You're my national monument

In one of my classes I have a group of 3 boys who are best friends. They are great but they can get a little chatty. They are the 3 amigos, or at least that's what I call them. Anyway, I did this activity at the beginning of the school year where students pick partners for various places around Washington, D.C. and when I want to do a partner activity I can just say, "okay, meet your partner at the white house or the Jefferson memorial or whereever." One time I said, "meet your partner at the national monument," and one of the boys said to the other, "you're my national monument." The way he said it was so adorable and I couldn't help but laugh. I think it's great that 3 guys can be so close and not feel stupid when they act silly. It's great. And, not to mention, I think "you're my national monument" is a great compliment to give a significant other. I'm also partial to the phrase, "you're the cheese to my macaroni," from the movie Juno.

For fun, here are some pictures of my classroom. I actually had a horsehoe set up last week and loved it because it's a great way to walk around and cut down the talking, but we're having IOWA testing this week and when we aren't testing, I don't like rows so this is what I have this week. I love my room! I even love the foldable acordian walls because they are magnetic and it's easier to hang stuff. Also, it's kind of fun to hear the other classes sometimes. Our 8th grade is a cozy little family :)

South America Calling!

I've been trying to think of where to spend my next summer...naturally! I have a month and a half off and I'm not about to waste it away in Virginia. I had planned to visit in Europe with my sister but with the dollar in the pits, and trying to live on a budget, that's just not going to happen right now. I do however, have some co-workers who are from Colombia who are going there for the summer and invited me. I don't have a ticket but it's looking like that's a definite possibility. And, I made a friend who also has next summer off and is looking for some adventures so we are tenatively planning a trip to South America at the moment. Colombia is on the list for sure and hopefully Argentina. I would love to hit up Peru too and Brasil would be ideal. My question to all you readers, who's been to South America and can tell me where I have to go? I'm taking recommendations!

The Professional Dogsitter

For those of you that don't know, I run a little side business...aka, I'm a dogsitter. Well, it's not really a business but it does seem like I do it a lot. Thanks to my sister, I was able to get hooked up helping out friends of ours when they're out of town and it has turned out to be quite lucrative. Not to mention, it gives me a whole house to myself and a mini-vacation from my house. I'm 25 and live with my parents! AHH! Haha, it's not that bad actually, but I do like it when I have a chance to stay somewhere else, let out a dog once in a while and get paid for it too. Before I sound like a moocher, I moved home about 3 years ago to go back to school and since I graduated with my masters in May I went on a bunch of trips and decided that living at home is a great way to save money and buy what a what and travel where I want so I opted to stay here for at least another year.

Anyway, back to the original thought. I just got done dogsitting for a former co-worker for 2 1/2 weeks. That's my longest stint yet. It was great and quiet but I missed being home and having my own bed and access to all my clothes in the morning. Also, as easy as the dog is to take care of, she barks incessantly, especially through the night, and only on weekdays. It's like she's sad that her owners left her so she wants me to be awake and miserable too. I mean, she sleeps all day while I work so she just wanted to have fun. Ugh, it's just nice to be back in the quiet again. But, now my parents went out of town and left me to watch their beloved, Roxy (she's the one featured with me in the about photo).

She is cute but don't let that fool you. I always wanted a lab but after her, I'm not sure I'll ever own a dog! I love my cats. They are quiet, cuddly and so easy to take care of. But, back to Roxy. She is a wild, hyper, always wanting to play type of dog. She's still in her puppy phase. When I arrived at my house, she was in her crate (don't worry, it's only for when we aren't here, otherwise she'll eat the cats) and she had managed to chew apart the brand new training collar my parents bought her. Apparently it wasn't cheap. I went to let her outside, and knowing she likes to jet into the back woods I was holding her to get her connected to her running cord, she managed to break free and bolt off. I ran after her to no avail and called my parents to find out what to do. They said just call her name and clap and she'll return. Well, after 20 minutes or so of nothing, we concluded she was gone and I would have to get in the car and search...ugh! Just what I wanted to do on a Saturday! I drove in the next neighborhood from street to street until I saw her with two girls who had graciously caught her and leashed her. Ayayay, that was annoying. First an incessantly barking dog, and the one that gets away. Seriously, if you ever read a post about me getting a dog, shoot me!

Disclaimer...Bad Grammar

I just wanted to mention that the last few blogs I've posted...actually, probably all of them since June, I haven't gone back to read them to check for errors. Sorry! There's always so much going on so I'm lucky if I have the time to write a post so I just wanted to apologize for the low quality of posts lately. I will work on that and form some sort of schedule for myself to stay up to date with my posts since I know I have a few loyal readers...thanks :)

Also, I have a bit of good news. I had someone come for the county to "observe" me. She wasn't there to do an evaluation or anything but she came to provide support in instruction and classroom management if needed. She goes around to visit it all the new teachers. She gave me a great review and told me my classroom was very organized and she was very impressed...yay! I do have to preface with the fact that the class she saw was an honors class and they were doing an activity with laptops and watching videos on propaganda techniques so it was a lull day, the perfect day for an obsevation :) But, I feel pretty lucky with my classes thus far. My kids are great and we are having a lot of fun learning...at least I know some of them are.

