Funemployment: Wide Open Spaces

Posted in family, life, travel, weekends by

photoAs I mentioned in my last blog, I have quit my job for looooooove. How romantic. :) To celebrate this, and the idea of love in general (my grandparents 50th year anniversary of being married and not killing each other), boyfriend and I got in a car (I’m still afraid of planes) and drove a million hours to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Foot of Yellowstone, glacier peaks, the Tetons, moose, bears hoping to wrestle with me, way too much food and drink and family for a week.

900 miles, three gas fillups, one baby tumbleweed, land so flat that we could see the beginning AND the end of a train.

I realized that I don’t trust anyone or anything in Nevada. This might have something to due with how many episodes of Xfiles I have seen. I just think that everyone living out in the middle of nowhere is involved in a cult/religious uprising/government conspiracy/hiding from the law. After dinner at a casino, because nothing else is open that late on a Sunday (past 7pm), we found one dingy motel room with outlets that didn’t work, but managed to have a bottle opener attached to the bathroom sink, and stopped for the night.

photo (1)We woke in the morning to drive the final three something hours, and I felt like I kept having to take pictures and to pick my jaw up off the floor. We are in the the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The sky is so big. The air tastes like clouds and the sun feels brighter somehow. People are happy and friendly, and I’ve seen four meese. I hear water rushing all around me, everything is green green green and full of promise and all I want to do is hike to the top of something tall and then roll down the hill.

Tomorrow we are taking a river float down a river where we are guaranteed to meet a bear that wants to be friendly with me. Then we plan on letting the town of Jackson Hole, with it’s many cowboy bars, showing us a thing or two about how to have a good time.

photo (4)I am so, so, so happy. To be drinking in fresh air, eating BBQ everything, nothing better to do but have a good time. Everything about the rest of life will get really real in a few weeks, but for now, it’s just 5 o’clock right here.

 

TeacherDiaries: YOLO. You Only Latin Once. (The one where I leave my job)

Posted in children, Coaching, education, growing older., life, teaching, work by

one of my favorite memories

one of my favorite memories

I started my unexpected teaching career with nothing: I didn’t know Latin, I’d never taught, never even been in a private school, wasn’t affiliated with the church…In my interview, I literally told the principal “I don’t know why you’d hire me, but I love Jesus, kids, and languages, so I think this could all work out.”

And it did. I rebuilt the Latin and Spanish curriculums, created a drama program, got my credential, coached the volleyball team, and planted deep roots into the community at my school.

When I talked to my students about leaving, they asked a lot of questions. They wanted to know who would teach Spanish, Drama, coach volleyball. Who would throw pens at them. Who would demand they say “please?” at the end of every sentence. Who would teach them silly songs about frogs who love Jesus. Who would put together weird vocabulary slideshows. Who would youtube videos of puppies when we’d had a particularly rough day.

They said a lot of nice words…I got many hugs and nice cards that I will keep forever. Some even made me a video impersonating me! They demanded my boyfriend’s email address so they could write strongly worded letters. Some cried in my arms or made cookies.

<3

<3

It was overwhelming to feel so loved and to know I will be missed. Lots of times, as a teacher, I feel like I only heard concerns from parents, or heard students’ sighs about homework, or felt the time-suck of staff meetings, endless emails, correcting papers, cleaning, discipline, and all the mundane things no one tells you will really make up the bulk of your life.

Sometimes I just felt like a girl pretending to be an adult, trying to make kids care about a subject they just don’t care about. I know my students love me, but very few out of the 130 I teach actually love the Latin language. It was emotionally exhausting to drag the rest of them, kicking and screaming, through the worlds of vocabulary, declensions, verb tenses, and sentence drills.

And so I things like tell endless pirate jokes, or play pranks on them, or knock their pens off their desks, or steal their notebooks and write notes inside, or show youtubes of baby ducks. And so we made a fun, little family in my classroom-built-to-be-a-closet. And now I am struck by the idea that I have known these faces for three years, but perhaps will never see them ever again. (To be honest, with some students/parents, this is a rather comforting thought! :) ) But I will never know how they grow up, how they look without braces, if they will remember me, if they made good choices in high school. If they ever realized how special and beautiful and loved they were.

