Thrown in the Deep End

     The last few days have been the craziest whirlwind of my life.  I finally got to bed around 3am on Thursday morning and by 7:30, I was already awake and raring to go.  I think I've been running on excitement and adrenaline ever since then because there hasn't been much sleep to speak of.  Last Sunday, at my going away party, someone asked me when I would actually start teaching and jokingly, I said, "Oh, probably Monday".  Well as it turns out, the joke's on me.  When I got to school, I quickly found out that my promised weeks of preparation were no longer and that I was to start teaching on Monday.  I said okay, calmly left the room, and as soon as I was out of sight, ran in a panic to my friend, Katy, who helped me get together all of the papers and schedules and lessons plans and everything else that I needed to start teaching.  

     I spent Friday at school from 9 to 9, taking down decorations, putting up new decorations, making lesson plans, creating seat assignments, and all manner of teacher duties.  I also had my first parent-teacher conference on Friday night.  The meeting had a slight twinge of irony to begin with considering the fact that I haven't yet taught her daughter.  On top of that, my interpreter got called away about a minute into the meeting and the rest of the meeting I had to do on my own... IN SPANISH!  Talk about getting thrown into the deep end. 

     I spent most of Saturday at school as well, rearranging and decorating my classroom, until our principal came in and used her principal voice to tell me, "I think you're overdoing it. Go home."  

     The highlight of my Sunday was the fact that I understood the entire church service without any help.  There is hope for my Spanish yet!

     That's most of my news for now.  Check out the video below to see my kids' reaction the first time they saw me.