went off to school today happy as a clam because she could remember these little tricks and tips!  Oddly enough, I kind of had fun helping her study!