back in the midwest

Whew! We're in Kzoo, after three different trains and my first experience with motion sickness. The train was very nice, a lot more comfortable than I was expecting. It's really amazing to take the train, because you can really appreciate the landscape you go through.
Last night, we went to dinner after getting into Kzoo (and a shower! after 20 hours on a train, it felt amazing!). As I was eating, I felt like I was still swaying. Then I started to feel like I was going to puke. I was meeting Scotty and Traci and once they showed up, I felt out of it and sick to my stomach. It got better for a while and I tried to keep talking and not focus on it. I left around 8, because they ordered food and I knew that the sight of food would not help the tummy. I hope to see them again before I go, this time with no stomach issues. I think the combination of anxiety and excitement of traveling with the feeling of still swaying left my body very confused.
I went home, laid down, took some medicine, drank some Vernors (yayyy Vernors!), and felt better after resting a while. I went to hang out with Katy at her house and enjoyed slouching on her couch and catching up with her, Emmy, Mike, and a few other friends of Katy's that I've met and chatted with a few times. Three of them left after a while and I stayed for a while longer to chat with her. We'll be going to the midnight showing of Harry Potter on the 10th, as well as going to the cottage on Sunday.
Today is a beautiful day and I had no plans. The family already went out to the cottage to spend the night, so I headed to Rocket Star. I chatted for a while with Tim and Clay, but it probably came out as a bunch of rambling because I drank too much coffee this morning. Brian came in and we sat and talked for quite a while, then most everyone I know in Kzoo went to Mike and April's reception. Since I was not invited, I told Clay to tell them congrats and headed over to New Addiction to catch up with DJ and talk about getting a tattoo later on.
Now I'm at home, sipping Vernors and resting up so I can head out tonight for some fun (hopefully). I called Krista to make sure I'd see her while I'm here and dropped off Meghan and Alex's wedding card at their apartment. A pretty productive day today, so far.
Happy birthday to Cherie (who probably won't even see this until she's already here in Kzoo!). I can't wait to see Chris and Cherie in Kzoo. There's even a chance Ryan will drop into Kzoo tomorrow. So far, so good.

how'd them colonials do it?

We lost power last night, randomly. I got sick of a/c and decided to sit on the porch once the sun moved enough to leave some shade on the porch. Gabriel slept on his favorite chair while I read more of The Golden Compass (man, it is so hard to put down! Soo good!) and listened to the storm roll in. Megan watched the storm roll in from the box office of the theater. I picked her up from work, since her way would have been flooded, muddy and dark (no street lamps). The storm had been going since around 8 o'clock, the power failed around 11 or so. What?! Most of the bad part of the storm was already gone! It was really awesome to look over and see that the rest of Governor's Square hadn't lost power. Again, what? I felt bad for the kids moving out of one of the apartments near us. That had to suck.

There are many good things involving the storm:
-It has been incredibly dry, the grass has been slowly turning brown.
-It cut the humidity.
-I got to ride around in my car in the rain, which felt incredibly good after 3 days in a row of 90+ degrees and humidity.
-It gave us a chance to use some of the millions of candles we somehow have.
-It was awesome.

I just heard some more thunder, which means I'm going to turn off the computer and head back out to the porch, pick up my book again, and hope for some more rain.

There were two great blog posts today, one on feministe and one on feministing. I wanted to say more about them, but I'd rather not put my poor, slow, old computer through losing power again.
Ever been to the school district where Brown v Board of Ed was decided? (Feministing)
Do No Harm - Except to Women (Feministe)

intro to wsbg 101: parents edition

My parents and cousin Liz came for a visit last Monday through Friday. They came with no real plans or timeline, but Megan and I had a few things we needed them to do...

First (and most important!): Eat some Chik-Fil-A. And they can only order a #1.

Dad approves.

Second: Go to Food for Thought. Have dad drink a Yuengling beer.

Again, he approves.

Mom tried a mojito for the first time. I had some sort of martini named after Poe.


Third: Go through Williamsburg and W&M's campus, eat at Retro's, try the samples at the peanut shop, take senior pictures for Lizzie and make all of them take polaroids (not scanned) with Thomas Jefferson's statue in Merchant's Square and more pictures with TJ on the campus.