Watch for falling objects...

I neglected to post last week, surprise, surprise. First year teaching is rough. I love it but it wears me out. Although the guy I', dating has been out of town for two weeks so it's been really nice to have down time and more time to relax. Haha, as much as I love spending time with him, it's hard to make time for other people right now so I feel like I've accomplished a lot more lately. I've finally been able to get a caught up (I felt so behind, but I wasn't really) and get ahead of myself, which is a great feeling in teaching. I do have a funny story to tell from last week. I was teaching my students about precincts and voting districts and I used one of my handy wall hanging maps to demonstrate. When I went to put it up, the whole thing fell on me if front of my class and made a huge crashing sound. Haha! The weird thing is I didn't even put away hard, it just came crashing down. To top it off, like 3 teachers came to see if everything was okay. That was nice they were concerned but how embarrassing! Well, I wasn't that embarrassed.

The next day, someone from my homeroom went into my room and either farted or let a stink bomb off because eww....it stunk so bad in my room during homeroom. To solve the problem, all I could get my hands on was Axe cologne. Haha! My room smelled like a teenage boy who hasn't learned how to gauge the amount of cologne to use yet. When the other students trickled in they would say "it smells like axe in here," which sounds a lot like something else. That made for a lovely morning.

Let's see, I think that's the higlights from the last 2 weeks of teaching. I love my job so far. My students are great and I think it's going to be a great year. They seem to be really into the elections and politics so far and that's always nice to have students excited about the curriculum. Back to school night was last night and that went really well too. Yay!

One Week Down...a lot more to go!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just finished my first week as a first-year teacher. The picture to the right might show how I feel, I'll let you read what my eyes say. Or, at times, I feel like the one to the left...My emotions are a combination of scared, worried, stressed, excited, unsure, nervous, happy, etc. I am also constantly thinking about school, which I guess is good but it keeps me awake at nights. And, on the occasion that I might wake up in the night to go to the bathroom (dang it), I can't fall back asleep so I just pull out my laptop and work. That happened once last week, I got up at 3:00am, tried to sleep and around 3:30am I gave up and figured if I'm up I might as well get some work done and start putting my thoughts on paper.

Wow, the first week was exhausting! Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one who felt completely drained. Apparently, it's pretty normal for the first week of school to be like that and by Friday we were all dying for the week to be over. I'm just glad it was a 4 day week because I would not have made it one more day. The funny thing is the first week is pretty much house-keeping stuff and getting ready for the year but it wore me out. So far, my sister's prediction was accurate in the fact that I would be at the school a lot. However, I have chose the route to go in early instead of staying late. That's pretty funny too because I hate mornings but since I'm not sleeping well I figure I should just get up and go in early. I get more done. Plus, once I start my after school activities I won't want to stay there until 6pm.

I'm teaching 8th grade and as we all know, that age is full of drama. Already on the 3rd day of school I had a girl "cat" fight in my room. It was not phsyical but it happened in the morning when kids were coming in for homeroom. I don't need to get into details but things were resolved peacefully and nothing got out of hand. I think the girls had some unresolved summer issues. Drama, OMG! I won't really get into more detail about it but what a great way to start the year :) Haha! Actually, so far, so good. I really like my classes and I think it's going to be a great year. My classes are pretty small, with an average of 14 students each, except for one with 18 (or 20, not sure yet with schedule changes). That class is small compared to a lot of school districts but it feels huge to me. I think it will be my challenge class, not because the kids are bad but just the time of day. Also, in that class, the kids don't seem to care that much and my other classes have a lot of students excited about politics...at least for now since our first unit is elections. We'll see how it goes, I think it's going to be a great year.

Tomorrow we kick off our first unit of elections and we will discuss voting procedures and statistics and all that fun stuff. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it interesting and fun.

I'm a "real" teacher now

Well, I've successfully completed my first week of teaching as a "brand-new" teacher. Well, I should say, survived! I put "brand-new" in quotes because I have had teaching experience prior to my first year but I was not a contracted teacher so they don't count it. Oh well, at least it gave me some ideas and I learned to help me in my first year.

I'm teaching 8th grade Civics and Economics, which is my area of expertise (the Civics part). I love the material that I get to teach but wish I had more time to get more in depth on some topics. My county puts out a really nice curriculum guide for us to use and follow (not necessarily verbatim), which I like but, there is so much material that at times, it is hard to imagine getting deep into a subject. Oh well, we'll just touch the surface of government this year and they can go into it further in 12th grade...I'll cross my fingers that at least they'll remember we have 3 branches of government :)

Let's see, what should I write? There is so much but I don't want to be boring. My older sister taught U.S. History I (Colonies to Civil War) at the same middle school I'm at now. She got married and moved with her husband to Kosovo to teach history for two years. Her blog about her experiences are fun to read, check it out at here. Before she left she laughed and told me that I would be going to the school early in the morning and staying until 6pm every night my first year. I laughed back and said, yeah right! I had been a long-term sub before in math for 8 months and had all the same duties as a regular teacher and I wasn't staying late or coming in early then so I didn't think this time would be that different. Well...

