Sorry I'm so slow...

Yeah, I've been slacking off in the blog-writing department. Sorry about that. This past week has been crazy with a capital C. Let's see if I can remember what happened: Monday came and went without anything memorable.

Tuesday afterschool I had my follow-up interview at the middle school. He asked me a plethora of questions off this standard list. It was a little excrutiating, but I got through it. He seems to like me and wants to give me 7th grade English, but I have to work on totaling up "points" to be Highly Qualified. If you're not familiar, it's this ridiculous process, involving the verification that you are qualified to teach middle school or high school. You either have to have 24 credit hours in your subject area (English, for example), or you have to have enough training, experience, and involvement in focus groups that pertain to your subject area to be special enough to teach. It's grueling and pointless (well, it does have one point--when this is all said and done, they can only make me teach English--not P.E. or Science or anything else), but it is mandatory. So, I worked on that, and mailed it to the principal yesterday. We'll see what happens next.

Wednesday was the 3rd grade field trip to the big zoo in the big city that's about 2 hours driving distance from the school (hence the picture of the ginormous tortoise). What a trip. I went into it excited and looking forward to getting out of the building for the day. Among the interesting events (without taking an hour to retell), were: the bus was almost an hour late to pick us up, we were 4 seats short on the bus so the 3rd grade teacher had to drive down in the principal's Expedition with 4 students, a student was wandering around by himself without his group, a parent volunteer (the one who supposed to be in charge of the wanndering student) got pissy with me because I wasn't extra friendly to her after telling her I had the student that was supposed to be with her, and we arrived an hour late back to the school (after 6pm). Needless to say, I was tired, sunburnt and filthy from being around wild animals and wild children all day.

Thursday was a typical Thursday. My Secret Squirrel (like Secret Santa, but we switch out every grading period, all year long) has been good to me lately, and gave me a Starbucks giftcard. I used it on Thursday, and got a Black Raspberry Green Tea Frappucino, which sounds weird and gross, but is actually really good. I highly recommend it.

Friday was our Earth Day celebration at school. Another very, very tiring day. It started with my 6th graders giving and sharing books they made for 2nd graders about cleaning up Earth. It was so cute and I was so proud. I love those kind of moments...I organized a presentation with a local recycling company (through my Learn and Serve position), for all the kids to attend. That actually went down without a hitch. The guy was informative and really good with the kids. I learned the average 4 person family uses about 17 trees a year in paper products. That's crazy and a bit sad. Later was a huge inflatable slide and jumping castle, I guess just as a "celebration" kind of thing. Nothing to do with Earth Day, but oh well. The kids had a good time. Later, was a Potluck lunch. SO MUCH FOOD. I grazed in the 3rd grade room (nachos with homemade guacamole, jasmine rice--sweet rice nestled in a real pineapple that is to die for and a brownie), before eating my actual lunch in the 6th grade (fried chicken, mac and cheese, potatoes and cheese, ham and cheese on a croissant and mudd pie for dessert). Oh my God, I gorged myself. Later that night, we went to ANOTHER POTLUCK at church. It was Mexican, and again, I ate more than I should have. Oh well. Life's short and I like food.

Today we went to Target and Payless and Petsmart. And guess what??? We're getting an Old Navy!! Yippee!! This is good news and bad news. My husband just hopes it doesn't open until I start teaching in the fall, or we might be homeless and living in a van down by the river. But hey, we'll have cute clothes!!

Tomorrow will be church in the morning and a softball game that my husband's playing in, in the afternoon. Nice day.

Monday is a Teacher InService Day. I don't count days like that as work, since we're just sitting in a training for 3 hours.

So, that's it, in a nutshell--or tortoise shell, as the case may be. Don't you feel informed now. I hope it made up for my slackerness this week. It's dinnertime, so hasta la bye bye.