And thus, it becomes a tradition as we now have eight people doing this. If you come to visit, I will make you do the same.

My dad bought new shoes just for this trip and lots of walking around. Look at how new and clean they are!

Fourth: Go to Va Beach, swim in the ocean (Liz's first time!), go to Macarthur and shop, and see Pet Sounds (it was amazing! and Liz's first non-school live production)

Ocean! I now love it.

Tritan is a giant

and he has a huge turtle!

I think they all had a good time. It was nice having them here. We ate lots of good food, swam in their pool just about every night, sweat it out during the two amazingly hot days we had, and played Apples to Apples (Liz is now hooked). I took a picture of one of the rounds, because I laughed so hard:

The green card says "Quiet". I won with Helen Keller. What can I say? I have a twisted sense of humor during that game.

Today is super hot. I was planning on taking a walk up to CVS to pick up the pictures I took of Liz and having lunch, then wandering on to parts of W&M's campus, but Meg took my earbuds to my iPod. It turned out to be a good thing cause it feels about 100 degrees outside. I went up to CVS, no photos yet. Went to Plan 9 and bought two first-time pressings of Belle & Sebatian's If You're Feeling Sinister and The Boy With the Arab Strap. I wasn't sure if I wanted them at first, but then I saw the little sticker that said "Free Download of Album". What? Free download? Yes, please! So, I finally have the two albums of Belle & Sebatian's I've always wanted, on vinyl and in mp3 form. Sweeeeeet. I also bought The Road, the book it seems everyone's been talking about since Oprah got the guy to do an interview and talked up his book for about 30 minutes straight. I read the first few pages and it seemed worth it, especially since Books a Million is amazing and it was something like 40% off. I had lunch at Padow's and started reading The Golden Compass. I'm about 35 or 40 pages into it, it is really, really good. If you like Harry Potter, you'd probably like this series, as well. I stopped back into CVS since the dude working there said that the photos should be delivered any second, but they still weren't there. I really want to see what they look like!

was that thunder?

We found a wonderful, less crowded, less boardwalk-y/flashy/downtown beach with more families and beautiful beach homes lining the beach today. Oh, and parking was only $4 ($5 on the weekends), rather than $10+. The ocean wasn't as wavy, the wind was calmer, and the sun took breaks behind small clouds. I'm now almost done with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, since I got a lot of reading done. I used this mat I bought from H&M and our new beach chairs--both are perfect for the beach. Next we need an umbrella or something to create shade.
Unfortunately, during our second swim into some crazy huge waves, we decided two things: first, that we should bring some floatation stuff next time cause it looks so fun to go over those huge waves on one, and, second, to get the hell out of the water cause there were some huge, dark clouds that sounded like they were producing thunder. The ocean pretty much vacated once the third roll of thunder was heard, many people having already left the beach. Most people were packing up when we were heading to the car. It rained through most of Va Beach and Norfolk, making finding our way back totally exciting since my wipers need to be replaced. It looked incredibly dry once we got to the HRBT and Hampton. Either it didn't storm like crazy there, or it had already dried (which was possible, it was incredibly hot and humid today, thus the trip to the beach).
The best part? The chance of thunderstorms today was 20% for the southside. 20%!! We heard it on NPR on the way down! Ah well. I do love random summer storms and we really needed it.

Later on today or tomorrow I'll post about my parents and cousin's visit. I've got a lot of updating to do, but I've been busy enjoying my slow days and avoiding the stuffiness of the computer room. It's much better now that we turned the A/C on low, today and yesterday were way too humid to let it stay off.

a very colonial birthday

So, it's now June 17th, which means I am now 24 and a second year teacher.
My last days of school included many nice times. I watched Pan's Labrynth and Stomp the Yard with my kids. I got hugs. I got a t-shirt. I got awards. I gave awards and cards (one girl cried). And we ate a lot of food. Oh! And I found out I will have my own classroom, Tyesha (a long-term sub I just looove, she's just amazing and hilarious) will be joining our department as a teacher next year, Amy (other Michigan teacher) will have a desk near me, as will Ahmasi. Good changes, even though we saw many teachers leave and Chandra and Jerilyn will be downstairs with the 9th graders.
I took class pictures of every class but 3rd bell because a lot of kids couldn't make it, were making up other stuff, whatever, and I ended up with only five kids staying. I had pictures of most of them already, anyway, so... whatev.
I'll post the class pictures here, my flickr will have all the other pictures I took of kids and their funny faces, dances and handshakes.

