Wow, I left for about two months and Blogger got a facelift! The new editing interface is nice- clean, uncluttered, Mac-ish. I see what you're doing there, Blogger ol' gal.
Let's see. I've so far survived my second and last semester of student teaching, and I have (consults calendar) exactly 4 weeks left of my year long internship, counting from this coming Monday. Even better, my full time grad school experience ends this coming Monday, so I get to enjoy these last 4 weeks with my students without stressing about my own homework as I hassle them for theirs. Bonus.
Speaking of students- next year I'll be enjoying teaching students in....
Tirana, Albania!
At the beginning of March I stumbled across a posting for a position in Albania, and after researching the country and the school (rave reviews from all former employees on international teacher's boards) I applied. It was about a month long process full of detailed e-mails with a kind and incredibly helpful director, and at the end of it I had a Skype interview. Within 30 minutes, I was offered the job. This was the first weekend of my Spring Break, so it was a nice cherry on top of the much-needed break. We're leaving Colorado August 1st and I don't have to be in Albania until the last week of August, so we have some... interesting travel plans in the works. More on that later.
This weekend I'm wrapping up the grad classes, planning my To Kill a Mockingbird final unit, and getting ready to cry my eyes out when I attend graduation for the kids I've worked with all year. Bobby is selling half of our possessions on Craigslist already, and I have a 5 week long solo road trip planned out for my Farewell, Family Summer Tour.
A huge part of the reason I've been so absent, though, is that there have been some rough times health wise in my family, and my Great Granny passed away in early March. She was sick for a while before, so we were able to go down and say our goodbyes, but it was truly awful and I'm still dealing with it. I still don't think it will fully sink in until I come home from Texas this summer and I'm not able to stop halfway to spend the night and share some time with her in Hillsboro, Kansas. I'll go into more details at a later time, but right now it's still fresh and I'm still dealing with it.
Who can say when I'll check back in- it might not be until after May 25th, when school is over. Right now I have a good balance of work, school, and life and I don't know where blogging fits in. There has been some drama around blogging recently that has definitely made me skittish of even blogging here on my piddly little personal blog, and I'm still trying to figure out if I want to move forward with an idea for when we're living overseas. We'll see. For now I just wanted to drop in and say hi.