Spirit Week!

Spirit Week!

I have learned a lot these last four years. There are many things I wish I had done differently/would have known before I started, and many moments I wish I could do-over. But I don’t have a whole lot of regrets. Afterall, YOLO. (You Only Latin Once!)

What I do have are memories and tears. After I cleaned out my room, and handed in my keys, had my exit interview and got in the car, I just wept. I wept to think that someone else would be sitting in my desk come August, and teaching all the curriculum I worked so hard to develop. And I cried to think of all my kids and how I would miss them. I cried to think of leaving all my friends I have made…friends so close that I ran out of the building, afraid to say goodbye, because I knew it would hurt my heart.

But I think it is so hard because I have loved it. And that is a good, sweet thing. I question my decision to leave every hour or so, and the true test will come in August, when my co-workers head back and I…figure out what God has planned for me. No matter what, I will always be so grateful for the chance my school took on me, and for the many students who came into my classroom each year, changing my life forever.

Some Highlights of the Last Four Years!

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In my Life, I’m going to Carolina…Moving for a Boy. A Series. Part 3.

Posted in boys, growing older., life, love, travel by

first mission trip as a couple

first mission trip as a couple

If you asked us how BF and I met, we would each have different stories. Both stories are funny, but what matters is that almost a year ago today, we decided we wanted to be together. A year later, we’ve decided we don’t want to be apart.

That doesn’t mean a proposal or marriage or living together (things we agree we’re not ready for), it means that when my boyfriend moves to North Carolina at the end of this summer, I have decided I’m going with him.

!!!!!!!

I’m excited. I’m scared. I’m SO scared. But. I’m ready for a change. I feel like if I drive down the same road to work, pick the same food at the same Safeway, or park in the same spot and sit in the same seat at the same church service just ONE MORE TIME….I will go bananas.

Blue-dot-01

I want to go to there.

I want out. Out out out. I want to get rid of everything that I own except what fits in a car and drive across the country. I want to roll down the windows and stop only when I need to sleep or pee or buy some Cheetos. Or when I see a sign for something I can’t pass up, like “World’s Largest Bottle of Ketchup.”

I want to see small towns and smaller towns and then live in one. I want the smell of corn fields and wheat fields and the complete lack of mountains to fill my senses and numb my senses and propel me into the unknown.

I’ve quit the best grown up job I’ve ever had, a job I love, to pursue something else, or nothing at all. I have no plan for North Carolina except to be near someone I can’t imagine being without. I might teach, but what I really want is to pursue writing and getting a book published, come hell or high water. Because writing makes me happy and I want to run full force towards it.

riddle me an adventure...

riddle me an adventure…

And I want to know a culture outside of California. I want to know what it feels like when the seasons change. And to hear a different accent, and different perspectives, and to make an adventure out of everything that has become so mundane to me – the restaurants, drugstores, bars, live music, fastest way to get to Target, where an ATM is, the parks, the libraries, the movie theater…

Having been here all my life, I feel like I explore less and less as time goes by. We go hiking somewhere new every Saturday, and I love a good road trip, but my life is one big routine of things I’ve been doing since I was a little girl. Same people, same places, same feeling.

I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can stand. :)

And so we will go. Well, he will go, and almost as crazy (for independent, strong-willed, stubborn, “I do what I want!” me) as moving across the country is, is the fact that I’m doing it to follow a boy. Which makes it only more perfect because it’s even more nuts for the likes of me. So. Here we go! Stay tuned. :)

Running For a Boy. A Series. (Part 2)

Posted in being single, boys, growing older., life, love by

His name was James. He was a teacher. He was happier and more polite than anyone should be. He was older, tan, brown hair, and always ordered a number 23 with jack cheese to go. And he would leave a great tip for a to go order. I got to know him, and we flirted a little over the cash register. Then he would start to order his meals to stay.