1st bell: Paul, Chris, James, Bryan, Colin. Cleo. Renika, Nycolle and Ronisha. We were missing about 5 kids, a few of which never showed up because of family or medical issues.

2nd bell: Justin and his beloved donut, Tremaine, Melvin, Sandra, Franklin, Aric, Annette, Ariana. (Front) Sequena, Bonnie, Josh, Tony, Cody. I loved this class, I love this picture.

5th bell (most of it, anyway): Danielle, Zakiyyah, Vanessa, Nekita, Matthew, Dustin, Chen, Robert. (Front) Damian, Brittany, Samantha, Chris, Taphanies and Ryan. Loooove them!

8th bell: Vicky, Dorian, Kristian, Bre, J'mari, Deena, Julia, Shane, Rodney, Eric. Lauren, Patrick, Shawn and Ashley (cutest couple ever.), Crystal, Cherae. James, Le'Stace, Carl and some kid from Bugge's class that snuck himself in there. This was my crazy, but hilarious class. Many times we all laughed until we cried. James and Patrick had an amazing handshake they showed me that day, I took a picture of part of it. I should have taped it, it was amazing. haha.

So, my birthday. Thank you to everyone that sent me a birthday wish, I really appreciated it. Meg and I went to New Town, shopped, bought stuff, had lunch, went to get manicures and pedicures and then we all went into downtown Williamsburg, got a gift to send to Amanda to help her heal, and went to dinner at the Green Leafe Cafe. Very delicious!
I played around with the photo merge program that came with my camera. Here is a visual representation of what I bought for myself, what was bought for me, and our nailzzzz. It was not a wild & crazy birthday, but it was relaxing and wonderful.


Our parents should be somewhere near Charleson, WV now, on their way here. Tomorrow by noon, they should probably be here, along with our cousin, Liz. We're looking forward to hanging out with them in the CW, shopping in and going to Va Beach and Norfolk, seeing Pet Sounds and maybe convincing them (or part of them) to go to Busch Gardens. Woo, visitors!

bad, sunglasses, bad!

Last week. Lastweeklastweeklastweek! It's just hitting me now that on Thursday, I will be done. No more students, no more grading until September. Oh. my.
Tomorrow I have my 1st/3rd bell picnic. On Wednesday I have my 5th bell. After that I'll have class pictures, a run-down of what happened, and pictures of kids dancing, doing handshakes they made up, and general silliness. One of the most awesome moments of teaching so far happened on Friday with my 8th bell's picnic. We had it indoors since the heat index was about 100 degrees! I gave them their awards, and Patrick, Deena and James started a cheering section because Deena complained that no one was clapping. So, they were in the back going, "YEAH! YEAH! GET 'EM! GET 'EM! KEEP SMILIN!! YOU GO (name)! WOOOO!" and all sorts of crazy stuff. They got the whole class riled up. I wish I had a video tape of it, because it was 15 minutes of awesomness. People started doing touchdown dances, making shocked faces like the ones you see at pagents or the Oscars, faking crying, doing crazy walks around the classroom. It was amazing. We were so loud with the cheering and laughing, not only were people crying from laughing so hard, but an assistant principal popped her head in to make sure everything was okay. I was laughing so hard that I could only go, "No, no, we're okay! It's all good! It's a good thing!" Amazing.
Yesterday I took Megan out to Knitting Sisters and ended up finding an "upscale resale" shop. I got some Report shoes for $8, which was pretty sweet. They are very cute and the price made 'em even better. Today I pulled my sunglasses I bought from H&M when Meg and Mike were here for spring break and found out they snapped in the same place as my others that snapped over a month ago! Damn! And superglue won't fix these, there was a chunk missing that I couldn't find. Oh well, they were like $8. I liked them, though. I have bad luck with sunglasses. Megan and I made a list of my bad luck:
1. Lost green sunglasses at Silver Leaf. Never got them back, although they said they would drop them off at the house.
2. Lost a pair walking Brody, we retraced every step and didn't find any trace of them!
3. Screws fall out of David and I's sunglasses while they're in the car. Strange.
4. Sunglasses break when I get my first flat tire.
5, Today.
I think it's because I really love finding and buying sunglasses, so I subconcious sabotage the ones I have so I don't feel guilty. We went to Target and I bought myself a birthday present: new glasses and a new bag, big and sturdy enough for a laptop that I'll hopefully get in the future or a weekend away or tons of books or whatever. Either way, it's sturdy, which is what I've been lacking in the other bags I've been buying.
Speaking of my birthday, I have no clue what I'm doing. Meg is getting us manicures and pedicures at the place across the way in New Town. David's coming down. We'll probably go to dinner. I'm thinking of inviting Norfolk people up, but I don't think any of them will take me up on it. But I'll try. The parents and Liz come down after, on the 18th, so I'll be celebrating then. I would say that while I'm in Kzoo, we could celebrate, but I'm getting more worried that I'm going for really no reason. Maybe to see two people, but everyone else will probably be busy or have moved on. I'm no longer needed or important and most of the people I was closest to there have moved, but I still miss it. Hopefully, it'll be fun.

