It turned fall this week. Then today it turned back into summer. It was foolish of me to think that the seasons would follow any sort of predictable pattern, considering the overall feel of my life lately. I need to take out the trash.
I have entered my final week of solitude. My roommate moves in next weekend and I'm... sad. I've enjoyed living by myself. I'm not obnoxious to live with - I don't play my music loud or have lots of people over or hog the TV or make messes. I tend to clean up other peoples' messes and remind my guests to be quiet and I never borrow things without asking. But... I would really just prefer to live alone and I find myself anxiously awaiting next fall, when I've been hired by a real school, am making a real salary, and can afford my own, lovely, one-bedroom apartment for no one but little me. At least for a little while.
The last six weeks have been overwhelming and difficult and hilarious and enlightening. I feel like I'm wasting my time in class some days and other days I walk away with such a profound sense of the enormous responsibility that they're placing in my hands that I can't even see straight. And, blessedly, we all get along. On Friday night, Brittany and her "partner-slash-fiancee" Matt had the whole cohort over for an international themed potluck at their precious little house in Sacramento and we sat in their backyard under twinkle lights until midnight drinking sangria and black cherry vodka tonics (I represented Russia) and eating Matt's incredible spring rolls and pad thai, commiserating and laughing and having, as Lisa put it, "our own real grad student party!". And it was great.
As far as the actual "school" part of school... My ELD class is a mess - no one knows what is going on, least of all myself. We've retained maybe five of our original students in the biggest class schedule shake-up of the century and haven't even ordered books. I don't know how, or
what, I'm going to teach come January. Fransisco, who has been in the country the longest at nearly 5 years, can't even spell in his own language. As I reviewed his work this week, I noticed that
quien was spelled with a
K. The entire Spanish
alphabet does'nt have a
K in it. Lord, help me. My ninth grade advanced class is a little better... We at least have books and an established class roster. I get to teach
Romeo & Juliet, etc etc...
In two weeks, I start my secondary placement at
Norwood JHS in Sac. I'll be there all quarter with Jessica and Jenny and... well.... whatever. I'm excited, I guess. I'm just kind of rolling with the punches right now. Val and Pauline say that our schedules are about to get "really crazy", which is sort of frightening because what have our schedules been recently if not that?
I get the first third of my grant money tomorrow (almost $2,000!) and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. While the "I hate spending money" part of me wants to pay off the last of my credit card and then put the rest into savings and forget about it for a while, the "I like pretty, new things" part of me is itching for a
new computer. Actually, I think my current computer is itching for me to get a new computer too. And, logically, it's a better idea to buy the new machine now with the grant money than to try to scrape up the money to do it once I get out of school. Ugh.
I. Hate. Money.
In
far more exciting news,
Grey's Anatomy season 3 premiers this Thursday! Daniel has been listening to
The Fray nonstop for the past week and I'm ready to kill him. But Grey's!
Grey's!!!
Oh! And my soccer team (The Chelsea Aquabats - don't ask) won our second game yesterday 6-3! They were so awesome and fun to watch and I looooove coaching!
(how's that for an update, friends?)
