Snow!

Blizzard! Yep, Huntington, Indiana is officially being hit as I type this. Well, actually, we started getting it two nights. This all meant that today my school was cancelled and I already saw Huntington County Community Schools Closed roll across the TV for tomorrow! Nice little two day vacation.

Speaking of school, student teaching has been amazing. I love my supervising teacher and I could not have asked for a better fifth grade class. Roanoke Elementary has been so welcoming to me and I truly look forward to going in every morning. I am so glad for this because it has really validated the fact that being a teacher is something I would love to do. It has also been thrilling because it is challenging and being able to watch the fifth grade team of teachers pull together awesome Revolutionary War units and teach math in an exciting way has been great. As of now, I am just slowly phasing in, so I am still observing and helping students when I can. But, so far, this experience is showing me how to go from being a good teacher to a great one.
The fifth grade obviously takes up most of my time, considering I am there all day. The days of living the college life are really in the past now, and let me be the first to tell you it is a hard transition! I am very ready to be a ‘grown up,’ but it is always hard to say goodbye to an era so precious as the one I was just in. It is also a bit difficult to force my body and mind to go to bed by 11 every night! The good thing is that I am too busy right now to even have time to think about graduating and saying goodbye to people and places I have come to love with all of my heart. You can bet that these thoughts have been on all of our minds lately, and I will most definitely be writing about this more. But for right now, I am just very relaxed and don’t even feel like opening up that thought too much right now. So, I will let you in on some funny things that have happened recently.

-Bachelor Nights. Every Monday night, Liz, Rae, Sara, Kristen, Lauren, Margo, Dorina, and I meet up to watch the Bachelor. Pretty much we reduce ourselves to nasty human beings who make fun of all of the strange situations on this show. I seriously look forward to these nights every week. Lately, we have been going to Liz’s house. She has three cats, one of which has legs that do not function very well and another one that is a kitten with a ton of personality. We laugh a whole lot and eat all of the great food Liz’s mom makes for us. This past Monday night is when we started getting all of the snow, so Liz and I kept checking to see if Huntington schools were giving two hour delays yet; it’s practically like being back in school ourselves we still get so excited. Liz lives out in the middle of nowhere, basically drift city. After the show, we all went out to our cars and started backing out. We couldn’t tell the difference between the road and the grass, so guess who got stuck in a ditch? Yep, me. But, it was all a good memory.

-Snow. Yesterday, I had my alarm set as usual for 6:30. I kept waking up in the middle of the night to check if my school was canceled so that way I would know. Every time I checked Huntington was not listed. Finally, at 6:15, I got the text saying we were off! All yesterday I did not do much, so this means that today I need to start to get crap done. Then last night at dinner, I got the text saying we were closed today again! And sure enough, even Huntington University closed everything on campus today, so all of my other friends were pumped. Last night, we all enjoyed the fact that a blizzard was hitting us and we had nowhere to go the next day. We made snow ice cream and Susanne and I ran down the road at midnight in shorts, boots, and our coats. We heard sleigh bells when we got to the end of the road, and it totally freaked us out!

-Modern Women vs. Betty Crockers. So our friends next door cook all of their meals. Like, good meals. Their cupboards are filled with cooking supplies. Us over here prefer buying our meals, getting the food from school, or just putting in frozen meals in the microwave. This shows our personalities so well because the four of them over there we always joke will have kids right away while us over here will be all over the world doing who knows what. That is where the nicknames come from. The four of us here are the “modern women” and the four of them over there are the “Betty Crockers.” Naturally this morning we could all smell breakfast from our apartment. Who was it but the Betty Crockers making themselves pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage. After we smelled and saw that, Susanne said, “Well, I have some frozen waffles in the freezer.” So, we toasted some frozen waffles with raspberries on top and made coffee. Boom.

-Today we plan on playing in the snow pretty soon and make a giant snow man and then get back to our homework and lesson planning. I am pretty sure it is going to be a great day!