Surprise!

So, yesterday I found out that the seniors and their sponsors (that's me!) are going to CUC this weekend for college days. I think I am the last person to find out this kind of information. I'm pretty low on the totem pole right now. At least I'm adding another Adventist college to my list of places visited. Besides the 16 states I've visited in the last year.

Today is a Project Impact like day here. Community service and all that goodness. I'm going to a nursing home this afternoon with some students. We're going to play games and tell stories and that kind of stuff. I think. Once again, I only found out about this on Monday. Low on the totem pole.

Now that I'm in Beta, they give me options to label my posts. But all of my posts are just about random stuff. So it seems kind of pointless.

Things we did over homeleave...

*Got the car tuned-up and oil changed and all that stuff.

*Bought and assembled (twice) an island for the kitchen.

*Bought groceries. (You'd be surprised how difficult this is to do in a regular week.)

*Got Shelby a flea dip and a flea collar. It was getting out of control for a while with the scratching. She was keeping us up at night.

*Unpacked and cleaned a lot of our house. We can actually get to the closet in the second bedroom now. It's pretty full. I have a lot of clothes.

*Hung pictures, etc. on the wall. It feels a lot more like home now.

*Rented several movies, about the first time we've done that since we moved here.

*Got paid, woohoo! (And also realized that I'm not making as much less at this job as we anticipated. That is subject to change, I'm sure.)

*Ate at Olive Garden. It's endless pasta bowl time. The most wonderful time of the year. Too bad they won't serve the spinach alfredo sauce anymore.

*Toured Gettysburg. Much more interesting than when I went as a junior in academy. For starters, I actually wanted to learn something this time. Really enjoyed it and the yummy picnic lunch I made. (Superlink salad was included.)

*Went to New York city for the first time ever. Went to Times Square, Central Park and the World Trade Center site. Used the subway. Not as dirty as expected. Ate at a little Italian restaurant near Times Square. Had the pesto fettucini. It was yum. Also had some gelato later. It was awesome. Note: Central Park is amazing. Amazingly huge. Could not find Central Perk. Which doesn't mean it doesn't exist. New York is completely overwhelming. And we only went to Manhattan.

*Chaperoned students back from New York. That was fun on a chartered bus. Trying to get everyone there at the same time. Also, we were a little late. That didn't help. See, the bus schedule said we would leave at 5:30. So we got there at 4:45. We thought that would be good, but apparently not. Next time we'll know.

Now I need to figure out what I'm doing this week in Foreign Foods and start planning English.

Conclusion: I like homeleave. The next one is in three and a half weeks.

I think a change will do you good.

So it's official (I think). I'll start teaching Junior English two weeks from today. Shockingly, with more time to prepare than between when I got hired for Home Ec and when I started teaching. I'm excited and nervous. But I guess if all else fails, we'll read out loud a lot.

Have you ever heard of Garrison Keiller? He has this radio show, among other things, and the highlight (at least for me) is The News from Lake Wobegon. In one episode that my family used to have on tape, he talks about this woman who went to Alaska. The people in these Alaskan towns ask her if she knows how to do something, and although she doesn't she always says yes. And then she does it. And then she learns whether it's something she can actually do or not. That's pretty much how I feel right now. Sure, I'll teach. We'll find out later whether or not I can do it well or not. Next they'll probably ask me to teach calculus. I'm pretty sure it's a big no for that.

Kind of ironic that last year I lived in a place where no one knew how to speak correct English and this year I'm going to try to teach it.

The end is oceans and oceans of love.

A huge thanks to Ben for my new layout. Isn't it beautiful? What a nice surprise. There are no words. Friends are wonderful.

Also a big thanks to all of you for your thoughts and prayers. The trip was good, and it was wonderful to be with family. Even a family as complicated as mine. All of my grandparents have been divorced and remarried and there are uncles and step-uncles and half uncles. And cousins that I haven't seen in more than ten years. Which made it especially interesting to be around them for the first time as an adult and for one of the first times in my life to see where I make sense. My sense of humor, the little comments I make, so do all my (4) cousins. It was strange and good.

It was also good to be with so many people who loved my grandma. And to see my grandpa, who hasn't changed. He's just as funny and witty as ever.

Anyway, I'm back now for a short week of school and trying to get into the swing of things again. I may be teaching Junior English soon. I'll let you know more on those developments as they come.

If you could...

My grandma died last night and I'll be traveling today to get to her funeral, which is tomorrow, and traveling back on Friday. If you could keep me and my family in prayers, I would very much appreciate it.

Yup, even this.

Right now, the words keep ringing in my head... "This too shall pass". I'm not even sure why. It's not a particularly bad day, it's not a particularly good day either. I guess it's because my student worker who is also in one of my classes got switched to my other class and she's upset about it because all her friends are in the class she's being switched from. So I was trying to put a positive light on it but she was having none of it. So my last resort was to tell her that "This too shall pass". Which indeed is true. A year from now she'll probably be in another state and have many other things to worry about and probably won't even remember this.

I'm feeling a little less overwhelmed. Really it just depends on which day you ask me. But the Senior Retreat went really well and I felt like I bonded with a lot of the students. So other than the constant rain for two days and the general frigidness, it was good. And now I can say I camped through hurricane Ernesto. (It had calmed down quite a bit by the time it got to us, but still.)

We're cooking for the first time in class today. Bruschetta. Thought I'd start with something easy. We'll see if it actually is easy or not. In about two hours the fun begins.