Catch Up Time

so i moved at the end of June into my new place. my new place is nice but its really small and is essentially the same amount of rent as a whole... but that's ok i have great roommates and am closer to campus so i can walk to class my last semester of classes on campus. I am still not unpacked and cant remember where i put the stuff that is unpacked. Which is really frustrating. I have been super busy with school and my two jobs though... Earlier this summer I was working 3 jobs. It has only recently hit me that this year i am actually graduating for real. I have been freaking out about it for awhile but now its the real deal and its scary. I am starting to get the questions of "what are you going to do after college?" and where do you want to teach? Honestly I don't know and I am ok with that. There is a plan and it will reveal itself when its time. Though I am leaning towards staying in the states this next year. Unless I find an opportunity that cannot be missed and/or will get rid of my sizable amount of debt. :-) But only time will tell of whats to come, so prayers are greatly appreciated. vacation is the next item on the blogging agenda. I went to the lake for a week, I wasn't working either of my two jobs (at the time) and i only had to come to st cloud one day for class. It was amazing and it was very restful, because it was my parents, me, family friends and their mostly adult children. It was a lot of fun and was good to see everyone. work-- i have been working at an Elementary school working with English Language Learners and first grade readiness kids and lets just say that i absolutely love it. There have been days when i have been so frustrated about what either was or wasn't happening, but i truly do love it and know that this is what i am suppose to be doing with my life. At my job I worked on English Language skills, did translating for students and I translated some notes that were to go home into Spanish, and i was advocating the importance of being bilingual to my students. All of them were Latino students coming from different countries and experiences and all were at various levels of English and Spanish. So essentially I was teaching both English and Spanish. I learned a lot too this summer about what does and doesn't work, and i realized the importance of my Spanish again. Since transferring schools I haven't used my Spanish hardly at all and I am noticing some difficulties with my word choice because I have lost a lot of vocabulary, so I am going to start studying Spanish again and I am going to hit it hard so that I can feel confident when i say that yes, I am a bilingual person. Now i say I am not really bilingual I can just read, write and speak a little bit of Spanish. So we will see how this year goes, it should be exciting on August 15th or so i am done with all of my summer classes!!! So i will actually get 3 weeks of summer where i can do stuff and I am only working one job, though a good portion of this time is going to be spent with my family driving down to Texas to go see my brother. I'm trying to think if I missed anything important to talk about, if I did I will just have to wait and see what happens though I am super stoked about going to go see Spamalot!!!

OH GUCAMOLE!!!

Hello Readers!
I am sorry for not updating lately life... has been relatively hectic!
Moving, Vacation, Teaching, Summer School are a few things on the agenda for the next post as soon as I can.

Moving!!!!

I am moving essentially in an week and a half! Oh My Goodness! Time has just seemed to kind of sneak up on me... but it should be fine, I just need to have a lot of my homework done this week so that it can all be turned before I don't have any sort of computer access... At least not to the internet. If anyone has any sort of suggestions for packing let me know, because I want this disaster to go as smoothly as possible. Though to have a vague idea of how I want my room set up so that will help out a lot. I just need to make sure that I have enough friends helping me move... Oh the joys of this type of thing.

weekof teaching

the week of teaching went pretty well. It is pretty much crazy, but then again that is what happens when you have anywhere from 15-30 minutes. I mainly work with students during their reading period and not really during the math period (but for those of you who know me really well, know that is probably not all that bad.) It fun and it makes me realize why i am going into working with ELLs. Even though there are there days of frustration its never the same thing twice. Next week on Wednesday, I might be going on a field trip with the Kindergartens to the Science Museum. I was asked to help with kindergarten Science camp. If I do end up going, I will have to tell you about that great adventure.

exhaustion

the first of school is almost done and i am completely exhausted.

California...

California was amazing! I had a blast and I feel re energized, though I do not feel well rested. It was pretty much going non-stop for 5 days! It was great to see people, it was great to spend time with my wonderful hostess, and it was a great adventure!! I have decided that I love California... the bay area is great! Although the real estate value is atrocious if you want to purchase. I went to San Francisco with two of my closest friends and it was great fun. Granted I did a lot of the touristy things there I don't think I would mind living there, but that would require another visit to the city, more substantial time spent out there, and a job offer later on. Though my wonderful hostess and her father was trying to convince me to move out to California... I do believe that it is "the land of fruits and nuts" ;-) Here is a list of things that I saw in SF on my one day whirlwind tour: Lombard Street, Pier 39, Golden Gate Park, the San Francisco Botantical Gardens, the Japanese Tea Gardens (which is totally worth the 4 dollar admissions), the exploratorium which was really cool! but that place is huge, and trying to see all of it in one day is extremely overwhelming, the ocean!!! The ocean was amazing even though it was freezing... I have some great shots, and I have some really cool shells and some pieces of a sand dollar, some day I will get a whole one. We drove across the golden gate bridge, stopped at vista and took pictues, drove through Saucilido (sp?), drove by san quentin and that sums up my visit to San Francisco... Eating half a bag of salt water taffy is a Very Very bad idea!!!!!

