The Beginning of the End

It's the end of the world as we know it... and I feel slightly nauseous :) hello friends, family and... um, others... ! I hope the transition into this new season is gentle and fulfilling. The summer has wrapped up and it is now my second day of my SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE! Oy... we had a senior class meeting that I went to (for one reason and one reason only... free t-shirt) on Tuesday (my house called it "Free T-Shirt Day") and they announced that we had 249 days left of our undergraduate careers, just under 6,000 hours! I'm kind of having an existential meltdown... I can't imagine how most of the seniors are feeling, I'm blessed enough in knowing what I want to do with my life! Anyway, my final Whitworth semester (I'll be student teaching in the spring, so that's not entirely true... but it's my last semester of classes actually AT Whitworth) is in full swing! It'll be fairly busy and a few of my classes will be a bit of work, but this will be a much more relaxed semester than some I've had in the past (for example, last semester's madness).

I am in three night classes and two day classes, but my day classes start at 12:50pm :) Finally, a semester with non-8am classes! I know that's not the real world, but everyone else gets them so it's about time I got mine :) This excludes my science lab at 8am on Thursdays, but if that's it I'll take it! I am taking Genetics (toughy and TIME-CONSUMING), Evolutionary Biology (so excited to learn more about the subject to become more knowledgeable about my stance on evolution, intelligent design and my place as an educator in proposing the ideas to my students), Leadership Democracy and Schooling (tons of writing and reading, but gonna be a phenomenal class with one of my favorite Education professors), Teaching English Language Learners, Introduction to Intercultural Education (these last two are half a semester), and Content Area Reading and Writing. Overall, a great semester :) I also had my audition for Women's Choir today, interesting as usual... thankfully, since I'm a returner, they weren't as worried about my lack of preparation as I was. Fun fact: after a three-year study of seeing whether learning an assigned audition piece thirty minutes before said audition turns out well, I can successfully conclude that no, it does not.

The house is wonderful! Housemates are good, place is good, everything is goooood. One of my housemates is currently living in our dining room (seriously... she put up curtains and has basically her own little hut) and we are hoping her room will be done as soon as possible. She's had a rough go of it considering she is living in a common space, was scammed by a mattress company (and therefore without a mattress to put in her dining bedroom), and someone attempted to break into her car... life is rough sometimes, but she's doing well :)

A quick look back to the past... the 27th of August will go down in history as the day I got to quit my job at Magnuson! Huzzah! Best thing ever, that job was a huge blessing considering how long I was able to work and how much it was an hour, but it made me somewhat miserable sometimes. After that I took a day to hang with my housemate and relax, then the day after that Richard and I took a roadtrip to the Westside! We left after he got off work, played by the Columbia River lookout on the way, and made it late that evening. The next day we did SO much fun stuff... I showed him Gig Harbor, Point Defiance/Five Mile Drive/Owen Beach, the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, Titlow Beach, all capped off with a (very short but fun) visit to my dad at his fire station and dinner with my best friend Chelsea Trotter and Richard's cousin (he joined us from Fort Lewis) at the Tides Tavern... mmmm :) The next day, we spent most all of our time with my daddy, going out and eating basically, and catching the rest of the sights that I missed. Two movies later (Blue Ray of course, it is my dad after all!) we were exhausted, went to bed, and Richard and I woke up at 6am the next morning to get him back in time for work. Kind of a whirlwind weekend, but wonderful also :) here are some pictures:

Tehehe... camel butt :) this picture made me really happy for some reason
Anyway, I'd better do something useful before my night class, like eat dinner maybe... it's hard enough to concentrate, much less on an empty tummy. Love you all :)

Chels