What an AMAZING day!

I have to admit, I was terrified by the thought of another "first day meeting" experience. I didnt have the best praciticum experience, and I was scared, nervous, and unsure of what this "next time" would bring. Well, it was amazing. It was beyond amazing! It has completely rekindled my teaching fire! I had such an awesome first day.
I actually got to the school earlier than my teacher, so I waited in the office until the receptionist said that she was there. Then she called my teacher to tell her that I was on my way down. As I walked through the hallways I began to feel a terrible knotted-nausea feeling in the pit of my stomach. Again, with the nerves. But as I approach what I was pretty sure was her room, I was greeted my a giant poster on the door that said "Welcome Ms. Calvert!" with all of the childrens names signed. The teacher was truly excited to meet me, and began showing me the set up that they had for me. I had a small table to myself to serve as a desk, and on it was a minilla envelope adressed to me. As I looked at it, Ms. McCormick said, "All of the students wrote you a letter." They students had been practicing their letter-writing skills, and so Ms. McCormick had them all write a letter to me! They were adorable! They all asked me questions, and told me that they wanted me to have a good day, and that they were a nice/good class and they wanted me to have fun here. I was also asked if I had pets, where I lived, if I had children, etc...
I didnt know that this day could get any better! But it did. As the students began coming into the classroom, when they saw me they would get a huge grin on their face and start whispering to each other the announcement that I was finally there. The first thing that was said to me by a student was by a little boy whom we will call, Joey. Joey raised his hand, and I walked over to him. He said "Ms. Calvert, I didn't know that you were going to be this beautiful." and... my day was made. The rest of the day was filled with morning activites, a fire drill, and three different visits from the prinicipal himself to see that I was comfortable and doing alright. the principal also had a different desk brought in for me, one that was larger, with a shelf. :)
Also, Ms. McCormick has some amazing things going on in her classroom, but I think that stuff may be saved for another post. However, she has already began giving me copies of all kinds of stuff!
Lunch time was interesting. I ate with my grade level teachers in Ms. McCormick's room. There I was subject to listen to the standard "teacher gossip". Which was not so much fun. At one point Ms. McCormick even said, "You might want to plug your ears" laughing.
The end of the day began rather early. Specials were cancelled that day, and so all of the first grade classes were watching Charlotte's Web together. They had read through the chapter book with their teachers, and seen the play at this point. So, I spent the remainder of the day in the darkened classroom with my kids watching charlotte's web and eating popcorn. :)

Firsts and Lasts

So today was my last, first day of college, and boy was it interesting. I have never felt as relaxed about a first day before. I guess that's because after you have been through 7 semesters you've finally got the hang of it. And, there are no others over you, you are a last semester senior, finally at the top of the food chain. this day was so weird though. Even though I was so incredibly relaxed about it, it seemed as though everything else around me was spinning out of control.
Right towards the end of my "getting ready process" all of the power went out. Which royally sucked, because it was too gloomy outside to provide any real light, so i had to finish getting ready in the dark. Collecting all my notebooks and finding matching shoes was the hardest thing. I, of course, found a flashlight right before I left the house. :)
When I entered the Fine Arts Building, I was welcomed by no one, in a dark hall, with strange emergency lights, and the high pitch ringing of a bad heater unit in a maintenance closet. Kind of creepy. But then of course, blonde me, looks at the first person I see, which thankfully was a friend, and says "Why is it so dark?" and then I proceeded to try and clock in. What a genius I am. I walked into the FAB lounge and it was pitch black. However, there were about 6 or seven people hanging out talking, I had to listen to the voices for a sec to see if I knew them, you wouldn't want to sit in the pitch black with just anybody. But they were friendlies.
Tiffany and I eventually left and went to our 10 o clock classes. This put me on a whole new stress level. In my first class I learned that there is going to be an insane amount of work put on me in the next five weeks, because my professors think of these classes as summer classes, and cram a crap load of stuff into 4.5 weeks. I already have like 4 assignments to do tonight. yuck yuck yuck. Then all of my following professors gave basically the same spill. Except one.
Lets discuss this one professor. She is hilarious. She began our class by saying: "You are not normal, not one of you are normal, and for that matter, neither am I." Then we proceeded to create rules for our race car game as if we were third graders. She is a TRIP. Oh, we also actually raced the toy cars, and that's all we did.
This post is getting long.
So anyway, Carl and I work out when we got out of class, then grabbed Aaron and Cameron and went to the Bookstore. When we came back outside the weather was CrAzY! There were streaks of bright sunshine with clouds of black, purple, red, orange, blue, and yellow spread out everywhere! It was amazingly dramatic and beautiful. I took pictures. Shortly thereafter there was a DOUBLE rainbow!!!
What a day.
Here goes nothing...

So... this is kinda sappy. :)

My blog title seems as though I stole it from a song, and I did. However it is definitely not a song that most people know. This is the title of the song that David wrote for me the night we started dating. Here's the story:
Fall 2005 - I had been hanging out with David almost every night in his apartment. There was this very intense tension between us, because we both liked each other, and had talked about that, but weren't sure what would come next because of past experiences that we had both had, and were both skeptical of getting into a serious relationship. However, the thing that initially brought us together, and would continue to do so, was music. We decided that I was going to write a song that night. I hadnt done it in a while, and I was just having terrible brain blocks (mostly because I was nervous in front of him). So he kept poking fun at me, and I said that I bet he couldnt just write a song on the spot. And so... he did. It was called Beautiful Pain. Later we would talk about the fact that the title was a way of describing that feeling you get in the center of your chest, so close to feeling like pain, but its heaven at the same time, when you are around someone that you are mad about. Sooo. yeah. I think that about sums it up. I might post all the lyrics one day.

The blogging begins..

Im not really sure if this is going to be the write kind of outlet for me. Im not the kind of person that is good at putting thoughts on paper (or in this case, a virtual page). I am bad at giving my brain-to-mouth (brain-to-fingers) filter time to kick in before saying (typing) things, so hopefully I wont kick myself later for any posts.

I am struggling through life right now, and God is making me more humble everyday. Hopefully, eventually I will find the light somewhere at the end of this rediculously long tunnel... more on all that jazz later.

For now, I think I'll play a little Halo with the Hubby till Wind Ensemble rehearsal tonight at 9pm. yuck.