Cue That Ole Timey Rocky Music

I wanted to post some pictures of the festivities I mentioned, but unfortunately every single one had my last name or a student's last name. So, enjoy this picture of me cuddling a student's pet wallaby the last week of school.

As of last Friday, I finished my internship. I also cried the entire week prior, and was showered in love and hugs and sweet cards and letters and surprise going away parties from students. I have diligently saved all of said cards and letters and will be scanning them and saving them forever and ever amen.

To say that my last week was a roller coaster of emotion would be an understatement. On the one hand, yes, it was incredibly stressful and I was ready to not work so hard for free- absolutely. I was also over the moon to know that this process, which started in January of 2011, was finally finished. On the other hand, and both feet, and all 20 toes and fingers, I was really sad to leave the students. I adore them, no doubt. The growth I have seen in them this year has been amazing and I'm so proud of everything they've accomplished.

I had put off a pretty tedious and vital task until the Saturday after my last day. I had to upload virtually all of my grad school assignments from the past year to a website aligned with Colorado's educational standards so that the CDE could verify that I had demonstrated competency in each standard. Thankfully Bobby helped me with the organizing and uploading and it only took us 2 hours. It's all been signed off on so now the final step is for me to submit my official "Hey, Colorado? I've done all this work to become a teacher, can you take a look at it and give me a license?" request. I've already ordered my transcripts for that purpose, and I submitted my leave of absence form to my college for the fall. Let's get real- I need a break and I'm not interested in starting another grad class in the same month that I move to Albania, start a new job, and begin the process of figuring out my day to day work life.

This past week I've been tying up loose ends, crossing off things on my seemingly interminable to-do list, and making plans for my upcoming road trip. Tomorrow morning we're getting up early to hike Horsetooth, so for now I'm cutting this reunion off short. Bobby has booked our ridiculous No Plane-ia to Albania trek, but that's another topic for another post. I'm also still trying to figure out what I'm going to do for a blogging space as we travel around. A part of me is considering starting a new blog altogether, but I'm loathe to leave this one behind, so I may just take it into more of a travel blog direction. Fair warning, a huge portion of traveling and teaching will be paying off student loan debt, so there will be more personal finance things thrown into the mix, too. I'm also just still so leery of blogging after stumbling onto some pretty intense snark sites that a part of me is afraid to ramp up the blogging again. I think people who blog sometimes think that everyone blogs, or knows about it, but in reality it's still a relatively small sub-culture and far flung spaces of the internet can collide in really harsh ways...

Whoa, sorry. That was a weirdo ramble upon which to end this post. Here's another picture of that wallaby.

I'm cute and have nothing to do with internet snark sites