Hugs and hellos

After my work week last week,  I think anything would have been a step forward.  My mom told me that my last blog entry was depressing, as a mother and as a teacher.  Well don't worry mom,  this week was 10 times better.  The sick teacher is was finally back at our school!  This was indeed good news, not just for me but for the other teachers who have been running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to fill in her shoes.  Like I mentioned, there are only about 13 or 14 teachers at the school, so when one is missing it leaves a considerable void in the staff.  But she was back and all of our lives resumed a somewhat normal pace and routine.  My first class Monday mornings is with the 4 year olds.  With all the switching around I have not been teaching then for the last 3 Mondays.  So as I walked into the classroom for English time I was warmly greeted with hugs and "seño!!!!!!!!" (means teacher).  I gotta say, it was a wonderful way to start my week.  I got a similar reaction from the 1st graders, who I also hadn't seen in 3 weeks due to the teacher shuffle we had been playing.  Despite the rainy weather we were having, it was a wonderful day.  The rest of the week was equally as nice.  The teacher that is finally back is doing a play with the 3rd graders about Mary and Joseph (yes they can do a biblical play in a public school here) and it is going to be in English and in Spanish, so I get to help out with that.  And the rest of my teaching this week consisted of me actually just being a teachers assistant.  It was a breath of fresh air after flying by the seat of my pants the last two weeks in school.  One thing I do miss though,  when the teacher was gone I got to teach English classes instead of Bilingual classes, and the sometimes the Bilingual classes are a challenge.  The 5th graders are learning about vertabrate and invertebrate animals.  Well I am mostly there to help with pronouncing the names of the different animals.  Well one type of invertabrate is mollusc.  The plural is mulluscs.  Now just say this word out loud to yourself.  Then imagine a group of students who don't speak English try to pronounce it.  It was quite comical.  And the 6th graders are starting to learn the muscles.  So the teacher hands me the work sheet and has me read the names of the muscles.  Well i'm reading a long and get to the sternocleidomastoid.  Yes, I had to stop and struggle through that one,  it would have been embarrassing but something my dad taught me long ago was that you always need to be able to laugh at yourself, makes things much easier.  So the kids got a good laugh and so did I.  I mean come on!  That word is ridiculous.

Aside from my lovely week of teaching no exciting adventures to tell.  I've been going out a bit more with some friends I met.  But going out Spanish style is a lot more exhausting.  It's not like being home from Patty's at 1:30 or 2.  No no,  thats when we go out to the bars.  I literally have to mentally prepare myself each weekend.  But it has been a lot of fun.  I realized something though on Saturday as I sat and had cafe con leche with my friend Mary Beth.  It was gorgeous sunny saturday afternoon, I had slept in and just gone to get lunch with a few friends.  Mary Beth and then walked to get a cafe.  As I was sitting outside in the sun I realized how nice it was to not have to worry about anything.  I could sit there and have cafe all afternoon and it would be totally fine.  For as long as I can remember with being in school there is always something in the back of your mind to worry about.  It was so nice to just sit there and literally for this moment in time not have a care in the world.  It is such a different world not being in school. Even on weekends when you have free time you have to worry about that test on monday, or that paper thats due, but I don't have that at all.  And aside from small lesson plans I have a job that doesn't require a whole lot of outside work.  It just really hit me how completely free I am here, to do pretty much whatever I want.  I hope this isn't coming off in a way that makes it seem like I'm living and easy stress free life,  things are challenging and overwhelming a lot of the time.  But that freedom, to be able to take the time to do what I want to do is something I have not experienced before.  I can go to the gym and stay for 2 hours or more, because I have the time.  I can sit in the aqua massage area for 30 minutes if I want to,  and I pondered this freedom as I did that very thing (don't worry I swam laps first.) Now what I need to work on is not feeling guilty about that free time.  Before I would always feel like I should be working on something, even when I wasn't.  I have to learn to enjoy the freeness and the ability to just be.  I feel like it may be something that won't happen again in my life.  Sorry this blog went all inner monologue, but sometimes there aren't great adventures to share, but just the simple every day happenings that I think are the difference between being a traveler, and actually living somewhere.   I have to remember that as continue to try and make this place feel like home.

Enjoy the snow Minnesota ;)

Katie