Dear Diary

This week I came across a journal we bought for Nathan while traveling in Hong Kong.  His teacher had suggested we have him write about his trip to help him remember when he came back to share it with his class.  I'm sure I've mentioned that our trip to Hong Kong was non-stop.  We were lucky we had time to buy the journal.  We searched for one that said "Hong Kong" on it, but the best we could do was "Hong Kong Disneyland".  (You can imagine we paid plenty for that extra word).

He did write a little bit at some point.  Honestly, I don't remember if it was during or after the trip.  Here is what he wrote:

First we went shopping. then went on a ferry to the other side of the Hong Kong harber and raod the subway. we also went to disneylan and saw the parade.  And the night parade and went to Oshean Park and saw a dolafin and a sea lion show. we raod on five difrent airplanes.

A couple of weeks ago the school held a second parent-teacher conference and I was so excited to see Nathan's creative writing.  His teacher was very pleased with the progress in his writing and what I saw was very good.  He really seems to enjoy writing.  I love that!  He also loves math.  His dad loves that.

Although I had read the paragraph about our Hong Kong trip, this week I came across a second entry:

first we went to sanaotonio Texas and saw our gramma and grampa and our cousons and swam in the hot tub. Next we went to the zoo mokeys, bears, hippows, rhinos, lions, tigers, cheetas, leoperds, a bunch of snakes, kamodo dragons, elephents, graife, alagaters, crocodiles, one turtle. Next we went to Lubys for lunch. on Christmas day I got lots of toys in colorado I got to see my other cousens named baid and cooper. we went sleding and sking where we were staying they had a movie theater we watched lots of movies. I loved going in the hot tub we had lots of fun. I loved meeting new peaple and saying hi to evreyone we playe corcle and electric monopoly and fuze ball. Finally it was time to go.

The first entry felt coerced and forced.  This one he wrote without being asked.  Although I smiled at the spelling, the lists and the punctuation, my favorite part is that he wrote this because he wanted to write it.  The creative writing at school was much different from this writing.  I'll hopefully have a copy of it after the student-led conferences next month and post about it then. 

I realize it normally isn't very nice to post someone else's jounal publicly, but I promise I have the author's permission. ;0)