Tuesday, November 27, 2007

November


I also thought that I would have way more time to update this thing! Sorry, I guess life gets busy, huh?
Well things are going well here. Only 3 weeks left of the first semester! Then it's home for Christmas. I cannot believe how fast life flies by!
There was one great story that I forgot to tell in my October blog. I shall call this story "Flea Market".

Flea Market
It was a Saturday afternoon and rumor had it that there was a community flea market/rummage sale at City Hall. It was supposed to be the weekend before but no shoppers showed up so they did it again. Well, Mrs. Stacks (the principal) said she we should check it out. So, Mel, Nikki and I headed out for City Hall. When we got to the sale, there was no one shopping. It was like 5 women sitting around the sales tables and us. There was nothing there! But we browsed around anyway, prenending to be interested. Then Phyllis, good ole' Phyllis, (one of the lady's who works at City Hall) came up to Mel and me and tried to get us to buy a pastel floral Christmas wreath. We had to say no numerous times, before she left us alone. We had now checked out all the tables but one. This table had some random items on it. Apparently in Saint Paul people not only bring clothes and floral wreaths to a flea market, they also clean out their kitchen cupboards and freezers and bring whatever they find in there with them. For example, for sale they had a few half used spice containers. You know, thyme, lemon pepper, cinnamon, etc. There were tons of used spices for sale. To make it even better, there was a half opened ecomomy sized package of frozen hot dogs for sale as well! We ended up opting for some of the bake sale items instead. We escaped the flea market with 2 pigs-in-a-blanket and 2 mini-mini- loaves of banana bread for only $14.00!! Ha!

November:
This month has been crazy, but good. I honestly don't know where it went. We celebrated Veteran's Day during our November Saturday school. We invited all of the local Veterans to come to an Honorary luncheon presented by the students. It was sooo cool! We taught the kids the pledge and national anthem and all about the history of the flag. It was a great day. One of the veterans got really emotional with the students and said that it was so nice to finally be thanked for what they had done. I think that was when the meaning of the day really hit the students.

Thanksgiving:
I thought Tahnksgiving might be really hard this year, being my first Thanksgiving away from home. But, it was really fun. Of course, I missed my family, but the day was still good. The Wednesday before that was my second parent-teacher conferences, which went well. That night we had a baking party at my sister's house with Mrs. Stacks and her 2 girls. We made 8 pies, the turkey, cranberry salad, stuffing, mashed potatoes, onion tartlets, and rolls!!! Then on Thanksgiving, we watched the Macy's Parade that Nikki taped, since it came on here at 4 am and the National Dog Show. That is a family tradition. After that we packed up Piece-O with all the food and headed to Stacks for dinner. It was great and there was tons of food!!!!!! Friday, Mel and I set up our "Christmas Tree". I will post pics of that later! Then we decided to head to "the" store for the Day After Thanksgiving sales. They had 1 liter cokes half price and doritos were half price!!!! It was a wild 5 minutes of shopping!!!

Now we are back in school. Time will fly by so fast I know! See ya in Decemeber!:)

Monday, November 5, 2007

Pictures!!!


I added new pictures this weekend! So check 'em out!

Thursday, November 1, 2007

Recap of October


Well...
October has been a crazy month! I cannot believe how fast time flies by! I am already two weeks into my second quarter of teaching.
I am going to write this in chunks.

Jennifer's Wedding:
At the beginning of the month I flew back to Michigan for my cousin Jennifer's wedding. It was so much fun, but went by way too fast. It was great to see my family; my parents, brother, sister, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins! i don't get to see them too often so it was really good to be there. I was a bridesmaid and also "the wedding singer". The wedding was beautiful and my cousin was, of course, gorgeous! It was weird to be in the lower 48 again. Life in Saint Paul is SO different. Going back to Michigan seemed so strange. I saw trees, dogs, paved roads, stores, and traffic lights! And, to top it all off, the weather was in the 80's compared to the 40's of Saint Paul!!

Girl's Night:
A few weekends ago, Mel and I hosted a Girl's Nigh Out at our house. We invited all the female staff members over for games and food. It was a blast! We talked and talked and talked. I even learned that one of the teachers had been attacked by a brown bear! I never knew! We played Guesstures and laughed a ton. It was so much fun and was well needed! The husbands came to pick up their wives and they stayed for a little while too. (I think they were all jealous that we were having such a good time! :P )
The husbands even brought over a few fishermen and some of the coast guard. I guess word spreads fast that there are two single girls on the island.

Artist-in- Residence:
For the past two weeks the school has had an artist-in-residence. His name is Steve and he is a professional photographer. He came into both of my middle school classes last week to teach them about photography. It was a bonus for me, because I got a break from teaching two classes and because I got to learn about photography! I have taken tons of pictures and I am trying to put them into slideshows now and do some cool things with them!

Little Sea Parrots:
This past Saturday was the first day of Little Sea Parrots practice. This is 3rd-6th grade basketball. I am helping Mel coach one of the teams. We have practice from now until Christmas every Saturday from noon-1:30. We even had our first game on Tuesday. The gym was packed! There are four teams that played throughout the night and the kitchen was open to buy nachos and pizza, so we were a very popular place to go that night!

Red Ribbon Week:
Nikki and I are in charge of Red Ribbon week this week. That is a week the school celebrates being drug and alcohol free. We put up banners and set up dress up days for the students. Today is Pajama Day, which is always fun! It has been a busy week!

Halloween:
Halloween is a big holiday here. Last Friday was the annual Halloween Carnival at school. We set up tons of games and activities in the gym and there was a lot of food for sale in the kitchen. Once again, the place was packed! Mel and I were in charge of the Tatoo Parlor, where we gave kids temporary Halloween tattoos and painted faces. After the carnival I went with one of the teachers to the adult costume party and watched the costume judging. It was so fun! And it was a good way to meet a lot of the older community member. I even met Buck-Buck, one of the infamous Saint Paul residents. He has about 5 teeth and is barely understood when he talks. He also always brings home whatever he shot that day for dinner. Well, he came up to me and asked me to marry him! I said, "Sorry Buck-Buck, not tonight. But maybe if you ask me tomorrow I will say yes." HAHA!
Yesterday was actually Halloween. The kids really get into it. When the students come back from lunch at 1:00 they are allowed to wear their costumes to school. At 1:15 all the elementary students have a parade through the rest of the school to show off their costumes. They were soooo cute! Nikki and Mel dressed up as Mama and Baby Bear, Benny dressed up as Napoleon Dynamite and I dressed up as The Cat in the Hat.
After school, we ran back to Nikki and Steve's to get ready for trick-or-treaters. Nikki was handing out candy, Steve would jump out and scare them and Mel and I dressed up as dummies that were sitting in chairs in the porch! We put out three chairs and one of the dummies really was a dummy. When kids would walk by Mel and I would jump up and scare the living daylights out of them! It was soooo much fun! My students were all talking about it today.

Piece-O:
Piece-O is what we have affectionatly named Nikki and Steve's car. It is short for Piece-O-Crap. Well, the name suits it even better now. The starter is out. So, we have to push start the car. This consists of Steve parking the car on the top of a hill and Mel, Nikki, and I running behind it to push it down the hill. Once it is rolling Steve can than get it going! So we have to be sure to park it on a hill all the time. At school we park it on a little hill that is covered in dirt and grass and Steve bumps down it the whole when when we push him. It is hilarious! I guess you do what you gotta do, right?


So yeah! There is my October in a nutshell!