Five and a half weeks in...

We've made it to our first homeleave. So far the school year has been pretty good. We had a good Senior Retreat, my third in four years. We elected Senior class officers and I think we got some good ones. There were some issues during the retreat, but nothing that we haven't survived, although one of our senior boys was expelled afterward.

My classes are going pretty well. My first section of English is so quiet. I practically have to beg for participation. Second section I have to cut them off. Class dynamics are so weird, one group will love something and the second just won't care about it in the least. My business math class I have 28 students. (!) I'm pulling my hair out a bit with this one. My classroom is too small for this many students and it ends up getting really loud really fast. I'm already really frustrated with it, which is not a good sign. I've made seating charts, I've threatened, I've taken points away, I've nearly cried in class... nothing is working. I'm going to make a new seating chart this week and give it another go.

Our housemate has made it almost six weeks. We're hoping to start integrating him back into the dorm soon. Maybe a night or two a week at first to see how he handles it, and hopefully by this time next month he'll be back in pretty much full time. We've felt mostly pretty good about it, but we do miss our privacy. And he's messy. That's annoying. I mean, I'm no neat freak, but this is beyond that.

This homeleave we went to New York for a couple of days. Tuesday afternoon we drove to Newark, New Jersey and got into our hotel. Then we got tickets to In the Heights, so we went into the city. It was a really great musical. More modern music and dancing. It was about two days in Spanish Harlem. We recommend it. It was right up there with Wicked and Billy Elliot.

Wednesday we slept in a bit and then went to try to get the lottery drawing tickets for Shrek the Musical for the Wednesday matinee. Lucky for us there were only about 16 people there trying for the 16 tickets, so we got cheap tickets and pretty good seats for Shrek. It was fun, not as awesome as some of the other shows we've seen, but still a good time. Then we found the Strand, New York's largest bookstore, with used, new and rare books. My book loving heart enjoyed it. Then we got some awesome Thai food (they have vegetarian duck) down near China Town.

Thursday we went to Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Michael's been wanting us to try out for a couple months, so we finally went. To audition you have to sit through tapings of the show, so it was really long. We got there at about 10:15 and we weren't done until 4:30. To audition, they have you come into the studio and sit to take a 10 minute, 30 question multiple choice test. About 200 people tried out, and they don't give the results until after three tapings of the show. Which was a really long time. We were pretty done by that time. And the test was really hard, so we didn't think we had passed it at all. Only about ten people did pass, and actually, I was one of them, and the only woman! I was pretty nervous. Don't really want to go on TV. Anyway, so after the show I had a short interview with one of the show's producers and they took my picture (we had already filled out these long questionnaires earlier), and that was it. I'll hear in a couple of weeks whether they want me for the show or not. Really, I'm pretty OK if I don't get on, because it just makes me anxious to think about it. But at least I know I'm smart. I guess, it's really just trivia, not smartness. Actually, I think it's just as much about being able to make good guesses as anything.

So anyway, we're home now and enjoying a quiet Sabbath together. Tomorrow we're back on duty. It's nice to have the house to ourselves for a little while.