Look at the four photos above. They were all taken in the same city. Can you identify this city? If so, send your response to Christine with November Photo Contest as the subject of your email. The first person to send in the correct response will have a choice of the prizes listed below.

If you have a photo that you would like to submit for a future contest, please send it to Christine. Many thanks to Marcel Lavergne for this month’s interesting photos.

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Winner: Rebekah Stathakis was the first person to correctly identify the Doge’s Place (Il Palazzo Ducale) in Venice, Italy.   She tells us that,  growing up, she traveled throughout much of Europe on family vacations and Venice was one of her favorite destinations.  She recognized this picture of the Doge's palace from her childhood trips and her honeymoon to Venice. 

Rebekah was raised in Madrid, Spain, and then lived in Caracas, Venezuela, for her last two years of high school. She is a National Board certified Spanish teacher who has worked with a variety of ages (from toddlers through college students) although most of her experience is with middle school students in Oak Brook, IL.  In 2006, Rebekah was honored to receive a national Disney Teacher Award for creativity and innovation in teaching.  In 2009 she was selected to represent the "Best of Illinois" at the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.   

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Source: Wikipedia

Winner: JoAnn Crandall was the first person to correctly identify Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. She says it was Michelangelo's statue of David (a copy) in front of the building that gave it away. She thinks that the Palazzo and the statue are quite a combination.

Jodi teaches in the M.A. TESOL Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she also directs the Language, Literacy and Culture Ph.D. Program. She travels frequently, giving talks and working on projects, but has only had the opportunity of visiting Florence once. This picture makes her want to return--soon!

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Photos by Peter Olson, reproduced with permission

Winner: Norbert Kurtz was the first person to identify the Birdman sculpture by Jean Tinguely located in the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. Many thanks to Joanne Polner for calling our attention to this marvelous work of art. She discovered it in the intriguing Paris blog of the Swede Peter Olson. (Read more about his blog in the Bloggers' Den.) http://peter-pho2.blogspot.com/2008/05/montparnasse-cemetery.html We, of course, would like to thank Peter for granting us permission to use his splendid photos.

Norb has taught German and English in Michigan, New York, Ohio, and Schwerte (Ruhr), Germany, from middle school to graduate school levels. For the past 21 years he has been teaching German, leading an exchange program with a Stuttgart business school, and administering the Speech and Foreign Language programs at Lansing Community College in Lansing, MI. He is married to a South African and has two wonderful grown children who live in Washington, D.C.

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Winner: Elena Odio was our winner.
Many of our readers responded correctly to the February contest. We would like to thank all of you for your participation. The February winner is Elena Odio, who was the first to identify the structure in the photo as the Atomium in Brussels, Belgium. Elena’s father was in the Mexican diplomatic corps and, while living in Europe, her family visited the 1958 World's Fair where the featured attraction was the Atomium. Fifty years later, in July 2008, Elena attended the AATF convention in Liège, Belgium, and - lo and behold - as her train pulled into Brussels, there, from a distance, she saw the Atomium again! Elena has an advanced degree in Comparative Literature and currently teaches Spanish in the Department of Modern Languages at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus, Georgia. She has selected the book, Indios de las Pampas argentinas: Leyendas, mitos, cuentos y otros relatos, as her prize. Many thanks to the Embassy of Argentina for donating this book.