a day in the life of an odd day

Today was another A Day, since it was the 1st. Sometimes this is really irritating, but today was really easy-going, since it was an extra day. I've been bringing my camera around more often, too, to get pictures of my kids before they leave me.

Since it was June 1st, I started telling anyone who asked what day it was that they only had 15 more days to figure out what they were getting me for my birthday. I usually got a "Whaa?"

So, first bell. We did some review for our exam, then some children started playing Apples to Apples (they're hooked, man!).
Billy declared it was "Everybody Be Gay Day!" and started sashaying around the room. He was trying to get everyone dance to the music I was playing (the Blow, Kanye West (their choice) and Interpol). He saw Ronisha outside and yelled out through the window, "Mrs. Pushie can see your stupid butt! Get your butt in here, girl!" I love that kid. I made sure he took the tag off of his new sunglasses before posing for this picture with Ronisha, his BFF!!!#%#!@!, who tried really hard to not crack a smile when I asked her about not smiling in any picture. "No smiling? Ever? Never. Really? No fun? No fun at all? Serious all the time? 110% of the time?" Oh, I went on like that for at least a minute! She held strong! It was amazing.
Maino said, "Take a picture of me doing my work!" Nycolle and I must have had the same thought, because we both said "The only time you do your work?" I must cherish this moment! Maino later challenged me to see if I was stronger than him by a shoulder fight (y'know.. randomly
pushing up against someone and seeing if you can shove them into the locker). Later on in the day, he stole some of the books I was carrying and ran into the men's bathroom, waited and peeked around the corner. That kid cracks me up.
While some kids played Apples to Apples, Bryan and I talked about music snobs vs. music slobs. Then he stole Kaila's hood and put it on his own head. Everyone agreed he looked like an elf.




