News from Middle Earth

Well here I am. Sitting in my living room. Only its not in Logan or Bountiful. I am kinda in New Zealand at the moment. Every now and again I look at a map and realize that I am about seven thousand miles away from home and it makes me cringe a little bit. How did I get here? Or maybe a better question, why the heck did I do this. Let me explain.

You know that whole Utah bubble thing? Well I grew up in the thickest part of that bubble. Bountiful. I broke out a little bit when I went away to college, but those of us who have lived or still live in Logan know that it really isn't that big of a change. I would like to think that over these past few years I have grown and been exposed to some different aspects of life, but even still I wanted an experience away from home. I wanted to really have to rely on myself. To grow. To do something that I have never done-leave.

So my "normal" student teaching began January and finished the 22nd of February. I was sad to leave my kids, but I was so excited to move away from Logan!! Don't get me wrong, Logan is a great place, but after four years it was time for a well-needed change. I packed up my Logan life for the last time and moved home for the first time in three years. I was at home for five days and slept most of the time there. Wednesday night, Feb. 27th, I packed my stuff and headed, for the first time, to the air port. I was kinda nervous for my first time on a plane but it was only an hour to get to LA. And I was flying with another student teacher Shantel Flannery, which helped a lot. All I can say is turbulence is really freaky. About an hour later we boarded our next flight to Sydney...THIRTEEN HOURS LATER...we got there. Once we did we went to get our next boarding pass and there was a problem getting it so they bumped us back to a later flight. Two hours later we boarded for our flight to New Zealand but there was another problem and we left forty minutes after we were supposed to. At first this didn't seem like a big problem, I got to watch the Hobbit, but once we got in...boy I wish we would have gotten in sooner. So after a long customs line, I found out that my bag with all of my clothes in it was missing. Well it was just on another flight but IT HAD ALL OF MY CLOTHES AND SHAMPOO!! I was a bit upset. So after figuring all of that out we got on a shuttle and a hour and a half ride later I finally got to my host family's home, six hours later than expected.

                         This is how we felt after finally getting off of all of our planes. Just so happy.

Well the rest of the weekend involved church activities and trying to get on a normal sleep schedule. We went to a relief society activity, Institute dance (don't worry they are just as lame here as they are in Utah), drove out to visit the temple and then went to a fireside about dating. So it felt just like home.

Today Shantel and I went to the university to have some sort of an orientation. Really it just freaked us out. We walked around the campus took some pictures, enjoyed the sun and then headed to our school. We got a little tour and was promised with more information tomorrow. Shantel and I are still feeling a lot in the dark, but slowly we are hoping things will fall into place.

So for now. Things are going well. I hope we'll get to the beach soon and I'll have more pictures to share. Just know that I am warm and slowly recovering from jet lag.

Learning from Teaching

Things I have learned from student teaching thus far: 

1) 5:30 AM is an ungodly hour.
2) I will soon have a bladder of steel!
           Serious, training myself to only being able to go at lunch, is slowly killing me. 
3) I want to buy a snuggie and wear it around the classroom. ITS SO COLD!
           I could pull that off, right?
4) Talent assemblies are awesome. 
           A guy shooting an arrow through a Life Savor?! WhaaaaaT?!
5) It will be my daily goal when I have my own students to make them roll their eyes at least once. 
          Corny jokes are so GREAT!
6) Finally getting to do what I have been learning about it rewarding. 
7) High school is fun, and I am excited to be back!

Oh boy has these past two and a half weeks been stressful and by the time 9:00 PM hits I cannot keep my eyes open. But its been getting better as the days go on and I take over my classes on Monday. Here's to hoping for warmer weather (and classrooms) and that my lesson plans go well and don't completely fall apart. 

What's good living this life you've been giving if all you do is stay in one place?

Well my assignment of creating a blog taught me something. I enjoy it. So I figure I might as well keep it going. We'll see what topics come up and what its purpose becomes over time.

With it being the beginning of 2013 there are a lot of "beginning-of-the-year-read-my resolutions-that-I-will-keep-for-three-days" posts. But mine are different because they are easy and I have already been doing them. Plus it is January 6th, so I have been keeping them three days longer than all of those other posts you skimmed over. I had a friend post an article about new years resolutions and have been seeing silly lists of things that you should do in your twenties and thus my list was born. 

Read

        Write

                 Laugh

                          Travel 

                                    Love

Read: I love reading and have done very little recreational reading during college, strictly based on the fact that I am a history major and the majority of my homework is reading. My eyes hurt and I wanted human interaction whenever I had free time so my reading lists were set aside. But now that I am graduating I have the full intention of pulling out those lists and learning through reading instead of taking classes. I read a book over Christmas break called Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It is a story about a man that was an Olympic athlete who gets drafted during WWII and after his plane crashed above the pacific is taken as a POW in Japan. Oh my goodness was it an amazing story! I highly recommend it if you have any interest in WWII, history, survival, humor, perseverance or an interest in the people that helped secure the freedoms we enjoy today...yeah I went there. 

Write: This blogs survival after my class assignment is partially due to this resolution. I also wanted to be better at keeping a journal as well as writing letters to my friends. If I have learned anything from my literacy class it is that writing doesn't have to be for school. It is a form of communication that I feel is dying out in a sense. We communicate so much through texts and emails, which at the end of the day will be deleted. We are running out of tangible evidence that our society actually communicated with one another. I have kept almost every hand written note, letter, or card I have received over the years and love looking back at their messages as well as the hand writing of the person who sent it to me. Also having a grandpa pass away when my mother was a young child and having never met him myself it helps me see the importance of journal writing. How will the people that come after me have an idea of who I was way back when? Lucky them, they get to read all the mundane events of a Mormon teenager and the many times I wrote "That was the best Fictionist concert I have ever been to!". 

Laugh: This will not be a problem. Trust me. During the summer I was at a friend's house in a big group of people watching Wall-e and laughing quite a bit...usually by myself. Once I had realized that most everyone was laughing at me laughing instead of the actual movie; I began apologizing. By the end of the movie I had an invite to every movie they watched at their house because it made it that more fun to watch the movie along with my laughter. Great. Speaking of laughing here you go. You will love this. 

Travel: As a social studies prospective teacher, I want to experience other cultures to be able to teach my students about them from a first hand perspective. Luckily I will get to do that this year! I will be participating in an international student teaching program and live in New Zealand for two months to complete my student teaching! Man I am stoked! I got my passport in the mail last week and have been making travel arrangements, as well as looking into taking a Lord of the Rings tour. It is my goal to save enough money each school year to be able to take a trip during the summer to better my understanding of this world I am teaching about. (top spots I want to go to? England, Europe (specifically Germany and France), Thailand, Peru, New York City and Washington D.C.)

Love: It is my goal to let the people around me know that I love them more. I am choosing to do this through my actions. Whether it be a note, an act of service, or just simply telling them, I feel that this needs to be done more in my life. Heck, spread the love people. We need more in this world. 

So recap. This blog is staying around so feel free to follow. I want to travel. Feel free to give me book suggestions. And I love you.