I started work on August 13th and went to a million workshops on "how to teach," which I find hilarious since most of us there had just graduated from programs where we learned all about that for 2 or 3 years. However, I did get a fwe pointers I liked. I started a week sooner than the returning teachers and when they came back it was even more workshops. I am meetinged (is that a word?) out. The fun part started on August 13th when there was an electrical fire at my home school and it literally melted the main electrical box. That resulted in 2 and 1/2 weeks of no power in our building. The county brought generators in to get us some emergency lighting and our administration bought us flashlights so I got my classroom ready in the dark. We didn't get power until the Thursday before school started. The admins were nice enough to open the school up to us on labor day weekend so from Thursday-Sunday, I lived at the school. I was there until 6 or 7pm each night! I'm very happy with my classroom and am happy to finally have my own room. I'll take some pictures once it's all finalized. It's done but I have some extra books leftover and I want that to be out of the way before I take photos. I'm lucky my sister moved because she left me a ton of posters to put up. I didn't hang up everything because I decided I don't like a cluttered room but at least I have a lot to change around in the future. I'll post about my first week in another post.

Puerto Rico!

After I came back from my 7 week Costa Rican adventure (oh yes, I came home a week early) I was surprised with a plane ticket to Puerto Rico. I was so excited because I love PR and I was excited to go see my friends there. My friend's sister was getting married so that was the main purpose of the trip but we also were able to spend a lot of time at the beach. I love PR!! I went there 3 times this year and I highly recommend it to everyone. However, if you go, please visit the west side of the island. Go to Boqueron, Cabo Rojo, Crash Boat in Aguadilla and also the east side of Fajardo :) Don't just stay in San Juan like most tourists or you're totally missing out!

I know I'm not really telling much about my experience but I'm so behind on my entries that I figured pictures are better. Here are the highlight photos from PR:

Bocas del Toro, Panama

Some of these entries are out of order but that's okay, I'm finally getting around to posting. It's also 5am right now and I'm not in the mood to edit so hopefully there's not a lot of typos. Haha, I've been up since about 3:15am and wasn't able fall back asleep because as soon as I got up my brain turned on and I started making a to do list. Not wanting to forget I got up to write it down and I just figured I'd do something to kill time before I have to start getting ready for work.

Anyway, I went to Pananma the weekend before my sister came for 3 days. It was about a 7 hour bus ride (with no A/C) down to the border of Panama from San Jose, Costa Rica. I went with a few friends from school. When we got to the border we had to get off the bus and walk across the bridge to Panama and go through customs. That was an experience. The bridge must have been at least 100 years old and about to break. It was scary...especially since I've always had a little phobia of bridges. This one was small and also had huge semi-trucks crossing it at the same time, literally inches from my body. They made the whole bridge shake!! After customs, you have to take a cab to a port and then take a boat for about an hour to the main tourist island. That was fun.

Bocas del Toro is a region of Panama, I think, and it has a group of islands that are popular to visit. I had heard it was absolutely beautiful. It was really nice, don't get me wrong, but living in Hawaii and having visited a number of beaches in the Caribbean, it's not the most beautiful place I've ever been. But, it was a nice place to go and I had a good time. It's definitely a hostel type town with lots of backpackers from all over the world. However, after the long bus ride, I was a little hot and cranky and not in the mood to sleep in a semi-gross, hot, sticky hostel so I stayed at a hotel next to the one my friends stayed in for $30/night. It was more than the $10/night my friends paid but I had A/C and a private, clean bathroom. I'm not opposed to hostels and I'm sure will stay in them in the future but sometimes you just need some privacy.

While I was there, I went to a few beaches, and snorkeling with my friends. It was fun to meet people from all over the world. Here are my highlight photos:

Finally, the last of Costa Rica

Wow, I suck at blogging these days and as a request from my sister, I'm updating it at 4:30am because for some odd reason I'm wide awake. I started teaching full-time this week and as a result, have no time for anything. But, I'll get to that later. Here are the last of my pictures from CR. I miss that place!! One of the last things I did before my sister came to visit me in Costa Rica was white water raft the Pacuare River with a school mate, Jeff. It was awesome and we fell out and everything. I loved it!

Before the rafting trip we went to this awesome little restaurant that was up in the mountains and as you can see from the view, it was gorgeous...and a little bit cold! But, I'm usually cold so that's not a surprise.

My sister came to see me for about a week. It was fun for her to come. I had a great trip but went through some difficult personal matters so it was a huge relief to have her there and have someone familiar with me there. Here are some of the highlight photos...



I know it's just a butterfly but I hate bugs...