life in the 'ville

I have spent the morning/afternoon cleaning and "preparing" to study. I have to take my second Praxis test tomorrow, and also a "Principles of Learning and Teaching" test. Both of these are 2 hour tests. Our apartment seemed to get a little out of control this week, and I hadn't scrubbed anything for awhile, so I set to work. I know these two things probably don't seem to correlate, but now that I sit down at the computer to study, my mind is clear, I have nothing else on my plate [for the time being], and everything smells fresh and like clorox and pine-sol. It's amazing how clearing the space and really clear your mind as well.

Alright, so I need to be studying but I wanted to get a few recent pictures up here [thanks again, Micah...you have no idea how much we are enjoying your camera! :)]

First stop, MY CLASSROOM! That's right, my classroom. I went up the other day to talk about some curriculum with my coordinating teacher [two of us split the 8th graders, and therefore teach the same stuff...it's really nice because I'll meet with her everyday, during one of my TWO prep periods]. So this is exactly how I found the room, before I touched anything. You may realize why I was so overwhelmed! A lot to do yet, but I'm getting there [more pictures of that later!] Here is a shot facing the door to the hallway:

The front of the classroom is pictured below. Every classroom comes with a ceiling mounted projector, so I can project anything from the computer, tv, vcr etc up there. I also have a nifty tool that I can place over a paper/whatever and it will project that up there [much like the "old" overhead projectors...I can write on it and everything will show up on the screen]. Apparently there are a lot of "gadgets" I will need to figure out...they even have little lapel mics for each teacher that is directly routed into the sound system in each classroom...so no more yelling for me, I can teach in my normal voice. Beautiful:
I wish that I had desks to begin with instead of tables, mainly for classroom management, but I hope these work out okay. I actually think I have to squeeze in one more, as this year's 8th grade is fairly big-- I will probably have about 30 per class. Here is "my corner" of the room. Again, this looks different now, but I had to leave the main stuff here as it is all hooked up over here. The big green board on this side is actually a bulletin board. Like I said, I hope many changes take place and I make this space more inviting.
Now to Brent's job. Here I snapped a quick shot of him in front of "his" building. It was dark so it was a little fuzzy.
Here he is keeping score during some slow-pitch men's league softball. One or two nights a week he doesn't go in until after noon and stays later to work the games.
I like to join him at these games when I can. He actually played this night, so I just stayed afterwards and helped keep score and pick up when the games were over. I didn't get any pictures of the actual game becuase it was a little misty and I didn't want to hurt the camera. He played shortstop and made some great plays [and has a huge strawberry on his knee and hand to prove it!]
As a "thank you" to all the 500 odd volunteers that help at the sport's ministry, they treat them to a Louisville Bats game once a year. Every volunteer gets not only a ticket, but some "Bat's Bucks" to spend at the park. Between the two of us Brent and I got 20 Bat's bucks and I got to indulge myself in overpriced ballpark food!! It was wonderful! [The Bats are the the affiliates for the Cincinnati Reds]

Eric is the summer intern with Brent, and we've become good friends with him. He's actually the one that got us tickets to the Derby race last month! He and Brent are very much alike, and so both of us easily get along with him :)

And one last thing I enjoy?? BURNING my candle. Yep, you heard me. For the 4 years I lived on campus there was a strict "no burning" policy. Not that this was a huge setback or that I had major withdrawls... but it is nice to strike a match and invite your kitchen to smell good again :)