Hey all,
So I spent the last week in Yosemite with 143 8th graders chaperoning a field trip. It was amazing! We stayed in tent cabins (with heat) and hiked around each day with an instructor from the Yosemite Institute. They do students tours and teach the kids all about the park. It was ridiculous. I couldn't believe I was at work. The kids were perfectly behaved, and I got to piggyback on their tour and see a lot of the park. We went on a hike up to Glacier Point where we could see the whole valley, we went into some caves where it was completely dark and the person in front of you had to tell you how to get through, we saw some rocks where the American Indians ground up acorns with grinding holes that had been used for 500 years, and we counted macro-invertebrates in the river to calculate the water quality. I think I might have enjoyed the instruction more than the kids. It was awesome. It is a beautiful place. Now I am getting organized for next week, and setting things up until Thanksgiving. Back to the school, BTSA, wedding planning for me!
Love and miss you all!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God
JP and I are going to our first meeting with the priest at the church we go to out here. He's super nice, but still I am a little nervous. I wonder if people of other faiths are a little afraid of their leaders? Somehow I doubt it...
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Wedding Planning (Part 1 of Probably Many)
Hey all,
So since J.P. and I got engaged last month we have started baby-stepping our wedding planning. So far we are thinking that we will have the wedding ceremony at St. Mary's in Chelsea, with the reception at my mom's house. It should be a pretty fun and low-key affair, hopefully with tacos and music. We have been scheming about how to pay for it and what to do, and so far things have been going reasonably smoothly. I have about 85 (see: 1) excel spreadsheets with a million (see: 3) tabs each of all of the different things to keep track of. Yuck. I am turning into an excel monster. I have my budget on there too and I am literally inputting every dollar I make or spend. It is turning me into a major miser, but I feel very organized. I feel like there are a lot of decisions to be made right now with the wedding and life in general, and they are all hard to make because we have incomplete information. It drives me crazy. For example, we have no idea what our jobs will have in store for us next year so we can't even plan whether or not we will be living here. If we do stay here we can't plan where to live for the same reasons, and if we don't then there is no plan at all. I don't think this bothers JP, but it drives me crazy. It makes planning the wedding difficult for unexpected reasons as well. Like, if we continue to live in this house should we even register for anything, since we won't need any of it yet? Or, if we both have good jobs should we move into a smaller, crappier place for twice as much money so that we can live alone (probably not, especially considering that Mike and Becky are the best). I feel a little bit like I'm spinning my wheels with all of this, and I just need to be more relaxed and see what happens... easier said than done.
On a non-rampaging note, both JP and I love our jobs. I have great kids in my classes, and they are catching on really quickly. The class has been entirely in Spanish so far, and the kids are doing really well with it in general, although grammar gets tricky that way. I have been listening to Harry Potter on tape (well, CD, do you guys still say on tape? It feels weird to say anything else), and reading Anna Karenina, both of which are excellent. That Harry Potter on tape (there it is again) is excellent is no surprise because I have listened to it at least 3 times already, but I was a little intimidated by Anna Karenina and am pleasantly surprised by how readable it is.
In other news I am chaperoning an 8th grade field trip to Yosemite next week which is 6 days long, and should be awesome! I can't wait! I was told that I am in a "hiking group", and I don't really know what was meant by that but I like the sound of it. Anyway, I miss you guys!
So since J.P. and I got engaged last month we have started baby-stepping our wedding planning. So far we are thinking that we will have the wedding ceremony at St. Mary's in Chelsea, with the reception at my mom's house. It should be a pretty fun and low-key affair, hopefully with tacos and music. We have been scheming about how to pay for it and what to do, and so far things have been going reasonably smoothly. I have about 85 (see: 1) excel spreadsheets with a million (see: 3) tabs each of all of the different things to keep track of. Yuck. I am turning into an excel monster. I have my budget on there too and I am literally inputting every dollar I make or spend. It is turning me into a major miser, but I feel very organized. I feel like there are a lot of decisions to be made right now with the wedding and life in general, and they are all hard to make because we have incomplete information. It drives me crazy. For example, we have no idea what our jobs will have in store for us next year so we can't even plan whether or not we will be living here. If we do stay here we can't plan where to live for the same reasons, and if we don't then there is no plan at all. I don't think this bothers JP, but it drives me crazy. It makes planning the wedding difficult for unexpected reasons as well. Like, if we continue to live in this house should we even register for anything, since we won't need any of it yet? Or, if we both have good jobs should we move into a smaller, crappier place for twice as much money so that we can live alone (probably not, especially considering that Mike and Becky are the best). I feel a little bit like I'm spinning my wheels with all of this, and I just need to be more relaxed and see what happens... easier said than done.
On a non-rampaging note, both JP and I love our jobs. I have great kids in my classes, and they are catching on really quickly. The class has been entirely in Spanish so far, and the kids are doing really well with it in general, although grammar gets tricky that way. I have been listening to Harry Potter on tape (well, CD, do you guys still say on tape? It feels weird to say anything else), and reading Anna Karenina, both of which are excellent. That Harry Potter on tape (there it is again) is excellent is no surprise because I have listened to it at least 3 times already, but I was a little intimidated by Anna Karenina and am pleasantly surprised by how readable it is.
In other news I am chaperoning an 8th grade field trip to Yosemite next week which is 6 days long, and should be awesome! I can't wait! I was told that I am in a "hiking group", and I don't really know what was meant by that but I like the sound of it. Anyway, I miss you guys!
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