A Plethora of Thoughts

California was a lot of fun, and i am entirely glad that i went. its kind of weird though because another pair of friends is now married. i am not but i think that i am o.k. with that. i am slightly commitment-phobic and am not sure that its a step that i want to take right now because its something that requires a lot of thinking and preparation (both with ceremony plans, but also with adjusting how you choose to live your life). This preparation consists of looking at issues that are important as well as looking at things like where are you and your spouse going to live, is someone going to stay home with the kids.... are you going to have kids someday? That kind of stuff. I am not sure about a lot of things in my life, but i am sure about one thing... I would like to get married some day and have a family. But I am waiting for a wonderful guy to realize that I have always been there, and see me for what I really am. An intelligent, independent, faithful and faith-filled, woman with goals, and a strong sense of values that truly aren't archaic.

This thought flows into an issue that I was examining on the plane back from San Francisco. Are my views and values truly archaic? and how indoctrinated am i? It might seem odd that one would even begin to think "how indoctrinated am i?", but it's true. Everyone has certain views that deal with thoughts about how things should be done, how the world should work, or what is considered to be right or wrong. I was having an online conversation with a good friend of mine about nature verses nurture- where i stated something along the lines of "its hard to separate the two because they are so intertwined with what we are taught and who we are because of the values that we have because of the experiences we have." I know for a fact that had i gone to a public university my first year after college i would be very different from the person that i am today. My experiences at a small Christian college helped form my values and what i value. Back to what i was saying earlier (sorry for this huge digression).

Everyone is indoctrinated, its part of being human, and part of being a part of a community. I was raised in a Protestant Christian home, in the Heartland, with strong views on the importance of community involvement, political awareness, a close-knit family and good friends. I guess you could say that my parents were liberal, in the sense that they thought it was important that I make my own choices, and that I accept the consequences for my actions. A good example would be that growing up I never had a curfew. My mum preferred that I was in by 11 on school nights, but it wasn't necessarily said that I had to be in by 11, and if I wasn't I still had to get up early for school the next day. I guess you could say that I have been indoctrinated by the churches I have attended, the schools I have gone too, my family and friends, and the values that I think are important. This is when things become tricky because of how they are entangled. For all purposes of this further attempt to explain my thoughts: values are ideals, goals and actions that are important and a larger part of who a person is. The following is a list of things and ideals that i value:

the freedom of choice/speech
liberty, justice, honesty, faith in people
family and friends
my faith that i have and my relationship with Christ
**such as forgiveness, loving one another ( to name a couple)
Helping people whenever I can
the importance of involvement in the community: whether its a school community, at a job, at a church or if it is even political involvement
peace
equality for every person, the removal of oppression and safe spaces for all people despite gender, sexual orientations, race, religion etc.
knowledge... i am very fond of the cliche "Knowledge is power!"
faithfulness, and saving sex for marriage

There are so many more things that I value but I think that this is a nice little list for all intents and purposes. These are things that are very important to me, and unfortunately there are things on this list that others don't value or feel are archaic, because there is a very different value portrayed in our world, predominately from the media (some of you see where I am going with this). Some view "saving sex for marriage" as archaic and don't see it as important. Its been said that I am old fashioned. Which i guess I can see in some instances but I like progress just as much as the next girl. So I guess I decided that I am not archaic and if "you" are unable to respect these things that I value then its not possible to have any sort of substantial relationship that goes any deeper than being acquaintances.

Its these values that also convict you. Or if you would like to use a non-jargon term... It are these values that cause you to stop, think about what is going on, and determines whether or not you see this path as acceptable. So I don't think that any one person should change their core views to make someone else happy... and i'm talking about religion.

I have kind of lost where I was going with this... but it boils down to this: dont change the core of who you are to make someone with different core values and life experiences happy, and eventually someone will love you for who you truly are and not who you are trying to be to make another happy.

Does this make sense to anyone or have I managed to ramble everyone into confusion?