3rd bell we did the same thing. A lot of students were missing, so it was pretty empty. We also cleaned out our lockers (hurray?) and I got a lot of the Literature books back-- sooo exciting, let me tell you. I don't think people realize how much paperwork and crap teachers have to do. Oh man, it's so incredibly fun. Especially at the end of the year. Totally fun.
After locker clean up, they still had silent sustained reading to do. A lot of the kids in this class (and a few of my others) actually enjoyed their novels and are almost done with them. I don't know if you even know how amazing that is. Not only did they just finish up their standardized tests, they also have 6-7 other classes, tests, projects, etc. to finish up (y'know, the end of the year=assign all those projects and tests! why does that always happen?) I can't imgine how these kids keep track of 6-8 classes! Anyway, I snapped a picture of some of my favorite ladies, Tiffany, Tyeiesha, and Elinida, (but who am I kidding? They're all my favorites) while they were reading their books. It would have never happened if I had asked them.
Some of the kids finished their review, cleaned up and then started playing Apples to Apples. This class is my hardest class to get involved in actually talking to each other (in a manner that's not joking someone), playing games, etc. etc. They would rather do their own thing. That's cool, but it's kind of sad when you want to "build community" and whatnot. But today a miracle occured! I had more than two students who wanted to play a game! (In the picture, it's Cory, Kyle, Tyrone, Tory, Elinida and Christina) One of the newcomers, Tyrone, enjoys pointing out any problem or mistake I make. That's just his sense of humor and I appreciate it because he can dish it out and take it and if I tell him that it's not a good time, he'll stop. Basically, we have a fun time making fun of each other every day. He really enjoyed the fact that I (as well as the other girls) were losing horribly. I had no green cards! I couldn't win! The girls also only had 2 or 3 cards. Tyrone ended up winning, in a sick twist of fate. That ass gloated like I've never seen someone gloat before! Amazing. I love that kid.



(you can't tell in this picture, but there are about 11 or 12 people playing this game)
Ahh, 5th bell. My light at the end of the tunnel on my long 3-classes-in-a-row A days. It was wonderful today. They crack me up and they've become really well-behaved, especially when I think about how rowdy that class was at the beginning of the year. They get their work done, they work well with each other and then they beg to play my nerdy games. Looove it! They also donated quite a bit of money for their end of the year picnic and some of the kids doing the alternative project (it's like a "10th Grade Will" all about English 10 in scrapbook or giant collage form) already started working on it! I was impressed!
Since the SOLs are done, so are a lot of classes. I've had a lot of students come and visit my other classes to play games or catch up on work, since they have nothing else to do. It's really flattering for them to come into my classroom, instead of wandering the halls. Today, Timmy B (he used to be in my 2nd bell, but had to be switched to another teacher due to scheduling conflicts with another class) and Sequena (my success story!) came to class. I kept telling Sequena I wasn't speaking to her until she turned in a research paper, but she still stayed. I took a picture of Zakiyyah, who's usually bubbly and smiling, but apparently refuses to smile in pictures. It could be because my comedienne, Crystal, did a stand-up routine for about 15 minutes about Zakiyyah's boyfriend until Z. finally stopped laughing.

And here is Jarone/"Pacman", Nekita, and Vanessa showing you how they look when they play Apples to Apples. Seriously, they posed like "Okay, this is our Apples to Apples play, ready? Go."


And during my 7th bell plan, I got to do the coolest (nerdiest) thing EVER. I didn't have much to grade, so I went to ask Rebecca (dept. head) if she needed any help with the book room business. We have to move all our English books from the A wing because the A wing will be all for freshmen and apprently we can't store the 9th grade books/novels in there next year. So she had to move all of them and she's wanted to organize the book rooms for us anyway. (She alo said she was motivated because she was trying to keep herself busy because one of the IB 12th graders was killed in a car accident which is pretty upsetting to her, other IB teachers and IB students, since it's a pretty small, tight-knit group of kids. It sucks even more because tonight is prom for seniors.) And, also, you know I love organizing, so I went to help. It was HUGE! And she had all the Shakespeare plays in one side and it turns out we have class copies of The Tempest and The Merchant of Venice as well as The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night's Dream!!! (Only the first two are on the 10th grade regular curriculum, though. I think MSND is on one of the honor's curr., but I don't think anyone does it.) That means that next year, I probably won't be doing Julius Caesar. It's so hard to do because it's really meant for people who know Shakespeare and are at a higher level of reading. It's so subtle, it's a lot of discussion and basically, it's a pain in the ass for 10th grade kids who've only read one other play by Shakespeare. Plus, as I pointed out to Rebecca, they go from Romeo and Juliet to Caesar to Macbeth! Talk about depressing! They never get to see Shakespeare's hilarious side. I told her I might do two of the other plays to see how it goes with them. I kept her company for a while while I picked out books to read from the stacks and stacks (some of them never taught any more) as well as the novels I'd have to read with 11th graders next year. It was pretty awesome.

Oh & if you ever wondered what I would look like as a cartoon:

Thank you, Cleo.