It seems like it has been a month

I cannot believe how long it has taken for four days to go by and I cannot believe how tired I am. I will try so hard to not make this a pity party for people to read, but it has been so tiring. It will be so much better once class time starts and we actually get to work with children.... 14 hour days of solid class has just been one of the most brain exhausting things I have been through. It has, however, been fun with the amazing people I have been meeting. Its funny the things we all begin to find funny and how crazy we all act. Today was a day of laughter, as it seems we have all gone crazy. Our advisors give us silly puddy and play doh to play with during class to keep from falling asleep and we are asked to stand up in the back of the room if we start to nod off, sure enough after 10 minutes of class today I was standing up in the back of the room... it didn't help so I was given an apple to eat and silly puddy. I was so tired.

One of the girls got silly puddy stuck to her new suit pants, comical for quite awhile. We've been having fun speaking in phonemes and watching others pass out on their desk only to wake up to a strong jolt. As hard as this is, I am having fun. Today, I left my lunch on the school bus, something you don't want to do! So I didn't have a lunch and I did not have my mom to come and bring it to me... I used to do this type of a thing fairly often.

I am teaching 1st grade Science next week, I will be teaching all about oceans, rivers, and lakes.... pretty excited about it. I am so thankful for having some Education course background as it has made me more of an expert than the kids without any Education coursework. Lesson plans are so hard though! Especially teaching 1st graders, it has been awhile since I have been around that age. I will have a language barrier as I am teaching in a monolingual Spanish 1st grade class with 12 boys and 1 girl. I hope it works out, it means a lot of pictures!!! Here is a sample of my very silly first grade lesson:

"Good afternoon boys and girls! I am so excited to be back in class today to fill our minds with more science smarts! Are you all excited?! Yesterday we talked about rivers, who can tell me what a river is? Today we are going to talk about another body of water, this time we are going to learn about oceans!"

Dramaturgical I know, but that is what is needed!

I have these random bouts of extreme longing for Walla Walla and Whitman, which makes me so sad. This city is just so large with so much traffic, I will just have to adjust and know that Walla Walla can be in the future if I want it to be.

Last night I had dinner with one of my students from the boarding school I worked at last summer. He is from Houston and went to Wolfeboro last summer. I tutored him as well as Resident Advised him. He is a wonderful kid and someone who really looked up to me last summer. We had a wonderful meal as we caught up on what he has been up to. He had a lot of academic apathy prior to coming to Wolfeboro. Last summer changed him and now he is doing really well at a boarding school in Virginia.

Ok, I have to finish my discipline policy and try to stay awake to do it.
Much love, Robert