He chose his table right by the register, perfect for our light banter as I ran around to deliver food, drinks, bus tables, or just walk by because I knew he would look.

Run!

He wore running shirts. Shirts about triathalons, marathons, 5 and 10ks. With a body that is built more for comfort than for speed, I had never had an interest in running. But I would ask him questions about this race or that. He was always so friendly and kind. You could tell he was nervous around me, and the other girls at the cafe and even the cooks and busboys would tease me about him coming in every day.

Valentine’s Day came, and I wondered and got nervous butterflies. I made sure my shirt was clean, I had on green eyeshadow, bangle bracelets on my arms, and a pretty brown skirt. He came into the restaurant. !

He was sweating a little on his upper lip as he waited in line. We made that eye contact you always do with a crush, where you both pretend you can’t feel each other staring, and you’re very nonchalant about each other’s presence anyway, but ohmygoshhe’slookingIhopeIlookcutewhatifthereisa booger/sweat/pitstains/badbreath/anything in my teeth?!

He got to the front of my line, and we smiled shyly at each other and then I saw his arm – wrapped in a cast.

“What happened?!” Instant conversation fodder, chance to touch him. Yes.

But he was clutching a white envelope on his hands, and he shrugged off my comments and thrust the card into my hands.

“I’m sorry about the writing.” and he left without ordering.

T2i - Red Heart

Inside, a Pink Panther Valentine, addressed to me, with a heart scrawled and signed “James” like a five year old might write.

I bought a pair of running shoes, joined a gym, and started training for a 5k that was happening in Santa Barbara, where we lived. I recruited a friend, bought cute workout clothes and a headband.

The morning of the race, sure that was the day we would run into each other “accidentally” and he would proclaim his love and we would begin to live happily ever after, I never saw him.

My hip also popped out when I tripped off a curb and I never officially finished the race. Should have been a sign.

We ran into each other a few times downtown after that, and he would buy me a drink. We both seemed too embarrassed to really talk, and he stopped coming into the cafe.

But I still run. And I found the card in the back of my car the other day. And I smile to remember James, who made me feel beautiful for a while.

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Blogging for a Boy. A Series. Part One.

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TeacherDiaries: Grief Bacon.

Posted in children, education, teaching, writing by

Kummerspeck (German)
Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.

As a brain break a few days ago, I showed my students a list of words from a Mental Floss article about words that exist in languages except English that we REALLY need.

Here are some of my faves that the students really got a kick out of. My commentary in italics:

  • Backpfeifengesicht (German)
    A face badly in need of a fist. Do names come to mind for anyone else here?
  • Gigil (Filipino)
    The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute. I am CONSTANTLY under the influence of gigil!
  • Ya’arburnee (Arabic)
    This word is the hopeful declaration that you will die before someone you love deeply, because you cannot stand to live without them. Literally, may you bury me. I swoon.
  • L’esprit de l’escalier (French)
    Literally, stairwell wit—a too-late retort thought of only after departure. I am often affected by this. 
  • Tartle (Scots)
    The nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember. This sounds like “fart,” so obviously the junior highers laughed for days.

As an exercise, I had them come up with their own feelings that we need words for in the English language. Here are my favs:

  • The feeling when you laugh so hard your stomach hurts.
  • The split second of panic that you’ve forgotten your locker combo after a long break.
  •  When you’re spacing out and then you realize you’ve actually been creepily staring at someone.
  •  The amazing feeling when you didn’t study for a test but you do great on it anyway.
  • When you’re eating pizza and all the cheese slides right off your piece.
  • When you’re eating and writing something at the same time and you accidentally put your pen in your mouth instead of food.
  • The feeling when you realize you’ve forgotten your homework at home.

So great.

Seven more teaching days with the little monsters. Can’t tell what my heart really feels….especially when they are as funny as this.

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