Way to burst my bubble

One of the perks of being a teacher is that - if you do even a half-way decent job - your students think you're the most amazing person in the world.  Consequently, I get a lot of "I love you, teacher."  "You're so nice, teacher."  "You're the best teacher in the world."  "You're so pretty."  etc.  Not too shabby, eh?

Yesterday my students wrote a paragraph describing the class.  They were supposed to tell me what they see, hear, and smell in our room.  (Yeah, I know - I really opened it up for craziness with that last one.)  Anyway, I discovered I'm not quite as awesome as I'd like to think when I read one of my student's paragraphs.  

She said:  "I want to describe my classroom.  In my class there's a lot to see, hear, and smell. Every day I see my second favorite teacher, the American flag, colorful baskets, and pretty plants. "

So not only am I the second favorite (which she explained to me in further detail, with much enthusiasm), but I'm also as exciting as the flag, baskets, and plants.

Sigh......oh, hello humility - it's nice to meet you again.  ;-)

Sick Discovery

Now, many of you are previously acquainted with strep throat.  I somehow managed to avoid it my entire life - including my first three years of teaching - until now.  Apparently someone, somewhere decided it's time for me to make up on lost time, and I'm now sick with strep throat for the second time in four weeks.  Sucks!!!

Headache, nausea, dizziness, listlessness, body aches, fever...not to mention the intense pain in your throat due to HUGELY swollen glands.  Sigh...I guess there is one bit of silver lining:  as a coworker who had it five times in one school year said, "If nothing else, it's very effective at making you lose weight!"  Yippee.  ;-)

Kids are funny

So a while back my students had to take a test to measure their proficiency in English.  (Remember, these kids are in a bilingual school program, and each year they get less Spanish and more English.  In second grade it's still 70% Spanish and only 30% English).

The students were shown a picture similar to this:

They then had to describe what they saw in one sentence.  Most kids said things like "The puppies are playing with their mom" or "The mom is giving the puppies milk", etc.  My favorite, however, came from one little boy who wrote:  "The puppies are teaching the true meaning of Christmas."  

Um.....if you say so! :-)

And our new calling is...

...nursery.  Yup, we finally received callings today and will be in charge of the nursery every other week.  Our bishopric said they felt STRONGLY impressed to put us there, so this could be interesting.  

Pray for us.  :-)

What everyone really wants from me.....wedding pictures!

We're alive!

I'm now able to understand why my friends who have been married disappear for six months to a year.  There's simply SO MUCH to unpack, set up, arrange, rearrange, learn, change, etc.  The weirdest thing is scheduling.  I live 5 minutes away from my work site, I'm no longer in grad school, I'm not new to teaching, and I don't spend 4+ hours a day on the phone with Robb (thank goodness - that would be odd at this point) ;-) Basically, I should have MORE time, not less - but trying to fit everything in is very difficult.  I suppose that's why they call the first year the adjustment period, right?